About
(408) 483-3782
Curious about how to shoot ruins?(408) 483-3782

A Man With A Mission

I want to help you tell the best visual story. My sneaky ulterior motive is getting you to love the natural environment, so there’s something left for your grandkids. I can’t always be someplace at the magic hours, so I shoot what it takes to tell the story. My secondary goal is showing you how to do that too.

Beginnings

I found my grandfather’s Leica camera in the basement when I was a kid, and it all went from there. There was a sales job in a camera store, songwriting and performance in rock bands, a couple engineering degrees, and design work in Silicon Valley, but I’ve always loved photography.

Mark Bohrer

Active Light began in 2003 as Mountain and Desert Photography, specializing in wildlife in the U.S. west. I was also photographing pro mountain bike races and travel. After some publishing and print sale success, I switched to commercial work – active portraits, food, and event photography.

Trouble was, I kept wanting to go outside.

More Tech

I wrote for tech and other clients for a couple years, based on 25 years of chip design, and did applications engineering for a software startup. Photography took a back seat in those years, but I missed getting out with a camera.

I began a 2-year park management degree program in 2010. During Summer 2011, I scripted and produced a documentary Tracking the Anasazi: How Great Houses Led To Stripped Resources and Abandonment. It was based on years of photography at Four Corners ruin sites, and research into current thought on the Chaco Phenomenon’s origins and aftermath.

Park Management

I finished the park management degree and went to work for Santa Clara County Parks, moved to New Mexico, and worked for the National Park Service.

I did some photography for NPS at Petroglyph National Monument, including their Find Your Park 2016 picture. But I also wanted to share some of the incredible pre-historic and early historic sites that make New Mexico such a cultural crossroads.

Active Photography

Active Light Photography offers you photo tours to remote World Heritage sites and hidden natural areas in the U.S. Southwest. These sites display amazing ruins, gorgeous mountain and desert settings, great light, and photographic experiences not found anywhere else. They’re a fragile resource, especially at a time of fracking throughout the U.S. Four-Corners area. It’s time to go out and photograph them, before the settings change forever.