SPA – Senior Portrait Artists, San Diego

SPA or Senior Portrait Artists is a niche organization devoted to the education and advancement of Photographers that photograph High School Seniors. This year it was held here in San Diego at the Hotel Del Coronado.

Last week I received a call from Edythe Blackwell at BWC PhotoLab in Dallas, who does all my printing, asking if I had time to help her with her booth at the show, if so, they would sponsor my attendance to the seminars.
I obviously jumped at the chance since it would be:
One, great to see Edythe and help her out with anything she needed,
Two, this is an area of my business that I would like to develop and offer to my clients here in San Diego starting this year.
And Three, I wanted to make some industry connections both here and nationally that were involved in this area for future ideas/help/comraderie, etc.

Well, Edythe has always been so great to me. I met her in Austin for a friend’s presentation at Austin PPA. She is one of the most hard-working people I know and she doesn’t stop or slow down ever. And it’s all about her clients, she really wants each and everyone happy.
Please excuse the commercial, but if you are a Photographer looking for a Pro Photo Lab, I’d seriously put BWC on that short list. You will appreciate the quality and the attention to customer service they provide.

The education aspect kicked off with a big ol’ bang. Larry Peters who is a pretty big deal in the High School Senior world led off the first day. And what I got most out of that, was that photographing seniors so very different in structure than photographing families and babies. Everything from the session, to proofing , to products offered. Paramount knowledge I was receiving right off the bat.
The rest of the week I sat through just as insightful and just as informative programs delivered by TRU which does demographic studies on teens and twenty-somethings, Tasra Dawson was there talking about video implementation and video promos, as well as her own project called Teen Identity, Rod ‘Awesome’ Evans and Brian Demint did live shoots.

What I noticed while socializing with the other participants, was that the attendees were a veritable “who’s who” in the Senior Portrait industry. I’d often be drinking a beer at the bar at the end of the night and having a casual conversation with a cool, down to earth guy, only to later find out from one of his groupies, that it was a Photographer from a $2 million/year photo studio! Most of the people I met were from the Mid-West, and only did High School Seniors.
So I just wanted to take the time to say “Hi, and great meeting you all” to some of the cool people I met this weekend, Mark Ellis, Ken Kneringer, Teri Fode. Amy and Maurice Wright, and Geri Goodale were a couple of the rare San Diego photographers at the event.
I even bumped into some people I recognized from Texas, Chuck and Abby from Vasara Photography who I met through the APPA. And Ross Benton, who was there representing Canon. He, I and Edythe all hung out and talked Texas. The best part was taking them down to Imperial Beach and making them eat a carne asada burrito from Sombrero’s, and a walk on the pier, unfortunately it didn’t have the desired effect of having them swear-off Tex-Mex for life.

All in all, it was a wonderful event and opportunity. And I can’t thank Edythe and BWC for having me there.