Mark Estabrook was born in Oklahoma City. His mother took him to Washington DC in 1962 where he saw a missile for the first time. When he returned to Oklahoma City, he saw President Kennedy warn the nation about the Cuban Missile crisis on TV. Mark moved to Texas when he was six. He developed his first roll of B&W film in his high school newspaper darkroom. When he was sixteen, he hitchhiked to Talequah, Oklahoma and volunteered at the 1972 World Parachuting Championship. One of his assigned duties was keeping a jump log onboard a Huey helicopter. In 1974, he talked his way into a visa at the Hungarian embassy in Washington DC so he could cover the World Parachuting Championship and the American team. The FBI filmed everyone who entered the embassy and in Mark's case, they also questioned him in the rooftop bar of the Hotel Washington. Estabrook was arrested in Szolnok after he photographed women standing in a breadline outside of a completely empty grocery store. Just days before starting his first year at UT Austin, he bought his way out of jail with $100 US and the blue jeans he was wearing.

 

Tom Tilton at Capitol Records asked Paul and Linda McCartney for Mark's first press pass in 1976 and they were kind enough to give him one. Mark began shooting concerts for papers in college thereafter. Estabrook shot the first episode of Austin City Limits in 1976 when he caught Jimmty Buffett's first televised appearance. He signed up for an art class with Garry Winogrand without knowing who he was. It changed his life and the way he looked at photography forever. Mark talked Stevie Ray Vaughn into starting his own band while he was playing with Paul Ray and the Cobras. He also spent two days with Frank Zappa in 1977. Also in 1977, Star Trek's Gene Roddenberry convinced him to pursue aviation as a career alternative to the film industry during a visit to UT Austin. Roddenberry was a B-17 pilot in WWII.

 

Mark received a Bachelor of Science in Radio-TV-Film at UT Austin in 1978.While achieving his flight instructor ratings in Dallas, he met CIA Director George HW Bush on May 7, 1979 at the Uiversity of Dallas where he encouraged Mark to apply for military flight training, which he did in 1980 and joined the Air Force. Mark and Bush had a private conversation about the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assasination. He obtained a Master's degree in Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma in 1987. He flew the E3A AWACS as an aircraft commander followed by 29 years as a FedEx pilot before retiring to work on a photography book about the 1970s in Texas and the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution in Kyiv, Ukraine. When he is not working on his books, he tries to update this website for people who are interested in the Ukrainians, their culture and their freedom from a totalitarian psychopath. Mark is convinced the American people have a lot to learn from the good people of Ukraine.

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In February 2014, Estabrook rode the jumpseat from Austin, TX to Memphis, TN and continued on a B-777 jumpseat to Cologne, Germany, where he bought an airline ticket to Kyiv, Ukraine. His photojournalist coverage of the Euromaidan Revolution in Maidan included his televised access to the stage. Putin and Yanukovych immediately labeled him as CIA. In fact, Mark was a FedEx Airbus captain on a winter vacation. Two days later, Mark was attacked by the Berkut and suffered two grenade explosions. The protesters protected him and smuggled him out of Kyiv. He received surgery in Cologne.