WPPI - Part 1 of 4 - Who, What, When, Where, Why?

So if you have been trying to reach but have been unsuccessful this past week, it's because I was in Vegas. No, I didn't go to try and win big or get in a bunch of trouble (and hope it stays in Vegas). I went to WPPI 2009! Wedding and Portrait Photographers International has a yearly convention and trade show with the best in the industry meeting up to discuss every aspect of the business so we can all improve our own work for our clients. This was my first year going, and I'm definitely going again next year (it's in March for anyone who wants to sneak into my luggage). It's so beneficial to see how other photographers work so you can learn little tricks and techniques that you can adapt from to better your own work! Not one photographer in the world is perfect, and even with an industry as old as photography itself, there's ALWAYS more to learn (I try to learn something new every day). Especially now with digital photography, you not only have the technical aspect of lighting and composition, but also have an unbelievable amount of things to learn once you have downloaded those digital negatives into your computer. There's dozens upon dozens of software packages and plugins to choose from when editing your photos, and there a lot of overlap in what they can do. Some programs may do only one thing you might actually use on a regular basis, but to get that one plugin, you might have to buy a whole package of plugins costing over $500+ (this is a plugin for a $500-$1000 application by the way!) I wish clients could both see the level of work that goes into creating a single completed image...but on the other hand, making it all seem so easy is part of the job I guess. Anyway, this is Part 1 of 4 of my extended post on WPPI 09 (I'm breaking them up into smaller chunks so people might actually read them and get what they want instead of having to weed through it all...I tend to ramble! See?)

Part 1: Into to WPPI (what it is, who was there, why it exists, and what I got out of it)
Part 2: The Highlights and Shadows (awesome cool products and services as well as some things that in my opinion should just go away...)
Part 3: Night photoshoot with Bob Davis and friends (gotta take pictures!)
Part 4: First time in Vegas when I brought my SLR...gotta do the tourist thing!

Anyway onto finish Part 1! So what did I specifically get out of WPPI? In a word ALBUMS! I primarily went to WPPI to look into working with some new vendors for both albums and other cool ways of getting my photos into my clients hands. I had prior to last week offered albums but wasn't thrilled with the vendors I was using. I hadn't gotten a chance to actually get my hands on a huge variety of company's products, so I went with the companies I had experience with and were what I deemed reliable enough for my clients. The problem with this is, although the company's I had been offering products from were good books and durable, they didn't have that je ne sais quoi that I was looking for, that sort of pop! that I wanted to offer my clients. This week changed all that and I'll be ordering all new sample albums in the next few weeks as I get some new designs together! I'm extremely excited to tell you about the vendor's I'll landed on!

Asuka Book

I'd looked at Asuka online before but hadn't actually seen one in person until this past week. I won't use them as a primary wedding album vendor (they are more of a "coffee table book" company), but what I AM going to use them for is engagement session books for couples to use as their "sign-in" book for their weddings. They even have a template just for that! I spent about 45 minutes checking out their products and talking to both their employees as well as Laura about her experience with them before I made up my mind to pick them for this. Their print quality is excellent as is their build quality and durability. This is all great, but what made me absolutely jump on board is this special type of paper that they had in a large number of their samples that was a silky matte finish. It felt soft like silk, but still felt amazingly strong! I can't wait to get my images in one of these to show off to my clients. What's new and cool about Asuka this year is that they're launching a brand new web application that will enable much easier album design uploads. This launches March 3rd, and as soon as I get a chance to play around with it and order my sample, I'll post a little review of their new process.

One of the various album vendor booths. Albums ALL over the place with places to sit and go through the various options you can offer your clients

Thumbdrive/Harddrive Engraving inside DVD-sized Leather Cases

There was a vendor Moshe found the last day that I ran over to go talk to when he told me about them, that sent a lightning bolt to my head and we both got excited about it. Right now I give clients a DVD with a printed cover (no not the nasty sticky labels, I print the label directly on specially made disks) in a DVD case...nothing too exciting, everyone has a DVD drive in their computer, so DVD it is. What really hit me though when looking at this vendor though, is "Everyone has a USB port too!" This company does custom engraving of USB flash drives and they will be partnering with a vendor soon to get a custom made, leather bound DVD sized case for these flash drives and hard drives! Flash drives can't get scratched up (or at least it doesn't matter if they do), and are significantly more portable if a client wants to carry their photos around with them. With many HDTV's included USB ports and also with several laptops now shipping without DVD drives, like the Macbook Air and the Mini 1000, it doesn't limit my clients on where they can display their images! They should have these new cases available sometime toward the middle of the year, and I can't wait (if you steal this idea...just credit give Moshe and I credit for it okay? Just kidding!)! Until then I'm going to have to stick the old school DVD thing...

This is another "spy shot" taken before the show floor opened on Monday...

