Matt and Enna Grazier, of Grazier Photography founded Inspire Photo Seminars with a group of like-minded studios. Thank you Seshu for inviting us to share our ideas about the value of “regional conferencing” and to tell your readers just a little bit about what we are cooking up for Inspire 2012!

We love attending conferences! They give us the chance to see great products, listen to great presenters and to network with incredible colleagues! We are excited to be at the forefront of a new trend of conferencing, which is the smaller more intimate regional conference. Jim Collins, CEO of Pictage, sums up the value of the regional conference perfectly when he wrote about last year's Inspire conference: “the reason I love this conference so much is because it is so relevant to its own community.”

We all know conferences can be tricky … it's easy to leave a conference feeling like you've just glimpsed the glossy surface of the topics presented. The irony for conference presenters is that while it’s difficult to pack rich material into a lecture spot of just one hour (the ability to do this is surely one mark of a gifted teacher), it’s very easy to fill an hour perfectly with a lot of inspiring catchphrases and pretty pictures!

It’s also common for conference attendees to have the sense that the best part of the event was the “in-between” time spent sharing war stories, strategies, ideas, and commonalities with other photographers. Our favorite moments at conferences we’ve attended are the most serendipitous – a chance meeting with a comrade who we get to chat with over coffee – or, if we’re lucky enough, while sharing a fine meal. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve gone home feeling incredibly grateful for these relationships, yet incredibly sad that we can’t easily continue those conversations over coffee, wine, or shared photography jobs simply because we live so far away from each other. Much of our business success is due to these photographers who have shared their own ideas and expert knowledge in happenstance, in-between, serendipitous moments.

Another common disappointment at the large conferences is that the talented speakers and experts who are the biggest draw to attend large conferences are often inaccessible, either surrounded by an almost impenetrable group of fans, friends, and colleagues, or just dropping in for their portion of the schedule and not participating in the greater community for the rest of the conference. Even if they work hard to be accessible, the sheer volume of people at a large conference makes it almost impossible to interact closely with these experts.

Each of the things that frustrated us about large conferences motivated us to put together our own conference that would address these three shortcomings and fact our approach to these shortcomings forms the building blocks of our conference community. We wanted to create an event that has the diversity, breadth, and spontaneity of a conference, but the depth of information and personal connections that are more often associated with a retreat.

Depth. Our sessions are deep. Instructors are selected almost half a year prior to the conference, and we communicate with them throughout the months that they are preparing their lectures. We give them 1.5 hour time slots for their sessions, and we encourage them to focus on addressing the needs of the mid- to advanced-level studio owner. We want them to deliver meat! This approach ensures that their content will be relevant to the beginners as well as the more seasoned photographers. This shouldn’t intimidate the less experienced studio owner, it just helps us make sure that we’re meeting the needs of the larger professional community.

Community. We have built the schedule and physical layout of the conference around the concept that the peer-to-peer networking and mentoring opportunities are of equal value to the conference sessions. There is plenty of time for impromptu mentoring and networking, and we also have scheduled time for 1:1 and small round-table mentoring with our speakers and several of our sponsors (for example, Jared Bauman of ShootDotEdit will lead a small group to whip their pricing and packaging into shape during his allotted mentoring time). All meals are included in the conference fee (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and we eat together. We have built plenty of time in the schedule for attendees to gather and socialize and because of this structure wonderful things happen! Attendees get more than an idea, more than motivation, more than a plan to move forward; they build real relationships with those who want to help them succeed… relationships that continue beyond the conference and are easily sustainable because everyone is from the same region.

The image above shows one of our innovations this year: a private online community for our conference attendees, sponsors and speakers. Everyone is invited to join and interact during all of 2012, including the months before and after the conference. Conference-goers can manage their class schedule, chat with attendees, speakers, and sponsors, download class materials, and schedule private meetings with others. We are excited to see how our participants utilize this unique tool!

Connections. Our teachers are not always well-known – most of them aren’t on the lecture circuit, and they haven’t proposed their workshop sessions just to become known as “rock star” wedding photographers. They are busy, hard-working photographers who are committed to raising the standards of business and art of photography within their own region, because they recognize that by raising the barre across the region, every studio stands to benefit. We’ve chosen our instructors in part because they’ve expressed interest in learning and participating in this community, and we pay for their lodging and conference fees to enable them to participate fully in the conference community. We know that part of the reason that they are teaching is that they also wish to attend – and not just as an expert, but as a fellow studio owner who recognizes that we can all learn from each other.

