Strobist Photoshoot at the Pier

This was fun!!!!! I did some strobist style portraits this weekend in St. Pete.
Thanks to the model, Candy Cooke.

Bandshoot- Fires of Gomorrah is a finalist at the CL photo contest!!!!

I took some photos of the metal band, Fires of Gomorrah in Tampa. Fires of Gomorrah is the fifth on the Tampa metal charts on Reverbnation!!!!Fires of Gomorrah have performed in local bars, one including the Pegasus Lounge in Tampa. The band will play at more events organized by Market by the 7th in Ybor.

I started to shoot Rachel (Rocky) Reyes because she looked like "the tough girl." I liked her expression, tattoos and her easy going style. Rachel was a bassist at Fires of Gomorrah and is currently the band's booking agent. Rocky is also the the bass player in a local all girls metal band- In Violent Sleep.
Thank you @Rocky and @Fires of Gomorrah for the amazing photoshoot and I hope we can do more bandshoots soon!!!! This band is a separate story and I hope a music blogger pays close attention to them.
Listen to their songs on Youtube.


My photo "Fires Of Gomorrah" was selected as one of the top ten in
the Creative Loafing Photo Contest (from 500 entries)!!!! The photo was part of the Sensory Overload event and exhibition on March 26 at the Glazer's Children Museum. The framed print (along with the 10 finalist photos and the readers' selected photo) will be exhibited again at the Florida Museum of
Photographic Arts (FMOPA)-Show Us Your Neighborhood from September 8-November 6.
I posted some of my bandshots on Flickr too.

Strobist portraits: De'mone Heller

I had the opportunity to shoot De'mone Heller who is an advertising student at USF and a member of the Faces Modeling Troupe. I don't usually shoot male models but I had a lot of fun shooting De'mone. I used one softbox and went for the dramatic light. Thanks, De'mone for the photoshoot!
More pics on Flickr!

Social Media – 3 Free Tools to Grow Your Business- Part 1

As I promised last week, here are my comments about Alan Brusky's presentation about social media. Alan is the Founder and Creative Director of Fireleaf Design and an excellent speaker on social media and more. Please follow him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and on Flickr because you can learn more from this dude who is also a brilliant photographer!

The power of social media is unreal. Today social media is part of communication and institutions need to integrate new communication tools into their marketing and recruitment strategy along with online media (web presence through promotional videos/news stories on the institution’s website) and traditional media (including newspapers, TV and radio, direct mailing). The goal is to network, interact, collaborate, and attract a global audience, including a technologically sophisticated audience who uses social media. I noticed most institutions, including USF employ social media tools for marketing and recruitment. USF is also present on iTunesU with a lot of free educational podcasts, including the podcast I created, Multimedia Tips , a podcast pn technology and media, USF students and professors, and local photogs who use technology and media effectively in communication.

Unlike the one way communication in traditional media, social media means interactive communication through multiple channels. The key is to keep interacting, collaborating and networking with other people. Social media if fast and cheap, and it pays off if messages are clear, consistent, and engaging.
This is the basic model some companies are implementing to generate most of their business through social media. Successful businesses are strobist.com that relies on online advertising and Creativelive. This last one is an online education platform that relies heavily on social media to spread the word about their courses in photography, video and web design. The best photographers and videographers offer workshops and courses online. Workshops are free if the audience watches them online live because the organizers realized the power of tweets. A local example is Rafael Concepcion (RC) from the Kelby Media Group who sold his last book in a couple of days on Amazon thanks to the retweets on Twitter. RC uses his audience on Twitter (he has about 6,300 followers) to branch out to his other businesses (books and workshops). In addition, Columbia Journalism School has built on social media and has created social media courses and workshops. The dean of student affairs at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Sree Sreenivasan’s free panels on new media on BlogTalkRadio circulate the name of this institution to a global audience and impact student recruitment.