“Once you stop learning, you start dying” – Albert Einstein

I am a strong believer that no matter where you are in life you should never stop learning. I’m constantly learning new things in my personal life (like learning to scuba dive – so much fun!) or  new things to advance my photography craft and business. The past couple of years I’ve been educating myself through webinars but this year I had the opportunity to get back into hands on learning by attending Shutterfest, an amazing photo conference in St. Louis. During the two days of Shutterfest you can attend classes or spend the whole time shooting with models and other photographers. You make it what you want! And the party doesn’t end when the sun goes down – there are shoots that go on into the early morning hours for all the die hard creatives.

This was my first year attending, and there were some fantastic speakers, so I decided to go to the classes during the day and then set up shoots at other times. I had traveled with some photo friends from Denver, so we made a week out of it, giving us plenty of time to photograph on the days prior and following the actual conference. I must admit that I was not prepared for how overwhelming Shutterfest can be! So much going on all the time and not a lot of sleep – I actually didn’t do as many photo shoots as I had planned but the ones I did do were fantastic. I loved that I got play around with some fashion forward senior photo ideas that I can bring back to my seniors this year.

I left Shutterfest so inspired! I came home with a long to do list and tons of new ideas to try out. I can’t wait to get started!