Real Life Portraits

When Photographer Marianne Martin of Real Life Portraits first picked up a camera, it was just to have fun taking portraits of pets.

Now, 15 years later, the consummate professional, her portraits of pets are rendered as large canvas works of art. And weddings, portraits and family portraits have become an equally important addition to her repertoire.

“I started with pets but then my clients started having children and friends were getting married and everything kept evolving," Marianne says. "At the time, very few photographers worked in the candid, lively style that I do, so my business grew very fast. People wanted more than what someone looks like, they wanted to feel the person's (or pet's) soul.”

That is what Marianne loves to capture. She emphasizes that the best photographs aren’t necessarily the ones that are most technically correct, but the ones that hold the most life and emotion.

“Elliot Erwitt is one of my favorite photographers. He did photograph a lot of dogs, which first drew me to him, but mostly he photographed life and the many emotions that make up life. You could feel something in his photographs. That is what I strive for,” she says.

Most of her portraiture is printed in the warm brown sepia tone that many early photographers preferred. “The monotone focuses the viewer more into the heart of the image without the distraction of color," Marianne says. "There are certainly times that I prefer color, but for the most part I prefer sepia due to the warm feeling that it creates. Someone once called my portraits 'yummy,' and I thought that was such a nice compliment.

Marianne travels extensively to photograph weddings - to France, England, Mexico and throughout America. She has had the honor of creating portraits for celebrities such as Robert Redford, Dave Mathews and senator Mark Udall. Her photographs have appeared in a variety of print media including USA Today, Mountain Living, Modern Bride and The Knot. She says she feels fortunate to have been able to travel and to have these great opportunities, but she prefers to stay in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado, creating images of the simple "baby next door."

"That's real life," she says.

"When I was looking for a new house I had a few very specific requirements: three bedrooms, a fenced yard, trees and the perfect photography studio," Marianne says. "My ReMax of Boulder agent found me my ideal home. It has all of my requirements and more!"

Find out more about Real Life Portraits at http://www.reallifeportraits.com/ or call Marianne at(303) 447-3341.

Spring brings out the sellers, buyers but market still flat

Attendance at the National Association of Realtors’ annual legislative meetings in mid-May reinforced Ken Hotard’s opinion of Colorado’s and the Boulder area’s real estate: it is holding its own compared with many other communities throughout the country.

Though the sales statistics for the year ending March 31 showed declines in sales in almost every Boulder market and prices continuing to drop in many of those markets compared with the previous year, other markets in the nation are having “so much more difficulty” than Colorado, metro Denver and Boulder-Broomfield, says the senior vice president of public relations for the Boulder Area Realtor Association.

Besides California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, states in the so-called “rust belt” – Michigan, Indiana and Ohio – are in much more dire straits than Colorado, Hotard says. “Those economies have to completely restructure themselves around different sets of industries and business models,” he says. “They’re facing much greater challenges than here in Colorado and the southwest generally. You wouldn’t want to own a home in Phoenix, Ariz. – especially if you bought it two years ago.”

Hotard says he is seeing an increase in listing and buyer activity, with several markets showing modest improvement in sales volume. Overall sales were up slightly in April compared with March and the attached market remained unchanged.

Prices continue to hold up, but with so fewer homes selling, the average and median prices are not indicative of value across the marketplace because of the lower numbers of samples and greater variability, Hotard says. Usually the prices are based on 80 to 110 homes selling per month in Boulder, compared with 39 sold this April.

“We think we’ll continue modest improvements in sales moving into the summer,” he says. “Don’t expect a tremendous amount of change through the balance of this year unless the credit dam breaks.

“Boulder can be on front edge leading the nation out of the recession,” Hotard adds. “My expectation is that we can turn this corner in second half of 2010. That should be enough time for the credit issue to improve and for job growth. The two will go hand in hand.”

And it’s the Realtors who embrace the changes the industry is experiencing, who do what they need to make their businesses and clients successful, who will lead the industry when real estate turns that corner, Hotard says.

