TAMPA
BAY SHOOTS
HISTORY
The
legacy and pedigree of Tampa Bay Shoots
01.
The founding of Aurora PhotoArts in 1994.
02. The start of modeling photography events in 1994, and events becoming
frequent in 1998.
03.
The golden age of Tampa Bay modeling photography events from 2001 to
2007.
04.
Aurora PhotoArts business moves into high gear in 2002, becoming the
standard and a leader in talent headshot and modeling portfolio photography
in the Tampa Bay market.
05.
Espy model testing photography group events for Aurora PhotoArts in
2003.
06.
Work on a modeling photography event and workshop business from 2003
to 2011 with development and market research, as well as more events.
07.
Web site design class concept sets the standard for Aurora PhotoArts
in 2005 with the Diana Class and Venus Class web sites, followed by
others such as the Raptor Class site for Tampa Bay Modeling, the very
first 3rd Generation web sites. Tampa Bay Modeling, founded in 2004,
becomes the leading modeling resource site for the Tampa Bay market
in 2006, with television and media coverage by 2008.
08.
The next generation of talent resource web sites begin development,
as well as the development of advanced business and marketing models,
in 2007.
09.
The economic collapse of 2008 creates the SEO 2008 issue, with a flood
of aspiring competitor web sites and a slip in search engine performance
for Passinault business web sites. Aurora PhotoArts waits it out because
of the economy, as other sites, such as the talent resource sites, dominate
until 2012, and are useful as economic indicators.
10.
The perfect storm of technology, the great recession, social media,
cheap digital cameras, and smart phones in 2008 comes together and inspires
floods of amateur photographers and models to flood the market. Most
of the business lost because of the economy never comes back, at least
under the old tactics, as everyone thinks that they are photographers
and models, and amateurs begin aggressive networking.
Passinault begins work on his next generation DJ productions and his
event planning businesses, and the results lead to a revolution in his
photography business, as they immediately translate and apply. Research
into the cost-effectiveness of DJ programs leads to a revolution in
how the photography business is seen and how it is worked.
11.
The next generation of business, marketing, sales, and support for Aurora
PhotoArts in 2010; the integrated business and marketing model, which
enhances value, capability, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability.
Aurora PhotoArts continues to book work, although business is slower,
and continues development of another generation of integrated business
and marketing models as the implementation and application of new technology
is delayed due to the sluggish market; Aurora PhotoArts will not show
its best hand and work that hand before the benefits outweigh the risks,
as it is not in business to teach the business to aspiring competitors.
Passinault develops and engineers strict security measures into every
aspect of his integrated business models, making them extremely difficult
to detect, track, study, and copy; ensuring market dominance by making
his businesses resistant to being reverse engineered by aspiring competitors.
This is the only way that the level of work and resources going into
research and development can be justified.
12.
The next “generation” of marketing and support sites, late
3rd Generation web site design classes, begins in 2010 with the extremely
successful Pioneer Class for Frontier Pop. The successor to the effective
Venus Class marketing and support sites for Aurora PhotoArts, the Mosaic
Class, begins development in in early 2011. Although the Mosaic Class
is designed to be cheaply mass produced, a single prototype site is
deployed in May 2012 for testing purposes due to another issue with
a search engine change.
13.
The first attempt at a photography event and workshop business, Tampa
Shootouts in 2011, falls short. Tampa Shootouts becomes a successful
4 year development program for a more advanced photography and workshop
event business, Tampa Bay Shoots.
14.
A major search engine makes big changes and starts penalizing web sites
that it thinks are over optimized in 2012. Many Passinault sites are
crippled, ending over a decade of search engine dominance for Passinault
and creating wreckage which will take years to rectify. The 2012 disaster
compounds the SEO 2008 issue.
Because of strict mass production standards and the need for a library
of thousands of refined support files before mass production is cost-effective,
the new Mosaic Class sites are spared from being crippled, as the fleet
had not been deployed in 2011 as originally planned.
New tactics are developed. Development of the Mosaic Class site is extended
another five years. Lessons learned from the successful Super Raptor
Class Tampa Bay Film Online Film Festival are applied to the new Revolution
Class sites for Tampa Bay Film, as well as the Mosaic Class site design.
