I LOVE learning! I always have some sort of book on my shelf having to do with business, parenting or about faith. I am also always in some sort of photography class, as a photography business owner and photography teacher, I am always prefecting my craft. I really believe that it’s super duper important to invest in high quality education! So when Conference 12, sponsored by Seniorologie, announced that they were hosting an educational conference dedicated to everything about Senior Portraits, I jumped at the chance.

The Conference was held at the GORGEOUS Saguaro Hotel in Scottsdale Arizona. With lots of vivid colors and artful decor, this place was a ton of fun to stay at for a group of photographers. Even though it was hard to be away from my family for five days, I had a blast meeting new friends and learning a ton about how to run a better business. But I think my favorite part was being able to finally meet some of my favorite online friends that I have been chatting with for years, and to finally have a real face to face conversation with them!

I decided to road trip to Arizona with some fun girl friends who are also Southern California shooters. We had so much fun getting to know each other and talked everything Senior Portraits for five days! My husband would never let me do this! Tara Rochelle & Kiwi Ashby were my awesome roomates and partners in crime. I love these ladies!

It was so fun being able to talk to fellow business owners who are also moms. Most of my friends are stay at home moms, and I have a hard time relating sometimes. It was glorious to be around 60 other women, who mostly are moms too, and talk about our dreams and who chase after them with all their hearts.So after a superfun welcome party on the first night, our first day at the conference started with the fabulous Spanki Mills. She spoke about the Keys to Effective Client Communication. I loved looking at all the gorgeous images from Spanki, all very Anthropologie inspired. She gave us all lots of amazing tips to up the anty of how I can better communicate to my current and future clients. I definitely walked away with some great ideas that I plan on installing ASAP. I fell in love with Spanki and her totally authentic personality. She is a jewel of a woman and truly inspirational photographer.

Our second inspirational speaker was the fabulous Olivia Renea, who walked us through her Spokesmodel program. She has a super successful rep program filled with lots of great girls. I love my Foxy Model program, but I plan on implementing some of Olivia’s ideas for sure. Her tagline is “lets take pretty pictures” and it’s definitely what she gives her girls.

Then came along the fabulous Laura Winslow. This woman is so full of life that it was a joy to learn from her. She taught us all about how to be better at blogging. Cough cough. I know it’s hard to keep up with blogging for most photographers, so she was able to give me lots of strategies to become more consistent with blogging and how to provide more valuable content for my readers. She also gave us tons of WordPress plugins that will make my life a lot easier and my blog more effective. Win! 

And after a fabulous lunch, we were introduced to the amaing True Moa. I truthfully had never heard of True, and it’s probably because she is pretty new on the scene. Her work is incredible, so it’s no surprise that her name is everywhere and her work has gotten tremendous recognition. Trua is not a sweet heart, but she is phenomenal at creating super creative concept shoots. She walked us through her creative process and showed us how we too can create amazing conceptual shoots on a budget. I really enjoyed this section and it was fun to see a genious at work.

With a notebook full of notes, it was time to start shooting. The way that photographers have fun is to take pictures of super stylized models. One of my all time favorite photographers, Misti Davis of Pink Fly Photography. It was so fun getting to shoot along side Misti. I have a been a big fan of hers for a long time, so it was super fun getting to know her while photographing some of her gorgeous seniors! So if you haven’t figured out yet, all the beautiful images shown throughout this post, are from my first shoot out. 🙂

So did I have fun? Yes! Did I learn a lot? Yes! Did I make new friends that will last for years to come? Yes!
I have a lot more photos to share from a couple more shoots. I decided to break up this potentially giant post into three posts, one dedicated to each day of learning. So stay tuned over the next couple of weeks. Yay!