We had quite a few submissions and, as part of the idea, we have blogged them all below.

So, without further ado, I give you what the WPS photographers are thankful for!

I am most thankful for Bella, my two year old dog. Her vibrant energy when I walk in the door from a long day of work never ceases to amaze me. Her sweet face always makes me smile after all that we have seen and been through together. And she is always the perfect model for any photograph.

- Kristen A.

This image represents the “bookends” of five generations of women in my life. My wife’s grandmother is holding my new granddaughter. I am very close to my wife’s family and her mother and grandmother mean the world to me. Of course, my daughters first child holds a very special place in my heart.

- Jim C.

This is my story of thankfulness. It still makes me cry. Actually, Im am crying as I write this.
It was a bright, cloudy day, and I was wanting to try some natural light portraits of my shepherd Chickie. It started kind of rough, with her not understanding what I wanted from her. But being a smart girl, she caught on quickly. For this pose, I had to convince her that she would NOT be in trouble if she got on the furniture. I had a wonderful afternoon with her that I will never forget. Im so grateful that I had this time with her.
She died suddenly a week later.

- Sue B.

In choosing a photo to symbolize what I’m thankful for, it’s no surprise that I choose one featuring my kids. But, this one is special. My best friend of 16 years and I had our kids four days apart. FOUR DAYS. You can’t make that kind of thing up! Among our families, my fraternal twin boys and her daughter are affectionately known as The Triplets. This photo was taken earlier this year when my friend and her daughter were visiting from New Jersey. I love that I was able to capture three 18 month-olds smiling and looking at the camera. I love that they’re all wearing coordinating pajamas. I love that you can see my foot, my husband’s hand, and my friend’s knees around the edge of the photo, framing our kids. And I love that they love each other as much as their parents do.

- Carrie G.

Some days we take for grated people who are our mentors, caregivers and motivators. It’s rare when something moves me to act, but this moment made me think of my family immediately. Tears streamed down the face of the bride’s brother as they cried together during the father-daughter dance. It is powerful to me because her brother stood in for their deceased father, which made everyone cry. This moment moved me to hold all my family members tight and tell them that I love them.

-Christobal

 

I love this image because it was one of the first pictures that I really felt proud of. It is a reminder to me of so many wonderful gifts that I’ve received – the potential to make beautiful photographs, the ability to visit the Outer Banks every year all of my college friends, and a wonderful husband, who loves the beach as much as me and never fails to remind me of the potential that I have.

- Rebecca F.

This image reminds me of why I am thankful in 2011. The day before I shot this wedding, my Dad had a massive stroke and was in ICU in Charlotte.
Because I was shooting this wedding, I could not go to the hospital to be with my family. We all know that as photographers, it is our job to really be present in order to give our all at a wedding. As hard as this day was for me with all that was going on back home, this was an incredible wedding to be a part of. This image was taken as the couple walked out of Duke Chapel right after the ceremony. I love the mystery and the play of light and darkness in this shot. Marriage is such a magical union, while being so full of the highs and lows of life throughout the years. Thankfully, my Dad is recovering and I was able to be there in the hospital with my family right after this wedding.

-Martha M.

Unfortunately in this business we do hear of a lot of tragic things happening and they all seem amplified because it’s happening at, or close to a wedding. A few months before a wedding, I had a client’s father diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and really was not expecting to make the wedding day. To make a long story short, he took a miraculous turn for the better and was up and about during the wedding day. What I am thankful for is being taught how incredible of a power we hold, as photographers, to memorialize family and loved ones which can be treasured if & when tragedy does occur. The above photo is something that I had been thinking about since I first got the call about his illness. I wanted to make sure and get a fitting portrait of her father – something that could be passed down, honestly, for generations as a legacy of his life.

- Brian M.

First – what a cool meeting!!  Having former and future brides willing to answer ANY question from 62, yes, that’s SIXTY-TWO wedding and portrait photographers regarding how & why they booked a particular photographer, how did they find their photographer, what was important to them (albums, discs, etc) and SO much more.

Second – what I need to change in my own business to capitalize on what the brides had to say.

Third – As a whole, we as wedding photographers don’t do enough to educate our brides.

So, with that being said, the meeting turnout and content really exceeded our expectations!  Thank you to everyone who came out for the meeting!   Here’s a few photos and a short video clip (please remember, I’m a photographer, not a videographer) from the event!

Bridal Panel – March 2011 WPS Meeting from Brian Mullins on Vimeo.

I’d personally like to thank Don for donating his time to the WPS and extend an open invitation to pop by anytime you are back in the Raleigh area!  Thank you so much for coming out Don!

Chris with Azul Photography captured a few shots of Don in action!