15.
An enhanced Pioneer Class site, the Maverick Class, is designed for
the web site for the successor of Tampa Shootouts, Tampa Bay Shoots,
in 2015. Passinault addresses all of the event participation issues
raised by the early Tampa Shootouts in late 2011 and early 2012. Branding
and intellectual property developed during the Tampa Shootouts program
are ported to Tampa Bay Shoots, which includes pictures from several
successful photography events with groups of models.
A large fleet of over 32 Mosaic Class sites is ordered for Aurora PhotoArts,
which may seem like overkill for the SEO 2008 issue, but it is deemed
necessary. The closest aspiring competitor to Aurora PhotoArts in its
target market will be outgunned 20 to 1 with swarms of web sites which
are so advanced and effective that one of them would easily overwhelm
opponents.
Aurora PhotoArts begins it super secret ShimmerWorks research and development
program to develop future photography technology, business, and marketing
tactics, as well as its secret Mirage Shoots, built with and using Tampa
Bay Shoots resources and support infrastructure, to test new photography
equipment and processes. Both ShimmerWorks and Mirage Shoots each get
their own Maverick Class web site under Tampa Bay Shoots.
The future begins in 2017 as both Aurora PhotoArts and Tampa Bay Shoots
ramp up major operations, with Aurora PhotoArts supporting initial operations
of Tampa Bay Shoots. Tampa Bay Shoots will completely roll out operations
by 2018, and will be fully operational at that time.
Development of 4th Generation web sites is fully underway in 2015, with
work on the successor to the Mosaic Class, the Aurora Class, as well
as other 4th Generation sites such as the Destiny Class and the Centurion
Class.
Tampa
Bay Shoots had its genesis back in 1994 with the founding of Aurora
PhotoArts, when then aspiring photographer C. A. Passinault started
his company for photography and design support for his production projects
and his mobile DJ and event planning business; Passinault had been planning
and running events since 1988. Aurora PhotoArts was founded and established
in June 10, 1994, and the development of what was to become Tampa Bay
Shoots has strong parallels with the development arc of Aurora PhotoArts,
with the very first group photography event held on that same day on
June 10, 1994, using experience planning and running events going back
to 1988. Aurora PhotoArts did a few shoots in the first few years, but
thing really got into high gear in 1998, as he began developing web
sites, and needed both photographs and graphic design for those sites.
By default, working with more and more experienced models, he began
planning and working simple modeling photography events.
In January 1999, he had his first modeling photography event with more
than one model and more than one photographer, keeping detailed anecdotal
logs about their adventures as he spent a great deal of time and money
with the photography events, which cost a lot back then because there
was overhead in the form of rolls of 35MM film and the associated development
costs.
Most of Passinault’s event work during this time transitioned
to the modeling photography events, as Passinault’s work as a
photographer began to displace his work as an event and wedding DJ.
In 2000, Passinault, after years of work and after working with model
and fashion expert Diana Furka, finally became a professional photographer,
and began shooting modeling photography events in the Tampa Bay area
with both a 35MM SLR and some of the first digital cameras. Among the
models in those events was young teen model Stephanie Coatney in her
first foray into modeling, as he got her started in her career as a
model. Stephanie would grow up to be a major force in local modeling,
working routinely as a model for the Home Shopping Network (HSN), as
well as as an actress in television commercials and in independent films.
In 2001. Passinault invested in more capable digital camera as his business
with Aurora PhotoArts took off. He christened the new camera with a
photography event with three models in March of 2001. Passinault’s
career as a photographer took lead over his DJ career and his DJ’ed
events.
In late 2001, Passinault, who learned a lot about the modeling industry
from his friends, professional models Kitty and Ken from Florida Models
back in early 1998, started his own modeling resource web site, Independent
Modeling, which began life as Tampa Bay Independent Model from its Independent
Modeling domain name. The site was the first of many modeling and talent
resource sites, and the first of many web sites, as he began a path
which would see his growing armada of web site dominate search engine
results for well over a decade.
By 2002, Passinault, still booking work as a professional photographer
for Aurora PhotoArts, began doing more ambitious photography events
with professional models. One such event, in early 2002, was with four
models. Passinault’s work as a photographer went into high demand
around this time, also, as he became the top talent headshot and modeling
portfolio photographer in the Tampa Bay market, a distinction held since
then.
