About Me

Hi, I’m Mark Mourlas and I'm a giant pumpkin grower too! I created this website to help promote the hobby of giant pumpkin growing through my photography.

I have loved joining the giant pumpkin growers’ community. The community is really friendly, and I must say has many folks with really incredible personalities. And this is where I came up with the idea to photograph giant pumpkin growers including the B&W photo series, I’m working on called “Giant Pumpkins – Giant Personalities”. This is a working title. You can see the preliminary photos of the series in one of the photo galleries on this site.

More about me – I live in the SW suburbs of Chicago and belong to Illinois Giant Pumpkin Growers Association. I’ve been growing giant pumpkins since 2016. My personal best is 1,893 in 2021 with the 1789 Werner seed.  My passion is photography. My favorite subjects are portraiture, landscapes, cityscapes, and wildlife. My undergrad degree was in Photography from Columbia College – Chicago. My day job is in Marketing and I work for Northern Illinois University heading up their marketing efforts in the College of Business – Mater’s of Administration department.

I'm also the GPC representative for the Great Lakes region and webmaster for the GPC website. GPC1.org 

Plans for this PumpkinPhoto.com website is to continue photographing giant pumpkin weigh-offs and conferences such as the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC) Big Show. And of course, my photo series. I’ve photographed weigh-offs in IL, WI, MN, IN, MI, and CA  so far but hope to make it out to the East coast soon! And maybe your giant pumpkin patch too.