WOW, what an incredible 8 days in Vegas!! WPPI is our annual International Photography convention in which over 12,000 photographers attended this year! Alycia and I had one of the most hectic schedules of anyone there, but we had so much fun meeting everyone and teaching all of our classes! Here is a breakdown of our week...
Wednesday night - We had a chance to meet all of the PLUS class attendees at a cocktail reception as well as see some old friends! Alycia and I then had a WONDERFUL dinner at Emeril's(courtesy of Skip Cohen) with some of the BEST photographers in the world!(Who I am proud to also call my friends.)
Thursday and Friday - We had the most awesome PLUS class!! I think we had folks from over 5 countries represented in our class alone!(The Marshall Islands, The Philippines, Malaysia, Canada, Guatamala, and the US!) Everyone was so eager to learn and asked some great questions!! Thanks also to our amazing Sponsors who gave us a TON of cool door prizes(I think everyone in the class won something!!)
I even got WPPI's own Shauna Harris to do a little modeling for the class! Here is a fun shot in front of MGM...
Here is a shot of Alycia and I with our class on the last day...
Saturday - I judged the Print Competition this year and saw some AMAZING images!! The quality simply keeps getting better EVERY year!! Since it was Valentine's Day, Alycia and I went out to dinner at Craftsteak and then had front row seats to the Wayne Brady show at the Venetian! First off, the steaks at Craftsteak were awesome to say the least!! We will definitely be eating there again!
Next, we went to the Wayne Brady show and had a total blast!! Wayne is so incredibly talented, it's crazy!! Almost the whole show is improv and I don't remember laughing that much in a long time!! He is such a great guy as well as we hung out with him a little after the show!
Here's a shot of us with Wayne Brady...
Sunday - I judged the Print competition all day and then was invited by the great folks at Pocketwizard to test out some new products with a live shoot on the Vegas Strip! I had a blast and the new stuff is totally exciting!! In fact, I will blog about the products soon!
Monday - Alycia and I attended a cool focus group meeting during the day and then had our Platform Class at night! We had a total blast with everyone and the feedback has been tremendous!! A special thanks to Laura, Lowell, Shannon, Starla, and Melissa for helping us with everything! I also want to give a special shoutout to the guys at Dury's who went above and beyond to support us as did the folks at Azura albums! Thanks also to all of our great sponsors who provided great doorprizes!! The footballs were a hit and the Apple ITouch that WHCC gave us to give away went over quite well!
Thanks to Shannon for the following 2 pics of us at our Platform class...
Me answering questions afterwards...
Kenny Kim got this one of me throwing some footballs during our program! The footballs were a hit!!
Tuesday - Both Alycia and I spoke at the WHCC booth(Which looked incredible BTW!) and then we finally had a chance to walk around the tradeshow for a bit before heading off to speak at a WPPI Townhall meeting that night. We then had dinner with our WONDERFUL album company - AZURA Albums! It was great getting to know Lek and Shelly better and the sample albums they made for us looked incredible!! Here is a shot of the booth with our images and then all of us...
Wednesday - We spoke at the WHCC booth again and then walked around the tradeshow some more before attending the awards ceremony. Our equipment supplier, Dury's, seemed jam packed everytime we walked by! We are not surprised as we feel that they are the best in the business and we wouldn't get our camera gear anywhere else!! Here are a couple of quick shots of Ron and his crew in action!!(Look at all the people!!)
We also took a quick shot of the Photoidentities booth(who provide my blog!!) They used a bunch of our images as well and it looked really cool! Vera and Max do a fantastic job with websites and blogs, so if you need one, contact them asap as they had some amazing deals!!
OK, so then we made our way to the Awards ceremony. I didn't really expect to win anything this year since I only entered a few prints, but I was pleasantly surprised when I won 2nd place in the high school senior category and 3rd place in the animal/pets category! I was shocked to say the least, but I won't complain!! =)
Here are my winning images...
It was a crazy busy week, but a ton of fun! It was also great to see a lot of old friends and to meet new ones! I am already looking forward to our trip next year!
I can’t wait to see everyone, including my amazing vendors, sponsors, and friends!!
