Exclusives

Rodney Rascona

AUTO-Biography

Meet International Image maker Rodney Rascona

Creative challenges
Doing something well, on time, on budget with zero re-shoots is not a track record everyone can enjoy. A car image in a portfolio does ‘not’ imply that the lensman is a car photographer. To award projects to photographers on the highest level is a risk when it comes to serious projects and serious budgets that have high expectations for success. The challenges in shooting cars are really quite considerable.

The industry is really tough right now and gets worse all the time. Budgets are simply super-tight with extreme cost control at the agency level ensuring that 3-5 and even more, photographers are asked to bid a project with at times, the cheapest one getting the through. Next on the list of hurdles is that, the projects that Ads and agencies used to have for a photographer, now have smaller and fewer images that are being refreshed or reproduced. So while you may obtain a project that you worked really hard to get, you find out that it only has two images in its ‘package’, hardly making it worth the enormous efforts car photographers have to go through to put a ‘program’ together for a client.



It takes just as much energy to shoot one or two images on location as it does a whole two weeks worth. You just aren’t going to get the pay nor are you going to get the chance to keep the client out in front with leading imagery. Third on the list of hurdles would be that, given our digital capability these days, its far easier to get an average photographer to produce an average image and then place it in the hands of a skilled Photoshop artist. The yield for the client is a guaranteed deliverable. No risks involved. Unfortunately, they overlook, or the account teams forget to educate the client that last years image doesn’t do much for their new product. Neither does average imagery. It is far better to place a team of creatives together and take them to a location out in the world and let them do what it is that they do best.

Stop spending huge budgets to repair or build images from Photoshop’d royalty free stock just because they can be bought for 100USD. Instead, take that budget and give it to the creative team, place your trust in them, make them responsible and then get out of their way. It is what takes average creatives and makes them into great creatives, average photographers become great image-makers and in the context of advertising, a client’s message becomes one that the consumer remembers. If the industry is price-driven to excess, you may no longer have the ability to use great talent to creatively partner with and produce leading brand imagery. While it is the client who looses in the end, the agency takes a beating for poor Ad performance and everyone losses out.

Intro
Early interests
Car Specialist
Commercial Imagery
Social Causes
Africa Attracts
Digital Enhancements
Personal schedules

You can find out more about his work by visiting his website www.rascona.com  |  www.rasconastock.com