This post is for all the new and old faces I saw at
WPPI and for those of you who could not make it this year. I am more than happy to be back home enjoying my family, however, I can't help but wish I was back in Vegas with everyone. We had such a great time!
I want to thank my sponsors
Apple,
Epson,
La-vie Album,
Lexar,
Nikon,
Pictage, and
Tamrac for their wonderful support at the show and throughout the year. I was extremely honored to see so many of my images hanging on the tradeshow floor.
I also want to give a special thanks to my assistants/helpers
Brittany,
Jasmine,
Joel,
Kristin,
Liana,
Rosanna, and
UncleRay for working so hard keeping me on schedule and documenting the trip.
All images below were taken by
Ray Santana (aka. uncleray) and
Joel Austell. Thanks guys!
Saturday night we took
uncleray (front left in black shirt) out to dinner for his birthday. He's looking pretty good for 34!
Sunday lunch at the French burger place in Paris with some of my favorite people
Some fun in the elevators with the luggage carts
The Poker Room... a sure place to find me in the wee hours of the night
I found some time to hang out at the
La-vie Album booth and show off some of my latest samples from my favorite 2006 weddings.
Models, Cameras,
Apple Cinema Displays, and a few hundred photographers watching with ice-cream sundaes... who could ask for a more interesting night :)
I was running out of things to do with a model and a backdrop so I tried some creative angles.
Martin Gisborne from
Apple showed up to display my images in
Aperture. I'm always impressed to see how fast he flies through image corrections and versions. In a matter of seconds he had 4 different versions up of each image to show the audience.
A resulting image of our model Rosanna from the
Champagne Shootout
A nice tongue shot of Lauren Austell taken by her hubby
Joel during my
Nikon Lecture
I had the honor of hosting a discussion at the
Pictage booth along side the famous photographer and industry icon
Denis Reggie, a personal hero and mentor of mine. Many questions came up about current and future trends in wedding photography and workflow which he answered with confidence and ease. It's always nice to see a true professional in action.
WPPI just wouldn't be the same without a visit to my second home, the
Nikon stage.
After a three city tour with
Apple last month, I felt right at home hanging out with my buddy Martin Gisborne (shown on the left behind the cinema display) on the
Apple stage.
Martin getting friendly with my assistant Brittany who many of you know from my workshops.
One of three presentations for
Lexar - a special thanks to Andy Peterson for rounding up the gang for this early morning (10:30am) talk. Most of us were out late playing hold'em the night before so I consider it a huge favor that everyone showed up to support me!
Aerial photos above by
Juan Gonzales - Thanks Juan!
After about six back to back booth presentations switching headsets for each one, my hair was starting to look pretty toe-up.
The rain came down today in buckets. We got wet chasing cabs and even resorted to taking a limo once for a steep price but made it through 7 more shows. For lunch, we had a large pizza delivered straight to the runway between shoots to stay out of the crazy sideways rain. We ended the evening with a nice dinner at the hip Tau restaurant for Tracy's birthday. Good times :)
