Well, we’re back from (mostly) sunny Las Vegas. It rained only one day of the entire trip, and, as usually is the case, we flew back to rain on the sunniest and warmest day of all.
To start off the trip Amy came down with a cold a couple days before we were to fly out. After a very miserable flight on her end, we landed at McCarran International Airport on Valentine’s Day night, grabbed our baggage, and took a shuttle to the MGM Grand. We checked into our first room in the MGM’s West Wing, which has tons of mirrors everywhere and transparent walls to both the toilet and shower — Amy wasn’t a fan. We switched to a more normal room not too long after. Traveler’s note: a 5044-room hotel has really, really long hallways!
For those of you not familiar with WPPI, I’ll try to explain it a bit. WPPI is an organization for wedding and portrait photographers that, among other things, holds a couple print and album competitions each year and the annual convention in Las Vegas, NV. The convention consists of some paid workshops at the front end, a couple broader ones (e.g., the Business Institute) after, a bunch of walk-in seminars, three days of tradeshow, and a number of large-audience attractions. We joined a couple years ago and have been to both conventions since.
The convention is sort of a build-your-own adventure. You mix and match all the various classes, seminars, and events you want to attend on your trip. There’s a lot of garbage you end up going to because they sound good, but the gems are there to find and the take-away from those makes it all completely worth it. This year our most notable gems were the Rings to Rattles session with Alycia Alvarez and Top Ten with Jessica Claire. Both were very useful for us, and we’re definitely going to use some of the ideas we gained there. Look forward to them in the months to come!
This year one of the large-audience attractions put on by the convention was a mock-wedding where two members renewed their vows. Of course, the bridal party consisted of only hired models, but the renewing of vows was real. Along with the five “official” photographers, the audience was full of several thousand more and wasn’t exactly your typical wedding.
We get a lot of our backdrops from Silverlake Photo in southern Idaho and Brook and crew from there invited us to the cocktail party they co-host each year at WPPI. This happened to be on the same night as the wedding, so we stopped by after ducking out and spent the rest of our evening there. We didn’t win any of the backgrounds they brought as prizes, unfortunately, but we did order a new 10×20′ red swirl custom backdrop at the tradeshow a few days later. We’re looking forward to breaking that one in this senior season!
Monday was the first day of the tradeshow, and we were there for when the doors opened. For us this is one of the best things of the entire convention because it gives us a chance to take a look at all the album and print options out there. Between those and the sample designs, we’re able to keep our product lines top-notch and find some new ideas. But the show specials are nice too — show specials are very, very handy for when you want to pick up some new stuff (most vendors are around 10-20% cheaper at the tradeshow).
Monday night was also another first for WPPI. Being at the MGM offers one very useful venue: the MGM Grand Garden Arena. We were treated to, courtesy of the sponsorship of Nikon and others, to a private, free concert with Blues Traveler. The seating was totally open and it was really a great time. We enjoyed it very much!
Each year at the tradeshow the WPPI booth has a gift for the members. This year’s rocked. We picked up a card that gave us tons of perks at the MGM’s restaurants and made eating out actually affordable. Last year we spent $1,000 on food (yeah, just food) so any way to minimize that was very welcome! With the WPPI card we had a couple of the best meals we’ve ever had anywhere. The ravioli (entre√©) and donuts (dessert) at Fiamma Trattoria (italian) and the almond-crusted lemon chicken at Pearl (chinese) were amazing. If you’re staying at the MGM anytime in the future, definitely give those places a try. Another traveler’s note: the bottled water is $3 per bottle at most places except McDonald’s. It’s only $1 per bottle there.
The rest of the trip was spent in the various seminars and the tradeshow. Once Amy finally started feeling a bit better we hit up more of the strip and got some photos. We flew back on Thursday, signed the lease to our new studio space on Friday, and have been working on that since. Keep an eye out for future posts as we update on our progress building that out.
