Alright, here we go, another year of WPPI! WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) is the biggest photographers convention in the world, with other 10,000 photographers traveling to it last year. All in all, its an absolute blast for a photographer to go to – huge tradeshow, tons of great speakers giving presentations, parties and catching up with old friends. Oh, and did I mention its in Las Vegas?
I have the honor this year of speaking on a Platform Topic at this year’s convention. I’ll also be speaking at a couple of tradeshow booths. Below is my schedule for the week:

Sunday:
Pictage is hosting a half day photo conference, with some great speakers and a wonderful “Ladies of Photography” segment. This starts at 1pm and goes through the afternoon.
That night, Bronson and I will be at a liveBooks dinner and then to Sara France‘s soiree! Last year was a wonderful party, and this year they have a suite at the MGM.

Monday:

8:30am, Me Ra Koh is presenting on “Associate Your Way to The Top”, which is sure to be amazing. Me Ra and her husband Brian are wonderful speakers – you can’t help but instantly fall in love with them. They are also great friends of ours – we’ve been blessed to know them through their relationship with ShootDotEdit. Me Ra and I are teaming up to offer some awesome discounts on our DVD’s and info packets, so you won’t want to miss her talk!

Michael and Anna Costa will also be presenting at the same time, which is a huge bummer for me as I want to see both! These two are a wonderful photography team out of Santa Barbara, and have a really neat style to their images. Anna interviewed me a few months ago for her new photography forum Photo for the People.

And Marc Weisberg is ALSO speaking at 8:30am in a Master Class segment. Marc just joined the ShootDotEdit crew, and I’m really looking forward to learning more from him over the coming years! Going to be a busy morning!

3:00pm – liveBooks booth:
Our brand new website, which should be coming out in the next few days, was put together by liveBooks. We’ve been so blessed to start working with them, and our new site is looking absolutely fantastic. Bronson has been working tirelessly with the design team to get it done by WPPI, and I will be speaking at the liveBooks booth on “Adding Associates”.

6:00pm – Pictage WPPI Party – always a blast, it will be great to see all our Pictage friends. And afterwards, who knows – it is Saint Patty’s day!

Tuesday:
9am: Can’t say much (mainly because I don’t know much), but we’ll be doing some ShootDotEdit filming for the morning for a new video we’re working on. Thanks to Ron Dawson for helping us out with this!

11:30am: Time for the Thirst Relief mentor session. If you missed my posts on this earlier, WPPI teams up with Thirst Relief every year to do a photographer auction. Photographers can bid to have some mentoring time with other photographers at WPPI, and all money goes to a GREAT cause. Thirst Relief is doing some awesome things and I’m proud to be able to contribute some time for them. I’m looking forward to meeting Rowena Curtis and answering any and all of her questions!

7:30pm: My platform presentation! Two hours of speaking in front of who knows how many hundreds of people! Its alright, I’m actually not that nervous (yet . . . ). My topic is “Business 101, Structuring Your Business for Maximum Profit”. Basically, in a nutshell, I’m going to present on how to set up your business so it will be viable, but still afford you the luxuries a business needs to provide for you! I’m so blessed to have such an amazing team around me here at Bauman Photographers – it allows me to focus on my strengths and still have time away from work. I’d encourage any photographer to come check it out – I can promise you’ll walk away learning something! Also, Me Ra will be on hand and we’ll be blowing out our DVD’s and info packets – you’re not going to find a better price on those than at the presentation

Wednesday:

10am: back at the liveBooks booth for the “Adding Associates” presentation!

11am: at the Pictage booth hosting Q&A with Joe Buissink! I had the pleasure of meeting Joe, an icon in the wedding photography industry, a few weeks ago. To share time on stage with him is an honor, and I’m really looking forward to this hour.

Phew – then its home for me on Wednesday night! What a week!

Nobody ever wants to sit in the front row . . .

Bronson Pate even got in on the speaking action this year

John Yao demonstrating his supreme editing skills to another photographer

ShootDotEdit’s dotMan made his first ever public appearance at Partner Conference. He was there to hand out shirts and save the world from the evil’s of post production. If you’re a photographer out there and you’re still doing all your own post production, make sure you check out ShootDotEdit.

A lucky photographer sporting his new shirt

We went to a party that Wednesday night put on by ShowIt and Kiss Wedding Books. They had a photo booth there, so we the three of us jumped in there with local SD photographer Jeff Youngren and his wife Erin

Moral of these two images – never let three photographers alone with a camera and nothing but their creativity. We started messing around in our hotel room with Jefferson Todd, an amazing photographer from Arizona, and this is what we came up with.

Thanks to Loren Scott, a great photographer out of Temecula, for taking these great images.
All in all, another wonderful conference. We had an amazing time hanging out with photographers from around the country, and learned a lot. See you all next year!