If you follow me, Jeff, indigosilver studio, or The Shoot Space on social media, you’ve probably seen us posting recently about the degrees, awards, and merits we received from Professional Photographers of America at ImagingUSA 2017 this month. So what does all this stuff mean? Why is it important for photographers? In Part 1, we will explain what ImagingUSA is.
ImagingUSA 2017
Photo courtesy Chris Brehmer
ImagingUSA is the annual convention hosted by Professional Photographers of America (PPA). PPA is the world’s largest international nonprofit association for photographers. This year’s 2017 convention was held in San Antonio, Texas. It hosted about 11,000 photographers from all over the world. It is one of the greatest learning opportunities for photographers to learn about business, lighting, posing, marketing, and all other aspects of photography.
Award & Degree Ceremony
One of the events at ImagingUSA is the annual Award & Degree Ceremony. At this ceremony, photographers receive the awards and degrees they’ve earned throughout the previous year. Stay tuned over the coming weeks as we post lots of pictures from our recent trip to San Antonio, or check out our instagram feed.
International Photography Instructors
Okay, I needed to say it just once… it sounds so cool, right? “International Photography Instructors”. Yeah. Maybe that’s pushing it a little. 🙂 At this international convention, Jeff and I were invited to teach a full-day class on the business of photography. When Jeff and I first opened indigosilver, we were flat broke and living in the basement of our studio. Now, we can be open about it, but those were pretty dark days. Literally. A basement with no windows is the darkest thing ever.
Photo courtesy Chris Brehmer
Anyway, PPA’s educational programs were instrumental in teaching these two artists how to be successful businesspeople. Seven years later, we are exceeding PPA’s annual benchmarks for studio cost-effectiveness. This means we have a good balance between our expenses and our profits. Lots of photographers struggle with high expenses and end up hurting financially, or worse, go out of business. We were invited to share our story and how we’ve turned our studio around. We taught really dry topics like business and math and numbers and equations for 8 hours straight. And I am happy to announce that not one student fell asleep! Even better, everyone showed interest, stayed engaged, and asked a ton of insightful questions. It was so fulfilling to see our story resonate with so many other photographers.
Photos courtesy Chris Brehmer
A Reunion of Friends
One of the most fun aspects of ImagingUSA 2017 was reuniting with friends from all over the world. I’ve started to collect selfies as my convention souvenirs. Check out this lil slide show I put together of all my cell phone shots throughout the week:
Join us for our next post, when we explain the merit system, medals, and degrees!