About Me

I figured it's probably time that, if you don't know me, you might be interested! Who IS this "Clarissa Rodriguez" and WHY should I care about her blog? Well, simple answer... okay so there is no simple answer. But I'm going to tell you who I am anyways!

The Basics

Name: Clarissa Rodriguez
Nicknames: C-Rod, clarissarod, theclarissarod, Rodriguez, Iron Man
Twitter: Follow me here
Instagram: Follow me here
Flickr: View my work here
Likes: yoga, reading, coffee, travel, sarcasm, technology, music, movies, beer, The Green Bay Packers, and bacon
Dislikes: mushrooms
Preferred Camera Brand: Canon
Who I've Worked For/With: BMA Milwaukee, Startup Milwaukee, Division BMX, The Soup Market, Stack'd Burger Bar, Greater Milwaukee Committee, Digital Measures, Milwaukee Bonecrushers, 4PM Magazine, MKEWired.com, and more!
Greatest Accomplishment: beating cancer (cancer-free since August 1, 2007!)

My Photographic Journey 

To be honest, I never considered photography as a "career" well... ever. It just sort of happened! Back when I was around 12 or so, perhaps younger, I remember going shopping with my dad and him buying a digital camera. At this point, we still had a FILM VIDEO CAMERA, so getting a digital camera was AWESOME. Certain technology my dad was quite the early adopter on, and others, not so much. We still purchased VHS for a few years after DVDs came out. That one was rough... but back to the story. So we go to American (yes, there's a store called "American" it sells electronics. or rather, used to. it's out of business now.) and my dad purchased a Canon G2 (this is where my love of Canon came from, it's the first [digital] camera brand I was exposed to). My dad is kind of a strict guy, when it comes to certain things anyways. This was one of those certain things. I was not allowed to even TOUCH the camera. There was no way that his 12 year old daughter would be able to mess with his $1000 camera. I know. Talk about early technology, a thousand dollars for a G2. Go ahead and google the specs on it. I'll give you a minute........ back? Yeah. I know. Well, needless to say, I wanted to know more about it.

Fast forward a couple years. I've always been artsy. I decided to participate in community theatre, A Christmas Carol. It was getting closer to show date, and I wanted to take pictures with all my friends! Keep in mind, this is still years before cameras came on phones. Or, decent ones at least. So what I wanted for Christmas was a digital camera! And I got one! A Canon Powershot A520. It was a point and shoot, but slightly more advanced than that. It wasn't just a literal point and shoot, I had setting options that I could change: Manual mode, Aperture priority, Quick Motion, Night Time, etc. Now I really started to get into photography even more. Still never thought of it as anything more than a hobby. 

A couple of years after that, so around age 17, a good friend and I were working at Summerfest. Since we mostly had the earlier shifts, we usually stuck around the rest of the night and walked around. We stumbled across some sports shows going on: Division BMX. Neither of us were really ever interested in BMX, she skated occasionally, I didn't. Our middle school and junior high days were when PacSun was big, and skaters became prevalent. Nevertheless, we were interested. If anything else, these guys were hot. I brought my camera with me nearly every day just because it was fun and this was our first experience working at Summerfest. Heck yes we're going to take pictures! Well, I liked the fast pace of the show and I started to experiment with how my camera worked. There was even a video camera setting so I shot some video. My dad had some software that I was able to edit the video and create a (VERY) basic video for the guys. I sent it to them along with some photos that I had taken. They loved them! We all ended up becoming friends and I would go to other shows during that summer and do photo and video. I'm not sure what drew me to photography as opposed to videography, probably less work to edit a photo versus a video, but I became even more interested in photography.

Later that year, 2006 or so, I ended up getting sick. All my hobbies went by the wayside as I focused on regaining health. Though I wasn't nearly as focused on taking photos, I still took a few. It was something I could do to take my mind off of things. Slowly, but surely, I got better. I started college, got a new job, things were looking up. I decided it was time to pick up photography again. I decided to purchase a new camera at this point, a Canon Powershot S5 IS. I needed up up my game!

I started photographing concerts, still photographed sports, got into landscapes and nature. My photography developed as my interests developed. Over a few years I started doing more portraiture work, and focusing on live events, as that's where I felt I captured the best photos. Another new camera came, a Canon Rebel XS, and my favorite lens, a 50mm 1.8.

In 2011, I registered with the state of Wisconsin as a sole proprietor. It was official, I had my own business. I continued to shoot concerts, sports, portraits, but still focused on live events. In 2013, I became the photographer for Startup Mke, GMC, and BMA. I continue to hone my craft, focusing my talents on live events, concerts, and portraiture. I look forward to soon purchasing a Canon 60D, and a 24-135mm lens too (I'm always accepting donations to the fund!).

Any other questions, let me know! I'm an open book. :)

I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about my photographic journey, and why I love what I do.