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Sharing a studio with One Fine Print has its perks. We had some fun filling up our massive office walls with some huge new prints! You can read more about them here and check out the little timelapse we made below!

A video posted by Mark Lobo | Melbourne (@marklobo) on Apr 21, 2016 at 8:21pm PDT

After wrapping up a shoot early last week, I decided to dump literally everything I had in my bag out and arrange it into a tidy flat-lay.  I think this could be the start of yet another series…

I recently joined a few Instagrammers out on Phillip Island, just under two hours out of Melbourne, for a tour of the beautiful coastline out at Cape Woolamai. There wasn’t much of a sunset like we had hoped for, but it made for the most peaceful night, shooting long exposures of the waves and seeing the silhouettes of thousands of Short-tailed Shearwaters flying above. It was so refreshing to get excited about photography outside of my professional style of work and just have some fun.  This is what I saw:

Since 2010, I’ve ended each year by wrapping up with some of my favourite moments through the photographs I’ve taken. It’s been a great year for pushing myself to experiment in new areas and styles of photography, both commercially and personally. I found myself heading in a few new directions with the primary focus being on creating new personal work, selling my work as prints and to continue to grow my portfolio photography business, “Foliolio”. Looking back on my photography from the year, it’s interesting to see how well these three things seemed to fit together and helped one another grow. This is my top 15 from 2015.

Although I spent much of my childhood in Japan, and still head back over to Tokyo at least once a year, I’ve never really had a chance to play tourist and actually explore some of the most beautiful and interesting places that Japan has to offer. This year I made a conscious effort to do just that and as a result, saw some incredible things. One of them being the beautiful deer of Nara.

I teamed up with One Fine Print who helped me get my personal work onto people’s walls, something I’ve been striving to do well for years. Not only did they do an exceptional job at that, they also got one of my prints on the air and into the penthouse of Shay and Dean, the winners of “The Block” a reality TV show about renovations with a strong focus on interior design and styling. If you’re in Melbourne, be sure to check them out on the walls of the Pop Up shop before it closes!

I continued to work on my playful food photography series, “Graze“. It’s an experimental food photography series in which I give myself some studio time and some “ingredients” to see what kind of playful food creations I can come up with. This was the result, I call it “Frankenfruit”.

Foliolio, my side-photography business which focusses on working with designers who want their work photographed well, quickly gained momentum and I worked with some incredibly talented designers. This was one of my favourites from a colourful shoot with Wild Hen on the design work they did for Fonda Mexican.

With the growth of Foliolio, I found the perfect studio to work out of. This small decision resulted in the ability to create some great work and I’m so glad I decided to find a dedicated space to work out of. It even has a space for my hammock, what more can I say!

In between shoots, things got pretty messy in the studio thanks to a new photo series “spill”, but now everything smells great (ie. like coffee)!

…and I continued to play with my food.

My main photo series of the year was “Handy“, which features creative people and what they do with their hands. One of my favourites was this one with Magdalena Ksiezak who makes adorable paper crafted creations.

Abandoning the seriousness of photography and with this new fascination with hands, I adopted a more playful approach, with a light-hearted spin-off series called, “Stuff you can’t do with Novelty Sized Hands“.

The series fed other ideas, which led to some experiments, including the idea to create an “ice sculpture” using the novelty sized hands as the mould.

I worked with friend and graphic artist, Spencer Harrison AKA Spenceroni on some promotional imagery for Hello Play, his exhibition at No Vacancy Gallery in Melbourne’s CBD. We created a series of playful photographs, showcasing Spencer’s work, all the while “playing” and experimenting as we did.

I was featured on the front cover of PDN Magazine’s January issue. It was an issue on innovation, featuring the work I created with Nate Bolt and the long exposure of his drone over the Californian desert.

A 7 hour drive from Melbourne, Do Lectures Australia once again took place in the beautiful Victorian high country in Glen Valley atPayne’s Hut.  It’s a land without phone reception or internet access, and a sky with seemingly more stars than negative space.  I couldn’t have been happier being back in the thick it all to photograph for another 6 days of incredible people, great conversation and a good community.