By 2003, Passinault began incorporating photography events directly
into his business, with group modeling photography sessions for his
Espy model testing sessions.
From 2002 to 2007 was a five year golden age for Passinault, his photography
business, and his modeling photography events. A lot of professional
actors, talent, and models booked him for what they needed in headshots
and portfolios. There were many events. Digital camera technology made
photography inexpensive, and enhanced business. There were not a lot
of photographers in the market, and even if there were, Passinault’s
work was good, and his web sites dominated. Life was good.
By 2005, he had a growing number of web sites, and, now into his third
generation of web sites, he realized that he could not make an unique
design for each and every web site that he built and deployed. Visualizing
fleets of ships on the seas of the Internet, he decided to design and
develop distinct classes of web site designs, modeled after naval ship
design classes, which would enable many similar web sites with the same
requirements to share the same design class, while each site would still
have content which was unique to them. This became the format of the
future, and things were never the same again. The web sites became more
professional in design, as more work could be put into the designs cost-effectively,
and the sites were easier to build and deploy, since each site did not
have to be completely designed from scratch. Passinault started out
with the Diana Class, the predecessor to the Raptor Class used by talent
resource sites such as Tampa Bay Modeling, the Diana Class named after
mentor and muse Diana Furka, whom was also a top web designer and art
director back in 2000. The Diana Class used a main menu on the left
side of the screen vertically arranged, and became the main web site
design for the Passinault business sites, and although it was not optimized
to market photography, it was shoehorned into use as a site design for
the latest Aurora PhotoArts web site. Despite its lack of image marketing
optimization, this new site still did well.
He realized that he needed a site which was optimized to market photography
and design services, however, so 2005 also saw the design and the development
of the Venus Class web site, specifically for Aurora PhotoArts, which
saw a service life of 10 years. The temporary Aurora PhotoArts Diana
Class site was quickly replaced by a new Venus Class site. Two Venus
Class sites were built for Aurora PhotoArts, one for its new main web
site under an operating domain name, and another at the original Aurora
PhotoArts web site location under Passinault.Com. The Venus Class was
extremely successful for most of the decade of service that it saw.
Passinault’s talent resource sites also advanced. Although Independent
Modeling was in limbo for many years after 2005 because the newer and
more market relevant Tampa Bay Modeling took the lead, Tampa Bay Modeling
became a test bed of new ideas. The Raptor Class web site, derived from
the Diana Class, but much more advanced, and a site optimized for fighting
scams, was built for Tampa Bay Modeling and its Tampa Bay Talent sister
sites. By 2006, Tampa Bay Modeling absolutely dominated any search inquiries
for modeling in the Tampa Bay area, and that lasted for six years.
As the years went by producing and running the modeling photography
events, as well as his photography business, he began researching other,
rival modeling photography events in the Tampa Bay market. He did not
like what he saw, as the target markets, the type of photography, the
quality, and the professionalism of these events were all lacking. One
series of events, under the guise of networking between “models”
and “photographers” in the name of “art” at
a clothing optional resort in Pasco county, in the norther area of Tampa
Bay, was, in the opinion of many professionals, himself included, very
tacky and unprofessional; a new low for modeling and photography in
Tampa Bay and completely misrepresenting what modeling and photographer
were about, with exploitation being passed off as art. There were major
problems in the market, for sure. This research continued for several
years while he continued his own events, although most of his work was
as a headshot photographer and booking modeling portfolio photography
sessions with clients. He began working on business models, however,
so that he could eventually make a business out of modeling photography
and photography events, which he was good at and had a long track record
of success with, with the eventual workshops, which he and other qualified
modeling and photography industry professionals would instruct at. This
photography event and workshop business would obviously be separate
from Aurora PhotoArts, his market leading photography and design business,
although Aurora PhotoArts would lend its full support and resources
to other event company.
Passinault eventually figured out how to interconnect the companies
in a way where they were still separate, but where they could support
and enhance each other. This development would be critical to the creation
and the formats of some incredibly advanced, cost effective, sustainable
photography events.