“It’s encouraging to see larger numbers of these professionals embracing the future,” he says.

Sales, construction improve moderately in March 2009

While it’s too soon to predict a turnaround in the market, the Pending Home Sales Index and construction showed slight increases in March.

The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in March, increased 3.2 percent to 84.6 from 82.0 in February, and is 1.1 percent higher than March 2008, when it was 83.7.

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, says it should take a few months for the market to gain momentum.

“This increase could be the leading edge of first-time buyers responding to very favorable affordability conditions and an $8,000 tax credit, which increases buying power even more in areas where special programs allow buyers to use it as a down payment,” he says. “We need several months of sustained growth to demonstrate a recovery in housing, which is necessary for the overall economy to turn around.”

Construction spending also increased from $967.1 billion in February to $969.7 billion in March – a jump of 0.3 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce.

While small, it’s the first increase in overall construction spending in six months. Public construction increased 1.1 percent after a 1.3 percent increase in February, thanks to state and local government projects. On the downside, private construction was down 0.1 percent from February, thanks to a 4.1 percent drop in residential construction.

Colorado wind-power generation capacity 8th in the nation

With the capacity to generate 1,068 megawatts of wind power, Colorado is now eighth in the nation, according to recent data from the American Wind Energy Association.

Texas leads the U.S. with the capacity to generate 7,907 megawatts and with projects under construction that will generate another 1,102 megawatts. Colorado had no projects in the construction process at the time of the report, which reflected data at the end of the first quarter of 2009.

The biggest users of wind power in Colorado are in Logan County, though Weld, Wray, Bent, Prowers and Peetz, among others, also have smaller users. The AWEA report notes that Colorado has the potential to generate 54,900 megawatts of wind power, which would make it 11th in the nation.

Here’s a look at the nation’s top wind-power-generating states:

Boulder top among towns where folks live well, according to Forbes

Forbes recently put Boulder at the tops of its America’s Best Towns to Live Well list, followed by Doral, Fla.; Fairfax, Va.; and Mountain View and Cupertino, Calif. Boulder, however, was the only Colorado town to make the top 25 list, which featured numerous communities in California as well as Maryland and Florida.

The magazine partnered with ZoomProspector.com, a consulting firm specializing in relocation, to identify and rank towns with less than 100,000 residents. Forbes considered median income; average commutes, distance to highways and airports, per capita venture capital funding; per capita number of small businesses; sole-proprietorships and start-ups; the percentage of population with bachelor’s degrees or higher, the share of professional-level workers as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics; the percentage of young and educated people, or those 25-34 years with a bachelor’s degree or higher; the percentage of foreign-born residents degree or higher; and the per capital number of restaurants, bars, museums and cultural institutions.

With a population of 90,648 and a median income of $54,243, Boulder was a consistent performer in all of Forbes’ measures, according to the magazine. The city’s businesses bring in $1,165 in per capital venture capital funding; and it ranks fourth for its young and educated population, in the top 5 percent for its patents per capita, fourth for museums and cultural institutions, and it has an average commute of 17 minutes. The only drawback mentioned was snow – at least for those who don’t care for it.

Here’s a look at America’s Top 25 Towns to Live Well, according to Forbes:

Top 25 Towns to Live Well

1. Boulder, Colo.

2. Doral. Fla.

3. Fairfax, Va.

4. Mountain View, Calif.

5. Cupertino, Calif.

6. Newton, Mass.

7. Columbia, Md.

8. Rockville, Md.

9. Coral Gables, Fla.

10. Foster City, Calif.

11. Belmont, Calif.

12. Hillsborough, Calif.

13. North Potomac, Md.

14. Santa Monica, Calif.

15. Sandy Springs, Ga.

16. Aliso Viego, Calif.

17. Germantown, Md.

18. Evanston, Ill.

19. Davis, Calif.

20. Silver Spring, Md.

21.Tustin, Calif.

22. Sugarland, Texas

23. Potomac, Md.

24. Santa Fe, N.M.

25. Kendall, Fla.