A little more than a year ago I was sitting back & watching the Blair + Thurston Retreat page waiting anxiously to see the announcement of their next location. I had already taken the survey for their next destination and was ridiculously excited to see Portland, ME as a possibility. The price of the retreat was significant and I wasn’t sure I could quite swing it depending on the location. And suddenly there it was ….. the location announcement was there in my email inbox and it was in MAINE!
Having had to travel by plane to get to the three prior Click Away Conferences I had attended, and a forth trip to Florida in the horizon I could not contain my excitement that all I would need to do in hop in my car and drive three hours!!!
The year passed quickly and in September it was time to head to Maine …. I was incredibly excited that I’d be meeting a friend I met at my very first Click Away at the airport. After a day of catching up … and meeting a few new friends for dinner …. I headed off to the Retreat … TERRIFIED! See, all the other conferences I’d been to where just that … conferences. There was tons of people there and you could easily hide …. this experience was going to be very different. We’d be receiving a first class education directly from some seriously talented photographers … but there was only fourteen of us …. there was no where to hide!
Bre & Elena are amazingly gifted and sweet photographers and businesswomen. They gave us all the advice that we needed in order to advance our own businesses further. I am not going to lie, that the feedback I received was easy to hear, but it was what I needed to hear … and quite honestly stuff that I already knew. It was time to really focus on the business side of my little photography business …. including a major overhaul of my website.
Upon returning home (and coming back to the reality of no personal chefs or yoga instructors on hand) I began to slowly work on compiling the images I wanted on my new website and the overall concept of what I wanted it to look like. Once the crazy fall began to settle down it was time to get to work and make it a reality …. including finally getting off butt and starting a blog. It seems odd to begin my blogging posting images from others instead of my own, but I wanted to share a little bit of that very special weekend. All images were taken by Bre, Elena or their amazing assistant Gabby!
