News Archive November 2010

Being With Stars Is Part Of The Job
From: The Colac Herald
by Jennifer Chiu
Posted: November 11, 2010

There would be few people from Colac who can say they have met rock and roll royalty Led Zeppelin, KISS' Gene Simmons And ZZ Top.

But former Colac woman Cara O'Dowd's photography career has given her the opportunity to work with big names of music and fashion and travel the world.

The now London-based O'Dowd is a digital operator for photographers and has recently flown to Tokyo, Japan, for a a beauty shoot, having just completed a 20-day fashion shoot at Cape Town, South Africa.

O'Dowd, 26, a former Colac College student, said her work included fashion shoots, celebrity portratis and car shoots, which have taken her fo cities such as Milan and Nice to shoot exotic Jaguar cars.

"It was really hard establishing myself as I work in an industry where word of mouth is your best, if not only, bet at gettting any work," she said.

"So it was a matter of getting people to meet with me and give me a chance."

Now I am getting loads of work and loving it - I love my job as I never know what the next week holds."

The daughter of Colac's Diane and Trevor O'Dowd, her first punlished photograph was in The Colac Herald where she used to play with her grandfather, former Herald photographer John Lawless.

She then studied photography at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and worked as an assistant in Melbourne and New York.

"I am now in the transition period where I am approaching more and more mags with my portfolio to get more photographic stories of my own published."

"I recently had my first UK publication, which was satisfying," she said.

O'Dowd said highlights of her career to date included meeting some "crazy old-school celebrities" at a rock awards show in London.

"Also shooting KISS and dancing with Gene Simmons in the studio will be a memory hard to top," she said.

"My dream for the future is to be travelling the world shooting and seeing billboards with my images on them wherever I go."

"Fingers crossed, it's not a small dream!"