I love her hair color and skin tone in this color version…

But I also really love the tones in this b&w version…

What do you think?

I know it’s probably no big deal, but it’s always nice to be published.

I love how Flickr Favorites show up in FriendFeed. What a great way to discover new photography. Head on over there and subscribe to my FriendFeed.

Tiana #159 B/W
Feb. 23, 2008

Tiana #22 B/W
February 23, 2008

Tiana #194 B/W
February 23, 2008

Small Flowers Along the Path / Getty Villa / April 27, 2008

Floating / Getty Villa / April 27, 2008

This is my wife, Heather, and my nephew, Joel. Taken today, March 28, 2008, at Battery Spencer, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. One of my favorite photos that I’ve taken in a long time.  It was a perfect day for taking photos.

Tiana #309
Canon EF 100mm/2.8 Macro

I shot with Tiana Hunter a couple weeks ago. I rented a studio in North Hollywood, which turned out to be nothing more than a space in one of those industrial parks. A big empty concrete space. It was one of those rare cold, rainy days in southern California, and the studio was freezing inside. The tiny space heater barely warmed Tiana if she strayed more than a couple feet from it. It was also her second shoot of the day, after having just arrived in town from New York that day. So she was cold and I’m sure a little tired, but she was a real trooper.

Since there was no natural lighting in the place, I used strobes for the whole shoot. After using mostly natural light on my last couple shoots, I didn’t enjoy using strobes as much as I used to. I found it difficult to find a groove with all the breaks for lighting setup and fiddling with lights in between shots.

Anyway, overall it was a great shoot. Tiana is a fun, wonderful model and a real sweetheart. I hope to shoot with her again in a daylight studio, maybe on her next trip to L.A.

Update: There are several photos from the shoot on my Flickr account. To view them, you’ll need to have a Flickr account and turn off “safe search.”

I had a great shoot with Tiana on Saturday, but I’ve barely had a moment to process the photos. Hope to write about the shoot before the end of the week. In the meantime, I posted a few photos from the shoot over on my Flickr account for you to enjoy until I get it together. Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Arielle Lee (2c22)
Oct. 2002

I uploaded a ton of photos from my 2002 and 2003 shoots with Arielle to my Flickr stream today.  I will be uploading a lot of older photos over the coming weeks, in preparation for new gallery software that uses Flickr as its source.

Another one from the archives.

I haven’t really used Zooomr since the introduction of Mk III, but now it’s official. Today I moved the photos I had left on Zooomr over to my Flickr account, fixed any blog entries with Zooomr photos, and finally deleted all of my photos from Zooomr.

Please visit my Flickr photostream and add me as a contact there.

Meanwhile, here’s a new photo to start off the new year…

Heather and I spent Christmas afternoon at the beach!

Leo Carillo beach has some great sea caves when the tide is low enough.  I was shooting some pretty boring shots of this one when this kid ran through.  I waited for him to get out into the sunlight on the other side, and snapped this shot.  Hope you like it!

I came upon this little crab while I was looking for starfish to photograph.  An instant after I snapped the shutter, a wave came in, nearly engulfing me and my 5D, and he was gone.

It’s been a long time since I shot with a 100mm lens, and I had forgotten how shallow its depth-of-field is.  I guess I’m gonna have to pay more attention to depth-of-field with this lens.

Today she gave me an early Christmas present for our trip to the beach — a Canon EF 100mm/f2.8 Macro lens! I had a great time taking it for a spin at Abalone Cove Beach in Palos Verdes, which has some wonderful tide pools.

Here’s a starfish I found stranded a little ways up the beach:

And here’s the best piece of beach glass she found today:

Michael –

Thanks for participating in JPG, but your photo, “Shadow Play,” had to be removed from the site. Some of the most frequent reasons for removal are:

* Inappropriate content. We’re okay with artful nudes, but no genitalia.

Please be sure to read the photo guidelines before uploading again.

http://jpgmag.com/about/photos.html

Note that once a photo has been deleted from the site, it’s gone. It cannot be reviewed again.

Please don’t take this personally - it’s not! We just want to keep the JPG site focused on the kind of photography that we print in JPG Magazine. Try again with a different photo!

Thanks,

– Paul, JPG Editor
http://jpgmag.com

ps - Do not upload the same photo again.

WTF? Genitalia?

Here is the photo they removed:

OK, yeah, the pubic hair is clearly visible. Is that genitalia? Well, I don’t think so, obviously. I’ve read JPG’s posting guidelines. I thought about it before I posted this photo. But I remember thinking to myself, “Um, self, this surely isn’t what they mean by genitalia. Is it?”

Well, yes, apparently it is.

I don’t want to go on too much of a rant here. I like JPG Magazine, and they have the right to publish whatever they think is fit. But maybe genitalia isn’t the right word to use in their posting guidelines. C’mon, there must be a million better, less subjective words they could use.

So anyway, dear readers, what do you think? Is pubic hair genitalia or not?

This week’s stumble is the site of Polish photographer Waclaw Wantuch. Gorgeous black & white nude photographs, selected from his books. Enjoy!

A recent comment on one of my photos of Julie Simone reminded me that I haven’t posted many photos from that shoot, even though it was almost 4 years ago. So here’s my favorite photo of Julie.

What do you think of it?

This week’s stumble is: Naked Girls In Our Bed

Naked Girls In Our Bed features, um, naked girls in a bed, belonging to the site’s author, Lucky B. Jumping around, rolling around, wrapping themselves up in the sheets, whatever. The women are mostly “real” women friends of Lucky, not professional models. The photography is top-notch, and consistently conveys a feeling of good, clean, innocent fun. I don’t think I’m doing a good job describing it, so just go check it out. Beautiful!

Crow, originally uploaded by mhocter.

Update: Vote for this photo for JPG Issue 15:

If you subscribed to my old blog feeds, be sure to update the feed URL in your reader because all new posts will be made here. You can find a link to the feeds at the bottom of the page and also under the “Meta” section in the sidebar.

I have many plans for the new site, starting with a photo gallery to showcase my photography and a section of the site to discuss photo gear. So check back over the next few weeks to see how it’s going.

Enjoy!
Michael

Moonstone Beach, Cambria, CA

Moonstone Beach, Cambria, CA