Caitlin Moe Album Cover Photo Contest

Hi Everyone!

I am in a online photo contest trying to win an opportunity to photograph musical artist Caitlin Moe for her next album cover.

I am in need of votes to get into the top 25 finalists.

Please visit my contest profile at:

http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/glamourdave/119

and cast your vote. This would be a great career opportunity and I would appreciate your support.

Happy Birthday America!!!

Today is the 4th of July, and that means a great birthday for this very fine country that we live in. In honor of today, I thought I would post some examples of how I have captured the beauty of the American spirit during my photo shoots. I hope that you enjoy these images. Have a great day today everyone!

My Interview with ArtChix Magazine

I have just completed an interview with ArtChix, which is an online magazine.

Visit the magazine & read my interview at:

http://artchixmagazine.com/post/751474546/artchix-special-cover-feature-an-exclusive-interview

My Negative Experience with ArtSelector.com

My last blog entry talked about beginning a new round of self-promotion. So after that entry I began making the rounds to some various art oriented directory sites where I could create some promotional profiles. One of those sites that I had found previously and then went to create a profile on was www.ArtSelector.com.

My initial impression of the site before I went to create a profile was a positive one. They promoted themselves as a site oriented towards the contemporary artist. And they represented all major areas of artistic discipline including photography.

So I went through the process of creating a profile on the site. After I created my initial profile, I proceeded to begin uploading images of my photography to my profile to finish the setup process. At a certain point in the upload process an error occurred, and the upload process was interrupted. That then forced me to have to re-login to the site. When I did I found that my new profile was completely lost along with my initial signin codes. I couldnt get back in at all. At this point in time it was late in the evening, and I decided to deal with this problem the next day.

The next day begins, and I again attempt to signin to my profile. And I find that I cannot. My created signin codes fail to get me back in. So I am forced to re-create a profile a 2nd time. And during this 2nd attempt I am able to completely finish the process of creating my profile including the uploading of images for my profile gallery. So I'm feeling good at this point except for a minor irritation. That irritation being an error msg that was created after the first failure at uploading my profile gallery images. That error msg was reading "Embedded Gallery2 is not available or requested URL does not exist." No matter where I go on the site this error msg is constantly following me around on the screen. It refuses to go away.

At this point this error msg is irritating me enough to contact the site operators and report the problem. Other than this error msg not going away I'm feeling ok about the site and expect to gain some quality promotional benefits from working through the site. Afterall, the site seemed to fairly active and had a large number of registered artists on the site.

A few hours go by, and I find in my email box a reply from ArtSelector.com in regards to my sent msg. They replied back apologizing for the problems I had with the site. But then they laid a major bombshell on me immediately after their apology.

They specifically stated the following, "Unfortunately we are unable to show your work on ArtSelector as i contravenes our terms and conditions of use on which our funding agreement is based. We are a contemporary art website that aims to support, promote and bring together criticaly engaged, contemporary art practioners and viewers. Sorry about this."

At this point after reading this I found myself becoming more than irritated. No where during my signup process was there any form of a warning that would alert me to the idea that maybe my work would be flat out rejected or be undesired so that I would not waste my time on this site. It's not like I am a producer of adult hardcore porn. I generally work with fitness models. I produce fitness, fashion & glamour images. And I will on occasion produce soft erotica. Soft erotica that's softer than a Playboy magazine centerfold spread. I tend to personally consider my work as sexy as the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. So in my book, I dont consider what I produce or what I posted up as examples of my work for my profile to be a problem.

But apparently there was a problem for the people at ArtSelector.com. Because it took my signing up onto their site twice, and apparently automatically having my profile blacklisted & removed to learn that my work was a photographic work was a problem for them.

And this whole experiecne begs several questions that I'm quite sure I will never get an answer from, from anyone at ArtSelector.com. Such as why does it take 2 signup efforts to learn about there being a problem to begin with? If the site operators are concerned about contemporary art than I have to wonder why there is a problem with someone that produces fashion & glamour style imagery? My personal experience tells me that fashion & glamour photography is fairly contemporary in its development & production?, and the site stated that they allowed photography among its disciplines. So how was my posted work not contemporary?

During the period that I was successfully online with the site and my profile, I did see other others in using other media that were showing work that was figurative and that was semi-nude & nude. So why was it perfectly ok those artists to continue to be on the site, and not me?