Still, as development of the modeling photography event and workshop
business continued, there was still no business, although the business
had to be put on hold, and was delayed, because of the great recession
of 2008. Development continued, however. Although he continued to book
work as a photographer, work was slower, and he began to put a lot of
time into developing advanced business models for his photography business
and his other businesses. He also began monitoring the rise of social
media, which many used as a free “web site” for a “business”,
and the growing number of amateurs trying to get into the photography
and the modeling business, enabled by cheap digital technology, smart
phones, digital cameras, and social media. Suddenly, more and more people
claimed to be models and photographers. Professionals such as Passinault
were not impressed, or amused. He realized that there needed to be professional
standards, ethics, and other things taught to this new generation of
aspiring photographers, as an example, and the problem was that these
new photographers, as well as models, were networking with other amateurs
and were doing it all wrong.
In 2007, he began developing the next generation of talent resource
web sites, too. Some of these advancements were directly relevant to
his business models, and were also applied to those.
In 2008, with the economy crashing, more and more people decided that
they would go into business for themselves, and figured that photography
was an easy business to get into, along with its perceived fringe benefits.
Pretty girls, too, figured that they could be models using whatever
pictures that they had. Quality standards in the market dropped, although
this merely kept the professionals in business. He noticed that, which
his talent resource and support web sites continued to dominate, that
his business web sites were slipping in search engine results because
of increased competition, as some of the first of those photographers
were buying domain names and building web sites, as social media had
not come of age like it soon would, which would be enabled by a new
generation of smart phones spearheaded by the new Apple iPhone. Although
he could have easily remedied that, and he did to an extent with his
Huey Class Tampa Headshots web site, which was a derivative of the successful
Venus Class web site used by Aurora PhotoArts, he decided to wait it
out as he knew that people, because of the crashed economy, were not
looking and buying that much, and that showing his best hand in such
an environment would be more of a benefit to his new aspiring competitors
rather than his bottom line.
By 2010, his next generation business models were ready to be used,
although the economy was not ready to support those efforts, and Passinault,
whom had experienced amateurs trying to learn from him and steal from
him since 2003, not only did not want to show his hand before he could
really work it, but also wanted to spend a lot of additional development
time advancing another generation while incorporating countermeasures
to being studied and copied into every aspect of his businesses. Not
only would he benefit from publically using older, but still dominant
business and marketing technology when the time came, but all of his
business, marketing, sales, resources, and support infrastructure would
be stealthy and hard to detect and track, being highly resistant to
the efforts of others to learn from and copy them, reducing risk. He
did realize that the influx of amateurs in the market whom did not know
what they were doing and who were lying, misrepresenting themselves
as they tried to compete with established professionals, combined with
his experience and high profile, would result in more people trying
to study what he was doing and copy him. He realized that putting years
of hard work into next generation, advanced businesses would be pointless
if others could easily copy him and compete with him using his own tactics
and formats; he would take his time and make sure that everything was
resistant to being ripped off.
In 2011, Passinault was invited to attend a modeling photography event
after he contact the organizer. The experience proved to be very enlightening,
although the event was amateurish. He realized that the photography
was professionally inappropriate, the models were mostly
amateur, and that the models were not getting paid.
He knew that new standards had to be introduced to the market. Although
he had not attended the event to study them, it turned out to be eye
opening to the demand for such events, as well as what needed to be
done to fix them.
He published an article about the event on Tampa Bay Modeling criticizing
its flaws. Models stopped attending the events as a result of these
articles, and the organizer tried to adapt by finally trying to pay
the models. This proved to be too much overhead for him, however, and
his event business collapsed because he wasn’t good at business
and could not get it to work.
Development of Passinault's photography event business continued while
he continued to book work as a photographer.
Early 2011 saw the development of the next generation marketing and
support web site for Aurora PhotoArts. The Venus Class web sites, although
six years old, had been proven to be extremely successful. He liked
the design of the Venus Class site and wanted to continue to use it,
so he began work on the Venus 3 variant of the web site, which fell
into development lmbo because he could not get it to center correctly.
Advanced web sites such as the Pioneer Class site for Frontier Pop had
debuted in 2010, however, and even Independent Modeling obtained a new
web site design, the Athena Class, which was actually the second version
of the Athena Class, in late 2010. There were options.
