It’s no secret that I truly love what I do.  I’m pretty sure everyone who knows me knows I love taking photos and am usually that girl at the party or get-together taking the pics, even when I’m not working. I love shooting, editing, playing around with images in Photoshop… I am addicted to it all. And, when I’m not actually shooting or editing, I’m online looking for inspiration, tips and tricks, advice from others in the industry, etc. I’m a constant blog-stalker of many great photographers because I love seeing what others are doing out there. I’m also a frequent visitor of the Digital Wedding Forum (DWF), an online forum for professional wedding photographers where people post questions and advice about the industry, photos to be critiqued, and many other things having to do with wedding and portrait photography. I have willingly let my job consume a large part of my life, and I couldn’t be happier with where my business is going thanks to some great support from friends, family and trusting clients. For all of these reasons, I am totally stoked about where I’ll be one week from now…

WPPI 2008 begins next week and I am so excited! For those of you who don’t know, WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) is a huge annual convention for photographers that takes place in Las Vegas. Every year, photographers from all over converge on Vegas and transform the city into Photographer Central — a gigantic tradeshow, tons of amazing speakers, top-notch skills classes and demonstrations, and, of course, fabulous parties. Last year, I went for the first time and brought my mom along with me as my guest (I blogged about the trip here). She’s a graphic designer and encouraged me to get into design and photography, so it was great trip. I got to teach her some stuff about photography, and together we learned a lot from all of the platform speakers… we had a great time. However, last year we could only spare one night for the trip. We quickly realized that was definitely not enough, so when I planned the trip for this year, I made sure I would be able to stay longer.

This year I’ll be spending 3 1/2 days trying to learn all that I can. My mind is going to be so full of information and ideas when I get back! My main goal is to learn ways to polish my photography skills and push my creativity to the max, as well as to improve my ability to use off-camera lighting to create more fashion-inspired photos on location. Also, I’ll be paying close attention to album companies as I’m searching for more options to offer my clients. I want to only sell the best albums and products to my clients– products I know I would like to have to remember my wedding or portrait session. I am happy with everything I offer now, but there are always new exciting things to check out, and WPPI has them all!

This year I’m especially looking forward to sharing my WPPI experience with the lovely Meg. She was able to make plans to come out and explore the conference with me last minute, and I am so happy that the plans worked out! She and I always have a good time together, especially when photography is involved, so I know it will be a blast. I’m sure there will be tons of photos that we will take of each other and be able to post. Maybe we’ll even test out some of the things we learn while still in Vegas.

This year I have also been invited to the [b] party, a great party hosted by Becker during WPPI. I had the good fortune of being invited via being a member of his [b] school. If you’re a wedding photographer, I would highly recommend daily visits to that blog. It’s already given me so much information that I have been slowly trying to apply to my business… and it got me an invite to a fabulous Vegas party!

Here’s a photo of Mom and I in Vegas last year for the convention. This was taken inside the Wynn. What a gorgeous hotel!

Here’s to a great WPPI– no Mom, it could never be better than the year I went with you

I know I’ll come back more knowledgable and ready to take on the ‘08 wedding season by storm, but hopefully, just maybe… I’ll come back with some winnings from the Blackjack tables, too. (I know all of my friends totally just rolled their eyes at that… but hey, it could happen!)