When I got ArtSelector.com's reply to my problem, I immediately responded back some questions to get a better understanding of what their problem truly was with my work. But as of yet I have not gotten any response to my questions. And I do not expect any response at all.

So at this point considering my experience with this site, I am here to tell everyone reading this that they should scratch off ArtSelector.com as a site to consider for artistic promtional use. There are other sites that do not concern themselves with cherry picking which online members are worth keeping online and which one's are not.

I have created profiles on other art oriented sites and have not had any problems at all. Those sites I will discuss in upcoming posts.

But when it comes to ArtSelector.com, all I can say at this point is this, if ArtSelector.com changes its policies and contacts me with an invitation to rejoin, I am here to tell them to flake off. They need me alot more as a member than I need to have them as a vehicle to promote my work. Ignore ArtSelector.com in your artistic online travels.

A New Round of Self-Promotion

As a photographer I find myself regularly working on self-promotion of myself & mywork. As I have several years of experience as a webmaster for various models, my promotion efforts are generally oriented online. And my efforts tend to take a slightly different direction because of my webmaster background.

Good web promotion goes beyond just submitting your site to the search engines. Building a good name recognition factor requires increasing the relevancy of your name to the key search terms and phrases that you choose to associate yourself with. And increasing relevancy in search engine results also requires making an effort to associating your name with other relevant/similar types of sites.

For myself, I focus my photograpghy services in the areas of fitness, fashion, glamour & erotica. One thing that I do myself is constantly search out directory oriented sites that are strongly built around my chosen themes.

In the last few days I have done another round of web searching and built up a list of over 50 websites that concern themselves with erotica art & photography, glamour, fashion & modeling. So I am going to being the process now of going to each of the sites on my developed list and begin creating profiles on these sites. Increasing the number of web profiles through these sites will in the long term strenghen my name association to the key themes that I want to connect with.

As I begin this process I will update here on the specific sites that I am submitting too. And also discuss the quality of the sites that I submit too.

My New Toy

My newest toy was delivered this afternoon by UPS. It happens to be a digital camcorder that my mother ordered for me as an early birthday gift. (My birthday being July 24th) She allowed me to begin using it when I got it. Actually its arrival today was a bit of a shock being that she ordered it on the 5th from HSN.com. We werent expecting it for a few more days.

So which digital camcorder did my mother order for me? The latest special offer from HSN.com which is for the DXG model # DXG-5C8V-HD. It records 1080 HD video in a device that is as thick as a dime is wide, and small enough to fit inside a shirt pocket easily. A nice little digital camcorder to add to my photography tools.

BUT, this afternoon's efforts at setting up the camcorder and trying to get the provided editing software to install left with some frustration. After I got the camcorder battery charged up and the device itself operational learning to record my first video clip was fast & easy. The ArcSoft Total Media HDCam 2.0 software on the other hand has so far proved worthless since I still am unable to get the software to install on my Toshiba laptop which is less than 2 years old.

Every time I tried to install the software I kept getting an error msg that no device was connected, and that was with the device connected to my laptop via USB port. In fact I connected the camcorder to my laptop via every USB port it had. And rebooted the laptop with the camcorder attached and still got the same error msg each time I tried installing the software.

After several attempts at trying to install the software I finally broke down and went to the company website and registered my camcorder. During the registration process I had to identify my model # and found that my model wasnt even listed among the product models. I guess its that new.

After the registration was done, I sent a support email. Within a short while I did recieve an email response. That allowed me to successfully get the device drivers installed on my laptop. But not the editing software. During the process of getting the device drivers installed, I wound up downloading a Canon codec file which allowed me to view the video test clips I create through Windows Media Player. So that got me a level of basic success with my new camcorder. I can now create new videos and view them.

But I still need to have some editing software, and so far the provided software that came with this camcorder just aint working for me yet. I hope to see if I get more info from the company DXG on that problem. And I will continue to keep you all alerted to my experience with using this model camcorder.

My Online Interview with ArtHash

I just recently completed an interview with ArtHash, an online art oriented blog.

My interview can be viewed at:

http://arthash.blogspot.com/2010/05/artist-interview-david-m-nienow.html

From The Archive: Diana Dennis

Here a couple of new images of fitness competitor Diana Dennis. I shot Diane in Las Vegas several years ago during one of my Vegas trips. I just re-scanned these images over this past weekend. So check these images out.

