It's been 3 months since I've posted a blog. Way to long! I wanted to update everyone and let them know I'm back in the studio and will be having more blogs here shortly. When I update my blog next with new pictures you are going to be seeing more and more B&W pictures from now on. Here's a couple. Some you might have seen before and some might be new.

I know a ton of people read my 2008 Review so I thought I would finish up 2009 with a review also. Lot's of stuff happened this year with my photography. I got my first studio this year and fell in love with studio photography. Now because of that I pretty much have a completely new portfolio. CLICK ON EACH PHOTO TO SEE LARGE. I was able to shoot some fine art and landscape work this year also. I hope to continue to add to this so I can have a personal section on my portfolio sometime soon. So that's 2009! I got a lot of stuff planned for 2010 and am really excited to meet all my goals. If you want to get a preview of 2010 go read my 2010 to-do-list. I love the cool bubble map in that blog.

I used to love these brainstorming cloud drafts we used to do before we wrote any type of story when we were kids. I decided to organize my 2010 To-Do-List in the same manner. This is a continues document that I am going to keep adding to and updating as time goes by. Have a look and leave me comments if you have any ideas or suggestions. Look how much time I spend on marketing!!!!! Oh yeah, wait for this thing to load. It's worth it.

[gallery] I know most of the people who read my blog are interested in the same type of blogs I am. I've subscribe to over 60 blogs which I will read through new post almost daily. If you don't know how to subscribe to a blog or what an RSS feed is watch the short video below. The majority of the blogs I read are photography, marketing, graphic design, modern architecture design, writing, freelancing, small business related blogs. Even though I'm a photography by trade I love getting ideas from design and architecture and other outside areas. Here's links to the blogs I enjoy 5ones A Photo Editor Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips Annual Report Photographer David Tejada Avisualsociety Blair's Blog brettludeke.com Burns Auto Parts blog Chase Jarvis Blog Confessions of a Photographer Douglas Sonders Photography Blog Dustin Snipes Blog FreelanceFolder FreelanceSwitch Fuel Your Blogging Fuel Your Creativity HeatherMortonArt buyer Joe McNally Joey Lawrence John Keatley Blog John Loomis Photography Lifestyle Marketing Blog LightSource Studio Photography Podcast Martin Prihoda nickonkenShoptalk Patrick Hoelck Seth's Blog Shoot The Blog Smashing Magazine Strobist The F STOP whats the jackanory ? WordPress.com News Zack Arias Zencast 2Modern Design Talk - Modern Furniture & Design Blog Dornob Finn O'Hara Photography Fuel Your Branding GAILE GUEVARA PadStyle | Interior Design Blog | Modern Furniture | Home Decor Waitin' On a Moment - by Tim Gruber | NYC Photographer william eubank, director Write to Done Zen Habits Copyblogger RESOLVE — ...

Here's a couple 5x7s I just got printed. If you remember I said I was picking new photos for my portfolio. I'm using the 5x7s for proofs for my 11x14s prints I'm going to be using for my portfolio. The detail on these are sick!

I signed up for this new social marketing site called Daytum. It's really not as social as Twitter or Facebook (right now you cant add friends) but this is more of a data collection of everyday things you can keep track of. On Daytum's home page it says "Daytum is a home for collecting and communicating your daily data.". It looks like as of now a lot of people are tracking how many drinks and what kind of drinks they are having, how much exercising they are doing, what restaurants and how many times they are visiting and the travelers are keep track of how many miles by plain, car, bus and train they have been. I've decided it to use it a little differently and track how much time I spend on photography and how many jobs I am currently working. I'll be the first one to admit that I don't use my twitter or facebook enough as I should so I'm going to have to really keep track and make sure I use Daytum regularly. I'm hoping this can be a cool little supplementary marketing tool for me. Here's a link ...

Here's a couple shots of some photos I took awhile back that I haven't shown you guys yet. All these shots were taken within 30 minutes from each other. This was one of the model's buddies who showed up at the studio also. He was a pretty interesting guy so I got him to get a couple portraits while the model was working with the MUA. Here's my favorite out of the shoot. Nice posing, nice lighting and a nice feel with the gray background and gray suit. Nice shadows being picked up also.

I've been working on getting my print portfolio updated. I've never realized how overwhelming it may be to pick out the perfect images and trying to make sure everyone of them flows together with the next. I've been researching a ton on portfolio images and print portfolios. I'm hoping in the next couple weeks I can my my portfolio reviewed and can make the proper changes based on the recommendations. I'm going to post a couple links to some articles and blogs that have helped me through this tedious process. Here's a recent blog post by me brettludeke.com/blog that shows a couple shots of my current print portfolio. Zack Arias does portfolio review/critiques in his blog section. Has them set up so you can watch a video of him on the photographers website flipping through each photo in the photographers portfolio. So far Zack has done 12 videos with each video having anywhere from 2-4 portfolio reviews. This has been a great resource for me. Chris McPherson drops of his blog for A Photo Editor to review. He posted a couple slide shows showing a couple different portfolios Chris uses. Here's some good words of ...

I got the opportunity to get some images for the blackout2.0 club promotion. They wanted a couple group shots which I was able to get pretty quickly so because I had the models in the studio I decided to get a couple more shots of the girls individually.

I spent the whole day today just editing pictures and working on a few things while trying to recover from last nights Halloween festivities. I sat this afternoon and watched a little ant walk across my computer. Just one lone ant riding by. I recently bought a new MyBook external hard drive. This one is the backup for my backup (the backup's backup). I think of it as my second insurance policy. The thing is super fast and can update 300gigs of pictures in a matter of a couple hours. My studio mates and I are shopping around for a new studio that we will hopefully be in by December/January time frame. I'll keep everyone posted on how the search is going but no one has to worry because we will make sure its a perfect place just like out last studio. This is allowing me to focus more time on marketing and other odds and ends that I've been to busy for. I'm going to be doing more location stuff the next couple months now. So I got a bunch of my gear at home with me. Here's ...