Well I just returned from the Digital Wedding Forum and Portrait Photographers of America convention in Tampa !  It’s been a great 5 days though – seeing old friends (Hi Elsa, Roman and Mouna!), meeting new ones (Hi Melissa and Linda), attending seminars, cocktail parties and a major industry tradeshow.

This is a great event where you are learning from (and having drinks with) the best wedding and portrait photographers in the world.  While everything was covered from the latest editing and shooting gear, to the business-side, I’ll share with you some of the inspirational stuff I heard because that’s universal to everyone…a lot of it was about childhood/children:

• “What do people try to save from a house fire?”  – can’t remember who said this.
• “Would your four-year old self be proud of who you are today?” – paraphrasing Jerry Ghionis
• “Every child is the artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up.” – Picasso, quoted by Jesh de Rox
• “It’s never too late to be who you might have been” – George Eliot as quoted by Tamara Lackey
• “We sell the experience” – Denis Reggie (he coined “wedding photojournalism”, shot JFK Jrs. wedding, and his base is $50K/wedding)
• And, I didn’t attend David Williams‘ seminar this year, but everyone came out of there truly emotional and it reminded me of when I saw him two years ago – he said that when you take a child’s portrait with a parent, you are actually taking it for the child, not the parents, so that years from now, when the parents have passed on, it becomes one of the few physical records of the parent’s love for the child, and thus becomes the most valuable at that time.  David Williams has no pictures with his mother so this point was truly close to his heart.  I have always remembered that at both portraits and weddings.

It’s an amazingly small and open industry and I feel so happy to be in this business!