SWPP Convention, London, continued.

What a great week. The SWPP  convention gets better ever year. I heard that there were 17,000 tickets sold this year, which is astounding! This is my fourth year of attending, and third year as a speaker.I enjoyed this one better than any others.

It looked for a while this year as though I wouldn’t be attending. For a start, I wasn’t going to know until a few days before leaving, whether I could manage without crutches, as I couldn’t have travelled if I still had them. I also had the added issue of the bad weather threatening to stop me from travelling. There were no problems on the day though and I got there safely.

I attended some business seminars on Tuesday and Wednesday, which were very inspiring, with some great speakers on show. Thursday I decided it was time to be a tourist. We went in to London and visited Madame Tussauds and the London Dungeon. They were great fun although the miles I walked to get there certainly took it’s toll on my leg and the cast!

Friday was the day of my first Superclass. I spent the morning having a wander around the trade show and preparing for the afternoon. I had a great group and it was sold out as well which was nice. We were covering lighting techniques for wedding photography, and enjoyed a great shoot around the hotel and nearby area, with our amazing model Natalie Oag, who was down from Caithness as well. It was very cold, but as usual Natalie was the ultimate professional and never complained once. She’s definitely the best model I’ve worked with and it made my job so much easier working with someone I can rely on, so I could concentrate on talking to the group, knowing that Natalie would do a great job.  I was very tired after the class, which was 2-6pm and had an early start on Saturday morning for my second class, which was on Post Wedding Shoots, or Trash The Dress as it is sometimes called. This was a 9am-1pm class and it was a joint superclass with Sofie Louca, from Amorphia Photography in Cyprus. We again had a great group and enjoyed a fun shoot around the hotel, despite the rain. Again we had Natalie modelling and she looked amazing in Sofie’s black dress, albeit a bit cold. We also covered how we use photoshop techniques to finish the images (well Sofie took the lead on this part as I don’t use many techniques!). By Saturday afternoon I was shattered but managed to attend Mitche Graf’s superclass which was inspirational. Saturday night I was too tired and sore to do much so just had a bite to eat and a couple of drinks in the bar before heading to my room to pack for leaving in the morning.

I would like to thank SWPP for inviting me to speak again, and will look forward to hopefully returning in 12 months time. Also big thanks to Natalie for being a great model as usual, to Sofie and Paul for joining me in the Superclass,and to all the people who gave up half of a day to come and see what I do, which is a great honour for me. This is sounding like an oscar speech now, but I’d also like to thank everyone I met and never managed to meet during the week for their welcomes and continuing friendships and I look forward to seeing you all again very soon.

Here are just a few images from the two classes: