Wild West Photo Fest in Casper, Wyoming

I hope you all had a wonderful three day weekend. Mine went by way too fast and it was a real winner! On Thursday afternoon I drove up I-25 to Casper Wyoming for the Wild West Photo Fest. Wyoming Camera Outfitters , 307 Magazine , and Canon USA kicked off the festival with a talk and presentation from none other than famed western photographer David R. Stoeklein. It was such an inspiring seminar and got my creative juices back on track. The rest of the weekend consisted of workshops, photo walks, all with coaching from Canon representatives.

The weekend also consisted of me buying a new camera, the new Canon 70D. I was fortunate enough to put my hands around it before it hit the shelves. And boy what a machine. I’m still getting acquainted with it so a more thorough review will come soon.

We also attended macro workshops and time-lapse workshops. Both very informative . It was cool learning new things and re-learning functions that had fallen back in my repertoire.  I was not opposed to attending a beginner workshop because I know I can always pick up a little something that didn’t register in the early days. This time for me was different focusing functions in the camera.

Once the festival kicked off on Saturday afternoon, models had been hired for the event for us to learn with Canon reps about off-camera flash and other shooting techniques. This was a sweet couple. I hope they really liked each other because they were instructed to hold this scene for quite a while!

This little girl was happy to sit in the car with the burger and milkshake….

…until she found out it wasn’t real! Her momma said she would take her out for a real milkshake afterwards.

One man brought his parrot to join in the festivities.

Live music filled the street….

…while an enthusiastic fire twirler showed off some creative stunts.

Then came the last exciting part of the festival. The Wild West Photo Fest contest. Earlier last month, 307 Magazine opened their site up accepting up to five of your best images of and in Wyoming.

With a few a hundred entries and the top 150 displayed, all five of my entries were hung. I placed First in the Cowboy Life category with “Ponying Alice”. Wahoo!  My heart jumped into my belly and I grew a little weak.

The perma-grin and the weakness persisted once I got to “Rope ‘Em and Choke ‘Em” and discovered I had beat out all of these amazing photographs and won Grand Prize for the entire contest. Can you believe it!

I’m still in shock and am deeply honored to have been recognized at this event.

Now I have to ask, where do I go from here? Well, along with my 70D, I purchased the Pixma Pro-10 Canon printer to make true fine-art prints right from my own camera and computer. All of the top 150 photographs on display were printed from this printer at 13×19 inches. The colors, tones, and density are so true and accurate, just as I see it on my computer and prints I’ve made from pro-labs. I’ve been threatening this for a long time now but maybe it really is time for me to open an online shop to sell some of my work. I have a lot of paper tests to run to see what images work best on what paper type since there is a science to it. I was coached by a Canon printer genius at the event and am so grateful to have learned some tricks to further my printing skills.

What a weekend! Thank you to Wyoming Camera Outfitters , 307 Magazine , and Canon USA for all of the hard work that went into making this festival so much fun and very informative. I made some great friends at this event and it was so fun geeking out on all of the Canon gear.  Stay tuned for what’s next!

BTW, I know it’s Tuesday and this is not a Tilda Tuesday post, but she and I discussed it and since this was such a busy weekend, she decided it was best that I post about the Wild West Photo Fest. Matilda will see you next week. 🙂

Cheers,
Leah

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