www.wppiworkshop.stephenknuth.com

Monday March 8th, 2010

2-4pm

THE WORKSHOP IS NOW SOLD OUT. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ATTENDING YOU CAN SIGN UP ON THE WAIT LIST

WPPI is a very, very busy week. You’ve got the tradeshow, platform speakers & masterclasses, dinners and the unforgettable late night parties. When I attended my first WPPI last year I will admit that it was a little overwhelming trying to soak every little detail and try to attend everything during a 4 day span. During my stay in Las Vegas last year I was able to watch a few of the shooting workshops from a distance and I was really impressed with how powerful they really are at such a large event such as WPPI.

I decided for this year that I wanted to create a shooting workshop where you we can shoot together, and you can get some amazing portfolio pieces in the heart of the Las Vegas strip!  I  was so excited to be chosen as the 2009 Photographer of the Year and now I want to share with you my secrets at this informative shoot workshop.  I’ll take time to give each attendee the chance to capture some stunning portfolio images while learning the artistic ways of using natural light as your studio while on a shoot and learn how to shoot on complete manual settings. Remember when I mentioned how WPPI is a huge event that houses more than 10,000 photographers? One of the huge benefits of this workshop is that it is capped at 20 photographers. During the shoot we will all have a really great time and everyone will feel like we’re one big happy & sort of dysfunctional family. (Dysfunctional in a good way lol)

The workshop will be styled like an engagement session on the Las Vegas Strip on Monday March 8th, 2010 from 2-4pm. You can expect instruction from me on how I shoot my engagement sessions and you’ll be giving practical tips on how to grab raw emotion from the client and how to grab real smiles from them too. I know that getting real laughs from a client can be tough sometimes but I have found a way to make it easy on them and you! The shoot is two hours long so bring some comfortable shoes because we will be walking to some of the most famous locations on the strip!

One of the most exciting things about this workshop is that it is being sponsored by SHOWIT! They gave given  me over $1,000 in products that YOU could win at the shootout and we will be having a photo contest after the workshop to find out who could win things such as 2 year pro-account from Showit. That means your website would be paid off for the next two years! Another great giveaway is you could also win a 1 year membership from Pictage! These are gifts from two companies that provide me with amazing tools & they have provided me with opportunities for growth.

I want to share a story about the very first time I met David Jay. It was about two years ago at his Free to Succeed Tour in San Diego. I had just attended the San Diego PUG and a few members had mentioned I should check out the workshop. I had just started into photography and I knew nobody in this industry. You know that feeling when you are in middle school on the first day of school and your at lunch and there are all the super cool kids and your afraid to talk to anyone? I remember feeling that same way walking into his workshop. It’s funny because I sat next to Becker that night and I had no idea who he was at the time! I do remember that David’s talk inspired me and I walked out of there knowing that I would become a wedding photographer.

It’s fun looking back on that night because on my right side was sitting my future mentor, Sara France. David’s workshop was the night that would lead me to not only my future career path but one where God had already planned for me to meet so many different people later down the road, and have on my team of good friends.

Fast forward to now… I was blown away to find out a few weeks ago that I was chosen as one of the Top 25 finalists for SHOWIT’S Photographer of the Year. There were so many incredible photographers on that list, many of whom I look up to as mentors & leaders!! I strongly believed in the fact that I could do everything possible to do my best in the contest and knowing that whatever the outcome, it is still an amazing victory being among the Top 25. So, as the contest started out, everyone started asking their friends and followers to tweet & blog about the contest to capture their votes. I chose to take a slightly different route and it was my choice to create a series of short silly videos that would be spread around the web attracting people to vote for me.

The results just got released and I cannot believe it that I am even saying this, I won the contest!!! It’s so incredible to be named “2009 Photographer of the Year”!!!! Before I go on, I need to thank a bunch of people who have supported and helped me to where I am now.  Not to sound like some cheesy academy award speech but I really, really mean it when I say Thank You to the following people: My Mom & Dad and the rest of my family, my amazing girlfriend Scarlett Lillian, Sara France, David Jay, SHOWIT, PhotogShootout, Dane Sanders, The Youngrens, Zach & Jody Gray, the entire photography community and most of all Jesus Christ. Those people have been and continue to help me stay on course and focus on what is the biggest thing in my life. My friends have been there to help in every little and big way.

So as this is a time to celebrate what my journey has been like so far and what a year 2009 was, this is  also a time to look ahead and use this as part of my drive to keep marching forward and continually make things happen.  I hope this can inspire you too as you march toward your own dreams!

If you voted for me, THANK YOU and I very much appreciate all your support and thank you for reading my blog and following me every step along the way.

“To succeed you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.”

