"The New Erotic Photography" arrives...

Received my copy of "The Mammoth Book of the New Erotic Photography" today, and it's really a beautiful collection of work. I'm very pleased and proud to be included, and would like to thank my models who appear in the book: Danaid, Sweet Romance, Iris, Mosh, Zinn Star (above), and Sativa. I would also like to thank editor Maxim Jakubowski for inviting me to participate, and for doing such a fine job putting everything together and making sure the finished product looked great. Congratulations to all the other photographers and models who are included as well, especially Chas Ray Krider for his cover shot of Trishii.

It's really a beautiful book, and even if I wasn't involved, I'd urge anyone with an appreciation for provocative photos of women (men are almost entirely absent from the images) to pick up a copy either from Amazon, or it should be on the shelves of major bookstores very soon now.

Lost

Danaid

Waiting on a friend

Danaid

Total Recall

Danaid

On newsstands now

Very pleased to mention that I received an "Excellence Award" in the B&W Magazine's 2010 Portfolio Contest (issue #76). They featured nine images in a six-page layout, and many thanks go out to the models: Danaid, Amalia Sue, Lucy Dominga, Sweet Romance, Stephanie, Char Rose (above), Galetea, Keira Grant, and Zinn Star. The issue is out now at Barnes & Noble, as well as most other bookstores and should be available through August. Check it out and let me know what you think!

External

Danaid stretches...

The windowless room

Well, for the many of you who have been eagerly awaiting my decision, I've opted for a small studio space, at least on a short-term basis. One substantial change... no windows, so I'll be working with studio lights, in addition to my "shoot and dash" method around the vicinity. I'll have to see how I like the space, while I keep my eyes open for other spectacular studio opportunities.

This is Danaid, who helped me inaugurate my previous studio a while back.

Blow-Up

In yet another instance of life imitating art, a number of years after Mr. Show parodied a NASA mission to blow up the moon because "we have the technology and science demands it" comes the news of a NASA mission to fire a rocket into the moon and blow up a chunk to create a six-mile dust cloud, ostensibly in search of ice or water. I'd echo the monkey's question of "why?" and the protestor's sentiment that there are things right here on earth we need to blow up first.

Not sure why I picked this particular shot of Danaid to put here, but I get a kick out of it. She's always a blast to work with.

Got word from Vato that he'd received his subscription copy of Erotic Review with my feature in it, and that the printing and all looks good. They're sending me a few copies, but just shipped today, so I might not have them until July sometime. The magazine is also "putting to bed" their book of the contest, and it looks like I'll have 6 or 7 pages in that as well, so I'm guessing that should be available in a month or so. The 2008 book is still available, with 4 of my shots in it.

Think I have the Chicago trip pretty well figured out. Looks like I'll be working with 9 models over 5 days, and attending a show of one of my old-school favorite bands, X, at the Double Door. Should be an excellent weekend... so, until I return back to the bloggin' seat, I'll leave you with another shot of Danaid.

"Sometimes I sits and thinks... sometimes I just sits."

A quote attributed to good old Satchel Paige, who usually had a certain wisdom about him. I think just sitting could be good advice for a while.

Here's a couple of Danaid, recently finished and polished up. The top one was awarded my 80th OMP Showcase, for what it's worth. That's over 140 if you count model showcases of my shots, and why shouldn't you?

Story of my life...

So, I put together my little shot of Danaid in the Obama shirt giving the peace sign in yesterday's entry. I posted it a few places, and turns out it's been picked up on Reddit via one of my groups on Flickr. While up to now, my most viewed images on Flickr had something like 900 views over the course of a couple weeks, as of about 3:15pm Tuesday, this shot had over 17,700 views in the span of about 13 hours! (Update as of 11:30 Tuesday: 31,000+)

Sounds great, right? Well, here's where my usual luck comes in.

When I picked and did a quick edit of the shot, I made two versions, one with a watermark, and one without. But I accidently uploaded the unwatermarked shot to Flickr and a couple other places, so what may be one of my most popular images to date has no identification on it. I did manage to fix that, so subsequent viewers will get the marked version, but dammit!

Story of my life.

Vote

In my memory, each presidential election campaign has been uglier than the one before. On top of the usual partisanship, this year unprecedented amounts of racism and sexism were injected into the mix, although Obama seemed to stay above it all. Add in that this year, roughly 8 MILLION perfectly legitimate voters will be turned away from the polls, thanks to the so-called "Help America Vote Act" which led to purges of huge percentages of voters in swing states like Indiana, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. These people won't even know they can't vote until it's too late to do anything about it. A bold stand by Ohio's secretary of state prevented virtually all newly registered voters from being purged at the insistence of the Ohio GOP, which was something of a victory for democracy, as well as Democrats.

Oprah's vote got flipped right before her eyes, so that means it can happen to anyone. Be careful when you vote. Choose paper instead of electronic if possible. If you are somehow challenged or offered a provisional ballot, insist on your right to cast a REAL ballot -- more often than not, the squeaky wheel will get the grease. If need be, call in support at 1-866-OUR-VOTE or call 1-877-874-6226. Fight for your right.

It's gotta be a huge margin, too big to be stolen. Do your part to make it happen.

Please vote. And vote wisely. Reject fear, and vote for hope.

Musings on Danaid

Got a nice surprise the other morning when I saw that NuExpo.com has again featured one of my shots as the main image on their website, giving prominent credit to the model, Danaid. I'm sure it was more about featuring her than me (just based on the size of the type) but I would totally support that decision, as she's an outstanding model who's made me look good whenever we've worked together.

She's a trained artist with quite a bit of experience with sculpture, which she is able to translate into her modeling -- she is especially a fan of Rodin (hence the name Danaid) and she reflects his unabashed sensibilities when she poses. I first met her at a Collingwood group shoot where we immediately hit it off and seemed to speak the same language. A true art model, she has no real interest in fashion or glamour work, but instead is more intent on form and line, light and shadow, texture and sensuality. She's going back to school to pursue her MFA, and sadly, some changes in her personal life have pretty much put a halt to her modeling, but we do keep in touch, and I do maintain hope that we'll get to work together again at some point.

So, for all the NuExpo.com visitors, here's a collection of some of my work with Danaid. Enjoy responsibly.

And Danaid, thanks for everything, and for making me look good.



For the English version of the original NuExpo feature, check the comments on this entry.