OK why is it that when a band like Maroon 5 comes to my venue all of the girls come out of the woodwork. Most of the Marketing Department at the Forum are women. Someone like Adam Levine comes to our building and they all get into fights over who’s going to meet the band. Each act that comes to our venue gets a Tampa Bay Lightning jersey with their name on it. So here I am backstage waiting with a bunch of giggly girls all blushing about Adam. At least none of them fainted.
Started shooting for ESPN and University of South Florida Football. It’s been a while since I shot sports so this is going to be a challenge. Walking through the tunnel at Raymond James Stadium it all started coming back to me. The roar of the crowd, the smell of the turf and oh yea college cheerleaders. I love my job! Quarterback Mat Grothe took the USF Bulls to victory 37-10 over North Carolina. GO BULLS!
I did another shoot for Flair Magazine today. I was tempted to slip out the backdoor of the studio. We had over $300,000.00 worth of jewelry on the set. I had a great crew again, I like working with Flair they really put together well thought out shoots. Alla the model worked out great but the truth is the star of the shoot today was none other then Mr. Darcy the wonder dog.
Just give me what I want and no one gets hurt. I stopped smoking today, the good news is no one has died…. YET!
Here is the shot that I got at the Beyonce Knowles concert tonight. Now you might say “hey, I’ve seen that photo before”. And the truth is you have, in every city at every show she’s played. Every photographer was given the first 30 seconds of the first song of the concert. So if it was Tampa or Tokyo Japan every newspaper had the SAME EXACT shot….. Nuf said!!
Here is a show that I’ve been waiting a long, long time for, The Police! I’ve shot Sting at least 5 times but never the Police. Yet another of my top 10 best concerts. There I was shooting Stewart Copeland on drums, Andy Summers on guitar and Sting on Bass when it hit me, Oh my God it’s the POLICE! You just can’t miss that Copeland drum beat, it’s unmistakable. Then I busted out laughing, for some reason I would have never guessed Andy Summers as a South Park fan. Check out his guitar strap….
Today I did a shoot for Flair Magazine with my favorite Art Director Shelly Archbold, AKA “Tinker Bell”. Shelly is wonderful to work with and so much fun, it’s hard to call it work. We shot on location up in Brooksville at a horse ranch. Everything was great, we had killer wardrobe, a great crew and a nice location. One problem, no one asked the model about her phobia of horses! No worries, we just fed our model Willow some horse tranquilizers we found lying around and made it through the shoot. I think from now on that should be on every model’s comp card. Hi, I’m Buffy, 5′-9″, 36-24-36 and I have a fear of spiders!! Click on the thumbnail to see the rest of the shoot.
Did another shoot with duPont Registry’s Celebrity Car magazine today. I’ve been meeting some of the greatest sports celebrities working with this publication. Boxing Champion Antonio Tarver, Motorcross Champion Bubba Stewart, Buccaneer Cato June, Indy Car Champ Dan Wheldon, wrestler Dave Batista, Buccaneer Derrick Brooks and now WWE Superstar John Cena.
While at the House of Blues in Orlando I put together a shoot for Sonny Mayo to be used by one of his sponsors Mesa Boogie amps. The same day we did a shoot for Morgan Rose and Ddrums. Then I finished out the day by shooting Sevendust for their new website. You got to love it, one day, three shoots, three different clients.
The AVP stadium went up in 2 days at the St. Pete Times Forum. Kerri Walsh and her beach volleyball partner, Misty May-Treanor won the tournament. I took pictures of the Men’s finals also, but who cares they don’t look as cute in their bikinis as the girls do!
OK it’s off to a secret location somewhere in Atlanta Georgia to start recording the band Sevendust’s next CD “Alpha”. For a Music Photographer it doesn’t get any better than this. 3-4 days of just shooting what goes on behind closed doors. For me this is the exciting part because no one else gets to see this stuff. Add to that, this is the funniest group of people that I have ever met. If the music doesn’t work out for them they should all be stand up comics. My sides hurt from laughing all day..
Something I love about my job is it’s different every day. One of my clients is the St. Pete Times Forum. One of the busiest venues in the US. So when I heard we were having the finals of the AKC Dog show I had no idea what to expect. There I am backstage trying to get some shots of the groomers and the dogs. Who do I see coming towards me but Joe Perry of Aerosmith. Turns out that Joe breeds German Shepherds. I took some photos of Joe, his wife and son with a Neapolitan Mastiff. This photo is not an optical Illusion this is a 200 pound dog.
Tonight is New Years night and I got a last minute call to cover drummer Morgan Rose of the band Sevendust for Drum Magazine.
I did my first shoot with duPont Registry’s Celebrity Car magazine. The assignment, take hockey superstar Vinny Lecavalier of the Tampa Bay Lightning his $200,000.00 360 Ferrari Spider and his Hummer out onto the center ice. Can you say 400 horse power Zamboni? When the shoot was over Vinny jumped in the Ferrari and just tapped the gas, needless to say he lit the rear end up. You could not even let the clutch out without spinning the tires. We ended up pushing the car off the ice in one piece.
Ok without a doubt these guys are truly the Rock Gods. Out of all the concerts I’ve covered over the past years, I have always been away on assignment somewhere else when U2 came to town. This time I was lucky, not only did I get to see the show, I got to cover it. It was well worth the wait. There are Rock Stars and then there are ROCK STARS. Bono Rocks!
Always trying new things, I put together test shoots. That way I can try out new lighting techniques, play around with the images in Photoshop without loosing a client. So after talking with my buddy Morgan Rose, I put together a shoot at a laundromat at 2 AM. Morgan needed some new promotional photos, so we grabbed his wife and off to the nastiest laundry we could find. The bad news is “A” cymbal company and “A” drumstick company thought the images were to hot to publish and turned down Morgan for using them. The only person brave enough to use them was Rob Warner of Head First Drums. I’ve got to move to Europe where nudity is not a sin!
Well it’s off to Madison Wisconsin, the land of cheese, to do a shoot for Drum Magazine and Morgan Rose of Sevendust. This is going to be a rough shoot, I fly in at midnight, get up the next day, unpack equipment, shoot the cover, repack and then fly back that same night. Oh well who needs sleep. I have so much fun working with the boys from Sevendust. Me and Morgan go way back. I’ve know Morgan since he was 11 years old. It’s like working with your little brother. Everything was going great until Morgan came up with the idea of being held upside down over his drum kit…. we don’t like talking about the resulting accident!
This is a new promo poster put together for the band Sevendust.
Today Sevendust released their CD “Next”. It’s my first CD cover! A pretty cool feeling to walk by the racks in the record store and see your work staring back at you. Thanks Boys!
OK this is an old one but a good one. The week that the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup we had Tim McGraw in concert. It was crazy, everyone was like little kids wanting their photo taken with the trophy. So here we are backstage with Tim and the trophy, what you don’t see is the line of people waiting to have their photo taken. And yes that’s me and the cup.