Kiss Wedding Books

I was thoroughly impressed with Kiss Wedding Books, from cover to cover they are a fantastic product. Beautiful rich leather on the outside, thick colorful pages on the inside. What also was rather unique about them was how flat their pages lay even when brand new. Many album vendors I checked out last week had great print quality, great materials selection, but their pages just wouldn't stay flat, which drove me nuts (and I know would bug my clients after a while too). Some companies products showed signs of wear and tear even after just three days especially regarding color fading or flaking off in the gutter, but not Kiss (and they only brought 8-9 samples while most vendors had 20-30+ to share the abuse)! Three days may seem like a short amount of time but remember there were 10000 photographers handling these in that short period of time, that's a lot of wear and tear! What I like about Kiss though is their clean looks and impeccable quality. Keep It Simple Stupid is their mantra. They offer three sizes in 7 colors. Their pages are thick and strong, and of all the samples I looked at they didn't show any signs of warping in the center. This was a problem I saw that plagued a number of other vendors. Also, for most digital printed books (books without traditional mattes) I really don't like a black or white strip at the center of pages, because it makes panoramic images look bad with a big 'ol black line in the middle of your image. If you like designs that only have an image span one page, its fine, but if you want to spread a great family portrait across a two page spread, its great to have a seamless print which is exactly what Kiss delivers. Just as with Asuka, I'm going to be ordering some new samples from Kiss as soon as I get a design ready...now to pick a color for my sample...red, blue, green, white, black?

This is NOT a Kiss Book. I decided against the vendor whose book I'm holding because of the warping in the center...

PictoBook

PictoBook is my new premium album vendor. I wanted to go with a vendor that had what I liked about Kiss, clean seamless pages, excellent print quality, pages that lay flat and a reputation of fantastic customer service. What I wanted to be different for my premium album offerings though was choice. Kiss offers amazing quality at an excellent price point, but didn't offer a huge variety in materials and sizes. Hadar recommended I check out the PictoBook book, and this recommendation was backed up later by some other photographers I know who have used them in the past and loved them. They offer a huge range of sizes, form factors, as well as a wide range of materials, from carbon fiber to wood! They even have a "Precious Metals" series that can cost well over $10000+! (diamond encrusted monograms on a plate of platinum wrapped in real ostrich leather is what you get for that price range). PictoBook also owns another company called Bijou (pronounced "By You") which produces smaller albums with the same level of quality and a large number of options as their parent company. What sets PictoBook apart from other album makers out there is the presentation. I was extremely impressed with the build quality of their books but what amazed me was that every book ships with a beautiful polished wooden presentation box, which really blew me away. These boxes can have monograms printed onto the top of the box truly making your album an extremely personal and special heirloom for your new family. I spent well over an hour at this booth the first day, went back the second day to reexamine them for about 45 minutes just to make sure I wasn't exaggerating what I liked about them in my head. The coolest part is that they're local (they're based in southern Maryland) so if there's a last minute order, I can save time and go pick it up without having to wait for FedEx or UPS! I'll be working on a design for my samples this upcoming week so I can get these ASAP, I'll just need to decide what materials to use... leather, carbon fiber, wood, metal, or glass?

One of the uber PictoBooks. Gold plating, and diamonds for the monogram on the cover!

Part 2 will discuss some really cool products that I got a chance to check out while I was there and also some stuff that should have just stayed at home...

WPPI - Part 2 of 4 - Highlights and Shadows

Part 2 of 4 WPPI Post covers the cool new things coming out or that were new to me... and the kinds of things that I believe need to be left in the past or buried in the Nevada desert... (feel free to disagree with me in the comments, these are just my opinions!)

Highlights:

New Pocketwizards!

New FlexTT5 Transceiver

New MiniTT1 Transmitter

Pocketwizard launched a new line of their radio triggers this past week, and I can't wait to get my hands on them! I currently use Pocketwizard PWII's which are great, but have some limitations, especially in your level of control when it comes to adjusting the power of your flashes remotely. With the PWII system, I have to physically walk over to a flash and manually dial down the power I want out of it, then walk back to where I was and check to make sure it's giving me the level of lighting I want now. The other downside of the old system is that due to the very minute delay in the camera sending a signal out to the transmitter and to the receiver, it is near impossible to use a shutterspeed faster than 1/320 of a second and still have the entire image show the flash. With the new Pocketwizards that have now been announced, I can not only adjust the power of my flashes remotely, they now have a sort of ESP, allowing the flashes to fire when I want them to! You can plug the new models into your computer and actually adjust in nanoseconds, when you want your flashes to fire in relation to when your shutter release is pressed! This allows for faster shutter speeds, meaning you can actually dial down the ambient exposure much more easily. Don't want the Sun to be overpowering your flash burst? No problem! These new models will allow you to set your shutter now all the way up to 1/500 with full flash coverage and up to 1/8000 with the right type of flash and settings! Right now they just have Canon compatible models available, but as soon as the Nikon versions are released, you can bet I'll have a set on order!

New Lasolite Triflash bracket

New bracket (image taken from strobist.blogspot.com)

Another flash related accessory that caught my eye was this new tri-bracket from Lasolite. They aren't shipping quite yet, and they're a little pricy (the rep told me about $75) but imagine being able to throw three hotshoe flashes behind an umbrella or a softbox. You can get a ton of power in a very portable package with one of these, I'm probably going to wait for another company to make something similar though, I don't think I need one of these that badly to go blowing $75 on a piece of plastic. Especially when I can use gaffers tape to hold three flashes together if I need to for less than $1's worth of tape. What's funny about this, is I thought I had seen one of these before so I didn't think much of it at first, but then I realized that the last time I'd seen someone (Joe McNally) use so many flashes in an umbrella, it was MacGyver style!

