WPPI is an amazing experience made available to any photographer who wants to attend.  There’s nothing exclusive about it. You don’t have to be a member. You don’t even really have to be a photographer. But you do have to get yourself to Las Vegas in order to attend. Being there for my third time, in four years, it sort of feels like home now. (Not Las Vegas. . . the conference part). I know my way around. And I find everything about it intriguing. It’s changed a bit since I first started going-the classes are thirty minutes shorter, and there is one less per day, but none the less, it’s still enjoyable and there’s so much to take away. This year I felt like a lot of what I heard was stuff I’ve already heard. And that’s okay. I remember my first year, I was incredibly blown away because everything was new news to me. My head was spinning by the end. I had no idea what to implement first, so I came home like the tasmanian devil and tore through everything all at once. i.e. I was so overwhelmed, I hardly did anything at all. This time around, I was able to take away a couple of small things to implement from each class. James came along with me this time though, and he’s suffering from first timers syndrome! Ha. He came home with a bang, ready to be more involved in my business and lend a helping hand with ideas. Before, I don’t think he really had much of an interest in the “inner workings” of the business, but now it seems something has lit a little flame of interest. I do admit, and we’ve already talked about it. . . it’s hard for me to even entertain some of his ideas. Because for the past five years, this business has been like another child . . . started out as this little idea and has grown into a five year old that I’ve been raising carefully and invested a lot of time into. All on my own. And for someone else to come in and start trying to call some shots, well, it’s been a challenge for me. A selfish one at that, for sure. But he understands where I’m coming from, and hopefully we can put our heads together and work together to make sure we keep growing.

Just a few goals that we came away with-

-Turn the living room/office into a more functional “studio” space in which I could proudly call a studio space. This will be a place where I can keep my props out and won’t have to drag them in and out every time I have a newborn or baby session. We’ve decided that James’ April break will be a good time to start attacking this project. We’ve literally thought of every possible combination we could do to our house to make a studio space, even ideas that involved an addition or transforming part of the garage.

-Establish more of a community feeling with my brides. I have to figure out exactly what this would mean and how I can take steps to do this.

-Create better packages for my portrait clients which include some print products so that they can have beautiful art displayed on their walls, instead of only getting them printed at lower quality labs.

-Some ideas to work through in regards to lighting at my weddings.  Finally I’m about to jump into the world of off camera lighting. (I think and I hope!).

-Create a relationship with a few other businesses in the area

-Some new newborn techniques that I’m excited to try out (next newborn session is on Saturday, yay!)

There are others we’d like to incorporate, but I think I would say that these are the first six I’d like to focus on. I’m sure we will go back at some point. My mom says that those kind of conferences suck you in and keep you coming back. And I guess that’s true in my case. I’ve gone with four other friends in the past. . . none of which have returned yet. So maybe I’m in the minority! Call me a sucker for education 🙂