Last week I was dragged kicking and screaming to Vegas…OK I’m lying.   Who wouldn’t want to go to WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International)?   It is the biggest annual convention and trade show for photographers in the US, and with the amount of international photographers I met, possibly even worldwide!   All the big celebrity photographers were there from Dennis Reggie to Gary Fong, as well as just about every photography vendor from Adorama to Zookbooks.   I’m so excited about all the new ideas and lessons I came home with which will really expand my offerings to my clients.  One concept widely talked about was the integration of video into DSLR cameras.  As soon as I found out a few months ago that Nikon’s new D300s had a video mode I started saving up for one.  And while myself and the other video inspired photographers I talked to do not really have any desire to switch over to videography, its just a new cool feature that we can implement into our creative offerings.   Currently the audio and video capabilities with DSLR cameras are really poor compared to what a pro video camera can do.  You also can not capture both video and photos simultaneously, so please don’t ask me to shoot your wedding video too, but once I get the hang of this I can’t wait to see what I can come up with.  If you’re curious to see what these cameras can do so far, scroll down to watch my first attempt at shooting a video…it will get better I promise.

Above – An intriguing Boudoir photography workshop.

Below – The WPPI convention had me up before sunrise every morning with meetings and workshops that went late into the night…but the last night in town was celebrated by a party hosted by Pictage at Studio 54.   That’s me at the bottom with 2 of my favorite Denver photographers, Happy & Tricia.

Check out my first attempt to create a video with with my new camera.