Wedding & Portrait Photographers International is a week long convention in Las Vegas every year. Though I had heard of it several times while attending the Brooks Institute I somehow never attended. This was my first year going and let me just say I will never not go again! It made me speechless, literally I lost my voice. It was so inspirational and educational I choked up several times hearing great photographers pour their hearts out. There is also a trade show filled with vendors that have anything and everything to do with photography: equipment, printing labs, album companies, software, backdrops, etc. It was overwhelming! I was not satisfied with my album company before going to WPPI, but after the trade show I now know exactly what I want.

However one of my favorite parts of WPPI was being surrounded by thousands of creative photographers! I wanted to become friends with them all and trust me I tried 🙂 I still have so many business cards to go through. I want to look at all their work individually and friend them each on facebook. I even got to meet the most talented Jose Villa and Jill LaFleur. If you don’t know who they are and you love love, then I highly suggest checking out their work. When I went to express my appreciation for Jill’s class to her afterwords I embarrassingly started tearing up. I’m not sure if it was the lack of sleep or truly the passion and respect I have for her but I would say it was a little of both. There was also a small class thrown together for just Brook students/graduates where a panel of teachers and successful graduates (Jose Villa being one of course) all got to express things that would be most beneficial to us. I loved seeing these award winning graduates from Brooks speak because it inspired me to think I could be where they are if I keep doing what I love and putting my everything into it. Anyway I could keep writing about this forever so I will end with a few photos from my Las Vegas trip.

This was another panel of amazing photographers and bloggers. I believe from left to right it is Amanda, Mike Colon, Kimberly (Style Unveiled), Summer Watkins (Grey Likes Weddings), Mike Larson, Jose Villa, Jesh De Rox.

I also kept coming across rabbits on my trip and I felt like Alice chasing after something big to come in my future…

This was a wedding dress in the airport for a purse store. Believe it or not I went in and asked who the designer was and her response was someone that worked there! The dress was actually made of rice paper, pearls, and feathers… Isn’t that amazing.