I recently went to Imaging USA - one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) professional photography conventions. This year it was held in Nashville, which I love because it's so close (and it makes me nostalgic for Opryland theme park). It's so much fun but also overwhelming because there's so many people and so many choices to make (on which classes you want to attend). This year, one of my favorite classes was with Pete Coco - watching him shoot the model really gave me some ideas on trying to shoot more "outside the box" - he was including cords and lights and modifiers - but it looked great in the end! It's always interesting to me to see how other photographers "see" things.

     Another class I really enjoyed was "There's not enough time in the day" by Andrew Donofrio. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be - in my head he was going to give me a timeline on how to best live my life (ha), but instead he said that everyone lives their life differently and are at different places in life (he's a retired police officer with no young children at home so his free time looks different than a full time business owner with small children would look). The main take away I got from his class is I need to look at my life as a whole because it does all go together (he said don't rely on motivation - motivation is a visitor). 

     Now I just need to start applying all the new things I learned :)

Here are a few pictures from the trip and there's more on Facebook (click here to see them).