las vegas: wppi 2010

I’m going to blog today out of sheer willpower! Ever since we returned from Las Vegas late Friday night I’ve been either beyond exhausted or super sick. The 3 hour time zone difference was brutal enough, but then “Springing Forward” an hour really did me in! I am beginning to feel better and so while Rich works to catch up on email, I am going to make this WPPI post happen! I’m determined!

For a couple of months, Rich and I weren’t even sure if we were going to be going to WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) this year. We’d just gone to Imaging USA in January (which I summarized here), and just weren’t sure about making the commitment. But after multiple conversations and a decision to have Alana stay with my parents in Fort Lauderdale (they just don’t get to see each other enough!), we were off on a 12 hour drive to drop Alana off in Florida to – be followed the next day by a 6 hour plane trip to Las Vegas, arriving in the middle of the night (eastern time).

Our very first day in Vegas was a huge treat. We got to meet our online friend from the past couple of years, Gabe McClintock of Perspectiveye Photography. We were so thrilled to have a session with Gabe on Sunday before all of the WPPI festivities began on Monday. Check out our session here and leave him some blog love! We’ve been communicating with Gabe (and admiring his work) since 2007 via email, Facebook, and Twitter and we were thrilled for the chance to meet him, have a session with him, and enjoy a couple of dinner dates with him before he left for his home (and beautiful wife and daughter) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Let’s just say Rich and I want to visit them sometime soon. The landscapes – and Gabe’s photography – are epic.

Here we are with Gabe. He said his first impression of us – seeing us in person for the first time – was that we were tall! So here he is, trying to show us up in the height department. We might be squatting.

The trade show floor opened on Monday and it was even more overwhelming than the trade show floor from Imaging USA in Nashville…two huge buildings filled with photography related products and services. Everything imaginable. Below, Rich and I are at the KISS Wedding Books booth (which rocks, by the way) admiring the marketing genius of Kevin Swan and Shaun Austin. They even hooked us up with a couple of KISS T-shirts so we can be little fan people. We love the simplicity of ordering our clients’ wedding books through KISS, the continual updates throughout the printing and binding process, and the quality of the wedding books themselves.

In the photo below, Rich is holding a 1×64 inch KISS wedding book. Yes, you read that right. In other words, when this album is closed, it is 1 inch tall and 32 inches wide. Gotta admire their creativity. I have to say, I never would have thought to order such a thing!

Hilarious!

We love Pictage, our online lab for client proofing and ordering. They simplify our lives so much and allow us to focus on the most important aspects of our business: client relationships. We love to outsource the things that drain us of time and energy (like post-processing, print orders, and album design), and do the things we LOVE (photographing our clients and growing our business). Thank you for your new and improved leadership, Pictage. And sweet new branding! We are excited about our continued partnership into 2010 and all of the exciting things that are in store!

Here is the Pictage booth on the trade show floor:

With Joe Buissink and Denis Reggie being interviewed by Pictage’s new CEO, Jim Collins. We love Jim.

We ran into the fabulous Meggie Velasco from Knoxville on the trade show floor. SO good to see her!

We thoroughly enjoyed sitting in on Garrett Nudd’s Master Class on getting published, complete with six wonderful magazine editors. We have some exciting goals for 2010 as it relates to having our work published!

Hanging out with Amber Holritz and our new friend Tim Halberg right before Amber’s platform class on Lifestyle Baby Photography. Fun times and enlightening conversation about sprouted wheat bread!

Then Amber totally rocked it out to a PACKED HOUSE. She is one of my best friends in the world and yet she always manages to move me with her poignant stories – I adore listening to her. She asked me to take photos of her presenting, and I was more than happy to do so. I took a bunch, but here are just a couple from her presentation.

Other incredible photographers and industry leaders we had the pleasure of listening to at WPPI include: Jesh De Rox, Dane Sanders, Jasmine Star, Kevin Kubota, and Mike Colon. All amazing people and so completely different from one another, both photographically and business wise.

Rich and I were thoroughly exhausted from the schedule we’d kept in Vegas, and we didn’t have time for very much of ANYTHING outside the walls of the MGM Grand where the WPPI classes and trade show were located. And because this was my first time in Vegas (never made it to Vegas, even growing up in Orange County, California), I insisted we briefly head over to the iconic “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign for a photo. Oh, I am such a tourist. And so, Rich humoring me, we hopped into a cab, took a few photos at the sign (which did not disappoint, by the way), and rode straight back to the hotel. Ha!

And so, this was a brief and insufficient summary of our time in Vegas, but to be truthful, we did not do a great job of documenting our time there. We were incredibly sad not to have taken ANY photos with our client-turned-dear friend Leslie Janous, no photos with our incredible slip cover designer, ChrysQ, no photos with dear friend Nathan Holritz with Photographer’s Edit, and on and on it goes. Sad, to be sure, but we hope for many more WPPI experiences and many more photos with dear friends in this incredible industry.

We hope that you all have a fantastic week and a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!