{"id":2098,"date":"2009-02-20T12:31:49","date_gmt":"2009-02-20T19:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realphotography.com\/blog\/?p=2098"},"modified":"2009-02-20T12:31:49","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T19:31:49","slug":"vegas-highlights-wppi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/vegas-highlights-wppi\/","title":{"rendered":"vegas highlights &#124; wppi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got back from WPPI on Wednesday.\u00a0 It was completely re-energizing (in spite of the very few hours of sleep) and a fantastic experience in every way.\u00a0 I&#8217;m already looking forward to going back next year!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">I though I&#8217;d share a few highlights from the trip&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hanging out with my roommates and awesome photographer friends\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shannonmontez.com\" target=\"_blank\">Shannon<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.photographybyalison.com\" target=\"_blank\">Alison<\/a>. <\/strong> We&#8217;ve been online friends for years, but this was our first real life meeting.\u00a0 When I realized yesterday that there&#8217;s now no one to sit on the edge of the bathtub and soak their feet with me in the evenings while we chat about the day, I was very sad!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2108\" title=\"thegroup\" src=\"http:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/blog-old\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/thegroup.jpg\" alt=\"thegroup\" width=\"782\" height=\"568\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">(That would be my poorly group executed shot by self timer.\u00a0 It was SOOOO much better in my head.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2109\" title=\"shannon\" src=\"http:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/blog-old\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/shannon.jpg\" alt=\"shannon\" width=\"782\" height=\"568\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2110\" title=\"alison\" src=\"http:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/blog-old\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/alison.jpg\" alt=\"alison\" width=\"582\" height=\"854\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Our trash the dress shoot with Beth<\/strong> on Sunday.\u00a0 She was UP FOR ANYTHING, as you can see below!\u00a0 I have many many many many <strong>many<\/strong> more shots to share, so this is just a sneak sneak peek.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2117\" title=\"waterttd11\" src=\"http:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/blog-old\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/waterttd11.jpg\" alt=\"waterttd11\" width=\"582\" height=\"854\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2112\" title=\"trash the dress colorado springs photographer\" src=\"http:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/blog-old\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/ttdurban.jpg\" alt=\"trash the dress colorado springs photographer\" width=\"782\" height=\"568\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>The classes!<\/strong> There were so many fantastic speakers this year, and their energy was contagious.\u00a0 One of the best parts was seeing how some of the speakers&#8217; philosophies conflict each other.\u00a0 Which just encourages that idea that if you are who you really are, you&#8217;ll attract clients that love that thing that you love, and you&#8217;ll be successful.\u00a0 There&#8217;s no one road to great wedding photography.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Seeing the print competition judging. <\/strong> I made it a point to fly in early enough to see the print judging.\u00a0 And even though it meant a 2am wake-up after VALENTINE&#8217;S DAY, it was totally worth it.\u00a0 I think it would be a waste to enter the WPPI competition without seeing the judging first.\u00a0\u00a0 It was inspiring, but also kinda a downer.\u00a0 I think it&#8217;s hard to watch a photography convention without ending up feeling like a total hack!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Meeting Bobbi<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 When you read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobbiandmike.com\/blog\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bobbi and Mike&#8217;s blog<\/a> you get the feeling that they&#8217;d be the type of neighbors where you could be like &#8220;hey&#8211;wanna come over for pizza tonight?&#8221; and they would come over and you&#8217;d be such good friends and have so much fun together that you wouldn&#8217;t even clean up before they came.\u00a0 You&#8217;d just push the laundry piles to the side.\u00a0 Sometimes when you meet people that you love online, it&#8217;s sorta a disappointment.\u00a0 Some people just come off better online (I suspect that I am one of these people).\u00a0 Bobbi is NOT.\u00a0 She was so gracious and friendly and didn&#8217;t just do the obligatory &#8220;nice to meet you, thanks for introducing yourself [cough-cough-stalker-cough]&#8221; but actually chatted with us.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t take a picture, but here&#8217;s a pretty accurate depiction of it:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2107\" title=\"bobbimeeting\" src=\"http:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/blog-old\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/bobbimeeting-287x300.jpg\" alt=\"bobbimeeting\" width=\"287\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">When I texted Nic that I had met THE Bobbi and that she was every bit as awesome as I had suspected, he texted back:\u00a0 &#8220;did your head explode?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>Our hotel.<\/strong> We stayed at the MGM Signature, and I am so hoping that WPPI is held at the MGM again next year, so that we can have the same perfect set-up.\u00a0 For the photographers that read this blog, I definitely recommend it!\u00a0 You&#8217;re close the action so you can run back to your room between classes (it&#8217;s about a mile walk to the conference rooms, but it&#8217;s all indoors and you&#8217;d walk the same amount if you stayed at the Grand), but you don&#8217;t have to walk through a casino, and it&#8217;s a very new nice hotel.\u00a0 I waited for three hours for a room on Sunday, so we were upgraded to a balcony (on the 28th floor!), and I think we&#8217;ll splurge on a balcony next year.\u00a0 It made such a difference to have access to some fresh air!\u00a0 Looking down from the balcony was kinda freaky though!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2113\" title=\"looking-down\" src=\"http:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/blog-old\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/looking-down.jpg\" alt=\"looking-down\" width=\"782\" height=\"568\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got back from WPPI on Wednesday.\u00a0 It was completely re-energizing (in spite of the very few hours of sleep) and a fantastic experience in every way.\u00a0 I&#8217;m already looking forward to going back next year! I though I&#8217;d share a few highlights from the trip&#8230; Hanging out with my roommates and awesome photographer friends\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,240],"tags":[239],"class_list":["post-2098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-second-chance-shoots","tag-second-chance-shoot"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.needlesandapen.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}