As I complete my time at WPPI in Las Vegas (forth year attending), I continue to come back because each year is different. New people, new experiences, new parties (which I usually skip).
Every year, I organize a shoot to experiment and practice. This year I worked with a makeup artist I worked with last year, Bri, and asked her to suggest a model instead of me conducting my own search. Thanks to the crew (see below) that braved a very long walk through the desert, getting rained on briefly and cold weather (for Vegas)...all to get to our beautiful destination in the Red Rock Canyon. Here are some behind-the-scenes (BTS) followed by the results.
The day before, I attended a completely unplanned shoot that someone else organized. They planned the location, hired the models and I just showed up to shoot. As it turned out, this was a great way for me to meet some new people. Here are a few images from that shoot.
Now to the classes. I didn't attend as many sessions as I had in years past. I like that this conference is not all about the presenters, the classes, and the expo. I attended a great talk with Dane Sanders about building your business from the ground up. He outlined categories to think about when evaluating your business, whether you're just starting out or have been at it for a while. Since I've left I've started to look more into a book he suggested called Deep Work. More on this soon.
Expo floor
Next was a talk with Jen Rozenbaum. She's a NY based boudoir photographer. We have mutual friends through the photography community and I hadn't heard her speak in the past so I'm glad I had the chance to see her this time. She's great and I loved that her personality came through in her talk which makes it so much more fun. I also attended a social media talk with Susan Stripling that was enlightening. Through her talk I learned that her competition is my favorite NY based wedding photographer, Ryan Brenizer. Interesting. She had some good suggestions about what tools to use and why and how to automate a lot of the interactions with social media.
My last class was a lighting class with Joe McNally. Love him! He's very funny and such a wealth of knowledge. He admitted from the beginning that he had no agenda and was just winging it. He took some questions from the audience and then started to experiment with light and color and explain it as he went along. Here are some images he made during the talk.
Joe McNally's images playing with color and light