The Digital Wedding Forum Convention in Nashville

Greetings everyone! As promised, today I wanted to share a little about our trip to Nashville last week. One of the coolest things about being a photographer is the constant opportunities to further our education. We are members of a group called the Digital Wedding Forum (if you're a wedding or portrait photographer, check it out) and this year they held their annual convention in Nashville. That's a no-brainer, huh? We HAD to go. We had been to one other DWFC in Tampa two years ago and had a blast (as evidenced by THREE blog posts back then... here, here, and here).

We had a great time this year and made a ton of new friends as well as partied with some old ones. Of course, we came back all stoked and ready for our next wedding. Too bad we have to wait about two more months! Anybody getting married next week and need a fired up pair of photographers? :)

Here are just a few of the many photos we took on the trip...

We'll start off with something way cool. We were contacted by the company that makes our sweet canvases, Simply Canvas, a couple months before the convention. They said they wanted to show off some of our work in Nashville so they asked me to send them one or two files. I was so excited that I sent six!

And this is what they chose. We were ecstatic (as you can tell)! Thanks Simply Canvas!


This has nothing to do with the convention. We walked around the outside of the hotel and I saw this and liked it. :)


Our buddy Jason Davis tagged along again this year. Well, he drove, so I guess *we* tagged along with him.


It wouldn't be a trip for us if we didn't find time to play, I mean, experiment.


Jason tried to play hide and seek.


Apparently Knoxville photographers are pretty antisocial. The night of the big party, we all kind of hung by ourselves and had our own get-together. There's our pal Tara and hubby, Brian from Dixie Pixel, Jason, Matt Browne (far right), and Bill Waldorf.


So the album company, Finao, that we added to our lineup last year, held a contest for the King and Queen of the DWF Convention. And two really great photographers took home the title: David Getson, right, and Petra Hall smooch it up for the crowd (Petra posted some more photos of the event on her blog).


Feeling inspired to play so more after one of the seminars, Danielle, Jason, and I took to the creepy stairs at the hotel.


And we made some pretty cool images!


Jason getting all sniperish. Yep, I'm making up words.


We did a few of each other in front of this old ratty light and then I asked Jason to shoot Danielle and I. I think it's one of my more favorite images of the two of us together (well, there aren't that many).


After it was all over, we had dinner with some of our new friends before driving home. Erin and Justin Moulden, are a cool couple from Arkansas that we hit it off with right away and Ben Ramos, who is probably one of only a handful of guys at the convention that saw eye-to-eye with me. Literally (sorry, there aren't too many of us gentle giants out there in the world, so when we meet, there's an instant connection).

There are sooo many others that we met and partied with... it would take me a week to list them all. But Danielle and I do want to take a second to say an extra special thanks to John and Dalisa Cooper, who are the amazing duo behind altF. They took a few minutes out of their hectic schedules to sit with us and help us wrap our brains around some business issues we were having and they really opened some windows for us. They didn't have to do this; they didn't know us, but they exemplify one of the greatest things about our business. And that's the giving attitude and the willingness to help others that a lot of great photographers have. So THANK YOU AGAIN, Dalisa and John!! And if some of you haven't had the chance to be blown away by their work yet, head straight to the link above and prepare to have your world rocked!

In other big news for us, we finally took a few minutes to set up a fan page over on everyone's favorite daily distraction, Facebook! Check us out:

Our Facebook Fan Page.
If you haven't joined in yet, what the deuce are you waiting for? :) I am completely blown away by the fact that we have over 500 fans already and I just set the thing up less than a week ago! What's going down on the fan page? We'll keep in touch daily with updates and links and promotions and photos and general revelry. It should be fun!

AND (won't this guy shut up already!) if you're engaged or know someone who is engaged and you don't have a photographer yet... check back tomorrow afternoon for a HUGE announcement!! This is going to be bigger than BIG, trust me!

-Wes

Coming tomorrow: We announce something so epic it will make you slap your momma. Well, not really slap her, but it is something EXTRAORDINARY!