We were swamped over the holidays with weddings and events. Then, in January I went to Imaging U.S.A., which is the national convention for the Professional Photographers Association of America. It was held in Atlanta this year and, since I live in Florida, I decided I should go since it was as close as I could hope to get without actually being in my home state. Florida's great but it takes eight hours just to leave the state by car. :)
The convention was great. Lot's of photographers to meet, workshops to attend and I got to hang out with my old friend Jodi from Ben and Jodi Photography. She spent the whole week drinking as much "sweet tea" as she could find since they just don't offer that up in Ohio.
I spent most of the time at the convention taking notes full of ideas for a speaking program. One of the big things in PPA is education and members are encouraged to "give back." I decided that I would put together a program that I could share with local chapters and spent the whole weekend brainstorming ideas. Last night I presented my program for the first time to the Lakeland PPA chapter and it went well. No one got up and left, only a few items were thrown at me, good times. :)
I had a unique opportunity last month when I was asked to shoot some images for the WWE. That's right, your humble photographer got to photograph professional wrestlers! The whole thing was green screen so that the backgrounds can be replaced for tour programs, etc. One thing I will say about the wrestlers, male and female alike, is that they were the most polite, well-mannered people you could ever hope to work with. It was a pleasure to meet them.
Of course I had plenty of weddings as well and no blog post would be complete without some wedding pictures:
Finally, we wedding photographers love to complain about people who get in our way at weddings. We call these people "Uncle Bob" and usually it's someone who owns a nice camera and in their eagerness to "get the shot" at a wedding they end up blocking us. It's just one of those things... everybody likes to complain about something so we complain about Uncle Bob.
Well, just let me say for the record that not all "Uncle Bob's" are created equal. (I've written about them here.) At my wedding on New Year's Eve, I met a man who was using a camera that he had bought some 60 years ago for his own wedding. It shot film!
When a man at your wedding has a camera that is older than you are, he get's to do whatever he wants to do. :)
It was a great wedding. We got fantastic images and the party was a riot!