Tony Dorsett

While I was in Photography school at San Diego City College a few years back I took one class that focused on the business side of doing photography that really inspired me. As photographers, we do love to shoot a whole lot but the business side is extremely important and we can never forget about it! I got an email from my Business Professor a few weeks ago asking if I would visit his class to present to them about what it’s like to shoot as a professional after your done with college. How exciting is that!? I will point out that it was such an awesome feeling returning to the campus and not having to worry about homework!! haha!

My presentation was focused on “Living your Passion” and how we as photographers must focus in on what we are best at before we can truly start the process of booking clients. I took them through my story and also through the process & formula of finding what your best at. Once you find what your best at, take time to market your passion to your niche market. Then, use social media platforms such as twitter & facebook to grab your potential clients attention and finally using your passion to showcase the clients images to them with such platforms such as Showit +Sites & Pictage.

It was a wonderful experience and I cannot wait to present to another group in the near future!

Special thanks to my friend Nick Lamb, who is in the business photo class for snapping an image of my talk!!

Every person who has a mac needs MainMenu! Oh my gosh!!! So here I am on Thursday night watching the olympics and trying to edit images from my latest shoot. I kept running into the wall of macintosh slowwwwness because I wanted to make my computer run faster and have more hard-drive space. I think it’s safe to now say since I do have more space available I was almost going to yell at my computer but things didn’t escalate to that so we’re alright.

The only “mac maintenance” service that I know to do with my computer is to repair permissions and that can sometimes free up files but all computers deal with this issue where you get crud stuck in the harddrive and then it starts to run slow and we all get mad. Well, I can finally say I can do a happy dance in my office now because I found a solution…

MainMenu for mac is a free widget for your dock that will clean out all the hidden files that clog up your mac. All I had to do was click one button and it cleared up 14GB of space!! What on earth was my mac doing with that 14GB!!!? I now have 16GB free and the computer is running faster!! I know, right!? Maybe your just shaking your head and I am too much of a geek but think of it as outsourcing your computer’s spring cleaning to a free app that does it all for you! Yeah!!

It’s a free download but you can give a small donation to the developers because it is a super awesome program and anytime you see your computer lagging, start up MainMenu and watch it speed back up! Okay, I can now edit images with a faster machine!!

Click Here to download MainMenu

Showit Sites is quite the amazing company. They handle all of my website needs and their product is flawless and their customer service & management team is phenomenal. I have nothing but great things to say about them!! Today, David Jay announced their new website and I LOVE IT!! Showit is very well known for handling their clients so well that they haven’t given themselves some kudos and today they finally did! Well done guys!!

Fact: 57% of brides use an already created “wedding website”

Showit offers a rad featured called +Sites and it allows me to create custom wedding websites that are branded with my logo and I then ask for the clients wedding colors and I incorporate that into their names that are seen in the website. I also add in a few things like the highlights from their shoot, their first dance song which plays throughout the website, wedding day details and even the story of how they met. I can tell you that because of your effort doing these types of things, they will tell all their friends about you!

Start offering your clients, +Sites TODAY!

I am the featured photographer in the Showit +Site section of their new website!

How amazing is their new website!!!?

Last week I had the honor of attending San Diego PhotogShootout’s sister group, SoCal PhotogShootout. It’s an amazing group that’s run by Hanssie Trainor & Matthew Saville. It’s fun to attend their events because when I organize the San Diego events I’m really busy the day of making sure everything works and I don’t get to shoot very much and I always have Hanssie attend so she gets to shoot at mine and when I attend her event, she is running around and I am getting to shoot. I guess my sense of humor in the mornings is lame then if you didn’t laugh at that.. because I did.

This shootout was off the hook! It took place at the beautiful venue, The Romanesque Room in Pasadena with everything themed through the journey of a wedding day. There was six stations with The engagement session, Getting ready details, the ceremony, bridal shoot and the reception. Hanssie & Matt did a phenomenal job putting this one together!

Special Thanks to all the catering services that made it happen!

Coordinator: Amanda Auer of In the Now Weddings

Florist: Honey and Poppies

DJ: First Choice DJ’s

Rentals: Town & Country

Catering: Jays Catering

Styling: Mila

Hair/Makeup: Kacee Geoffroy

Hair/Makeup: Alisha Baijournas

I was asked by SoCal PhotogShootout if I would lead an “Advanced Off-Camera Lighting” Mini-Workshop after the event concluded. I took about 10 photogs into the streets of old Pasadena with one of our amazing couples for some fun! I really loved how old all the buildings were and they streets had a very artistic style mixed in with the amazing textures throughout the alleyways. I was teaching with a WhiteLightning 1600, 12×24 strip softbox and vegabond powerpack. I taught the group that when using off camera strobes you can shoot around 1/20 at f/8 with an ISO 800 and get some awesome images like this one below.

I presented the differences between front lighting which has a much more “beauty” style lighting vs. side lighting (more dramatic light) which at the time was a better style of light because of the textured walls.