Starting as a concept in late 2010, the Mosaic Class web site, a late
3rd Generation marketing and support web site specifically optimized
to specialize in marketing photography and design work, was designed
in early 2011. The Mosaic Class site was a very refined design, and
vastly superior to the Venus Class in every way. In its early incarnation,
it was designed to be mass produced and interconnected, with a fleet
of many of the advanced Mosaic Class sites working together to dominate
markets.
Something happened with a search engine in 2012 to change come major
operational strategies of the Mosaic Class web site, however, and it
was a good thing that development of the site had been delayed due to
the requirement of it to be easily and cost-effectively mass produced,
the large numbers of the advanced web sites the answer to what Passinault
had dubbed the “SEO 2008 issue”. Had the Mosaic Class sites
been built and deployed in large numbers in 2011, as originally planned,
the fallout of what would have been an operating strategy mistake would
have left a decimated fleet of wreckage of the highly advanced site.
In 2011, he also redid a lot of his photography and design company.
One of the new additions was a new Aurora PhotoArts logo and new copy
protection strategies, the copy protection strategies developed and
perfected for the new Mosaic Class site, as it had a large canvas and
was designed to show large images in their full glory.
While he was developing new web site designs, he fast tracked his first
attempt at a photography event business, Tampa Shootouts, which went
online using the proven Pioneer Class web site design, as used by Frontier
Pop in 2010, in August 2011, and had it first networking event on September
25, 2011; the networking event used as a working audition to evaluate
and screen professionals for paying jobs at other Tampa Shootouts events
and workshops. The event was barely attended, however, primarily because
it was set up as a free networking event for professionals, and most
in the market were not interested, as they were mostly strangers to
each other and did not personally know each other. The emphasis on jobs
was also lost on them. He attempted another event in January 2012, but
cancelled that one in December because of an issue that he had with
another photographer whom had been involved. He was both perplexed and
disappointed, as he had never had such issues with his previous photography
events, and now that he had developed and fielded his most advanced
event formats, no one seemed to be that interested. Still, he worked
on, addressing the new issues. He decided to take more time and take
his time. There was no rush.
He continued to research and develop the business.
In 2012, the Internet changed. A leading search engine started penalizing
web sites which it saw as over optimized. Several of his web sites were
crippled, and he spent several years repairing the damage. The next
generation marketing and support site for Aurora PhotoArts, the Mosaic
Class, was still in development, delayed because of mass production
requirements, which would lead to further delays because of delay developing
the image and graphics support libraries which the mass produced fleet
of sites would need. This delay had a huge benefit, however, because
had the fleet of Mosaic Class sites been built and deployed in 2011,
they would have been penalized, and crippled, in 2012 because they were
connected to each other, among other things. This would have left a
large mess because of a fleet of wreckage online, and the sites would
have had to been redone, never able to be used at their full capacity
as their operating domain names would have been tainted.
Because of the enormous job of repairing the damage to his existing
sites, as well as the strict requirements for the image and graphics
libraries needed for mass production of the Mosaic Class sites, in additions
to new technologies and tactics needed, development of the Mosaic Class
would go on for another 4 years. On May 6, 2012, the prototype Mosaic
Class site was partially built and deployed for testing. For just over
three years, it was the only Mosaic Class site online, although it was
incomplete and not fully operational, and because of that the branding
and marketing domain names of AuroraPhotoArts.Com and TampaLooks.Com
were not connected to it; they were connected to the aging Venus Class
site which still served as the official main web site for Aurora PhotoArts.
In those three years, major advancements were achieved, which meant
that the production versions of the Mosaic Class, despite looking the
same and sharing the exact same image and graphics sets as the original,
would be a lot different “under the hood. The original site would
serve as the official main site, as well as the largest Mosaic Class
site, and the production versions would benefit from advanced technology
such as SES, or Search Engine Superiority technology, an enhanced form
of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, and exotic technology such as
web site stealth technology, which would actually enhance SEO by shaping
and sculpting search results for their target markets. Advancements
developed from what was proven on different Passinault web sites, such
as the Tampa Bay Film online film festival site were applied to the
first 3rd Generation talent resource site, the Revolution Class used
exclusively by the fleet of Tampa Bay Film sites, as well as the Mosaic
Class and other modern design classes of web sites.
