Home: Hancock, MI

Email: markriutta@yahoo.com

Mark E Riutta is a photographer based in the beautiful Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan. Also known as the U.P. ("You" "Pee") the Upper Peninsula is full of photographic opportunities of which Mark has many to share. Much of his work is available for purchase as stock photography. He is also available for on demand photo shoots of events or those special situations where that image does not yet exist.

As an ex-full time musician, Mark values the intensity and emotion that comes from a live performance and knows how to capture those moments in difficult conditions. Like everything else Mark has excelled at he is completely self taught and keeps his passion for capturing that magic his focus.

About Mark's journey:

As a senior at Kingford High, Mark was a Great Northern Conference and U.P. champ in alpine ski racing. After college at Michigan Tech he worked with his degree until a slow economy forced his employer to downsize. That actually turned out to be an opportunity for Mark to pursue his passion in music and so for the next 2 years he went on the road as a full-time musician.

As much as that was his dream he soon found out the challenges involved and decided to return to his degreed profession. With that came more opportunities to learn about computers and computer programming, project management and IT management. All the while Mark was still exercising his musical talents in weekend bands or on his own writing and recording instrumental material.

When his kids started skiing Mark's former love of ski racing returned and he got involved in coaching. There he learned the value of video and how it could be used to train athletes and improve their technique. With the guidance of head coach Ron Lawrence, Mark put together a training CD that explained the mechanics of proper technique using video clips of top skiers along with visual animations.

Marks 10 years as an alpine ski racing coach also gave him the opportunity to refine his interest in photography. After plenty of trial and error Mark learned the necessary techiques to capture what is said to be one of the most difficult sports to photograph.

As with any extreme challenge much of what is learned can be applied to other areas and so was the case here. Today Mark shoots corporate events, portraits and stock photos in addtion to video capture, video editing, creating corporate videos and web design.