I have had an unbelievable week! As I mentioned in my last blog I had the opportunity to shoot a few national touring rock bands in Cape Coral on Wednesday (I have posted some of those photos below). My wife and I got to meet some of the band members who were awesome, and they spent a good amount of time talking to me about the tour. I posted a number of the photos on Instagram/Facebook, and the bands have commented that they loved the photos. They shared them with their followers which has gotten me some good exposure, and new followers. 

     I also mentioned in my last blog that my photos from Peace River Revival were going to be published on the website www.MusicFestNews.com. Click here for the link to that article that includes my photos. On top of that, Lukas Nelson (son of Willie Nelson), linked the article and my photos on his Facebook page which has over 200,000 followers. I really couldn’t have asked for more exposure than my work got for these two events, but theres more…..

     On Saturday a couple friends of ours asked us to goto a Mud Drag event out in rural Punta Gorda. I brought my camera and got some good shots of the trucks, ATV’s, Jeeps, and people in attendance. I posted those on social media, and tagged the event promotor who proceeded to share my photos on their site. That event got me 10 new followers and became one of my most view posts on Facebook yet. I have posted a few of those photos below as well.

     So whats planned for this week? I actually have a much quieter week on the photo front as of right now. I did shoot another house for The Houseman Team yesterday, which makes 4 in the past 3 weeks which is awesome. On Friday my wife an I are attending Rockfest in Tampa. I will bring my camera in case I can shoot the free bands outside, but know I cannot get in the arena with my camera since I do not have credentials for the show. Other than that I don’t have any planned photo shoots. I will use some free time to update my website, and better organize my studio. I also will be studying for my Drone pilots license, and expanding on my photoshop knowledge as I’d like to start creating some composite images.

     I thank you all for reading and following my photography journey. Please feel free to share my posts and social media with your friends and family. I hope you all have a great week!

     This past week has been crazy busy and exciting for me. As I mentioned in my last post I shot a real estate job last Wednesday which went well. I have included a few images from that shoot below. Friday was a really exciting day as I discovered a few national hard rock bands were going to be playing in Cape Coral on April 11th (tomorrow). I contacted the promotor at the club to inquire if I could photograph it, and heard back that I could. Only about 2 hours later I got a call from a contributor to the website www.musicfestnews.com. They were going to be doing a story on this past weekend’s Peace River Revival festival in Punta Gorda. They needed a photographer and asked if they could use some of my work from that shoot. So some of my photos from that event (possibly some of the ones below) will be published on their site. I will be sure to post the link when I have it. While I am not being paid for this, I will receive photo credit which will increase the exposure of my work. To add to that excitement, the writer of the story encouraged me to contact the owner of Music Fest News to see about being an ongoing contributor!

    Saturday was the Peace River Revival festival. The event was great as all Edgewater Events have been over the past year. It featured Lukas Nelson (son of Willie Nelson) and Devon Allman (of the famous Allman family), unfortunately we did not get to see Devon perform as the skies opened up about 20 seconds into their first song which caused their performance to be cancelled. Also performing were Michael Haymans & His Hibiscus Band, Love Canon, Seth Freeman, and Donna the Buffalo.

     I planned this weeks blog post to be about my ambitions and plans for my photography in the months and years ahead, but so much excitement happened this week that I had to talk about that. So I will hit on a little here, and continue next week. As I discussed last post I have setup a studio in one of our spare bedrooms for portraits, still life’s, etc. I’ve also been thinking a little bit about actually establishing a corporation in hopes that I can continue to grow this into a full time gig down the road. Its definitely a goal, but my day job pays too well to walk away from at this time. In addition to the studio I have purchased a high resolution (7200dpi) negative and slide scanner. My initial plan was to convert a lot of my high school and college work to digital files and share some of that. Then I got to thinking about using that scanner to increase business. I’m sure there are a lot of people  with negatives and slides that would like to have those digitally converted, and possibly printed. Negatives and slides degrade over time, especially if they are not stored properly. This service will allow these images to live on forever with no degradation. Also I will be color correcting and editing to get the best image quality possible out of client negatives/slides. The scanner arrives on Friday and I will scan some of my old work to show everyone the quality of the scans.

     I will get more into my future plans in the next blog post. I will be posting photos from my concert shoot tomorrow, and a real estate shoot Thursday on social media in the coming days. Also look for the link to my published photos once I get it. 

     Its been an awesome week! On Wednesday I had a portrait shoot (images below) with a friend’s daughter, and the photos came out really well. This was the first of a couple shoots with her since we did not get to all the locations I wanted to photograph her at. I am looking forward to the next shoot as each with a model tend to get easier as both model and photographer build a rapport a comfort with each other.

      The day before the portrait shoot I shot an amazing house for the Houseman Team Realtors from Keller Williams. The home is only 1/2 mile from mine, but located back in a secluded area that I had not through before. The house is over 4,500 square feet and is gorgeous. I have put a couple of the photos below. Asking price is $699,000 which I think is a steal for the size of the house, and what it offers in quality and location. It is a 3/3/5 with an additionally 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom located in an apartment/mother in law suite behind the attached 5 car garage.

     The most exciting part of my week was getting my new studio setup in one of our extra rooms on Saturday. I spent much of the afternoon getting the lights, and background setup. We then went around to several consignment and thrift stores in the area to look for a chair/stool for posing. I had a look/style I wanted to find, and after 5 or 6 stores I found something that would work. Not exactly what I was looking for but I like it. I also got a small stool to use as well. I obviously wanted to test out the equipment so I did a boudoir shoot with my wife Sarah that evening. I was impressed with how well the images came out as this was the first time I used these lights, and haven’t worked in a studio environment since college (16 years ago). I am now even more excited to start doing more portraits and am looking for more models. I will be shooting my wife again later this week as we only used the white background for “high key” lighting/look. I also have a black background and will be doing some more hard light and “low key” photos. The studio is going to open up a lot of new opportunities and projects for me to diversify my portfolio.

     So for the rest of this week I have a few things planned. I had a real estate shoot today for the Houseman Team in North Port, tomorrow I will probably do another shoot with Sarah to try out the black background in the studio. I also have another possible real estate job in Venice later this week. Lastly on Saturday I will be shooting the Peace River Revival music festival at Laishley Park in Punta Gorda put on by Edgewater Events (Matt and Nick Nemec). 

     I’m still having a lot of fun with this “second job” and more and more opportunities keep presenting themselves. I have a lot I want to do and my next blog post will probably be about where I hope this takes me in the months and years ahead. Until then I hope you all enjoyed reading this an enjoy my work on here and social media. Thank you for your support.