I went to Atlanta for a few days in July for a photography business workshop called ‘The Business of Storytelling‘. It was an AWESOME workshop held by LaCour Photography. I went there wanting to fine-tune some of the marketing aspects of my business. I am so glad that I went. I walked away with a zillion ideas and tools and now have to find some time to sort the things I learned and implement them! I would recommend this workshop for any wedding photographer who wants to improve their business.
The trip started in Louisiana while visiting my folks and I just finished teaching vacation bible school. I drove all of the way from Baton Rouge, LA (my hometown) to Atlanta, and the drive wasn’t that bad. Fortunately, another awesome photographer friend of mine, Jason Cohen, who lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, went also to the workshop. He got to be the navigator for our road-trip. He brought some new toys, including his new iPhone, and I tried really hard not to be too envious. His cool blackberry phone (yes, he has 2 phones) came really handy because my GPS ran out of juice and my auto-charger went on the fritz. It’s not that easy to get around Atlanta if you’re not from there! Regardless, we made it there safely.
We then spent the next 4 days in lectures, some hands-on lighting style demonstrations, fun networking, and received mucho inspirational encouragement from Andrew, Mark, Rachel and Erin at LaCour. They reminded me how important it is to make a personal touch to their customers (not that I forgot it, but it was a good refresher). Also, I was amazed that nearly all of the photographers there had a Mac (I’m still using Windows) and there were an ABUNDANCE of iPhones.
Anyway, while there in Atlanta, we stayed at the phenomenal Twelve Hotel. Our rooms were super-nice and another photographer, Corey McNabb, put together a really cool slideshow that showcases some of the decor in the rooms. This hotel truly blew me away in it’s customer service AND the high-end clientel that lived there (it’s a hotel and high-end condominium – they’re building something similar here in downtown Austin). I saw both an Aston Martin AND a new Rolls Royce – I didn’t even know they still made Rolls Royce cars! I wish I would have taken more images, but I was too busy trying to work remotely and get some print orders and albums done. However, I did take some images with my new Canon Mark III camera and I wanted to test the ‘extreme low-light’ capabilities of this camera and it ROCKED! You can see some of them below, as well as being posted on the LaCour blog, too.
We ended the workshop with a fine dinner at a local restaurant called Ecco. The folks at LaCour invited their parents to come along. Just seeing them interacting and involving their family in the event was really great (it was even Rachel’s fathers 80th birthday, too). Just spending this time with LaCour and their families reminded us about the importance of what we do and why we do it – to capture moments with family in order to save the legacy and pass it down for generations to come.
You can check out the slideshow here of some fun snapshots from the time we were there.
Here are some of my favorite images that were captured.
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