Christmas 2009...

'Tis the Season

Copyright 2009 Matt Mortensen

Merry Christmas 2009! We are having a very White Christmas this year in Minnesota with more than a foot of snow on the ground already. What a perfect time for a photo contest with the theme to capture being "white". I took to the streets (and froze some fingers in the process!) to capture that perfect "white" image. I thought this image gave the feeling I was looking for, a warm interior holiday setting framed by the cold exterior of the blizzard. If you're looking for photography contests and theme ideas to get the creative juices flowing try this site. Fellow photographer Andy Mork brought this gem of a site to my attention. Enjoy!

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and that you use the time to spend with family and friends!

-Matt

Stuck Inside...

Serenity
Copyright 2009 Matt Mortensen

With the tremendous blizzard that is coming to Minneapolis this Christmas, I turned my attention to my indoor studio. I always wanted to get a beautiful image of this piece of pottery I bought in Germany. To make this image I used my Cowboy Studio 36" softbox at 1/2 power with my D200 set at the maximum sync shutter speed with an aperture of 5.3 on my Tokina 80-400 lens. The key to making this image work was using a white wall as a fill card to step up the contrast ratio. There was no post-processing other than the pre-set JPEG compression options inside the camera body. Enjoy!