If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, I spent the last 5 days in Atlanta, Georgia at the Imaging USA conference. In the next few days, I will be giving my Imaging USA 2016 Review. Today I finish up Day 1
Sunday, 5 PM: Cutting Edge High School Seniors with Shawn Lee
Amazing, thrilling…Rock That! Shawn was an energy ball and hilarious. He had about three catch phases that he threw around the whole time, and the crowd was yelling them by the end of the presentation. That’s the kind of energy he had, and I know that’s partially why he is so successful. If you want seniors to get into the session, you have to give them that energy.
My main takeaways from the session were keep things simple and make the session about the seniors. Shawn shot almost everything in his studio, and he really only had three backdrops: white, gray, and black. That’s it. With those three things, he is able to create photos for all of his seniors. Two, make the session about the seniors. Everyone loves attention and loves his or her stuff. That’s exactly what Shawn did. He found out what they liked, and the kids brought their stuff. Half of his photos simply were the kids with their stuff. The kids love it, and he doesn’t have to buy any props. Genius.
Sunday, 6:45 PM: Focus on Fabulous Weddings with Bambi Cantrell
Bambi is a pretty famous photographer, and she packed the house. She’s got spirit and some great ideas. She gave 5 steps to be successful: 1. Identify your client, 2. Learn your craft, 3. Posing, 4. Camera Angles, and 5. Never Say Never. I feel like she talked mostly about posing and making beautiful photos. She uses window light for a large part of her photos, and showed how easy it is to get great photos with window light. Then, she showed some simple ways to pose people. For posing, you turn them at an angle, put weight on the back foot, tilt the head, push hips away from the camera, point the front toe and bend that knee or cross it over.
She seemed to have a lot more to say, so I was sad that she ran out of time. I will probably look up some of her work and see what else I can find out.
Opening Night Party
After all of this, there was an opening party at 8. I was expecting it to be a casual get together with some food, but it was much more. It seemed like everyone showed up. They were passing out tons of drink tickets at the door, there were stations with models to shoot, great food, and a live band. I didn’t spend a ton of time because I was by myself and my ride was showing up soon, but I still loved it.
That’s it for day one of my Imaging USA 2016 review. Tomorrow I’ll hit up some of the big names that I got to listen to. One of which I even got to shake his hand. Exciting!
