Last week my wife and I went to Idaho for Christmas to visit my kids and parents.  I make the trip from Denver to Idaho Falls, Idaho on a regular basis as that is were my kids reside.  On the drive back to Denver this past Sunday we were traversing across Wyoming on US Highway 191 in the morning where the temperature was a toasty 8 degrees Fahrenheit.  Over night fog formed and at such a cold temperature every tree and wire got coated in snow and ice.   As we passed little Eden Wyoming (population ~388) my wife suggested we should stop and take pictures.  Originally, I wasn’t too thrilled about stopping to take pictures (8 degrees is cold!) and I wanted to get home and didn’t want to stop for anything (such a man thing I’m told).  Somehow my wife convinced me it would be a good idea to stop and this little log church was where we parked.  Thanks honey! It really was a good idea after all even though my face was frozen for a good 30 minutes.

For the technical camera junkies the panoramic of the log church is a hand held 11 image composite.  There was no way was I going to spend time setting up a tripod in that cold.  The image below is after Photoshop has done the merge of the images.  Content Aware Fill in CS5 came in very handy as I had to “create” some sky in the upper left and right plus some fence line in the lower right.  Want to know more on how I did this drop me a comment or email as I’d be happy to give back to the community.

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Mark Mortensen
Denver Colorado Portrait and Wedding Photographer.
www.MarkMortensen.com

Every once in a while I need a sanity check in order to slow down my brain in order to focus better.  I find a personal photo walk seems to help in this respect.  My wife and I just finished up showing our booth at the Great Bridal Expo show on Sunday and I’m in a bit of a daze.  Something about seeing around a hundred brides can wear out some neurons.  So today the weather was unseasonably warm in Denver (high in the mid 70s for mid Nov is pretty warm) and I went for a quick photo walk up on a small canal by our house.  For these walks I only put on one lens and it is typically a fix focal length.  This makes me really focus on composing the shot and zooming with the feet instead of the lens.  You should try this sometime as it really does make you slow down and think.  For my walk today I selected my 50mm f/1.4.  Enjoy the images.

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Mark Mortensen
Denver Colorado Portrait and Wedding Photographer.
www.MarkMortensen.com

I discovered Moo a few years ago and can’t say enough good stuff about their products.  Moo is an exceptional printer based out of the United Kingdom with a printing lab in the United States as well.  I discovered them while looking for a different way to create my business cards and they provide a way to create cards with up to 50 different images on the back.  I use it as my portfolio in my pocket.  A good friend of mine, Steve of Xvelo Design , had some of their Moo mini-cards created and I was sold on the quality.  Since my first run of business cards I’ve created my fine art greeting card line via Moo as well.  Here is my latest round of cards I had them create.  Check out Moo!

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Mark Mortensen
Denver Colorado Portrait and Wedding Photographer.
www.MarkMortensen.com

Photoshop is such a main stay in my business I don’t know what I would do without it.  This is a great interview with John Knoll, one of the co-developers of Photoshop.  More info of the history of Photoshop here.

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Mark Mortensen
Lakewood Colorado portrait and event photographer.
www.MarkMortensen.com

I got the opportunity this past weekend to finish photographing a custom made bedroom set by Robb Helmkamp of Kamp Studios.  Robb’s dad lives in the Lakewood, Colorado and Robb is currently based in Asheville, North Carolina.  His dad had commissioned Robb to build a new bedroom set for his home and it turned out amazing.  Robb’s sense of the use of the elements and form are nothing short of outstanding.  You definitely should check out his website and other woodwork creations.

During the shoot his dad’s two cats, Lewis and Clarke, decided to participate in the shoot and be my grip assistants.  Not sure they knew that climbing in my camera bag and chewing on my battery pack cords was bad grip assistant etiquette.

Originally, I had met Robb in October 2009 via another woodworker, Cliff Whitehouse of Bernwood Custom Design, who is based in Denver, Colorado.  I have photographed some of Cliff’s work and Cliff was renting shop space to Robb while he built his father’s bedroom set.  Robb wasn’t able to finish the end tables while he was in Denver and later shipped them.  The images above are the finished set.  However, I did get to shoot the bed and a bookcase Robb was building in the studio during his October stay in Denver.

Technical Ramblings: For those that like to see how images are created I’ve included a few setup images.  All the in studio furniture shots were done using 3 AlienBee B800s.  Two in large softboxes with grids and one on a boom in a strip box with grid.  I use the grids to make the white seamless background go black as it rolls out.  After the bed shoot I’ve come to discover I need a much wider background as my 9 foot seamless just isn’t wide enough.

Been playing around with Animoto for a few months and here’s a video I created for a couple of up and coming models. I really like how Animoto does the transitions between images and fluid motion with the music.