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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