Lasolite Trigrip (not sure if this is new, or just never saw it before)

I'd never seen these before, not exactly sure if they're new, but they really caught my eye when passing by Bogen's booth. They are a great portable diffusion/reflector system that collapses up into a little round sleeve that could fit in any bag. What makes these really unique though is the triangular shape and rubber grip that allows you to easily hold onto them or even prop them up against something. I have a circular reflector and skrim, but never use it because I don't want to hire an assistant just to hold diffusers. Maybe when I start shooting $100,000 weddings, I might hire a "diffusing assistant". Just kidding!

Nik Software Plugins for Aperture and Photoshop

Nik Software is VERY cool... control points are UH-MAZE-ZING!

I've played around with Capture NX (Nikon's RAW processing application) and wasn't a fan of it, but loved the concept of control points. What this is, is a really intelligent system that allows me to select a sky or a dress or a face and it can intelligently figure out where the object starts and ends. From there it allows me to adjust that specific area of an image without having to jump over into Photoshop or another standalone application. I never realized until I happened across the Nik Software booth that they partnered with Nikon in creating the U-point technology, and discovered they are now offering a great package for Apeture that includes the whole suite of plugins! I had been using Aperture since it's launch up until late last year, when I decided to tryout Lightroom and never bothered going through Aperture for my editing anymore. Now that Nik has a great offer as a plugin for Aperture, I just might start using it again...we shall see.

Shadows:

This is probably where I'll get a couple people to disagree or flat out hate what I'm about to say. Foam posing props (fake brick walls, foam columns to lean against, ect.) and painted muslin backdrops with unicorns or Greek columns belong in Sears or Walmart and/or 1992! I'm not saying you shouldn't use muslin/canvas/whatever backgrounds or that studio shooting is outdated, or that props are evil, but what I am saying is that I believe that professional photographers who do portraits using these types of tools should try to step it up and/or modernize their studios (try to differentiate from the bargin basement photography that Sears does). Backgrounds are critical for a lot of headshot and some portrait work, especially for corporate headshots, and for young children's portraits props are very useful in getting kids to sit still or stay in one place. The issue I have with the vendors (by my count there were AT LEAST 12 different backdrop vendors and 3 or more ugly foam prop vendors) at WPPI selling those types of studio accessories, was that they were trying to push stuff that looked like it came off a 2nd-rate TV show back in the late 80's or early 90's when everyone's hair was feathered and Tears for Fears was still selling out concert arenas. There are new technologies that now allow photographers to use whatever they want as a background (check out Virtual Backgrounds, very cool concept), by either optically or digitally inserting the background the way you want without spending hundreds upon hundreds of bucks on different colors of muslin to get different looks. There are real brick walls everywhere that don't look (and feel) like cardboard. I beg those out there that use those types of tools to look for alternatives that help you grow your business and separate yourself from the outdated competition.

I'm not necessarily recommending their product (still kind of complicated) but VERY cool idea...

Another thing that will probably get some people to disagree with me on is outsourcing of editing. There were quite a few companies (I saw at least 5) that are offering to take your digital files and then edit your images for you. Sounds like a real time saver, but in my opinion, in a digital age, what defines a photographer's style is not only the images he or she shoots through a lens, but also the way those images are edited and processed. I can understand doing outsourcing of photo editing for event or corporate photography where clean, sharp images with minimal artistic flare is what the client usually wants (depending on the type of client of course), but for weddings and portraits, I feel that outsourcing your editing is like buying tickets for a cruise and giving them to some stranger, it takes the fun out of it and you really don't get as much emotionally from the final results. There are times when some photographers might get overbooked and need to ask someone to help out with retouching on a couple select images, but I feel that's different, because the original photographer will already have done their basic edits that bring out their style in their work. Just a quick rant... sorry if it offends. Not trying to step on toes, just trying to give my opinion.

WPPI - Part 3 of 4 - Night Photoshoot

Bob Davis (go check out his site, great stuff!) organized a photo shoot of three models (locals) and a young couple (WPPI attendees) at night with a large group of us to walk around and get what photos we could while squeezing in with each other to get what we could. I hung out with Katie (who had the most gorgeous blue eyes!) for most of the shoot and wanted to share some of my favorite images from that night.

This is a shot I got while "borrowing" Asim's 200 f/2 lens while he was trying to get his camera working properly again...I really want this lens...but I think I'd have to sell an organ to get one!

I nabbed this shot while standing up on a railing because I couldn't squeeze in between the other photogs, I'm glad I climbed up there

This is just a quick shot of how many people we had at the shoot!

To those who are confused about why I've posted part 3 before parts 1 and 2, I started editing some of Katie's images tonight (I'm still on Vegas time!!!) and I just kept going and wanted to post them tonight...I'll finish up Part 1 tomorrow, LOL!