Without any further waiting, click the following link, why yes…

My New Blog…

Seriously, it blows away this one.

T minus a few hours, and counting!

Let me explain…

I get to go to cool locations, and shoot even cooler people. I don’t have to be stuck in a cubicle all day, and get to do something I love.

Let me explain now the definition of sarcasm:

My previous sentence.

I’ll keep this one short, to save all of my millions of readers precious time, and get straight to the point of tonight’s post! I am currently saving up for my new Nikon D700, and man, I can’t wait! It was a tough decision, but I’m deciding to go with it, over the 5D-II. Instead of going on about why, every camera is amazing, and it’s all about what you do with it… I, on the other hand, will have it only to impress hundreds and hundreds of people, by how expensive it is, not by how awesome it is.

Maybe I’m being sarcastic again.

Maybe it’s not cool to mention you’re being sarcastic, hmmm…

Anyways, speaking of cool, I had a shoot with a friend of mine, who freakin’ rocks. Krystyn is her name, and being amazing-ly awesome is her game. Sam was there too, her superly cool husband, who I’m sure will be a subject of mine quite soon too, so stay tuned! Anyways, without any further waiting, or rambling, enjoy these two shots from our last shoot!

Again, I have such a hard life.

Mainly, because I have to narrow down my shoots to just a few images. I used to post 8,345,231 images per shoot, with random colorations to each shot, but lately I’m trying to work on quality, over quantity. I’ll end this post off with a shot of my hot girlfriend, shot in my new apartment. Adios all, and thanks, as always, as reading!

Don’t mess with Texas.

http://www.mhoganphoto.com

What do all of these statements add up to? None other than an impromptu shoot! We set up a few lights, and blasted away. My roommate, Daniel, his girlfriend, Ashley, and my girlfriend, Miranda, were all over, so I figured, hey, why not shoot us all in the new apartment? By the way, check out my amazing new Diesel jacket that I got off of eBay. Here’s the end result:

We slept, woke up, ate with some other local wedding photographers, and then Daniel and I were struck again, with another idea… Why not shoot at the bus station? We figured that Daniel could have an old 50’s/60’s type look, while I’d go for a more modern look. With my jacket. Again. I’m sorry, I love it.

With the end of this post nearing, I figure I’d appologize, yet again, for not being super blog-busy. I have been extremely busy shooting and editing, and haven’t had much spare time for my blog! In about a week or so, after I get totally caught back up (and can finally catch my breath), I will post my latest band shoots, model shoots, drummer shoot, and much, much more! It will be blog-overload. With, or without my jacket, even.

Thanks for looking, like always!

www.mhoganphoto.com

To my new apartment! I have internet again! Yayyy! I have so many projects coming up, that’s it is almost overwhelming, but amazing… It can be summed up with two words:

Party time.

Not as in drinking party time (since I don’t), but photography party time.

Mandatory picture of empy apartment:

Stay tuned…

That Iyhia and Nygul are pretty much the coolest couple that I’ve ever shot. Not only because of their very unique names, but because they are superly stylish, and awesome people. We had an awesome time on their engagement shoot! I normally don’t like posting a million engagement shoots, but I couldn’t pass up on this one. And there are even like 18 images up from this shoot. Take that, browser loading time.

I have an idea: From now on, every couple I shoot gets to look like they’re famous and in a band. How about that? No more boring couple shoots, lets make things “epic-ly” cool! (for more on that misspelled word, and other misspelled words, see my previous post)

Thanks to Miranda for assisting me in exchange for a nice dinner, that I would have bought either way! hehe, without further ado, enjoy!

Thanks, as always, for looking!

www.mhoganphoto.com

Today I’ll be posting shots from my first shoot with one of my latest clients, Yacine. He’s a local MMA fighter, and we have some really cool stuff coming up in our second part of our shoot! Seriously, it’s going to be epicly cool. And epicly isn’t even a word… There might even be a little video content up around then.

Epicly.

Epic-ly?

Epickley?

(watches as my spell checker freaks out)

(copyrights “epic-ly”)

Ok, now onto the shoot. We had a great time, as always! I will stop using that line one of these days, I promise.. The weather was pretty amazing, so we attempted to take advantage of it, without getting too much rain on our gear. I decided to cut out a shot of him from my boring backdrop that I have, and make a fake movie poster, so that it would be a little more “interesting” to look at.

Yacine, it seems as if many girls notice your strongness before the coolness of the images, so maybe I should start taking pictures of only skinny people. Like myself.

Just kidding, hehe… Without any further rambling, here’s a few of the shots from our first round! (no pun intended)

(click the images to open a larger/less blurry version)

…and, my boring gray backdrop that I absolutely hate, but keep using:

Yacine’s girlfriend, Hollie, who also does makeup and hair and whatnot, was there to help the whole time, and did a great job… At the end of the evening, she jumped in for a few shots, just for fun!

