Mike Colon, Robert Williams, and Dane Sanders speak to a crowd at the Pictage booth.

Last week I attended the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International convention in Las Vegas. I have considered attending in previous years, but now that I live in Salt Lake City it’s much more convinient. I’m convinced that wedding photographers are the most easy going, friendly group of people you will ever meet. It’s a pre-requisite for this kind of work really. I thought I would have some time to go take pictures, but there was just too much to take in! I met a lot of great people, and saw many of my photographer friends from Utah and Colorado.

I checked out presentations by some great photographers including Dennis Reggie, Katherine Hall, David Jay, Mike Colon, and many others that I can’t remember at the moment. All of these great photographers are so generous with their ideas and inspiring with their energy. In all the chaos I missed one of my favorite wedding photographers, Paul Gero, speaking at the Canon booth. Maybe next year.

Some other highlights:

I won dfine, a noise reduction software, at the Dennis Reggie seminar. I have good luck winning stuff at events like this. I’m not sure how much I’ll use it, as I’m actually starting to like noise in my pictures!

There was an awesome new book printing company called [Artefact]. I am so excited about these guys because their books are exactly what I’ve been looking for – digital press books with interesting paper choices. Now I will be able to make press printed books & products (great for parent albums, greeting cards, etc.) with paper that has a similar soft matte feel to my custom prints and albums. I will post pictures when I get my sample.

I ran into Kevin King showing off his RadioPopper flash trigger system to Matt Adcock. Matt and his equally talented wife Sol show off their creative off camera strobe wedding photography techniques on his FlashFlavor blog and at del Sol Photography. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this new toy since I first heard about it a few months ago. I can’t believe how many wedding photographers are buying pocket wizards with this coming out – this will make it so much easier to set up lighting on the fly. I can’t wait to play with these at some of my weddings this summer.