Regionality. Oh yeah, did you notice this word that I’ve repeated throughout this post? Region. Inspire is a regional conference. The national conferences are definitely important, offering polished and inspiring speakers with dazzling success stories, diverse trade-shows, and incredible opportunities to mingle with photographers who we either know or admire from across long distances. However, we’ve found that within our region (and perhaps others), photographers are starved for structured networking opportunities, and for relationships with local colleagues. It’s important to cultivate relationships locally: this networking provides emergency backup and other skilled resources within easy reach, and gives opportunity to become more familiar with the local markets. And, with enough critical mass, we believe that a community can actually drive the market – in style, policy, practice, and culture.

We have heard many photographers say they don’t recognize all the names of our speakers. While that presents a small marketing challenge for us, the tradeoff is that every single person who attends inspire – paying ticket-holder, speaker, sponsor, exhibitor, and members of the planning team – will benefit greatly from genuine, deep relationship building with successful studios who are right in their neighborhood. Our speakers are true experts, and we want to facilitate their connection with other photographers within their region. These are relationships that can continue into the wedding season and beyond. We’ve seen photographers meet at Inspire and hire each other as associates, cover for each other in emergencies, and share incredibly helpful information to see each others’ studios grow. We’ve even heard from one person exclaim, “I’ve vacationed with people I met at Inspire!” This was the biggest compliment, because it shows just how well people in our conference community can connect with each other.

You may work alone, but you don’t need to build your business alone. Everyone who attends Inspire finds a welcoming community willing to help.

Be one of the first 5 to use this PROMO/DISCOUNT CODE: 2012TIFFIN and receive $50 off your registration.

In our next post, we will share our strategy for choosing your path in a conference agenda so that you may leave the conference fulfilled and ready to tackle your business!

Today's guest post is by Jerod Foster, an editorial and natural history photographer based in Lubbock, Texas. His book, Storytellers: A Photographer's Guide To Developing Themes and Creating Stories With Pictures, was published in 2011. Follow @jerodfoster on Twitter.

Many thanks to Seshu for providing me the opportunity to guest appear on such a resourceful blog. Once again, the ability to create positive relationships over an ever-growing online community of photographers astounds me.

Speaking of community, if you’re reading this post, there’s no doubt that a good many of you came here via a link posted on Twitter or Facebook, perhaps Google+, your own RSS feed, or a variety of other means of connecting you to, well, here. Word spreads fast in the photography world, especially when that world spans across a very diverse and prolific online community. Needless to say, the photography community, online or not, is large. Very large.

It’s so large and diverse that it’s often difficult to distinguish who we are at times. Just think about it for a moment. We’re so vast and varietal, and in some cases so niche, that we’ve become enclaves of particular areas of the entire art and craft of photography. At the same time, however, we know we all relate to each other on one level or another, but what?

A quandary? Perhaps. Maybe we can be a bit deductive in finding out just who we are as a community. Consider this an exercise in getting to the essence of photographers in general.

Let’s break some of the diversity down by types of photographers, starting with some of the more obvious. A lot of us are wedding, engagement, bridal, and family photographers, established in a particularly special and popular area of photography that have, if you think about it, one of the most important jobs in the world. Others of us are photojournalists, visualizing the life around us for a variety of outlets, including the tried and true newspaper industry, magazine publications, and a boatload of online resources for both traditional and new media content. Still, there are those of us that concentrate solely on the natural world, training our vision and gear on awe-inspiring landscapes and the wildlife that populate such environments. We can’t leave sports shooters of the list, either, since they carry quite a bit of the load for both personal and media audiences (globally, I might add).

Story is not something new, but it is indeed a constant. It’s what each and every one of us as a community (online or not) has in common.

