Hangin’ With Three Famous Dudes

On the last day of the WPPI trade show, I ran into my buddy Gary Fong of LightSphere fame. Gary was there signing his new book – Snaps. It’s kind of a history of his success in the business over these past several years. Gary started just like a lot of us in the wedding business, but with his talent, smarts, and a few breaks along the way, he has had a very successful career – actually about 3 careers so far in is life. One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was, "If you want to be successful, hang with successful people and copy what they do. And, if you can't hang with them at least find out what they do - via books, tapes, seminars, etc. and copy it." If you want a peek into how Gary achieved his successes, check Snaps out at his website right here – a very interesting read.

And speaking of successful dudes, we had a wonderful dinner with Ron Nichols and his beautiful wife Carol. Ron was presenting his Photoshop Retouching Palette at the WPPI convention – very handy, by the way for the Wedding/Portrait photog – it automates the retouching chores very nicely. You can learn more info on it right here. Also joining us for dinner was Peter Howlett and his wife Fran – two of the nicest people in the world. Peter is the genius behind ProSelect software, rapidly becoming the de-facto standard for wedding/portrait studios wanting the best solution out there for editing, presenting, selling, and tracking your studio sales. I’m working as one of the beta testers for ProSelect so I'll keep you posted as things proceed. That's a picture of all six of us spending the day in the Valley of Fire right outside Las Vegas earlier in the day.

Also joining us for dinner was Jerry Ghionis from Australia. Jerry is a phenomenal photographer from down under - he is considered to be one of the top ten wedding shooters in the world. It was truly a pleasure to meet he and his wife Georgina. Jerry operates two very successful studios and is looking to open a third “Signature” studio upon his return. I have to say, he struck me as a sharp guy who knows what he's doing. Did I mention that his work is “knock–out” gorgeous, too. Check out his new website at right here. He is a wedding photog you will want to keep your eyes on.