A photo posted by Mark Lobo | Melbourne (@marklobo) on Dec 6, 2015 at 1:37pm PST

I started to get a bit more involved with Melbourne’s photography and Instagram community. I met some great folks and got to be a tourist on Phillip Island, shooting late into the night and witnessing thousands of Short-tailed Shearwaters flying overhead. I have to say, it feels like things are coming full circle and am feeling inspired by landscapes once again. I’m looking forward to where this all heads in the new year! Playful, experimental, handy landscapes for people’s walls?

And Lucky last, this ridiculous selfie I took with Phil Ferguson aka @ChiliPhilli when we did our Handy Series shoot.

Have a great holiday season everyone and all the best for 2016!!!

After an AMAZING trip to Japan, I’m finally back in the studio, spilling stuff and cleaning up heaps. I’ve started to continue to photograph more images for my “Spill Series“.  This one was probably one of the messiest, but delicious.

See #lobospill for more from this series on Instagram.

Wow. I’m amazed at how fast this year has gone by.  I moved to the beautiful, vibrant and creative city of Melbourne, made new friends, watched a billion comedy shows and worked with some incredible new clients.  Here is my annual wrap up of my top 13 from 2013.

Michael Doneman – One of my favourite portraits of the year was of Michael, a friend and former business coach.

Bay of Fires – I worked on some editorial photography for a story on “Walks of Australia” One of the most beautiful walks we did was the Bay of Fires, in Tasmania.  It was stunning.

Banana shoot – My new business cards will have “Fruit Balancing Expert” written on them.  I worked on a few playful food photography images for a personal project.

Chrissie Swan – I worked with the beautiful Chrissie Swan for some imagery to promote her new book.  I also worked with her on a different shoot, but more on that in the new year! 🙂

A New Von Vintage Print – A few old negatives were unboxed, scanned and I finally released another print for my film photography project, Von Vintage.

Semi Permanent Melbourne – Semi Permanent in Melbourne had me on my feet for two crazy big days, photographing the event and also shooting video. I saw some great speakers and came away totally inspired. This is a portrait of fellow photographer and speaker, Magdalena Wosinska.

Dumbo Feather – I finally got to work with Dumbo Feather on this shoot with Jaron Lanier in Sydney.

Dare Iced coffee – On a caffeine high, I photographed some product and lifestyle shots of Dare Iced Coffee’s new cold pressed coffee range at St. Ali in South Melbourne.

Dicko – I had the honour of photographing Dicko, in creating a set of imagery to be used for Watercooler Talent and Media, a company which he co-founded.

iPhone Photography Awards – In the cold of winter, I received a few honourable mentions for some of my Instagram photos submitted into the iPhone Photography Awards.  This was taken during a Melbourne heatwave, and had me wishing all year for that warm weather to come back around again. Still waiting, Melbourne!

Otway Harvest – Travelling with a group of international journalists, I worked on capturing the food culture of Melbourne and surrounds.  The highlight was shooting at Otway Harvest, the beautiful ocean side truffle farm of chef, Steve Earl.  I’ll put together photo essay of this trip once the story is published in the new year!

The White House – I photographed a few businesses at their amazing shared work space known as “The White House” for Est Magazine, home to extraordinary ethical businesses like Small Giants, Dumbo Feather and Tom Organic.  It was such a beautiful space to shoot in, I want to live there.

Awkward Melbourne Family Portraits – And finally, something silly for the silly season – On a beautiful Spring day, a group of friends reenacted a few of our favourite poses from Awkward Family Photos.

Stay safe and have a great holiday season everyone! I’m looking forward to an even better 2014!

As a professional photographer, I find photographing things with my iPhone to be a great way to take a less serious, but still creative approach to photography. The ability to share a moment with an international audience within moments of taking a photograph is something that couldn’t have been as easily done 10 years ago and it amazes me every day.

I entered a few images that I had shot and uploaded to Instagram in the annual Iphone Photography Awards and was honoured to find that I received honourable mentions for three of them.   What I find interesting is that these three shots were all photographed within 2 weeks of relocating to Melbourne.  It really reinforces my belief that my creative direction in photography is heavily inspired by new places and experiences.  These are the three shots:

You can find me on Instagram, here.