One of the challenges of owning a creative business is finding the inspiration and motivation to keep growing and changing, both as artists and as business owners. A big part of our growth has been WPPI – an organization dedicated to wedding and portrait photographers.  Every year, we have attended the annual conference, soaking up knowledge and coming out inspired for a new year of shooting.

Each year the conference holds a print competition, where thousands of prints are judged live over 2 long days, and those that achieve a designation of “Silver” or higher are displayed in a gallery for all of the conference attendees.   The first few years we attended, we would walk through the gallery, amazed and inspired at the work we would see.  We would say to ourselves, “Wow, maybe someday that could be us…”

Last year we worked up our courage, and instead decided to say “Why not us?” and submitted our first entries.  We were ecstatic to have one print hang, but after seeing so many of our images judged, we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us.  Those 2 days inspired us throughout 2014.  We sought education, pushed ourselves to shoot more thoughtful, well-composed, well-lit, personal images.  We entered online competitions to get feedback and help narrow down our best images.  We learned a lot about fine art printing, and were honestly amazed to see our images transformed into works of art in the hands of a master printer.

I think a year of preparation only made me more nervous for WPPI this year.  As we sat down for another round of print judging, we honestly felt that everything we had worked for throughout the year was more than enough reward.

So thank you thank  you thank you to our couples who let us into your lives this year and trusted us.  You inspire us to get up in the morning, and we only hope that we can return something equally special to you.  Thank you, especially to Stacy and Shaye, Caitlin and Chris, Kelly and Joe, Katherine and Peter, and Julie and Alex, whose images below achieved scores of Silver and above to hang in WPPI’s 2015 gallery.  We are so lucky to work with you, and we are looking forward to another year!