My passion is to capture you in your best expression of yourself. My passion for photography comes from my two grandfathers. One was an avid hobbyist, the other was a NYC commercial photographer starting in the late 1920's including fashion photography, news reels, films, and television commercials. My first paid work was High School sports events capturing the grit and glory on the faces of competitors. However, my passion took a back seat to an engineering career on the advice of a portrait photographers who said, "Go to college Mark, there's not a lot on money in this business". I had learned so much with my fully manual film camera and the hundreds of hours in the darkroom. That apprenticeship gave me patience and attention to detail which allowed me to capture human emotions and everyone's beauty. I strongly resisted the digital camera trend until it clearly surpassed the quality of film.

So, about 2013, I launched Mark Lillis Portrait LLC to handle events, family, and headshot needs. In 2021 I established a dedicated studio space geared towards portraits and headshots.