Raymond James Women’s Symposium, Orlando

For the second year in a row, I was commissioned to photograph the Women’s Symposium for Raymond James Financial. The 25th annual event was held over three days at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando and was attended by approximately 500 financial advisors. So many great speakers and programs and an incredible display of strength and growth by women in the financial industry, made me wish I had a daughter!

In addition to the event coverage, a full afternoon of headshots were also offered and 120 women took advantage of the opp, keeping me busier than you can possibly imagine.

This gallery is just a small sample of the excitement and enthusiasm on display.

Enjoy!

 

The Bumper Shot Seminar…

What a great time we had. A full day of mutually shared information among some of Florida’s most enthusiastic high school senior photographers. April 15th, we gathered at the Doubletree Hotel in Tampa and spent the day photographing seniors and learning how the Bumper Shot is the newest, most popular look that seniors are looking for.

Newsome’s Studio began creating Bumper Shots for seniors and commercial clients about two years ago. It quickly caught on as an exciting new look and both seniors and their parents are loving it.

A Bumper Shot is a television industry term, describing the still shot of the host and/or musical guest, sandwiched between the end of a commercial break and the return of the show, usually only on the screen for all of three seconds. Saturday Night Live is the most popular user of the “The Bumper Shot.”

Here are some of the Bumpers we created during the Bumper Shot Seminar…

Enjoy!

Last of the Newsome Kids Senior Portraits

I’m one very lucky Uncle. I have seven nieces and five nephews, and I have now photographed every single one of them for their senior portraits.

It became “an event” years ago, to make a trip to see Uncle Kevin for a full weekend to have their senior pictures taken, but always involved much more than an hour or two in the studio. We’d do the traditional studio session, then go out on location for something interesting… the beach, Ybor City, University of Tampa, downtown, a park… Then, of course, we’d hit a Rays/Yankees game, visit the Clearwater Marina, or do something that was just plain fun.

Well, of the dozen Newsome kids who call me “Uncle,” the last one just spent the weekend here for his senior pictures (all but two of my nieces and nephews hail from Atlanta).

Josh is the caboose of the train, and didn’t disappoint. We shared a ton of laughs, I told him stories about his dad (my brother) he’d never heard (always fun to reveal some hidden family secrets), we hit the movies, toured the Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, and lunched and dined all around town.

He’s an experienced kayaker, so when I was in Atlanta a few weeks ago, I took advantage of the opportunity to begin the senior session with images I knew we couldn’t do when he came to Tampa.

The rest were taken all over the Bay area, and of course, no senior session is complete without a few of our famous Bumper Shots. Here are some of my favorite images of Josh Newsome’s senior portrait session…

These Aren’t Your Daddy’s Senior Pictures!

Tampa’s Bumper Shot Photographer

The high school senior picture season is just getting underway, and there will soon be a mad rush to get an appointment with your school’s contracted yearbook photographer. I feel for those poor guys – they have to shuffle no less than 10k students past their camera in a few short months. They beef up their staff for the summer, then thin it back out by fall. Wow.

Fortunately for independent professional photographers like Newsome’s, we have the luxury of scheduling as much time as necessary to provide high school seniors with what they really want – a chance to be photographed like the star they are!

Thus, was born, the Bumper Shot!

At Newsome’s Studio, we provide the traditional, classic, head & shoulders in a tux or drape (but always on a classic black background, never BLUE!), then we do a few casual images in outfits our seniors bring, and then… we launch into the BUMPER SHOT!

In the television industry, a Bumper Shot (also known as an ID Bumper), is the image that “bumps” up against the return of a show from commercial break. It often lasts all of three seconds, but features the show’s logo and guest host or musical guest for that particular show. You’ll see it five to six times during every episode of Saturday Night Live.

This is where our seniors get the opportunity to break with tradition, and really ham it up for the camera. Props are encouraged, anything from a jar of peanut butter to a lampshade have been brought in and utilized. It helps to be animated, comedic, and playful, which our seniors today seem to have no problem with.

So, if you’re a high school senior, feel free to tap your “inner guest host persona,” bring us a banana, a Mother Goose book, or a tool from the garage, and let’s have a bit of fun creating your own personal Bumper Shot!

This is 2017. Let’s have some fun with your senior pictures.

