WPPI 2016

Simply put: WOW.

Ever since we opened up our business in 2010, going to WPPI has been on our bucket list. For you non-photography peeps reading this, WPPI is an annual conference held in Las Vegas for wedding and portrait photographers from all over the world. It’s several days of classes, seminars, speeches, contests and judging, an expo and of course – networking and parties!

Basically, it’s Photographer’s Gone Wild, or Photographer’s Spring Break, or … something else along those lines.

And … We. Had. A. BLAST.

^^ We pretty much spent all of WPPI doing some sort of happy dance, just like this. ^^

Thank you, Gifyyy for this fun new photo booth idea!

We spent three days from sun-up to late, late night totally getting our learn on – we got to listen to some of the most amazing photographers in the industry speak about how to be better business owners, better photographers, better friends and reminding us that what we do matters (thank you, Justin + Mary; we’re still verklempt thinking about your amazing class!).

We walked the expo floor, meeting face to face with some of our favorite wedding vendors and colleagues – including our friends at 17hats, the Knot, The Find Lab and Showit! It was so amazing to hug all these people who we’ve known for years but have never had the opportunity to hug and thank in person for their tireless amazingness. We even got to, ahem, totally fan-girled a couple times, walking by some photographers we really look up to in the industry! Plus, one of our good friends / colleagues / RAD brides stayed with us (heeyyy Suzi!), too! It was so fun having a roomie!

Not only that, we got to participate in one of the new classes coming out sometime later this year for the International Academy of Wedding Photographers – can’t tell you guys exactly what it’s about, but, all we can say is it’s an incredibly valuable class for ANY photographer to take! Check out the peek below, maybe you’ll recognize the teacher! 😉

We got to hang out with some of our Academy teachers + friends, which totally was the best part about WPPI for us!

Another awesome thing we got to do was take a Photo Walk with Matt Kennedy, talking all about off camera flash. We learned SO MUCH that we can’t wait to put into good use at our next wedding reception!

And here’s the crazy part: we totally brought our gear. We had every intention of taking photos, and maybe even making a video of our first trip, and documenting every single minute of it … and it totally didn’t happen. Not even a little bit. We brought our cameras to the Photo Walk, and didn’t take a single shot – we just were in such complete information overload that we didn’t even have the opportunity to shoot anything. If we’d carried them around with us, we might of taken some but considering we were out and about for 16+ hours a day, we just left them safely in our hotel room.

Thank goodness for cell phones … hopefully Ash can upgrade to the new iPhone 7 when it comes out this fall! Haha! 🙂 These are all cell phone photos since we didn’t take out our cameras once!

We definitely can’t wait to go back next year!!! Already counting it down for sure!!!! We’ll be writing more blogs about WPPI over the next few months, so stay tuned!