And, to end this post off, I figured I’d throw a shot up that I just took recently of my girlfriend and I (of over 5 years) after she helped me with an engagement shoot (when my normal assistant was out of town). I seriously need to take good shots of her and I one day… I don’t think we’ve ever had anything taken besides “candid” type stuff, so it’s on my to-do list, most definitely! Anybody else want to shoot us, in a non-traditional style? Epic-ly even? I’ll end on the shot, so thanks for reading everybody, and have a great week! I promise to post more often, seriously…

(I’m the one on the left)

www.mhoganphoto.com

Never fear, for I, just like Johnny 5, am still alive! I’ve been extremely busy lately, and haven’t had as much time to blog, since I’ve had so much stuff to process, from weddings/engagement shoots, to portrait sessions (one including an MMA fighter), to band stuff, so I figured I’d drop in, and say hi. Why am I a little behind, you  might ask? Here’s what’s happened lately:

My father has been in the hospital for the past week and a half, and has been having major kidney issues, and has had to start dialysis, which has been pretty hard on our family. This whole ordeal has slightly delayed my photography, since my family is quite important to me, of course. I’m playing “catch up” now, and am almost totally back on track! With this being said, it’s time to move onwards, and talk about the whole reason for this post:

I recently shot a really cool model based out of Houston, TX, by the name of Lincoln Lush. It was the first of hopefully many shoots to come with her, since she’s an amazing model, and is also quite awesome too! I’d definitely recommend anybody out there to check her out, and see if you can help her out in any way. Here are 3 of the shots that I’ve been able to fit in the processing for (with the craziness going on and whatnot):

I had a great time shooting these! Daniel, my assistant, was out of town, so I got to brave the rain by myself this time (hence why it was a shorter shoot). We shot the first image in an old abandoned gas station, and even met a nice guy who didn’t speak amazing English (due to difference in original country of residence), who thought we were about to ransack the whole place, or something like that. After that, we decided to head over to another indoor location, before calling it a day due to the bad weather, and hit up D’s.

For those of you who don’t know what D’s is, drive down Front Street (here in Tyler, TX), and see for yourself… It’s quite awesome. But, back to the story. We finished up shooting there, met a few crazy older guys who also didn’t speak much English (this time because of lack of teeth I think), so in all, I got to hear a few people throughout the day, in different locations, that I couldn’t totally understand… Kind of like this whole Emo music thing.

But that’s another story, for another time.

Hehe, thanks to Lincoln for the great shoot, and everybody, stay tuned, for I have some crazy epic shoots coming up soon!

Speaking of thanks, thanks for looking!

www.mhoganphoto.com

Random title for a post that has nothing to do with it, besides the image’s theme, eh?

View It Large, Pretty, Pretty Please?

Technical Info:
9 point lighting setup

The Story…
We had such an awesome time this weekend! I was the Director of Photography for The Vehicle Reason’s “Firestorm” video shoot this last weekend, and it was quite an amazing experience. I learned so much in just 2 days about lighting a big room (we had a 18 point light setup at one point), and it is something I’ll never forget! I was also in charge of lighting for this video, and collaborated with Tripwire Films (a partner and good friend of mine) on this particular video.

I love still photography, but am starting to branch out in other forms of media, since lighting is so universal, as I’m learning. No matter what the source, lighting is lighting! I’m in love with photography, and am loving getting to have it be my job, more than anything right now!

This video should take a few months to totally finish, but will be quite amazing when we’re finally done with it. It might, just perhaps, have quite the large audience as well, which I can’t really go into at the moment, hehe…

Anyways, like always, thanks for looking!

(By the way, the clock on the wall above the girl is set at the exact time the first plane struck the first tower of the World Trade Center)

www.mhoganphoto.com

I was faced with my band, once again, wanting a new promotional shoot, since our lineup had changed slightly… But, unlike last time, they seemed to want something a little different, with a “classy” feel. To quote them exactly, they didn’t want “just some band shot in an alley”, so I had to do a little planning.

After a few days, I starting thinking… How awesome would it be to have a shoot, with our band, in the back of a limo? The look I wanted was this: Our band, after a long night of playing, partying, and whatnot, driving back from a big show in a limo, tired, with a few girls with us (so that we wouldn’t look like we preferred men, not that there’s anything wrong with that… hehe). After talking to the band, I was quickly turned down, because they thought it would be too difficult to pull off, and would be too expensive.

Along came the fine people at Classic Coach and Carriage! After we worked out quite an amazing deal, I finally convinced the band to go with it; and they did.

Now, came the planning phase. I wanted pink carpet (which you can’t see in the only image I’m posting today, but will be able to see in shots that I’ll release at a later date), party favors, horns, white streamers, and all of that fun stuff, so I was out on a mission, finding everything that I could… After that, it was time to get ready.

That night arrived, and I had 30 minutes to set up, before the rest of the band would get there, so we had to think fast on the lighting setup… Here’s what we ended up going with, setup wise, to light everything we needed in the car (the trick was to not have a single flash actually in the car, but shooting through diffusion panels, through the windows, causing the limo to be one giant controllable softbox):

The bottom four people would be the band, and top two would be the two females, like mentioned earlier, to show that that was what we would prefer, if we were looking, and weren’t a very “close” band of guys…

Hehe, but seriously, I ended up using every trigger, cable, battery, and power pack that I owned trying to pull off this shot, but I think it turned out quite nicely! The city was a composite, and there was quite a lot of post processing to get the final look you see, but I like it quite a lot. Our new Myspace page will feature this image as it’s header, and it’s almost finished! Without any further waiting, here’s how the final image turned out:

(click it to view it larger, it’s an order!)

Again, thanks so much for reading, and for checking out our latest work, it means a ton!

www.mhoganphoto.com