Bumper Shot Photographer, Tampa

I have a deep admiration for the work done by Mary Ellen Matthews, the talented artist behind the lens for the SNL bumper shots each week. A bumper shot is the image you see of that week’s guest host or musical guest, that appear for all of three seconds as the show returns from commercial.

Mary Ellen Matthews has been creating those images since 1999, and her body of work to date, is an incredible gallery of musical, theater, and political icons of the last twenty years. Celebrity subjects aside, the images are fun, creative, zany, off-the-wall, dramatic, and utilize a slightly softer color palette than Peter Max used when stormed the art world in the 60’s.

The beauty in her assignment, is that she is working with professionals. She has an incredible team surrounding her, a world class wardrobe and prop department, and the most animated human beings on the planet – all with a terrific sense of humor and are game for anything. Some are among the most beautiful beings on the planet, some are as cosmetically challenged as the rest of us, but ALL are willing have some fun and mug it up for Mary Ellen’s lens.

This got me thinking… who among MY world as a professional photographer/studio owner would/could/might fit into that category? Who are my most animated clients? Who would mug it up for the camera? Who would enjoy the challenge of taking a common household object and turning it into an improv routine, just long enough for me to light, compose, and capture an image that could very well be THEIR bumper shot in life?

High School Seniors, that’s who.

So my challenge is on. My on-going project for the next few weeks is to photograph a handful of students and feebly and humbly attempt to create a bumper shot or two for each of them. With all due respect to the genius of Mary Ellen Matthews and her creative team, I know good and well that I can never fully re-create the incredible look that has gained her recognition on SNL, but my knock-off bumper shots are still a lot of fun for my seniors and worth the attempt.

www.newsomestudio.com is LIVE

A Second Web Site for Newsome’s Studio

If one website is a good thing, two must be better, correct? Well, we’ll soon find out!

I’ve owned the domain name www.newsomesstudio.com for over 20 years now. The only trouble with it, is that my email address (kevin@newsomesstudio.com) is often misspelled when someone new is sending me an email. They often leave out an “s,” and I never received the email. Sometimes it bounces back to them, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, the mistake happens often enough for me to finally break down and do something.

So I bought http://www.newsomestudio.com

By buying www.newsomestudio.com (with only one “s” in the middle), I could now create an email account to match (kevin@newsomestudio.com) and redirect any emails that are sent there to my original email account.

So Why Not a Whole New Web Site?

Great question. Why not? So I took Kira Derryberry‘s WordPress for Photographers, four day class at the FPP sponsored Florida Photography Workshops in Daytona this past June, and in no time at all I had a completely different website. Some images are the same, some are new, but it allows me one more opportunity to occupy another position on page one of any number of Google searches. And that’s the best part; the SEO techniques I learned, along with the new tools available to me as my own WordPress site designer, have given me a whole new perspective on what and how to reach my target audience via the Internet.

Armed with two websites, five blogs, and five domain names, I’m positioning Newsome’s Studio to be found more often, and without the added expense/frustration of paying for and working with an outside Google adword salesman.

Results are already promising, but I know the payoff doesn’t happen overnight. All I can do is try, and without trying, nothing ever gets done. I see Google as a charter fishing boat. They only allow ten lines in the water at a time (page one). Why step on board with only one fishing pole? I’m not here to fish, I’m here to catch.

Hop on over and browse around. If you like what you see, land a comment on my blog. If you don’t, just go away – you’ll scare the fish.

DA Style Prints for ROTC & JROTC

Dept of Army Military Photos for Retired Personnel

We used to get a lot of requests to create military”promotion photos” years ago when the studio was located in South Tampa near MacDill AFB. These days, the official DA Photo is done digitally on base by the base photographer, and uploaded to the DA Photograph Management Information System (DAPMIS) on the spot.

We can no longer create this for active duty use, however, for retired military personnel who are in need of a print that conforms to the same specs, we can provide it to match those specs exactly. The most common reason a retired personnel might be in need of an image that matches the official DA photo specs, is when they’re applying for a job as a contracted ROTC or JROTC instructor.

NOTE: Our “Newsome’s” logo you see at the bottom of this image, will NOT appear in the final print.

And I humbly and gratefully offer a 10% discount off all our photography services to any active military personnel.

Thank you for your sacrifice and service to our country!