Had the fleet of Mosaic Class web sites been built and deployed in 2011,
as was originally planned, it would have been a disaster in 2012, with
a lot of wreckage of the advanced web sites floating around on the Internet.
Had they been built and deployed in 2012, they would have been effective,
but not tremendously so. Now, almost 2017, with over 32 Mosaic Class
web sites scheduled to be built and deployed in a large online fleet
on independent marketing and support sites working in concert, although
difficult to track and not linked to each other, they will be a force
of nature for years to come, as each site is vastly superior to anything
which they will come up against on their own, but they will be mass
produced and deployed in a quick, cost-effective manner which will not
cut corners or compromise quality or effectiveness, to the point of
being expendable. Highly advanced, effective web sites which can be
quickly and inexpensively built and deployed in large numbers, which
are actually expendable; such sites are indeed game changers.
There was another strange benefit, too. The design of the Mosaic Class
web site was so good, that it is still like new almost 6 years later,
in late 2016, and it has not aged. Because the Mosaic Class site, even
discounting the resources required to make it easy and cheap to mass
produce, is a large, image hungry web site, no one has tried to copy
it, possibly because of the logistics involved, although the color scheme
has been ripped off. Because it is like-new, and there will be a lot
of the web sites produced and deployed, the 10 year operating life span
is unaffected, and the fleet is now scheduled to remain online as front
line marketing and support web sites until at least 2027. This, despite
the fact that the more advanced, 4th Generation Aurora Class web site
is in development. The Aurora Class, the replacement for the Mosaic
Class, will start out being built and deployed in small numbers after
replacing the original Mosaic Class as the main marketing and support
web site for Aurora PhotoArts sometime in 2017, and even with that,
it will use a new operating domain name; the existing Mosaic Class web
site being used as the main web site will be left online and fully operational
long after the Aurora Class replaces it. The Aurora Class will, at first,
compliment the Mosaic Class, and although it will replace it sometime
after 2021, some of the fleet of Mosaic Class sites will be left online.
In fact, the late 3rd Generation Mosaic Class sites are designed to
be easily upgraded to 4th Generation standards, which is very forward
thinking.
Tampa Shootouts became a 5 year development project for what was to
become Tampa Bay Shoots, with several events done in those years. As
2015 dawned, he decided to enhance some of what he developed for Tampa
Shootouts and apply it directly to Tampa Bay Shoots. The result was
that many of the brands, and even the main brand font, carried over
to the next generation photography event business and workshop.
He had solved the problems which had been experienced with Tampa Shootouts
back in 2011, too. He had found a way by enhancing interlinked support
and how the operations were marketed and leveraged.
There was an added benefit, too. The work that had gone into engineering
the event formats and support infrastructure were better than merely
setting the market, and industry, standard. They were good enough to
be used by a market leader such as Aurora PhotoArts, which was already
on the inside track of both Tampa Shootouts and Tampa Bay Shootouts
because it was heavily invested in the development effort. Development
cycled between Aurora PhotoArts and what was to become Tampa Bay Shoots,
with technology shared, and the end result were revolutionary event
formats and support infrastructure. What resulted was so good that Aurora
PhotoArts used Tampa Bay Shoots technology and support infrastructure
for its own research and development program, the first of its kind
for any photography company in the world.
Aurora PhotoArts came up with its ultra secret CurtainWorks research
and development program, which would come up with new photography, business,
and marketing technology. This would be tested in its secret Phantom
Shootouts, which would have then been produced and supported by Tampa
Shootouts.
Things evolved.
Tampa Shootouts became Tampa Bay Shoots in 2015. Its Athena Modeling
Photography and Networking Event Series, which was a major part of the
original Tampa Shootouts site, spun off into its own web site in order
to avoid potentially undermining the actual photography event business
of Tampa Bay Shoots, and shootouts became shoots. Aurora PhotoArts CurtainWorks
became ShimmerWorks, which fit in perfectly with the new official incarnation
of the Phantom Shootouts, the Mirage Shoots experimental photography
events.
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