I had the BEST week in Vegas for WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photography Conference). This year the Director of WPPI was my friend, the very talented NYC based photographer, Jason Groupp. He and his team put together a great conference and worked their butts off doing it. If you are even in NYC, make sure to book one of his I Heart NY sessions and see the city like you should!
I also had some amazing roomates who just happen to also be fabulous photographers. We became instant friends and I feel like I’ve known them all forever! Seriously had so much fun with these girls-some of the fun will stay in Vegas-haha. Check out their work at their links on their name:
We had so much fun learning new things in our classes and going to parties and meeting other amazing photographers from around the world. On Sunday we went to the awesome Lindsay Adler’s class “Shooting in evil light.” I learned some great tips on using my reflectors. Then it was off to the Team-X party hosted by my business coach and one of my favorite people in the world, Jeff Jochum. Tara and I met some new people and I loved meeting people in my business group in person! I played some pool with some of the guys and even won a game and was so close to winning a lot more-seriously down to the 8 ball a few times for both of us {ok I’ll stop-I am a little bit competitive-haha!}.
We went to the expo that morning to see all of the newest products out there for photographers and then hung out in the nice warm sun with some fellow Utah photographers. It was here I found out from Vell Smith (who I knew only through Facebook until then and was so glad to finally meet him in person) that I am just “a little big cool.” As he said it he was putting his thumb and finger to make it go from small to big, but it just made an L and I said, “What, I’m just a little bit cool?!” with the L sign on my forehead. It became the joke of the week for sure! I also got to meet Rachel Farner finally in person and she and I had way too much fun together!
After we went to Bambi Cantrell’s class and she is hilarious. One of my favorite quotes from her not really about photography was, “If the barn needs painting, you paint it!” Haha. She gave us great tips on posing. After her class we headed to the Shoot Dot Edit party. Shoot Dot Edit is the best editors out there! They are super fast and very custom for your photography style. They also have great customer service, which is the most important thing to me in a company.
We left the party a little early to go get some dinner at my favorite place in the world, Wolfgang Puck’s Bar & Grill in the MGM and had my gnocchi. Everyone laughed at me at how excited I was, well until they tried it! I shared a chocolate soufflé with my friend Kelli, another one of my favorite things there. So you would think at a photography conference I would have taken pictures….well I took like 8…on my phone (mostly of food), so forgive the awesome quality. It was actually kind of nice to not drag around my camera and the battery in my phone was dying all of the time anyway! So here is the gnocchi and the chocolate soufflé!!
After dinner we RAN through the casino to the Sony party….and had a few guys try to pick us up as we were running. It was funny. We made it to the last ten minutes of the party and danced until they turned the music off. We got to bed good and late and had to wake up early for our classes the next day! No sleep in Vegas is something everyone does, right?!
Luckily my very talented friend Scott Jarvie was always filming down there so you can see what happened on the first day of WPPI here:
Scott posts lots of great things to his youtube channel all of the time. You can subscribe to him here 😀
Well stay tuned because next week I will tell you about the next 3 days at WPPI!
That was such a fun trip! The gnocci was most def not my favorite. But I loved hanging with all the fun people and partying with you guys. And is it me, or do I totally sound like a mouse on crack in Jarvie’s video?
Oh Erin, you can’t knock the gnocchi until you try it! And my real favorite part was getting to know you all :D.
You guys were all so much fun! Can’t wait to get together again!
Yes, the trip was so fun!! And the Gnocchi was yummy, but the choco souffle was even yummier!!! I am so happy we are friends now. The trip rocked and I hope that most of it stays in Vegas….lol.
It was such a great week!! And SO fun getting to know everyone. I have to admit, I’m not to sad I missed out on the gnocchi. 😉 My pizza was pretty dang good. 🙂