Mark O’Connell

Mark O’Connell was trained by the Royal Airforce in photography and has been taking photographs for over twenty years. He travels around the world as part of the job capturing fantastic shots on a variety of subjects. These include superyachts, aviation, beautiful destinations and gourmet food. He bought his first camera, a Canon 1DS MK2, in Madagascar and took some stunning images of the exquisite surroundings in this country. He now specialises in photographs of sailing yachts, superyachts, marine images and exotic locations.

His portfolio comprises of many different aspects of photography including wild life, abstract art, fine dining and aviation. O’Connell has provided photographs for the front covers of many yachting magazines while a lot of his work has been published in other high-quality publications. He works with many different types of businesses taking shots to support their marketing programmes with images for fliers, websites and brochures. He has also started to create oil paint images from some of his photographs.

As well as being a top, professional photographer Mark is also a captain who owns a yacht photography website. He loves the sea, yachts and of course taking photographs of the marine world. O’Connell travels to many places throughout the world so all that he needs is on hand, right on his doorstep so to speak. There are no specific yachts he prefers to photograph and he does enjoy photographing art and wildlife from which he creates paintings. He prints the photographs onto canvas using a special programme that makes them look like beautiful paintings.

His photos are mainly used for other people’s websites either for marketing or advertising purposes. People also buy his photographs to decorate their homes. Among his works are a poster book called “Boys and their Toys” and a calendar which he called “Superyachts in the Mood”. Mark says knowing what to put in a photograph makes for a great picture. Finding something special means the end result will look terrific and sell very easily.

Among Mark’s favourite sailing destinations is Asia, that is Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. He has said there’s a perfect photograph around every corner whether it’s of people or landscapes. Winning photograph competitions also comes high on Mark’s list. He is highly ranked on a website called Guru where he has won many prizes. O’Connell has also displayed his photograph/paintings in public at the Ford Lauderdale Boat Show where they were a sell-out.