From The Archive: Sherry Gideons

I just completed another round of new scans from some old photo shoot material. So here are some selected pics from a shoot with Sherry Gideons that took place at a dry lake bed outside of Las Vegas and in the studio during the same visit to Vegas. I hope you enjoy these images.

A Suggestion for Canon

In professional photography photographers tend to associate themselves with the camera brand that they choose to work with. You're either a Canon Shooter, a Nikon Shooter, an Olympus Shooter, etc. For myself, I happen to be a Canon Shooter and have been since I took up photography as part of my web design business.

And during all the time that I have been shooting, it's always been a common thing to see your camera bodies in Black, Silver, or a combination of those 2 colors. But in the last couple of years as digital cameras have become much more common for the consumer, additional colors have become to make their appearance at least in digital compacts and digital consumer camcorders.

And in fact, Canon and Panasonic are 2 camera brands that I am familiar with where at least in the category of digital compacts camera body colors have increased in selection. With the Canon Powershot series of cameras it is possible to purchase camera models in Blue, Red, Brown, Green, Pink, Orange, Gold, and Purple. In addition to the traditional Black and Silver.
Canon also offers digital consumer camcorders in at least Blue & Red colors that I am aware of.

In the Panasonic line of cameras, you can find camera models in Blue, Red, Green, Pink, Orange, Yellow, and Violet. In addition to Black and Silver. Also, it happens that Panasonic also offers the G1 series DSLR bodies in Blue, Red & White.

As a Canon shooter, I am here to register my only true complaint to Canon that I have. And that is to ask them why they cannot add color bodies to their professional line of EOS cameras? Personally, what I would like to see in the Canon EOS body line is the addition of White/Black Trim, White/Silver Trim, White/Gold trim bodies to complement the White "L" series lenses offered by Canon. And in addition also offer EOS bodies in Blue & Red at least.

Adding a bit of color spice to the Canon EOS body line would just help to make things a bit more fun in handling the equipment. At least for me it would. OK, that completes my 1 and only complaint that I have with Canon.

From The Archive: Jamie

I have completed some more re-scans of old photo shoot material. Today I am posting up a couple of images from a shoot with a local girl who at the time of this shoot was actually working as a fashion designer. Jamie enjoyed designing and making dresses for renaissance fairs. So we did a fantasy oriented shoot and a fashion shoot. Enjoy these images.

The Passing of Frank Frazetta

It came to my attention that fantasy artist Frank Frazetta died on the 10th resulting from complications of a stroke. He was 82.

Frank Frazetta has been one of my favorite fantasy artists since I was teenager. When I first began reading science fiction, Frank's artwork was the first fantasy art that came to my attention. Through my learning of Frank's art I then also learned of other fantasy artists such as Boris Vallejo and the Hildebrandt Brothers.

For those not familiar with fantasy art or Frank Frazetta, Frank was responsible for defining the modern image of heroes from literature like Conan, Tarzan, and John Carter of Mars. The image of a musclebound warrior defending against some horiffic creature while also protecting a scantily clad beautiful woman is the hallmark of a Frank Frazetta painting.

And if your a fan of rock band Molly Hatchet, then you have definitely seen the work of Frank Frazetta. As his paintings "The Death Dealer", "Dark Kingdom" and "Berserker" were used as covers for the first 3 Molly Hatchet albums.

A great artistic talent has been lost. By like all great artists, his name & legacy lives on by the great art that they leave behind. And Frank Frazetta left behind a great legacy of images of fantasy & heroes & damsels in distress.

And he will always serve as one of the original sources of inspiration that I rely upon when it comes to the production of my own fantasy oriented photo shoots.

Thanks for the inspiration Frank.

From The Archive: Brandy Maddron

I have been going through my archive of shoot images, and found some material that needed to be re-scanned. Among that material was some images of former web client & fitness model Brandy Maddron. So for your viewing pleasure I present one of my favorites from that time.

This image is available as a limited edition 16x20 print for only $95.00.
All 16x20 prints are limited to 25 editions, and are signed & numbered & include a certificate of authenticity label.

Book Review: Va Va Voom

I am always on the look out for new books & magazines to add to my "Library of Inspiration". The kind of material that I can look at to generate new ideas for photo shoots that I produce. So I tend to look for source material that relates to pin ups, fashion, & fantasy art.

