The next morning came way to quickly! But I was up early enough to get my coffee and a good seat in Michael and Anna Costa's platform class. I absolutely LOVED this pair!!! The information I soaked up in this class is going to be so very useful to me this season.
Today was the first full day of the trade show. I visited so many booths....some of the vendors I researched included: KISS, Forbeyon, Jill•e Bags, Canon, DNL Photo Packaging, Studio Cloud, Triple Scoop Music and much more! After a few hours at the trade show my roommates and I decided to venture to the MAC Cosmetics store to have our makeup done for that evening's party hosted by Photo LoveCat and PIF photography. We had a lot of fun and even squeezed in a mini photo session at the store. The MAC Cosmetics professional store in Las Vegas is the largest in the world!!!
The last class of the evening featured Jesh de Rox. We arrived early so we could get good seats... we got there over an hour and a half early and scored 4 first row seats. Jesh's talk was amazing. He talked more about being a good person - being there in the moment. He had us do a visualization - he had us close our eyes and think of someone who we love and who loves us. He asked if we felt any kind of tingling sensation when we were imagining that person. That feeling of love and exhileration is free, real and love... that is how we should live our lives and approach our photography. It was really inspirational - especially when Amy Seely performed - she is AMAZING! I felt like I left that class with a clear mind and a better understanding of why I do what I do.
Check out these videos!
As if the night couldn't get any better.... we were invited to the Pay It Forward / Anne Ruthmann / PhotoLoveCat party at the Palms I-Bar. We arrived a little early so we could help Anne with some last minute preparations. While were were enjoying the open bar I met Michael and Heather Krakora from Madison. They were a neat couple and look forward to meeting up with them again.
One awesome thing about this party was that they were giving away a ton of prizes!!! I won a 16x20 gallery wrap, but decided to PIF (pay it forward) to someone who could really use it. Other awesome prizes that were given away by many great sponsors - to read more about it visit the PIF blog.
Day 7
We slept in a little... after coming home at 3:00am I needed to sleep at least until 8:00am - but Kelly and I woke up early enough to sneak into the end of one class. After that is was more trade show - Tradeshow sooo many booths!!! So little time! Got to meet Jessica Claire, Mathew Jordon Smith and while walking around the booths! I signed with the album company Forbeyon and am very happy to bring this high end album to my clients. Later that evening we attended a platform class by Jared Bauman. He is only 27 years old and is speaking on running a successful wedding photography business. I was lucky to be a part of a "dance off" and won a instructional dvd from Me Re Koh ;-)
After the last class of the night we headed to In and Out Burger. This restaurants concept is to have everything fresh - never frozen. They make the french fries from real potatoes right in front of your eyes. They pride themselves on high quality meats and great service with a retro feel.
This was our last night in Vegas so we decided to have some fun jumping on the bed. We were inspired by a photo we saw in class that day and HAD to do it ourselves - see more fantastic bed jumping photos at bedjump.com
Day 8
Kelly and I woke up early and headed to the airport. We were happy to be "leaving Las Vegas". It was a long trip home - I was happy to see my family after 8 days away!
