I was in Las Vegas March 3rd – March 10th to attend WPPI. This is a Ginormous trade show event for Wedding and Portrait photographers. It combines all the latest and greatest camera gear, product vendors, and photographers from around the world all in one place. I’m not sure how many photographers attended but it was enough to disrupt cell phone service for all those IPhone users, which was about the only time I was happy to have my Black Berry. I think it was something like 95% IPhone users to 5% everyone else. Everyone seemed to have their portfolios on their IPhones, but at least I had service.
One real bride and groom said they were approached by about 20 something different photographers asking if they would like to get their pictures taken (we were part of the 20 something). Can you imagine if you were a bride and groom and had no idea what the heck was going on ?
The first two days I attended a workshop by Jerry Ghionis who is an incredible photographer from Australia. He shared everything from lighting&posing, to his business& marketing strategies, and even tossed in some fashion tips for the guys. While we hoped for more of a hands on shooting workshop we walked away with lots of great information and met some other cool photographers from around the world.
And thanks to Jerry and William we spent the next few days attending the print and album competitions where you can sit in and watch the judges score and discuss albums and prints. This was by far the single most educational part of WPPI for myself where I saw some of the most amazing photography.
I spent a few days at the trade show picking up some new gear and looking at several album manufactures, and print labs for metal prints.
Sadly, for the first 4-5 days this was about the only photo I took. I spent most days taking notes and meeting other photographers. I’m not sure who’s room this was but can you imagine bringing that lighting setup to a wedding
There were lots of platform classes, which for the most part seemed like live infomercials on a product someone just happened to be selling outside the door.
There were lot’s of Vodka Tonics and friends along the way, hopefully we’ll all stay in touch and go shoot or meet up next year.
The last night there a few of us decided to go out and shoot something, which led to some serious “look at the pretty lights” ADD. I think we just wandered to all the brightest light sources like a Moth. The bright lights led us to City Center and the Aria, this place is an Architecture’s dream. Everything is over the top. 
Here it is back in Sept 2008 from a similar angle.
There is a mall inside that is just insane, make sure to bring lots of money and no camera equipment.
They have a pool with crazy ice towers coming out of it.
We only managed to shoot a few shots inside the mall before we were kicked out because apparently you are not allowed to photograph the inside architecture. Stopping to demonstrate how one would pose for a Boudoir session on this staircase isn’t exactly keeping things on the DL so security quickly escorted us out. 
Outside on the walkway of the hotel and casino is this awesome water wall, which reminded me of all the falls that will be going off in Yosemite this spring.
From here we stumbled into the Rodney Lough Jr gallery and saw some pretty amazing landscape photography. Sorry no photos, but go check out his website if you want to see some great images, or go visit his gallery if you want to really be blown away.
From there we headed on to the Bellagio where we discovered they don’t care if you photograph inside as long as it’s not in the casino area. Next time..
and finally we headed back to the MGM, where I got this shot. I took it while crossing the glass bridge across the strip, it’s reflections from everything around in the glass, plus the strip below. It pretty much sums up Vegas all in one shot.
by Dave
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