Recently I came across a book on the history of the Hollywood pinup. A casual look over told me it was an immediate addition to my personal library. That book is "Va Va Voom". The book is nearly 300 pages long with I am quite sure at least the same amount of pinup images of Hollywood beaties & actresses. It covers the 1940's to the 1970's. Each chapter is introduced with a shot text intro, but the main emphasis is quality images of beautiful pin up images. There is certainly plenty of material here for anyone that wants to adopt some old Hollywood pinup ideas for their own shoots.

This is a book I would recommend for addition to your own library. And it can be gotten through Amazon.com at a good price. Check it out.

Self Promotion & Licensing Control

As a photographer among the things that we concern ourselves with is self-promotion and trying to maximize our control over the licensed use of our produced works. Our abilities to earn a quality income for our talents as photographers is effected in part by our established reputation and the level of recognition we receive as an artist. And our ability to maximize income from the various licensed uses of our produced images is another factor in our ability to generate income.

For some photographers, the focus on trying to maximize control over all licensed usages of their work can be become a hindrance when it comes to trying to generate a high level of publicity through self-promotion efforts.
In my own career I come from the perspective of also working as a contracted web designer/webmaster for my various model clients. And in that vein, the regular use & distribution of "free" images for promotion of a model client's website was essential to generating a "buzz" on the net through placement in newsgroups, model directory sites, and any other web site that could make use of sexy pinup pics. That would in turn promote traffic back to a client's official website. The generated referral traffic back to the client website would convert into online memberships where fans could gain access to more custom created image content.

So the process of making "free" content regularly available helped in the promotion efforts, and in the long term it led to generating income. Back in my webmastering days my clients & I did not concern ourselves too much about worrying that some selected image was going to wind up being used illegally when we were producing & making available only low-res versions of the availble image sets. A regular graphic copyright stamp on each image was sufficient to protect the mutual photographic work that I and my model clients worked to create.

Since then the number of places for people to post their photos online has dramatically skyrocketed right along with the increase adoption of digital cameras by the general consumer. That increase in the availability of digital images online by both amateur and professional photographers makes for more opportunities to see images being used illegally without proper licensed use & compensation.

For the professional photographer, dealing with these issues of self-promotion, protecting their license rights to their work, trying to figure out how much of their work should be made available online, how to control image distribution, and ensuring that their rights are protected while still allowing for future compensation to be earned, has gotten a bit easier with an organization and online tools that have come to my attention. That organization is a non-profit corporation called Creative Commons.

Creative Commons allows for photographers and artists to define the level of creative rights and control that they wish to specify for a given work. You can use the online tools offered by Creative Commons to define what can and cannot be done commercially with a given piece of registered art or of a collection of art. Essentially six different license types can be defined. The generated license type can then be placed on an artist website, and the specific license terms are noted for everyone to learn and know.

As a photographer, if you wish to allow your images for free distribution for promotion purposes, and not allow any commercial usage or modification you can do so by selecting their most restrictive license. The licensing tools offered by Creative Commons are free to use.

Among the online tools and services offered for professional photographers, I feel that the Creative Commons organization has to be included in the
"Must Have-Must Need to Know" category.

You can visit their site at: http://www.creativecommons.org/ to learn more about their service. I encourage you to check it out.

And I encourage all photographers to feel more confident about using and distributing their work online for purposes of shameless self-promotion. You can only gain more from it in the long term than you would worrying about some sense of loss of control in licensed use of your images. No matter what, your still in control of your work. Creative Commons just gives you a means to publicly define that control for yourelf, your fans, and your customers.

Certifying Your Prints

It has come to my attention that a service is available for photographers & artists to allow them to essentially certify the limited availability of prints & artwork that are produced and sold.

The service is provided by a company called ARTrust. If you are a photographer producing limited edition prints, then this service can give you the means to actually certifiy the true limited edition value of the produced prints. That is done by the use of non-reproduceable Bubble Tags that are paired with each individual produced print.

A visit of the company website provides more details on the service. My visit of the site's gallery shows that no less than esteemed photographer Douglas Kirkland has joined in using this service for his prints of Marilyn Monroe. That's enough to impress me to look at using this service for future production of my own limited edition prints.

There is a cost to join, and a cost to the purchasing of Bubble Tag sets. But for the long term, any photographer or artist that is effectively selling their work in any decent quantity, should give serious thought to making use of this service. For it would further add extra value to what is produced and sold for both the immediate future and the long term collectibility of each produced & sold piece of art.