Our latest meeting of the Wedding Photographic Society was a huge success with over 50 people in attendance including wedding photographers, wedding planners, DJ’s, & florists!  It was an amazing meeting as many businesses in the wedding industry came together for our 1st ever “panel” discussion. We all learned and discussed how we can help each other for weddings, promotions and personally. Everyone in attendance got to hear how weddings are viewed from each discipline and shared experiences with what photographers (as well as dj’s, florists, planners, etc) can do to help as well as what hinders other vendors. Certainly an eye opening experience on how we can not only better serve our clients, but other vendors in the wedding industry.

The WPS would like to thank our panel for taking the time out of their busy schedules to meet with us!  Our panel of speakers is below:

Joe Bunn DJ
Erin McLean Events
Premiere Catering
McSound Productions
English Garden Florist

The WPS would also like to thank The Mint restaurant for accommodating our group and providing great service, food and beverages for the meeting!

Jeff Butterworth, founder of Alien Skin Software, has been producing cutting edge graphic enhancement tools for photographers since 1993. He enlightened us this particular evening, March 23rd, at one of our favorite meeting spots, Hi-5, sharing his wares with us and by giving us live demonstrations of his software. It was icing on the cake to us, all of the goodies he gave away as door prizes.

A very special thanks to Jeff for taking time out for us and for his generosity in the name of betterment of professional photographers!

Also a special thanks to Jim Colman of jColmanPhotography for taking some cool snaps of the meeting. It was great to see everyone there!

WPS meetings are always open to all wedding photographers, professional and aspiring, and to those wedding professionals in our industry. For more information, please visit our WPS Forum.

Looking forward to seeing you there!
Stacy Borelli
WPS Leader
Swank Photo Studio
www.swankphotostudio.com

Also on the nights agenda was door prizes!  Yes, that’s right.. free stuff!!!  We all like free stuff and thanks to Robin’s hard work and our very generous friends at Marathon Press ,  Simply Canvas, Jelly fingers & WHCC over $2000 in gifts were handed out to a few lucky photographers.

After the smoke cleared and the winners were restrained, err, sat back down without any assistance whatsoever, we moved on to photo tithing.  We’ll be posting the photos up on the blog soon so everyone who missed it can see what the fuss is about.  I must say, there were two shots that made me laugh so hard I almost gave my table mates a nose beer shower.

With 34 people in attendance, I think we may have to find a bigger room soon as space was  getting limited.  On behalf of everyone in the WPS, thank you for your attendance last night!  This really is a true measure of how strong & unified our photographic community is which is TRULY a wonderful thing!

Now onto some photos from last night!

A little history first – The format we first agreed on for  WPS Meetings were 6 per year, with each meeting having a “topic” such as business, packaging, branding, marketing, etc.  The first meeting in February had a great turnout and, due to interest in having another meetnig, WPS “unscripted” was born.  The whole idea was to NOT have a topic and talk about anything & everything that we are seeing in todays industry.  From the economy to influences to  strategy – we discussed all different topics in a very open & sharing format.  I, for one, am still feeling that “recharge” effect that only meeting & sharing with your peers can give you.  To have a group of photographers so willing to share what works for them and their business is truly a memorable event!

To help guage the success, I generally keep a count of who signed up to attend and the actual #’s.  After putting up a poll and an announcement, we figured we would have about 8-10 photographer attending.  The final count was 18!!  That’s 180% attendance!  Why am I writing about this?  Well, to me, it’s a simple indication of how powerful and needed a group like this truly is.

So, to hit on some highlights from last night:

Out of 18 photographers attending, roughly 90% were home based
Out of 18 photographers, no one has the same influences
Out of 18 photographers (regardless of experience), everyone learned something last night

The above is really telling about how vast of a range photogrpahers work within and there is always room to learn, share and network with others!

So, to close, I want to personally thank everyone for Chris, Stacy & myself for coming out and opening up with your experiences and knowledge!

And of course, a few photos….

More shots added!!!  From our friend and member Pat Eilers!

-0-0- The Wedding Photographic Society Team -0-0-

With everyone around us, friends, family, media, talking about the recession, I decided to bring in a business adviser to discuss how to keep your business healthy.  The Biz Doctor is a well known & respected business adviser with many years of experience in promoting & running small & medium business, including photography, video and other media centric businesses.  Below is a short outline of his discussion:

“Being Creative While Trapped in Your Business”  – Using the Biz Doctor’s 7P Business Assessment.

Basically, he explained how photographers can conduct & run their business creatively, but also need to understand the business basics and how to “creatively” utilize and measure them in order to be the most successful and profitable.  The 7 P assessment has the business owner look at the following areas:

(1) Personal assessment, (2) Planning, (3) People, (4) Promotion, (5) Persuasion, (6) Performance Systems and (7) Profit and finances.

Van provided us with examples of creative thinking, how to get past the ailments that can affect your business, decisive decision making and some of the true advantages of being a small business.

I would like to extend our sincerest THANK YOU to Van for donating his time, humor and knowledge to our group.

Here’s a few photos from the evenings events!