Learning my lesson the hard (expensive) way

I was contacted recently by a lady here in town to shoot a portrait of her daughter which I gladly accepted. I had a new sofa (actually an old crappy one) that I bought at a junk sale and had been wanting to use. The color of her dress was perfect with the sofa. So......I arrived early to set up my lights and turned on my car radio to keep me company. Obviously when Ally arrived I left it on because it's always good to have a little music on set. Not realizing we had been shooting for 2 hours (time flys when your having fun) I killed my battery. Of course we jumped it and it started but it was dead again the next morning. Time for a new battery. Our last shot Ally wanted to do with her car. She probably would have been happy with just a simple natural light set up but I wanted her to be happy so I did an elaborate light set up in the garage to get the perfect shot. While setting up I had the cable stretched a little to far on my cheap crappy light stands and you know what happened next. Yes it fell and it didn't come back on. Time to hit Precision camera to replace the bulb and of course buy a better stand like I should have done in the first place in stead of trying to cut corners. After it was all said and done.

New car battery $132
New stobe $369
New modeling light $ 39
New light stand $189
Old crappy sofa $150

Happy client with great photos: PRICELESS

Amazing compliments

Another incredible week. As I mentioned in my last blog I had a photo shoot with author and star of "The Secret" Joe Vitale. Joe has not only fallen in love with the photos I did for him but he has posted them in his blog 3 times this past week. Not only that but he gave an incredible compliment, " Rodney is a genius at turning an ordinary moment everyone else takes for granted into a masterpiece of symbol and power". Talk about making someone proud of what they are doing. Check it out at www.mrfire.blogspot.com. I also got more great news today. I will be shooting for Cowboys and Indians magazine. My first shoot will be an interior shoot of a home on Lake Travis in Austin. We are also talking about doing a fashion shoot with Patricia Vonne in the near future. I can't wait. I have shot with Patricia before and she is amazing to work with. Very professional and lots of fun. I will keep you posted on developments. Thanks for reading!

Vegas Baby!

I have actually been back in Texas for about a week now but it took me that long to recover from my 2 week road trip to Phoenix, LA and Vegas. Vegas was my final stop. Loaded with a car full of Marrika Nakk's clothes, I headed for the desert where I met up with Emily and headed out to Red Rock Nat. Park. What a great location for shooting. There is a narrow window for shooting there though. Too early and your fighting mid day sun and too late you lose your light pretty fast behind the mountains. We got some great shots. It wasn't all shooting though, I was in Vegas afterall. One of my best friends, Fred Ballard and his wife Terry were there too so we met up at the MGM and hung out for the evening. Nothing like $7 beers and $15 Frech toast for breakfast. Now it's time to start editing pictures so I can update my website. I'll keep you posted