The SnapKnot Blog: weddings, photography, and more

We had an amazing time at the 30th annual Wedding and Portrait Photographers International convention last week in Las Vegas. It was a valuable experience for us to see how the tradeshow worked for the first time, but most importantly we met so many wonderful wedding photographers who were gracious enough to spend time with us discussing their reactions to SnapKnot, ideas for the site, their photography business, and were cool people in general.

Here’s a recap of events last week and the fantastic wedding photographers we met:

Sunday

Went to the Photo Lovecat Happy Hour at Centrifuge bar at the MGM Grand. Met with Christine Tremoulet of Photo Lovecat, Big Pink Cookie and Wholly Matriomony.

We also met the following wedding photographers:

• Stephanie Mosher (Virginia Beach, VA)
• Donna of Exposures of Life (San Luis Obispo, CA)
• Hilary Mercer (Raleigh, NC)
• Kelly Niemann (Houston, TX)
• Michael Sackett (Sterling Heights, MI)
• Kari Noser (Houston, TX)
• Cliff Brunk (San Francisco, CA)
• Julie Branyan (Omaha, NE)
• Courtney Reece (Louisville, KY)
• Jessica Limeberry (Indianapolis, IN)

Then we hit the WPPI No Limit Texas Hold ‘em Poker Tournament put together by
J Sandifer (who also won…very suspicious… ;) ) and met and played with:

• Fran Chelico (Vancouver, BC)
• Bradt Photography (AZ)
• Richard Esposito (North Haven, CT)
• Becker of The B-School
• Jeff of JNP Studios

Monday

We hit the trade show floor at the MGM Grand sporting our brand spanking new white SnapKnot long sleeve t-shirts! Amazing. A bit overwhelming but cool to see all the vendors representing the industry and thousands (over 14,000!) of wedding photographers checking out the latest equipment, software, albums, etc.

We ran into Ari Simphoukham (San Francisco, CA). Funny to recognize someone we had never met among so many people.

At lunchtime we were in the pizza line at the food court near the trade show and met Jennifer & Tommy John from Baby Grace Photography (Indianapolis, IN) as well as Joel from Studio EMP (Orange County, CA). We shared our table with Richard Sturdevant (Garland, TX), Maria Bernal (Austin, TX) and Zida of Studio Z Mendocino (awesome letterpress design & printing out of Fort Bragg, CA). Lunchtime is networking time!

Later that afternoon we met up with Karl Ko (San Francisco, CA) at Starbucks and had a really valuable discussion. Thanks for the insight and feedback, Karl!

Tuesday

We briefly hit the trade show again and then met up with Seshu in the afternoon for a helpful discussion of how we could improve SnapKnot. It was a pleasure to finally meet Seshu, who was one of the first photographers we got in touch with through Twitter
(Seshu is the King of Twitter).

Later that evening we went to the Vegas Tweetup organized by fleurdeleigh, pifphoto, and vada_voom. Leigh is fantastic and we connected with several other great photo tweeps:

• Karen Ard (Los Angeles, CA) – awesome to finally meet Karen, one of our first photogs!
• Mark Stagi (San Francisco, CA)
• Sarah Postma (NY & NJ)
• CharlestonVal
• Chris Reed (not actually a photog but we don’t discriminate)

Wednesday

Wednesday was mostly work for us but we did hold “office hours” at Starbucks in the afternoon and we were fortunate enough to meet:

• Jessica Frey (Bakersfield, CA)
• Kelsey Bigelow (Denver, CO)
• Katrina Wheeler (Atlanta, GA)
• Kristi Crosson (Colorado Springs, CO)
• Michelle Standerfer (Atlanta, GA)

That evening I attended the party at Studio 54 at the MGM. Thanks to Pictage and ShootQ for hosting, and thanks again to Seshu for the extra ticket! I had a blast and was able to meet Jeff, Lori, and Lesley of indigosilver (Wilmington, NC).

Thanks to everyone for all the positive feedback, support, and ideas for the site. We’re already looking forward to WPPI 2011 and we hope to help every one of you book more weddings and grow your photography business with SnapKnot.

The trip was not only productive but also a blast. The only downside to WPPI was that we didn’t get to meet all the wedding photographers listed on SnapKnot. Maybe next year…

I hope I didn’t forget to mention anyone! Please let me know.