GRPP Holiday Party  :: December 14th, 2009

2009 was an amazing year! I was honored to be the Program Chairperson for the Greater Rochester Professional Photographers and it was one heck of a ride! I met a lot of awesome new people like Tammy and Tamar from London/Wolfe Photography as well as many many new members of GRPP this year. My goal as Program Chair was to really build upon the already strong foundation that GRPP had in it’s members as well as push the limits on what we could do as a group. There were a lot of gambles taken and a lot of ‘trust me on this’ for some of the things I wanted to accomplish. All in all, we are stronger than ever as a group and I am very happy to say that as President for 2010, I have a FULL Board and group of Officers! This is a first in a very long time. I did not do this all by myself, that is for sure and having a full set of Officers proves it. These are strong Photographers who have believed in my vision and supported me every step of the way. Hopefully now that I am President, I can step back and let them do their thing and just offer my support in return. A very special thank you goes to Sue Egan for reminding me to DELEGATE and for stepping up to take some of the work off of my shoulders. She has been invaluable this year and I hope that I can help her keep her sanity while she is Program Chair for 2010. I also want to thank Scott Crist and Kristina Juodyte for getting the new GRPP website up and running. We have finally joined the 21st century and hope to lead the way for other groups to have an accessible and helpful website for members and customers alike! The new blogsite was a major push for me these last two years and the group is already seeing new business coming directly from the members directory. 2010 should be full of content and regular updates to the site and the hope is that grpp.org will become the MAIN resource for Photography searches in Rochester, NY. My main focus for the New Year with GRPP, as well as myself, is to get as many members to become Certified Professional Photographers! We have one study group in the works now and will hopefully continue with rotating groups as the year progresses. Becoming a CPP is a great way to really get to know our fellow GRPP members and to hone our craft at the same time. Each week, each one of us has had an “a ha!” moment! I myself have been amazed at how much I know about photography, but didn’t realize. I’ve been a photographer since I was 10, so I have taken a lot of this knowledge for granted. At the same time, I’m realizing so many new techniques to make my work even better!

Our end of the year party was a huge success! So much so, that we had to upgrade to the Fire House at Artisan Works to hold all of the RSVPs. This alone shows how far we have come as a group since 2 years ago the holiday party was canceled because no one showed up!!! Artisan Works gave us a great deal on the space and everyone had an absolute blast! Thank you, Victoria! Here are just a few images from the night, as I didn’t take very many…

Tags: Artisan Works Certified Professional Photographer Greater Rochester Professional Photographers GRPP Holiday Party Meeting Networking Event NY Photographers Rochester