One of the challenging things about running a business based on creativity is constantly pushing ourselves to learn and grow.  Every year we try to do this by attending conferences during the winter months when we don’t have as many weddings to shoot.  (And hey, we can’t really complain about an excuse to head to a warmer climate for a few days!)

This is the third year in a row that we have attended WPPI – Wedding and Portrait Photographers International – which is one of the biggest wedding photography conferences in the country.  It’s an amazing opportunity to take classes from and be surrounded by some of the best wedding photographers in the world, and we always come away from it humbled, inspired, energized, and excited to move our art and business forward in the new season.

Every year there is a print competition, where some of the best photographers in the industry anonymously submit their prints for judgement.  Those earning the highest scores, a “Silver Award” or above, are hung in a gallery exhibit at the conference for everybody in attendance to view.  For the past two years, walking through the gallery has been a huge inspiration for us, as we dreamed of having our work hang side by side with the some of the photographers that we admire the most.

Well, this year we finally overcame our nerves and submitted a few of our own prints for the competition.  We spent the first two days of WPPI sitting in dark judging rooms waiting for our images to come up and listening to the critiques of the 2,000+ prints submitted.  Let me tell you, we have never learned so much in two days.  Every time one of our images came up, our hearts started beating wildly.  We felt like we had put our hearts out in public to be judged, and we saw so many images (both ours and others) come close but not quite do well enough to hang.

And then finally, towards the end of the second day, one of our favorite images from Dan and Kim’s October wedding came up.  Kim wore her grandmother’s pearl necklace as a bracelet at her wedding, and this image captured a brief moment between Kim, her mom and her grandmother as Kim was getting ready.  The connection and love between them are so strong that it has been one of our favorite images all year.  These moments are the ones that inspire us to get up in the morning.

Of course, the judges didn’t know the backstory, but something in the moment connected and this print was our first ever to win a Silver Award and to hang in the WPPI print competition gallery.

We are so grateful to the amazing families we get to work with who open themselves up to us and let us into their lives.  You inspire and move us every day.

Generations – WPPI 2014 Honors of Excellence Silver Award