Hello again,

For the non-photographers reading this, and even some photographers, you may be asking what is WPPI?  WPPI stands for Wedding & Portrait Photographers International.  It is a yearly convention and trade show for photographers.  Where is the first place you would think of for a gathering of over 10,000 photographers from around the world....Las Vegas.  This was the final year at the Paris/Bally's hotels.  Apparently the convention has outgrown the space available.

Anyway, there were MANY classes on many different aspects of photography and the trade show was awesome too.  So many ways to spend money....and so little money.   I attended sessions on Saturday and Sunday that focused solely on school photography.  One of the things that caught both mine and my wife's attention was the green screen being used in schools.  I had heard of green screens and actually have a chroma-blue (as opposed to green) backdrop.  In these sessions though, the presented several different ways to light it and software to automatically extract the subject from the green background.  With the subject removed from the background, you can now place them on any one of several different backgrounds.

I finally received my green screen from Backdrop Outlet (www.backdropoutlet.com).  Just as soon as I can get around well enough to set things up, I am going to try it out with my daughters and see how the software works.  I may have some new things I can offer parents this coming school year.  The neat thing about this screen is that it is a flex-out screen, think folding car shade except bigger.  This means I have less equipment I have to carry to a school and less to set-up and tear-down.

This is part one as I am planning to tell you about several of the other awesome things I saw at WPPI so come back again soon.

Paul