Hey friends!!! So I am still in the lead by a short margin for Showit’s “2009 Photographer of the Year”! My first silly video was me jumping on the bed which came across well and the next day during Scarlett Lillian’s workshop, I got America’s Next Top Model winner Whitney Thompson to endorse me!!

We’re now in the final five days of the contest and if you haven’t yet voted, please do! You can vote through facebook on this link: http://bit.ly/aRXxyB. If you have already voted then thats perfect because you can only vote once and I’d love it if you told all your friends about it via facebook status, twitter, you tube, email & texting!! I’d love to see this video go viral just because it was a blast to create and I know it made you laugh!!! Just a quick thing, once you click that link it will take you to facebook and will ask you to install the app. Once you click yes, exit that page and click http://bit.ly/aRXxyB again and now this time you’ll be able to vote! Scroll down the page and I’m #23. Click to vote and hit submit. It’s pretty simple and then you can spread the word to everyone you know!

It’s a very exciting time for me to be in the lead for this contest and I totally know this video is crazy but that is exactly why I am not a singer. Aren’t you glad I’m a photographer and not trying to rap?

Thank You for the support!!

The video explains it all!

Facebook friends, here is the link to vote:

http://bit.ly/aRXxyB

I love using showit sites for my business. Because of their awesome-ness, I have been able to constantly & easily edit my website and continually add new content. Because of those options, they have helped boost my brand and give me an edge with my style of photography.

Now for the awesome news. A few weeks ago, Showit asked everyone to tweet their favorite photographer & showit website. Then, they put together a list of those who stood out the most. I’m on that list!!! Whhhhaaaaaaa?? I checked for a spelling error to see if there is another photographer even remotely similar to my name! But, I am the only Stephen Knuth! I just want to say Thank You to those of you who twittered about me to this contest and what an honor it is to be on the same list for a contest with my name next to those such as Gray Photography, Bob & Dawn Davis, Dane Sanders & Gabriel-Ryan! I know it’s just a nomination but still, I think it’s amazing!!

Now, I have a special assignment just for you! If you can please take a moment to click on this link (http://bit.ly/aRXxyB) and I am the 23rd name down. I’d love it if you vote for me!!.

While your their voting for my category, there are some other areas that they ask you to vote in as well such as best website, best blog, best +site and overall unique brand. By voting in this contest, your going to be doing some people a huge favor by supporting them!

In advance, Thank You so much!!! I love it that you read my blog and give me these amazing opportunities!!

If you haven’t ever checked my website out, click here

Ahhhhhh!!!! I’m SOOOO excited!!!

If your not a photographer and your reading my blog, you may wonder what WPPI is. WPPI is the worlds largest convention where wedding and portrait photographers inspire each other through 1-on-1 chats, fun parties, exceptional presentations and the big trade-show that shows off all the latest & greatest tools for us to grow our businesses with.

For the photographers, I have compiled a list of some great tools for you to use when planning your trip to Vegas next month for WPPI 2010.

Flight:

I apologize ahead of time for not knowing where you are flying in from but Southwest is offering some killer rates to fly into Vegas. The next cheapest airline is JetBlue form what I can see. I get the special deal because I fly from San Diego to Vegas and for that 45min flight it only costs $100 round-trip. It may be different from where you live but if your in SoCal then your in luck because Southwest is ultra cheap!

Hotel:

My friends & I are staying at Excalibur this time around. It’s right across the street from the MGM and its no more than a 10 minute walk into the trade-show. Excalibur is currently running a deal through Hotels.com where you can book a room for $46/night with them! You can buy into that deal, by clicking here. The science behind my thought is this: If you stay at MGM, that hotel is so big that if you calculated the time you would walk from your room there down to the trades-show, it would be near the same amount of time to walk from a hotel across the street to the trade-show. This is my second year at wppi and I can tell you that you will not be in your room very often. Why pay over $130/night for a room that you’ll barely see?

By the way… if you stay at Excalibur, they have a special Food Pass for $29/day that covers entry to their buffet for 3 meals day. You’ll notice that vegas food is crazy expensive so finding food deals like this one will be your friend!!

Last year, wppi was handing out 2 for 1 MGM Grand Buffett passes but you need to find people who are handing those out. MGM Grand Buffett is great and its about $12/per meal.

Free Tradeshow Pass:

My friends at Adorama are giving away FREE passes to those who read my blog. Click here to visit their website and find all the information needed to score that deal! FYI to all the 1st year attendees, the tradeshow pass does cover entry into the Platform talks that are given by Jasmine Star, Dane Sanders, etc. It doesn’t cover the business school or master classes.

Thats all the deals I have for now… if you want more information. Get the latest scoop on twitter!

Follow WPPI on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wppi_2010

To get the scoop on the nighttime events, Follow WPPI-Parties on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wppiparties