This post is almost a month late 🙂  At the Kiss Get SImple Seminar in August I met Mike Larson.  I was very inspired by him and his shooting style, so in the beginning of October I made the trek to Las Vegas to participate in a workshop that he held with Brittany of BLR Life Studios. 

It was an awesome 2 days of learning, shooting and laughing with mostly new friends.  I did drag along my friend Charise to room with me!

 This is Mike talking to our group.  Of course, I am always the troublemaker in the back of the class!

On our first day out!  We shot 2 models in a dry lake bed.  It was such an awesome location!

Here is Brittany working her magic:

And of course, Mike working his:

After Day one, a few of use stragglers went out to dinner and we surprised Mike with a birthday flan.  I shot these at 3200 ISO, 24mm, f/1.4 hand held at 1/30th, Auto White Balance in a very red room (obviously)

I promise he did not eat the whole candle.

This is one of the lovely couples from Day 2 of shooting!

And the other lovely couple!

Poor Emily was convinced she could get a rad shot from the top of the wine barrel.  But alas, the wine barrel didn’t think so…and she fell all the way through!  Thank goodness she wasn’t horribly hurt!  I wish I would have captured the falling motion, but I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs.  This is immediately after.  Oh and she was holding on to Mike’s camera (Mark II, I believe) and she was able to save that! 

My stomach aches for Jimmy Johns when I cross the state line.  I cannot wait until this sub shop makes it to California.  I seriously crave the Turkey Tom.

One thing that Mike is known for in the industry is his camera toss.  I stole this image below off of his blog. You can see a video of Mike doing a different toss at this link. 

And my girls. Chelsea Nicole, Charise Proctor, me and Emily Nelson.  Brittany took this photo of us below and I stole it off of Charise’s blog.  🙂

Vegas was so much fun, I can’t wait to hang out again at WPPI!
XOXO, M