Hold up, though. I’m creating a rather clear separation of the types of photographers out there (I also realize the listing is quite truncated). It’s also apparent among the community that not all of us are 100% one type or the other. Many of us that sling a camera over our shoulder do so with just as much commitment to shooting a family as we do the magazine story assignment we picked up last week. I know sports photographers that can shoot a heckuva wedding, and vice versa. Lest we forget, there are specializations upon specializations in the photography field as well, ranging from different styles of portraiture and cultural photography, to underwater shooting, science and medical image making, to fine art forms of the craft. Some of us are primarily focused on publishing in coffee table books and magazines, while most of us will never see the inside of what those that do call the land of the yellow border (although that shouldn’t stop one from trying).

Finally, but certainly not the least, there are those of us that do not necessarily aspire to be labeled a “type” of photographer, but instead are content and productively happy being generalists and avid shooters. This position is true for many, if not the most, of us, and it includes all levels of photographic achievement/aptitude, from the most basic hobbyist to the amateur wondering if she can earn some side money photographing her neighbors’ children, to the emerging professional right out of university.

So, if the photography community is so diverse, what keeps us together, stumbling upon (if you will) other parts of the industry, different shooters, and strange and interesting sources of visual inspiration? No matter what type of photography you lean toward, the thing that connects each and every one of us is the fact that we’re all telling stories with the images we produce. Story, for that matter, has been a part of what connects us all since the dawn of time! Story and storytelling is what and how we use the information we are continuously consuming to learn and interpret our world. Photography, in this sense, is one of the most important modes of telling story and has been since its commercial inception in the early 19th century.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that storytelling is vital to being a photographer. In some ways, it’s our responsibility to tell stories with images. Not in a cliché way either—I believe that we photographers (no matter what level of professional or hobbyist achievement) are a very important part of what keeps this world in tune with itself. Whether you’re shooting a global humanitarian campaign, a national advertisement, or your child’s first birthday, you have something to pass along with your images, and it keeps informing those around you.

That being said, I also believe that in order to grow as a photographer, we have to tie quite a few things together—things that are discussed quite a bit by the online community I mentioned earlier. Gear, technique, technical aptitude, vision, visual language, style—all are used in order to increase how we see and create compelling images. In addition, and more importantly, each helps us tell stories (they can get in the way as well; a post for another time). Our job is to make sure we’re doing just that. We may improve as photographers, but in essence, we grow as storytellers.

At its core, photography is meant to tell story. At our core, we are storytellers. Whether you’re just starting out, or you have shot professionally for the past 30 years, whether you’re in the studio or on some exotic location, whether you’re shooting solo or as part of a budgeted production crew, story is the central element of the visuals you produce. Story is not something new, but it is indeed a constant. It’s what each and every one of us as a community (online or not) has in common.

We are, in essence, a community of visual storytellers.

This is a guest post by Trudy Hamilton, a portrait and lifestyle photographer and blogger, originally from Florida and now residing the the San Francisco Bay area. She can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Most photographers that I know enjoy the adventure that travel brings into their lives. Whether it be personal travel, such as visiting family, or business travel, such as the destination wedding or a location commercial shoot, travel is both a pleasure and necessity. However, unless we're all Joe McNally, we probably don't travel as much as we'd like to.

One of the best reasons to travel is simply to experience the culture of another, hopefully though an open mind, heart and camera. However, you don't have to travel all of the time to experience and photograph another culture. An exciting and economical way to do so is to explore the cultural events of your community. I photographed my first community cultural event in 2006 and I have been interested in them ever since. The beauty of people, music, food, fashion and uniqueness has always excited me and appealed to me. This is why I travel, but also why my mind and heart can travel even when I am home.

A few good reasons to embrace your local community cultural events are:

1) It's a learning opportunity. If you are open to it, a community cultural event can be a learning experience for you. Certainly I could have read an article on the Obon Festival, but I chose to attend one in Japantown of San Jose, CA a few weeks ago. I have been to Japan, but certainly couldn't pick up and go again a few weeks ago. But by attending the festival, I chatted with and photographed Japanese, Japanese Americans and others at the event, listened to the powerful yet soothing sounds of the San Jose Taiko and enjoyed gyoza–some of the same activities I did while I was actually in Japan a few years ago. For several hours, it was like I was transformed from traditional Bay Area Cali and merged into Japanese culture.