 

Corporate Head Shot Photographer, Tampa

Urban Architecture used as background for a Corporate Head Shot

 

Objective: Client needed an environmental headshot/bio photo that can/will be used in an ad pieces and web pages. Verbiage to be on the left, image on the right. Semi-nondescript background blown out of focus.

Solution: Utilized select locations in an urban settings for background colors, combining (primarily) available light with reflectors and some supplemented modified flash. Kept client’s shoulders facing to camera left, into the image, offset by one third, leaving room for ad verbiage. One image cropped square to be used for LinkedIn/Facebook/etc.

A wall of Bougainvillea provided color

A square crop will provide a great bio photo for LinkedIn and other social media sites.

 

 

 

Working Road Trip #todayscameraroom

I was recently contracted to create business head shots for select employees of the American Automobile Association (aka AAA). The job would require travel. Lots of travel (something they know quite a bit about). They wanted a consistent look among all bio photos, particularly with regards to background, lighting, cropping, and retouching. They had over a thousand employees in the southeast, spread out over 67 branches in three states. And, they had a deadline. “Can you do it?”

I had been selected as their photographer back in October, with a proposed deadline of February 28th. After photographing the first seven locations in Southwest Florida, they realized that my costs had not been budgeted for 2015, so I was put on hold until the first of the year where budgets for this project were now in place. The new deadline was May 1st.

I rekindled scheduling beginning in early February. There were 47 locations in Florida and 10 each in Georgia and Tennessee. Because of prior commitments and shoots with other clients, I selectively fit them into my already-busy schedule where I could, attempting to do two to three branches in a single day whenever possible.

The beauty of working all over the state of Florida, is that no matter where I went, I had friends to stay with. Jacksonville? Tammy Czigan; Tallahassee? Cindy Strickland; Miami? Marybeth Jackson; Sarasota/Bradenton? Manny Cruz. I could base myself just about anywhere to reach a cluster of offices over a one, two, or three day period, and even had an assistant at one time (THANK YOU TAMMY!).

Georgia and Tennessee would require a single road trip and a race to the finish. In fact, my road trip actually started with the Miami offices, beginning in Stuart and working my way south to cover eight branches over three days. From there, I crossed the state and spent the weekend with family in Ft Myers, before heading north to Savannah, Ga. I knocked out all twenty Georgia and Tennessee branches in seven days of shooting.

A bonus in Nashville, was running into my good friends (all Past Presidents of the FPP), Al Gordon, Dana Lunden, and Jackson Koontz III.

My final push to complete the assignment lasted 15 days (with weekends off), covered 28 offices, 328 head shots, and involved driving 3,421 miles.

I set up and tore down the same portable studio 67 times since this began. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve likely seen that setup accompanied with the hashtag #todayscameraroom more than enough times. Some offices were huge, some were tiny. I was set up in everything from boardrooms, to broom closets. The people I had the honor of working with were incredible! Friendly, kind, sweet, and cooperative. I couldn’t have asked for a better scenario or group of individuals to work with.

It’s nice to get out of the studio, even if I have to bring it with me. Road trips are like therapy. I can mentally check out – solve all the world’s problems – and see some great scenery along the way.

“Yes. I can do it.”

#todayscameraroom

Palm Springs Event Photography Coverage

Giants of Design – 2016, Palm Springs, California

 

For the fourth time in as many years, I was contracted to provide documentary style coverage of Interior Design magazine’s Giants of Design Conference in Palm Springs, California.

Held at The Parker (former estate of Gene Autry, “the Singing Cowboy” from the B&W film days), the event lasted three and a half days and features tours of Palm Springs homes that are of particular interest with regards to design and décor.

100 of the country’s top designers and a few dozen manufacturers are treated to seminars, tours, activities, and meals that continually raise the bar for inspiration, education, and networking within their field.

Held on the grounds of Gene Autry’s Palm Springs home at The Parker.

Dinner in the backyard one evening.

Coffee by the Fire Pit.

Dinner by the indoor pool one evening, featured “Light Dancers.”

The meeting consisted of over 100 of the country’s top designers and manufacturers.

One stop on our Tour of Homes, included the Palm Springs home owned by Elvis Presley at the time he married Priscilla. This is where they spent their honeymoon night!

Another stop of particular interest, was Sunnylands. Google it. Pretty fascinating.