Every year Photographers in the state of Montana convene enmasse at a location for their annual convention. This year was no different. From Sunday April 13th until Tuesday April 15th the Billings Convention Center hosted our annual meeting. On Sunday we learned about HDR photography from Steve Helmbrecht. HDR is an acronym for High Dynamic Range and seems to be growing in popularity in photography circles. As with anything new, there are those who are adamantly against it. Monday morning we listened to Jim Lersch tell us about Seniors his way and Commercial Photography for Dummies. Tuesday was probably the most needed seminar of the whole convention: Marketing and Seven Habits by Ed Belinski. In our business twenty percent is based on our creativity and the other eighty percent is business! Photography is a BUSINESS and for some photographers that fact is hard to realize. We want people to like us for the beauty we create, but it comes at a cost.
I car-pooled with another local photographer to share expenses and to help keep me sane as we drove the 400+ miles to Billings. We talked a LOT. On Tuesday we left Billings and drove a short distance to Livingston where she was giving a lecture on Adobe Lightroom, another essential piece of software for cataloging our ever growing catalog of images and helping to speed up the workflow immensely. By the end of the trip my head was swimming with the new faces and knowledge I’d acquired in such a short time. I often liken experiences such as this to getting a drink from a firehose. Too much, too fast. I was so busy I only took four pictures the entire trip.