2) It's a photographic opportunity. Certainly most photographers desire paid work versus unpaid work, especially the ones running a business. However, sometimes it is good to photograph truly for the sake of creation. Cultural photojournalism differs from my portraiture work. I use different camera settings, I have different compositional ideas and a different intent and message with every photograph that I create at a community cultural event. It's great exercise for me for when I do have paid event photography and great exercise in my creativity and storytelling, in general.

3) It's a networking opportunity. I am an introvert. Though I am not shy, as introversion does not always equate to shyness, I am usually uncomfortable and drained by traditional networking events and conventions. However, at a community cultural event, such as one I attended a month ago in San Francisco, Juneteenth, I can stay below radar and only photograph if I choose, or chat with people who ask me about my work simply from seeing me with what they call a big camera. At this aforementioned event, someone came up and talked with me. I ended up booking them as a client on the spot. So not only was it a great cultural experience (even just to embrace stories of Black people in America–ones that I could see in the very skin of the men I photographed below, who are only a few generations removed from slavery) but it was a business opportunity as well.

Acknowledging, embracing and understanding the cultures of others doesn't just make us better photographers, it makes us better humans. So I encourage you to view your city's website or a site like Yelp and look for the next event in your area, whether it be a Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Filipino, Jamaican or Irish festival (I've been to all of these types) and check it out. It may truly be a learning, photographic and networking opportunity for you as it has been for me. Embrace the true beauty within yourself, by embracing the beauty of others.

This is a guest post by Knoxville, Tennessee wedding photographer Shannon Kelley who has set up a successful photography community. She can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Back in January of this year, after attending a Dane Sanders workshop, I made a commitment to find community. Not online or Facebook friends, but real live community.

You see, it is so easy for me to sit behind a computer, chat on Facebook with some clients and other photographers, post some blog posts, read some others and think that that is enough. But I knew that I was missing something, local support and community. So I started doing things, little things. And I ended up shocked. Shocked to find many other photographers that were craving the same thing. Photographers who were supportive and nice. And who wanted to get together and just chat about life and photos.

Five months later and lots of those little steps, Knoxville now has a community co-op studio that my friend and I run, a Facebook group of 250+, monthly shootouts, SMUG's, and best of all, we all have the support of one another! It has been such an amazing thing to witness and be part of. I had no idea how reaching out and embracing local photographers would change my whole sense of who I am as a photographer.

My challenge to you: Leave your desk and computer screen in this next week for a real life connection. Reach out, don't get hurt if someone tells you no because there are people out there who won't get it. Then keep doing it. Take a little step every week and see how your support and community builds!

Here Are Some Of The Little Steps You Can Take:

1) Search one of your fave forums to see who else from your area is on there and then connect with them

2) Have a local photographer whose blog you stalk? Leave a comment or email them

3) Invite a local photographer to coffee

4) Search Facebook for a local photography group

5) Invite a JSO photographer to go on a photo walk with you. Learn from each other

6) Be nice and friendly when you see other photographer's out doing shoots. Maybe give them your card and start a conversation

Does your town or area not have a local photographer group? Or are the local resources available to you limited? Then be a path maker! Start doing things that build community in a larger sense.

1) If your town doesn't have a photographer group, start one on Facebook and organize some get togethers
2) Ask a local photographer to teach on something for your group
3) Organize a shootout (details here)
4) Find out if other groups are meeting in your area and go! (check to see if there are SMUG's around or other locally ran groups)
5) If you are on the hunt for a studio, consider a co-op or community one that will help save costs and build relationships for you!

A Note On Shootouts:

Shootouts have been one of the best ways here in Knoxville for us to reach out and build community. While these can be time consuming and detailed, they can also be basic and so easy to put together that you could be having a shootout by next weekend.

Here is a simple way to do a shootout: Ask someone you know to be a model, pick a cool location, tell the model to wear fun and funky clothes, invite another or several photographers along. Bam! You got yourself a little fun shootout.

There are tons of ways to make shootouts more complicated but if you aren't into all the planning of it, you can still do one and keep in simple. This is how we organize photographer shootouts in Knoxville

Here Are Some Images From Our Recent Local Shoots:

So what do you think? Are you ready to start or be a part of a photography community? What benefits do you see in collaborating with other photographers? What kind of road-blocks are you experiencing? Do you think you can or want to overcome them? Speak your mind in the comments section below. We love to hear from you!