Mark Austin is a San Francisco-based photographer, writer, and business technologist. His book Keep Looking Up grew from five years of daily sky photography taken while navigating his daughter’s cancer diagnosis and his own quiet rebuilding. These are photographs about resilience — and what happens when you learn to look up.
Portfolio
PANORAMIC
Wider than the eye – skies that stretch six feet and more, made for the walls that deserve a horizon.
blue skies
Calm, kept still – clear light and drifting clouds, every shade from powder to indigo.
STORM SKY 1
golden hour
The sky forgives us – fire and honey light, the gold that ends the day well. You made it … Look UP!
STORM SKY 1
luminance
Light, witnessed – the brief radiant hour when the sky explains itself.
STORM SKY 1
Storm Skies
Respect, not admiration – deep blues and gathering grays, rain you can watch arrive.
STORM SKY 1
About Mark
From 2015 to 2020, Mark photographed the sky every single day from a Minneapolis high-rise overlooking Lake Harriet. Those five years of images became Keep Looking Up, a book about grief, resilience, and the unexpected grace of paying attention to what’s above you.
Since moving into his San Francisco apartment on November 1, 2024, Mark has been building a second coffee table book — I Really Did Leave My Heart in Ess Eff — a love letter in photographs to the city that caught him on the other side of everything. He is also writing Losing My Distortion: The Story of MY Life — a nonfiction account of his quiet rebuilding, complete with diagrams and illustrations designed to help readers navigate their own. Think memoir with a map.
Let's stay in touch!
Location
San Francisco, CA
support@MarkAustinPhoto.com