Florida Professional Photographer’s Annual Photography Convention 2023 (FOCUS)
The Florida Professional Photographer’s Association (FPP) held their Annual Photography Convention in Orlando this past weekend (July 27-30th) at the Holiday Inn Resorts Orlando Lake Buena Vista, just outside of Orlando.
FPP has long been an organization with tremendous photography talent, and has always put on some amazing conventions with some of the best speakers available to educate those in attendance. This year was no different.
I probably have attended the FPP Convention in over 20 years, and I will admit that a lot has changed. The trade show, which used to be held in very large banquet halls, have been substantially reduced to a much smaller conference room, but there are still some very good vendors in attendance. In years past, alot of the vendors traveled from outside the state to present their products to those at the convention. Nowadays, most of the out of state vendors don’t travel to the state conventions, you normally only find them at the National shows, which is unfortunate as it helped non-profit organizations like the Florida Professional Photographers (FPP) to fund various educational opportunities for their members.
Although the trade show was not large in size this year, they are working on growing the trade show for next year. They did feature a bunch of great vendors and allowed photographers opportunities to see some great products in person. There were several great vendors displaying their products such as Reedy Photo, LVL Up Imaging, Luminar Neo, Pro Gear Orlando, Headshot Tools, and a new innovation from GoShelter. Plus the opportunity to sign up to attended the Florida School of Photography put on by the FPP. This is another great opportunity to get some hands-on education with some great photographers. But enough about the trade show.
This year the convention offered some amazing speakers. Before the convention even began, Diana Robles hosted a pre-conference all-day education event on maternity photography, which from what I was told was very good and informative. The convention featured some amazing speakers such as current PPA President Kira Derryberry, who was extremely entertaining and very informative, speaking about headshots. Larry Lourcey talking about salon competitions, Christie Newell on Boudoir, Brad Barton, Toni Harryman, and the very entertaining Kevin Newsome talking about his life-changing experience hiking in the Appalachian Trail. And last, but certainly not least, the Photo Bomb Podcast held their last official podcast live on Saturday night at the convention. The podcast which features Boo Perry and Gary Hughes have been entertaining listeners of their podcasts for years.
Another benefit of attending the FPP convention is the opportunity to see some of the amazing Salon Competition Prints that merited from the print competitions. There were some very talented photographers that were on display for everyone to see.
The convention as always was very informative allowing those to socialize with other photographers from throughout the state, and for them to learn and continue to grow as photographers.
If you have attended this great convention, I highly recommend that you check out this convention next year. You always learn something from attending this convention!
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