An Amazing Trip!

This past week was amazing. I attended the WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) Convention in Las Vegas.

I put in usually 20 hour days and I have never been more excited or learned so many new things. I challenged myself to learn some new things, stepping outside of my comfortable Photojournalism world. I learned some new portrait techniques and some very cool art techniques (look for some playing with that very soon.)

But one of the biggest things that I learned was that everyone has their own way of doing things and as long as it is what you want, it is good. There is nothing wrong with me not knowing a ton of classic portrait stuff. Just exposing myself to it will allow me to follow some of the classic techniques, but in my own photojournalistic way. I learned that everyone does things their own way. We would go to hear different platform speakers so that we could combine our notes and recordings to learn the most. And inevitably, someone that Shan went to hear would do things one way and the person I went to hear did things completely opposite. But both methods worked for them.

So it helped me to feel better about doing things my way. Shan and I have very different approaches to a lot of things in photography, but we are both successful with what we do. His way isn't better than my way and mine isn't better than his. But each is the best for ourselves.

So while I am going to be taking my photography to the next level, I will always stick true to my style and my love of photojournalism! And I am determined to leave my mark on this world!