Yeah, yeah I know the title of this post is cheesy, but I don’t care. If you’ve followed this blog over the years you know this is my favorite holiday. I get to eat and blow things up. This year wasn’t any different. This year we were short a couple of our pyrotechnics team so I actually had my friend Leah shoot the photos for me. I’m still amazed at the show we put on for just a small group of us shooting them all off by hand. The very last image is our grand finale. I still think it looks like something someone put together in photoshop, but I swear it came out of the camera that way.

Like I mentioned before, I did participate in a couple of photo shoot out of Vegas. The first shoot was a group Trash the Dress session. There was about 40 photographers and 5 models. We traded models every 15 mnutes or so. It was a fun shoot. My group got booted off the brooklyn bridge at New York New York cause it was private property. I didnt think that concept exsisted in Vegas… maybe that’s privacy.

The second shoot was a pin-up/boudoir shoot. So Ill warn you there are risque pics below but nothing nude. this shoot was done in a local photographers studio. I wont lie it was a crowded studio but still a fun shoot. we had a nice variety of models that day. So it was a nice mix of Pin-up, boudoir, and kinda high fashion. See below… you’ll understand.

Just wanted to share a few better images from the drive out as well as the convention itself. Im going to give some props to all my favorite vendors too, after all they do make offer all my clients the wonderful products and service, I give, possible.

I think I may have mentioned that this year was a huge experiement in time management… Ive made so many friends at WPPI that I have to manage my time in order to see all my friends, attend seminars, the tradeshow, and this year a couple of shoots.  Attending seminars was easy this year cause they were really enforcing the fire code so I didnt get into some of the ones I wanted to go see.  I did get to see Kevin Kubota, Kay Eskridge, John Micheal Cooper, and Cliff Mautner… who I might add Ive been trying to hear speak for a couple years now. I would say he was my favortie.

Everyone meet Troy and Rebecca… They are the husband and wife team that developed Pickpic, which is the awesome shopping cart that you use to buy you images through on my website. This year theres going to be some changes that will make your experience, and mine, even better. For you it will be faster and easier to use, also now that they are part of my lab I will be able to offer so many more products and make it easy for me to fill your orders on the backside of thing. so we are hoping tby the end of the year youll be able to purchase so many different things through the cart.

Next is Finao. Finao is the company I get the beaitful albums that all my clients just love. Christine had the most creative booth at the trasehow… probably the most creative booth Ive ever seen. It created such a wonderful atmosphere to just walk in sit down and look through countless albums.

Then of coarse, the next thing on my list is the tradeshow.  Ive gotten to where now at least I have just a handful of vendors that I make it a point to go see. It defiantly makes going to a tradeshow this big way more managable.

This is Christine… the architect of the chaos and one of the funnest people Ive met in the industry. Couple new things from Finao this year…. one is all the albums are no longer going t come in thsoe white pizza boxes. Past clients and fellow photographers know what Im talking about. the boxes they are going to be delievered in are much nicer. Second.. they are now offering a designer box that you can have pne of your wedding photos printed on the cover… and can I say they are gorgeous. Can’t wait to get one to show it off.

This guy here is Fundy. Fundy designed the amazing software I use to design all my clients albums. Ive been through so many different template software over the years and what he created is by far the best thing Ive used. So to all my fellow photogs out there… if youre looking for a way to make your album designing go easier go look up this software.

Last but defiantly not least is ShootQ. ShootQ is a service I use that allows me to book my clients online thus saving them the time of having to drive back to my office just to fill out a contract, plus it handles some of the day to day tasts that i tend to put off till the last minute, thus allowing me more time to do what i like to do… play on facebook with my clients and friends amd shoot.

Ok so this year, I decided not to put up more images of the same old things I see walking up and down the strip. I decided to give some credit to the vendors that allow me to offer my cleints the top quality products and service that they come to me for.

So now below I just wanted to show off more of the images I shot on the journey out to and back from Vegas. Then later Im going to post images from the 2 shoots I was appart of. So please enjoy.

Well this yer for those who didn’t hear… I drove out to Vegas to the WPPI convention.  Am I mad… possibly… but all the great minds in history were.  Was the drive long…. absolutely, but it was so worth it.  I got to see some really great things.  My friend Julianna and I spent 2 days driving out there. The first day was pretty much what we see everyday… flat fields of whatever.  We made it to Santa Rosa, New Mexico that day before stopping for the night and thats where things got fun… We started to get into the mountians the next day and got to see some beautiful landscape.  Once we got into Arizona we stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park. Due to time constraints we nly got to see the northern part of the park which consisted of the painted desert. After we left there, I found out that the Meteor Crater was only a few miles from where we were so I had to go see that.  The movies that have had that in it don’t even begin to relay the size of the creater. Its a must see if you ever make it out that way… in a car.

So for all of you that thought I was crazy for driving out there… and even those who didn’t… please enjoy the photos from my adventure.  Will I do it again… In a heartbeat.

I went today to pick up my friend at the airport in St. Louis. While I was there waiting the snow storm hit…. and hot it did. It was slow going coming home… 4 hours slow going. Traffic kept slowing as we approached Mt. Vernon, IL so it always seemed like we were an hour away. The scariest thing all night was when we came up behind a black semi whose lights were all covered with snow, so all I could see what a black outline till we got close then he was kicking up enough snow that I could see a thing. Got past hime when we got to the Greyville exit when we finally had some light. Saw several vehicles off the side of the road. At one point, when we finally made it into Indiana, just as we past the MotoMart on Cynthiana Road we stated to fish tale a bit, I thought we were going to end up on the side of the road. I wouldn’t suggest driving in this stuff unless you had too. My friend did shoot some video for me to show you but I don’t think it truly gives you the full effect of how bad it was.

Since it took me a couple days to get this posted; Ive had a chance to go out and do some shooting out in the show too. Enjoy!