Ottawa Wedding Photographer attends Nevada Desert Workshop

Last week, I attended the largest convention and trade show for wedding and portraits photographers run by WPPI (Wedding and Portraits Photographers International). It was my first time and I travelled alone. Needless to say, it was a little overwhelming with over 16,000 photographers (breaking last year’s record attendance) checking out the two massive trade show rooms with over 1500 booths. Some only go to check out all the amazing vendors who offers anything from gear to lab and album services. Many booths even have speakers do presentations so if you only get a trade show pass, you can still take a lot in. On the flip side, you can attend pre-classes, WPPI university and master classes for an added fee to your convention registration and partake in smaller group classes. This being my first time, and not having planned to attend until I won a free registration from PWD Labs (thank you!), I was trying to keep my costs down and only attended the platform classes. Even choosing those was a challenge because often there were 5-6 speakers presenting at the same time so you really have a plethora of choices! I was only planning on attending these classes when I entered another Twitter contest and won a spot on a desert model shoot hosted by San Diego photographers Stephen Knuth and Dan Fields. I was thrilled and honestly would recommend doing something like this because after several days of wandering the giant MGM Grand complex, it was nice to have a change of scenery and actually get my camera out for some hands on learning.

The desert wind was cold and our models were brave but we really had a blast! I met some really wonderful people and came away with a few images to add to my portfolio. A special thanks to Detroit photographer Andria Watha who captured the one of me. Oh and that last image was not our model’s dress but something I spotted while waiting for the bus before the workshop. Someone took the ‘trash the dress’ trend a little too literally, I guess!