Work In Action, originally uploaded by mark.mortensen.

A coworker bought three of my fine art prints and framed them for his office. Frames are through American Frame and the prints I made on my Canon PIXMA 9500 with premium matt paper. Image on the left are the flatirons in Boulder CO.  Middle image is a new pine tree growth in South Dakota.  Image on the right is a fox cub from last spring in my neighborhood.

Yeah me! I’m selling some of my work.

Uploaded by mark.mortensen on 4 Mar 09, 11.32AM MST.

I have officially released my new website for the portrait and event side of my business. Check it out at:

www.markmortensen.com

The new site is a BluDomain Adobe Flash product I purchase about a month ago. Figured it was time to get one of those fancy Flash sites for my photography business instead of just the blog. I will be posting a review of my experience with Blu and their products in the near future.  Overall, Blu’s products are good, however, their customer support and site admin tools could use some work.

What’s the future of the blog, you ask? My plan is to start transforming it into a blog about my photography business.  Essentially a place to share the steps I’ve been taking to startup my business and to eventually go pro.  One thing I like to do is educate others on photography and the business.  I’ve had some ideas for the tag line of the blog:

- From noisy cubicle to digital noise

- From IT to ISO

- From programming to postprocessing: My path to pro

- Path to pro

I’d love to hear what you’d think would be a good tag line.  So drop a comment!  Of course one of the first things I need to figure out is how to stop all the SPAM I get in my blog comments.  Uggh.  Don’t people have better things to do with their time?

In an attempt to broaden the paths in which people can buy my work, I decide to open up an ImageKind and CafePress account.  I’ve had requests via Flickr to purchase some of my photos and these storefronts appear to be an easy way to offer this feature.  I’ve always had my iStockPhoto account but not all of my fine art work is available on iStock.  I’ll have to admit I’ve let iStock slip these past few months as I’ve been focusing on the portrait side of the business.  Portraits have been good to me from a business perspective. But I’m always looking for ways to generate some more revenue and ImageKind and CafePress seem like good tools. So check out my store fronts!

I lead my first photowalk at DaVita a few weeks back.  We had a small but fun gathering of about 5 photographers and walked around the Denver West business park.  The walk was a bit short at only an hour but all of us are really busy with work.  Here’s a few of my images from the walk.

I’ve been waiting for Canon to refresh their legendary 5D camera for about a year now.  Last night Canon finally responded and came out with the 5D Mark II.  I have definite plans on purchasing this camera body (available Nov ’08) to upgrade to a full frame sensor and to get the most out of all the Canon L series glass I’ve been purchasing over the past year.  The updates to the camera were not too surprising.  Sensor resolution upgraded to 21 MegaPixels and in my opinion this is almost too much for the type of work I do.  All it does is require me to buy more disk storage and a faster computer to handle the twice as large file sizes I’ve been working with on my Canon 40D.  The ISO (light sensitivity) has a standard range of 100-6400.  The ISO change was one thing I’ve really been wanting as the max on my 40D is 1600 and at that the image quality is marginal.  Another feature introduced with the 5D Mark II is the ability to record full HD 1080p 30fps video.  I’m still undecided whether this is a feature I’ll use often.  For more information on the 5D Mark II DP Review has a preview article.

This Saturday I joined the Denver, CO group for the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk in Golden, CO.  Since the Democratic National Convention is in Denver this upcoming week, Golden was chosen as the location as you don’t want to be anywhere near Denver.  I along with close to 50 other photographers set out for a 1.75 mile trek to photograph whatever we felt like along the path in Golden.  Here are some of my favorite images from the event.  Other images from the other photographers can be found on the Flickr group here. The route of the walk took us along Clear Creek where a statue of two sisters reading was found.  Also a farmer’s market was also next to the creek and the image above was an umbrella at the market.

One vendor had the most colorful noodles I have ever seen.

Next we traveled into the older part of Golden, CO on our way to the campus of the School of the Mines.  Lots of old houses could be found and this was my favorite.

On the campus, several buildings caught my eye.

The Calvery Church, built in 1867, was a favorite for others as all the photographer’s were invited inside to take photos.  Thanks!

One last image of what Golden CO is famous for. Clear Creek and Coor’s.

This past Tuesday I attended a flash photography seminar and workshop in Denver put on my Neil van Niekerk. Neil in my opinion is the master of on-camera flash photography. He has an excellent blog covering all aspects of his technique, which I’ve been following for the past year.  It was great to get to know Neil and his assistant Karen throughout the day.

The seminar was the first half of the day and Neil lectured and did some small demonstrations of getting the most out of our on-camera flashes.  He also did an incredible job of showing how to misplace camera gear in a meeting room.  It was great to see someone else that does the same things I do and can’t remember where I placed my flash I just had in my hands 30 seconds ago. I walked away from the seminar with a preview of his upcoming book and a wealth of knowledge and I can’t wait to getting practicing.  I also came to the conclusion that my little Canon 430ex flash wasn’t going to cut it and I would need to invest some more money into a Canon 580ex II. Ugh, it seems like it is a never ending cycle to always need some new gear.

After lunch was the hands on workshop.  We started out in the lobby of the Colorado History Museum, worked our way outside, had some dinner on the 16th St Mall, took some more images on the 16th St Mall and finally ened up at Union Station.

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