Visit http://www.arttrustonline.com/

Death of the Floppy Disk

It has been announced by Sony Corp. that they will cease producing & selling the 3.5 floppy disk in 2011. The decision to stop manufacturing has been the result in the decline of sales and usage due to the demand for CD's and DVD's and similar formats.

The question I have is, why did it take so long to get to this conclusion? Its been so long since the last time that I used a 3.5 inch floppy that I cant even remember when. I know that somewhere in storage I have boxes filled with not only 3.5 inch discs, but also 5 1/4 inch discs. I can remember selling 8 inch floppies back when I worked for Radio Shack in the 80's.

Why do I keep them? Honestly, I dont know. But I have them. And I am amazed that I continue to see them for sale at this stage of things. But with Sony's decision to cease production, the little floppy disc is now reached the end of it's life. And for storage formats, I guess you can say it had a good long run of a life considering the speed at which change continues to take place in the computer industry.

R.I.P. - 3.5 Floppy.

Prayers for Bret Michaels

Bret Michaels, lead singer for the band Poison by current news reports still finds himself in intensive care and being closely watched by his doctors. He is suffering from a brain hemorahage.

My prayers go out to Bret for a speedy recovery from this situation. It is a condition that I personally have dealt with from a couple of different perspectives. The first being that when I was in high school I experienced some blackouts and was diagnosed with a brain tumor which resulted in my having 2 brain surgeries in my senior year of high school. The 2nd is that my father experienced an aneurism in his brain several year ago which sent him into the hospital for a couple of weeks while he recovered.

So this situation that Bret Michaels finds himself in is something that I am keenly sensitive too. I know that Bret can recover from this. But it will take some time for a proper healing to take place.

So I offer my prayers of support to Bret during this time. And feel confident that he can completely recover from it in time.

Poster of the Day

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The following poster is available for sale from my online store. All posters are 20x30 in size. All posters are limited to 100 copies each. And all sale for $45 ea + S&H.

Click on the banner to be taken to the poster's order page. Click on the ADD TO CART button at the top of the page to complete your purchase. Sales are processed by Google Checkout.

Poster of the Day

The following poster is available for sale from my online store. All posters are 20x30 in size. All posters are limited to 100 copies each. And all sale for $45 ea + S&H.

Click on the banner to be taken to the poster's order page. Click on the ADD TO CART button at the top of the page to complete your purchase. Sales are processed by Google Checkout.

Peter Gowland Passes Away

It came to my attention today while browsing the web that glamour photographer Peter Gowland passed away last month. He died on March 17 due to complications resulting from a hip surgery. He was 93.

Peter Gowland came to my attention when I was in high school and I was first getting involved in photography. At that time I was seriously spending time photographing my cousins in their involvement in BMX racing. And dreaming then of how I would like to get involved in glamour & fashion photography. But back then (early 80's) there was not alot of material & information on that area of photography. And the only book that I could easily find was one of Peter Gowland's books on glamour photography. In fact at the time, it seemed about the only such book that would be stocked by the bookstores in my local area.

But then I went to college and my photography came to an end. It wasnt until I got involved in my web design work that photography came back into my life. When it did I still had my book from Peter Gowland to help me with what I needed to learn when it came time to begin photographing my model clients.

I know that Peter Gowland wrote numerous books on photography and shooting glamour. He worked for over 60 years as a photographer specializing in glamour & pin-up. And I am quite sure that many photographers like me shooting glamour can all owe some influence & thank you to Peter Gowland for his instructional guidance. But beyond that his contributions in photography also included numerous inventions in camera design. The Gowlandflex camera is a camera model that he designed in the 1950's that many photographers have used including fashion photographer icon Annie Liebvitz.

Peter Gowland's photography & his contributions to the art of photography are to be remembered & appreciated. I thank you Peter Gowland for what you contributed to the art of photography.

New Magazine Issue Released!

The third issue of The Fine Art of Glamour magazine is now available for purchase. This 48 page magazine is exclusively devoted to fitness model Melissa Budreau. The magazine is $19.95.

To purchase the magazine click on the link below:

Latest Photo Book Now Available

I have just released my latest photo book. The Fine Art of Glamour, Vol. 1 is a 40 page showcase of some of my favorite portfolio pieces produced during my years of working with my fitness model clients.

The book is available through Blurb.com, and the price is $39.95 for the paperback edition, and $49.95 for the hardbound edition.

You can preview the book below before purchasing the book.

The Fine Art of Glamour Vol. I by David "Glamour Dave" Nienow BOOK INFO