Mark Funkhouser Photography

Mark Funkhouser photographs people in Key West, and the route he took to it is part of why he is good in a chaotic moment. He spent a thirty-year career as a firefighter, paramedic and flight paramedic, flying in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, before moving to Key West in 2021 and turning photography into the job. He learned the basics as a teenager from his grandfather on an all-manual camera from the 1950s, started out photographing his own family, and found the part he cared about was catching the mood of a person rather than arranging one.

The work covers most of what people come to this island to mark. Surprise proposals, including the undercover kind where he is a stranger on the beach with a long lens until the moment it is over. Weddings, elopements and beach elopements. Engagement and couples sessions, family and portrait work, senior sessions, milestones and short sunset sittings. On the commercial side, professional headshots, business branding, and event coverage up to island-wide scale. He is a member of the Professional Photographers of America.

He works on location rather than from a studio, which in Key West is the right call: the beaches, the Historic Seaport, Old Town's streets and the sunset hour are the set, and a backdrop would be a waste of all of it. He also shoots landscape and nature work under a separate name, Coast to Summit Images, and his Key West photo series is carried at Key West Collective, a gallery in the Historic Seaport district, so you can see prints in person before you book anything.

Booking is a conversation rather than a form. By his own account you do not need a plan or any experience in front of a camera, which is the correct answer for a couple who have just decided to get married on a beach in two days' time. He is based in Key West and also travels for work in other states.