PhotoPlus Expo is held in New York every year and I’ve always wanted to go, but until a few months ago, my weekdays were reserved for my teaching job and my weekends were packed with shoots. That didn’t leave much time for attending photography events so I’m incredibly happy that has all changed now! I love that making the leap into full-time photography has enabled me to have a more flexible schedule that allows me to do so much more for our business during the week, including attending events like the PhotoPlus Expo. As a former teacher, I truly believe we can never stop learning, no matter how much experience we have. So when the schedule for PPE was released, I knew I wanted the expo to be on my list of things to do in the fall. I chose one day of the expo and attended three seminars on that day, but next year I’ll plan to attend seminars on all three days. There were so many amazing speakers this year, it was hard to choose just a few! If you’re a photographer, I’d love to inspire you to invest in your continuing education today so here are my top 3 takeaways from PPE 2016, in quote form:
“What can I do with what I’ve got?”
This quote was spoken by Bambi Cantrell, an amazingly talented wedding and portrait photographer from California. I attended her seminar on posing and I just loved when she said this. As wedding photographers, we never know what we’re going to be faced with on a wedding day, especially during the getting ready portion of the day. We may end up in a dark home with little natural light, a messy hotel room with orange light, or even a room with plenty of light but lots of green color casts from the trees right outside the window. We’ve seen it all at this point, but our job as photographers is to do the best with what is given to us in order to create memorable images for our clients. “What can I do with what I’ve got?” is a great question to ask ourselves so that when we’re faced with less than perfect circumstances, we can pause, think things through instead of entering panic mode, and come up with a plan to get the beautiful images our clients deserve.
“Visitors want to know how you can help them.”
The second seminar I attended was taught by Rob Greer, another photographer hailing from the state of California. He covered online marketing, SEO trends, and blogging. One of the big takeaways from his seminar was that as photographers, we should always be working towards having a website that is relevant, valuable, unique, popular, and trustworthy. Rob gave lots of tips for how to do this, but I believe the most important one is to make sure you’re creating content that is going to help your visitors. Providing useful and engaging content for your target audience will get those readers coming back for more.
“At the end of the day, ten years from now, what is the most important thing that remains from the day?”
The last seminar I attended was Andrew Funderburg’s seminar on the power of print and storytelling and boy was it powerful! As photographers, I believe it’s part of our job to make sure that the images we create for our clients get printed and made into heirlooms to be passed on to future generations. It’s so sad to me that so many of our brides and grooms opted out of a wedding album in the earlier days of our business because ordering an album becomes less and less of a priority as time goes on. Let’s face it, once our couples are married, priorities shift and the chances of getting around to purchasing an album when there are pressing bills to pay and new babies to feed become lower and lower. Andrew’s quote above is something all photographers should share when they’re helping their couples put together a wedding collection, but ultimately it’s their decision on how they’re going to remember their day after the food has been eaten and the flowers have wilted. Andrew shared lots of useful tips on how to help our clients walk away from their wedding photography experience with an heirloom that they’ll forever treasure but my favorite tip of his was to take the time to discover your clients’ story. If you can discover your clients’ story and shoot images that help them tell that story fully, then they’ll be invested in creating heirlooms. I loved hearing this because telling our clients’ complete story is always our number one priority.
The Expo
I took advantage of the time between seminars to tour the conference trade show and made some purchases at my favorite booths.
First up: Hold Fast! Jay and I have been wanting to get the Money Maker for a while but I wanted to try it on to make sure it fit me. I started using it last weekend and love it. I’ll only want to use it during specific portions for the day but having my hands free to help our bride with her train or fix our groom’s boutonniere is going to be so helpful!
I stopped by WHCC, the lab we use for all of our printing needs and checked out all of their new products. I’m excited to start offering some of these in the new year. Thank you to our friend Jamie Bodo for snapping the photo of me below before we headed off to MagMod to get some new toys. I’m so excited to add these new modifiers, diffusers, and gels to our arsenal!
And there you have it, friends! I hope this post has inspired you to seek out educational opportunities. I’ll leave you with a great quote: “Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.” – Daniel Boorstin
