JOHN COPELAND

PUBLISHED WORKS & MISC INFO:

-- 1978 - 1995 PENTHOUSE - American, Australian and German editions - 150+ pictorials, 65+ centerfolds, 50+ covers.
-- 1978 - 1995 PENTHOUSE - All International editions - over 65 pictorials, 35 centerfolds, 30 covers.
-- 1986 - 87 - PLAYBOY Germany - 9 pictorials, 5 gatefolds, 5 covers.
-- 1990 - PLAYBOY Australia - 5 pictorials
-- 1978 - PRESENT - over 500 published features, Centerfolds, and covers in leading men's magazines around the world.
-- 1992 - 94 -- Heavenly Bodies I, II, III, IV, V, VI CD ROM discs an anthology of early works.


-- Asst. portraits, still life, Calendars, posters and advertising work.
-- 4 prints on tour with "German National Art Museum's" exhibit: "The Nude in Photography"
-- Featured: "Eye on L.A." Eye on Centerfolds, 1981
-- Featured: The Girls of PENTHOUSE #6, "The Erotic Photography of John Copeland", 1982
-- Featured: "Ibiza, Sonne, Licht, und Huebsche Maedchen" COLOR FOTO Feb. 1985
-- Featured: "Shooting a PLAYBOY Cover" PHOTOGRAPHIE, Aug. 1986
-- Featured: Profile and Portfolio "Maedchen" PHOTOGRAPHIE, 1986
-- Featured: "Under our Roof" PLAYBOY documentary,German Television 1 ARD, 1987
-- Featured: "The Best of John Copeland" Australian PENTHOUSE, Oct. 1994
-- Founded: PIXOTNA Productions Inc. Internet Development Company 1995.
-- Profiled: EXOTIC DANCER Magazine, Photographer Profile, Summer 1996
-- Started: BestAdultContent.com -- Adult Internet Content Licensing 1999.
-- Started: BACgalleries.com -- Adult Content Lease Galleries 2000.
-- Started: iNetDigital.net -- Internet Hosting, Design, Programming, 2002
-- Started: "Centerfold Photography -- 2002" Seminar-Workshops
-- Started: "LasVegasStudios.com" Photography, Web Design and Hosting

A LITTLE HISTORY
I have been a photographer since my days in Vietnam starting in 1968.  In that time I have photographed most every imaginable subject.  My specialty has always been photographing women.  I worked as a staff photographer for Penthouse magazine during its biggest years. from 1978 to 1984 shooting dozens of layouts, centerfolds and covers for the American and International editions of Penthouse

In 1984 I moved to Munich Germany where I was the staff photographer for the German edition of Penthouse. I photographed almost every centerfold and cover until leaving to work for the German Playboy in 1986.  Playboy was not a good place for me to work.  I was used to having a lot of creative control and Playboy had a lot of editors, assistant editors, art directors and assistant art directors.  It was anyhow a great experience and I shot 9 pictorials, 5 gatefolds, 5 covers in the next  18 months.  I felt my creativity was stifled and the German photographers resented me. In 1987 I married Christiné, my best friend and makeup artist while at Playboy.  She had also worked with me at Penthouse and we had developed a special bond.

In November of 87 we moved back to Los Angeles.  We took time to get Christiné accustomed to living in the USA and in 1990 set up a commercial studio on La Brea Avenue just south of Hollywood.  I began producing all of my own centerfold layouts and marketing them to magazines around the world.  It was a great time for this.  Models were readily available and I had many connections for selling limited rights to different magazines around the world.  We also did a lot of model portfolios, portraits and commercial jobs.  With Christiné being such a great makeup artist we found ourselves also doing a lot of Southern California business women.  We would do business "portrait" shoots for their professional use, and then do something wild and glamorous just  for their personal use.  Christiné would give them a glamorous look and I would photograph them as if they were celebrities or models.  It was a lot of fun.

In 1994 after the earthquakes and riots in LA we decided it was time to look at leaving LA..  A friend suggested we check out Las Vegas.  We made several trips, found a great house and moved to "Vegas" in June of '94.  It was a great move for us.  We set up a studio just off the strip and went right back into working as we had in LA. 

In 1995 I was being approached to sell my photos to Internet sites.  I decided to start my own Internet business with a long time friend.  It was a new chapter in my life.  Like many, we hoped to become millionaires.  Little did we know what we had gotten into. I jumped in with both feet and made a full commitment.  I had some computer knowledge, but was not a programmer, so we had to hire the people to do the complicated work. 

Within a year we had a fairly popular membership site and later developed a content licensing site that offered photo layouts of my works and those of other photographers that I knew. We basically became a photo agency.  I soon found myself totally inundated in the operation of the Internet sites. My partner's main interest was the parties, and so everything else was totally my responsibility. The sites were beginning to bring in a lot of money but at that time the expenses were also high. 

The Internet was the "Wild West" with a lot of shady characters scamming here and there. Just trying to protect our copyrights became a full time job.  We made serious enemies of some of those that were stealing our work. 

My partner died suddenly in 2000 and I really found myself in up to my neck. Our processor caused us to lose our merchant account, which cost us the majority of our membership base. It was the beginning of the end. The type of adult content had changed and quality was losing its value and the material people wanted had gotten too extreme for what I wanted to offer on our sites. 

Security issues became a major problem.  Our servers were constantly being attacked, costing us down time.  Our credit card processor had caused us to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars through their incompetence.  We were in effect "held hostage" by unscrupulous programmers that promised everything and ultimately never finished the job.  It became such a liability that I finally shut it all down in 2006.

I learned way more about building and hosting websites than I ever expected.  We still have our own servers and I do hosting and website design and maintenance as well as photography.  I love the Internet, and now I also once again have the time to do more photography.  Christiné and I have always made a great team and she is a great makeup artist and hairstylist and we take pride in the work we do together.