Wow!  My head is spinning from all the learning and information from Shutterfest last week in St. Louis.  First of all, let me try to explain  Shutterfest is.  Bring together 2000 photographers, 200 models, some of the best instructors in the country, an amazing setting, lots of vendors with awesome products and that's Shutterfest!  The photography conference was held at Union Station Hotel which is an amazing venue. 
 

I went to the event with 3 other photographers from the Fox Valley.  We left early Monday morning and arrived in St. Louis at 3:00.  We checked into our room, got registered for Shutterfest and then headed out to explore the city. 

IMG_0862
 

We ventured downtown toward the arch but decided to head back for dinner and to meet up with other photographers for a nighttime arch shoot. We shot the Arch from across the river on the IL side.  The sunset was marred by too many clouds, but the night skyline was beautiful!

IMG_0944
 

We had to find a place to watch the Wisconsin - Duke game.  We had hoped for a better outcome.  Oh well......... we all headed back to the hotel to go to sleep, only I couldn't sleep.  After watching tv, laying in the dark, checking facebook, and watching Netflix I got up at 6:00 to start my day!  A Diet Coke and I was good to go!

The days were filled with different classes about marketing, mastering your online brand, and building referrals.  My hands on classes were Extreme Sports Photography with Melanie Anderson and Pricing and Packaging with Sal Cincotta.  I'm SO excited to offer more unique sports photography to my seniors and I'll be offering collections this year instead of just a la carte products!  The models we had for our class were great! 

IMG_0964 IMG_0972
That night, we decided to try to find a model and use our off camera lighting to do some shots.  This is one of the shots I got that night with Joshua & Bayleigh.  They were super to work with! 

IMG_1009 IMG_0998 Thankfully, this night I was able to fall asleep.  Since being sick on Easter and all the travelling, I really needed the rest!  The next morning we were up bright and early again to start our classes.  I was thrilled to be going to a photoshop class about compositing with Dave Cross.  I've watched tons of tutorials on photoshop by him.  I learned about a great organization program called 17 hats, listened to another speaker about workflow and how to speed things up.  My last class for the day was with Jeff Poole & Lori Unruh about Senior Portraits with a Punch.  Finding the right location and looking for things and angles that make for an interesting portrait.  Again, we were blessed with some great models to shoot.  Dalton was great to work with! 

IMG_1066 IMG_1112 After dinner the storms had ended so we headed out to the area next to the hotel to do some night shooting.  The 4 of us had a blast and laughed so hard at the things we were doing.  Light painting, long exposures and a few selfies.  

IMG_1173 After that I thought we were going to head in to the party, but we decided to head to the Arch instead!  It took us forever to figure out how to get there because of the construction, but we finally ended up parking in a church driveway and walking there.  The spot lights go off at midnight, but we had lots of available light.  Such a beautiful place! 

IMG_1174 IMG_1175 Well, that's the end of the conference, but it's not the end of my adventure!  Instead of heading straight back to Appleton, we decided to spend a day in St. Louis and then travel home by following the Mississippi River.  Stay tuned for my next blog entry where I'll let you know the rest of the adventure!