WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International) is the leading wedding photography association, and this WPPI was my 6th year attending.  I’m not a veteran, nor am I a newbie anymore, but there are still goals that I want to achieve while I’m here.

Unfortunately during this trip I got food poisoning and missed a whole day’s worth of the convention, classes, and activities!  This hasn’t happened before, but after losing that time by sitting around the porcelain king and sleeping in bed, I learned that my time at WPPI was valuable and I wanted to maximize my time there.  For those of you who are looking to attend next year, I’ve come up with 5 ways to maximize your week long trip!

1. Sit and watch the print judging. Print judging happens all day Saturday, and all day on Sunday. Prints from all over the world are shipped and brought to Las Vegas to be judged in front of a panel of 5 judges. While an average score is given to the print to denote where it’s an Accolade of Excellence (80 points or more), the best learning is hearing the judges critiques about why they chose to score that image that way. While the print judging is very subjective to what they’re looking at, it’s great to listen in on what they’re looking for and what they expect out of an extraordinary print.

2. If you have that class that you’ve been wanting to take, but your friends ask you to grab buffet – don’t sit at the buffet with your friends if you don’t want to.  There’s a lot of things that happen at MGM and on the strip, if you’ve been waiting all year to take a class and you are debating to miss it, don’t let anyone or anything make you have “FOMO” and derail you off of what your main objective is!  Figure out where you are in your photography journey and write down 3 things you want to get out of your trip.   Mine were to learn more about newborn photography, fine art photography, and to look at a few new products to enhance my business.

3. Take platform classes that you might be interested in. Invest in Master Classes from something you feel you would benefit from. Most of these photographers teach all over the world and it’s an honor for them to come to Las Vegas to one centralized location and share their knowledge. I have found that investing in Master Classes might be a bit much, but the content the speakers provide is a lot deeper than some platform classes.

4. Need new albums? USB boxes? Or want to look into some new software that might make your life easier? I know we’re all photographers, but nobody told us that we needed to do-all-these-extra-things. Go check out what’s on the Trade Show, I’d say do your research before, or take a day to walk through, and then walk through on day 2 or day 3. There’s also people speaking throughout the floor, so check them out too!  There’s so much to see.  (above:  Pye from SLR Lounge)

5. Network!  One of the things that keeps me alive is meeting new friends as well as seeing the old ones I’ve met throughout the years!  This is honestly what I look forward to when I attend the show.   In addition to making new photography friends, I’m also networking with vendors as well.  It’s helpful to talk to your vendors face to face and create a relationship since you will be using their products.  This year, I’m making a few adjustments to my business and I’m adopting Honeybook (a client and vendor management software to help share information between my clients and other vendors) and also Fundy, a software to help assist with my album making process.  Aside from vendors, I was lucky to spend time with my amazing photography mentor Scott Robert Lim, and hang out with some new and old photography friends from near and far!  We had fun!

Funny giving us a 1-on-1 session on Thursday morning after WPPI ends.

All in all, looking back at WPPI – this year was better than the last 5 years.  I feel there could have been improvements, like I could have  submitting prints into the competition, sat in the print judging rooms longer, took the classes I missed – but now, there’s next year to look forward to!  Will I see you there?

Thanks WPPI for making this a great one!  I hope to see you again next year!