Graduation...

Elation
Copyright 210 Matt Mortensen Photography

This weekend I shot a graduation ceremony for a culinary school. Boy, the hard part that I wasn't expecting was keeping all those newly-minted chefs in their white coats and hats within the dynamic rage of my camera! That is a valuable lesson. Every shot had some blown out highlights, even the ones I would have called under-exposed. I also got to help organize the 150 students in graduating class for the big formal group portrait. The thing you have to remember with these kind of portraits is that you have 2 choices, 1) shoot it outside OR 2) bring lots of speedlights and know how to use them! After you make your choice, then get high up on a ladder and take more shots than necessary so you can do post-processing fixes if necessary. These shots are hard, really hard...
Have a great week, All!

Nikon D2Xs, 70 mm, f2.8, ISO 800, VR

NPO Portraits...

Happy-go-lucky!
Copyright 2010 Matt Mortensen Photography

This week I had the great pleasure of making some portraits for a local non-profit that fills a variety of needs in the Chicago/Lake Area of Minneapolis. The images have already been used in a fundraising effort and will hopefully continue to generate revenue for them. The staff and clients over there were very hospitable and professional and the executive director was clearly running a very well-tuned organization. I was able to get in and out to two different sites and get 15 portraits within 1 hours time with limited setup. The image above was my favorite and happened to be the first, as so often happens!

As a new feature to satisfy the Geek side of all my readers, I am going to give you the EXIF data on these images.

Nikon D200, Manual exposure, 1/250s, f2.8, ISO 100 w/ off-camera, diffused SB-900 set to TTL +0.7 EV

Stillwater Times...

Floodwaters
Copyright 2010 Matt Mortensen Photography

I took some time last weekend to see the flooded riverfront in Stillwater, MN. I finally got some time to post these images! I also pulled out the old printer and made some nice prints, I especially like the one above.

Vision...

For those of you who ask, "is that the camera that takes the really awesome pictures?" I say take a look at this shot. This was taken on my phone! In fact a recent book was published by a pro photog with nothing but iPhone shots! The point being that it is not the technology that matters, it is your vision that makes really awesome pictures. Sure, I have some fancy equipment that costs a fair penny but I also have five years of reading every book on photography I can find. Five years! That is the same number of years I spent getting a PhD in chemistry! In those years I studied structure, compositions, lighting, sun angles, posing, depth of field, and more. So why do I have all the fancy stuff if it doesn't matter? Well, I want to be able to capture beautiful images in every situation. A $5 disposable film camera can make the same image of the Egyptian pyramids in the early morning sunlight as my NIKON D2Xs. BUT, that disposable can't get photos of your kids running through a dim Roman cathedral or of your husband racing down a hill on his cyclo-cross debut race! To capture those images you need at least an slr, but you first need vision!

Food Failure...

Since today is the end of the work week for me, we have officially failed to meet our goal of delivering the same amount of food for half the cost as last week! We went to Supervalu, a local grocer, and a large gas station chain with no success. BUT, rest assured that persistence is a common trait in our team and we will succeed in the end. Miss a goal just means we get the joys of working harder for people who can't!!

If any of you readers out there have a suggestion or a contact at a local produce supplier give us a shout!