This is beyond overdue, but we have a number of viable excuses as to the delay, the main one being we spent a good two weeks getting very organized and moved our office across the house. Why am I rambling excuses for something I haven’t even mentioned yet? Because it was so incredible it would be a tragedy if we didn’t talk about it!
So January 8th we traveled down to Mystic Connecticut for our first Mystic Seminars. It’s four days worth of classes from the best in the industry. I’m going to do my best to describe everything, but so much of this was absolutely indescribable and unless you’re a wedding photographer you might not think it’s overly exciting. But it was totally amazing to us, and that’s all you need to know as we go forward.
Our first encounter with anyone at the hotel that was there for the seminar was two very nice guys in the elevator. We were on our way up to our room and they were on the same floor as us. They asked if we were there for the seminar and we shared a couple of jokes about knowing where the other slept and said we’d see them around. That small moment in the elevator would define our experience at Mystic. Everyone was beyond nice. Our next encounter was as we were checking in (for the seminar). We stood waiting in line and the creator of the seminar, Walter Van Dusen, introduced himself and struck up a conversation with us that ended with him complimenting Shana on her shoes. What is it with her and the shoes!? The next thing you knew, we were in the classroom enjoying the first two classes for the first night.
Now before I get ahead of myself here, I should probably mention some backstory. Do you guys remember this shoot? We watched Sue Bryce on creative live and were blown away by her ability to pose women in a way that was flattering to any shape. Not to mention she’s an incredible (and we mean incredible) photographer. We’ve followed her stuff ever since that moment and she is the entire reason we knew Mystic Seminars exists. She posted on her blog around 6 months ago that she was going to be a speaker there, and I was instantly laying out all the reasons why we should go spend $1500 on a photography seminar to Shana. It wasn’t that hard, because we had both been talking about the need for education for ages, but I honestly had no idea the value we would see from it at the time.
So Sue was the second speaker on the first night, and it doesn’t matter how many times we watch her talk, she still blows us away. By the end she had made us laugh and cry even though we’d seen most of it all before we still came away from it refreshed and with new tricks up our sleeve. The first night at the hotel was very quiet, everyone was just getting settled in and on our way up to our room we bumped into what Shana has dubbed as the “Western Mass Contingency”, our fellow wedding photographer friends Sandra, Kat, Cynthia, and Seth. We made plans to see each other the next day and we ended up being what can only be called a posse for the entire week.
I’m going to out ourselves on something here. Before we went we knew of none of the speakers besides Sue. We read all about them on the website and thought they sounded really cool, but we really had no idea what we were going to get. The next morning started bright and early at 10am, with Roberto Valenzuela, who has one of the most creative “eyes” I’ve ever seen. He blew us away. He started off with showing where he started, and how absolutely dreadful he was and had us rolling in our chairs. Then he showed us where he was now, and some of the shots… I can’t even… just go here and look at his portfolio and you’ll get it. He showed us this one where he made the driver speed down a dirt road lined with spanish moss so he could get the dust from the road flying around the couple. WHAT. He made us think so far outside the box I don’t think we’d fit back in.
We buzzed around after Roberto and caught up with the contingency a bit before the next class. The next thing we knew, the two guys from the elevator were up on stage and Shana and I were crying. Their names are David and Luke Edmonson, and they’re a father and son photography team who are easily the most inspiring photographers we’ve had the pleasure to meet. These two men are incredible human beings. I could go on and on about how heartfelt they are and all the things that made their two hour class so incredible, but it’s not something you can explain. The best thing we took from them was the need to fill up not only your own glass, but others glasses as well. We walked away in love with humanity again because of those two.
The classes went on all day, and we were sponges and absorbed every bit of it we could. That night was a serious party. The restaurant bar probably didn’t know what to do with itself. Everyone was there getting tanked, and the next thing you knew I was drunk enough to play match maker with Kat. She had her eye one of the Renaissance Albums guys and I absolutely thought I had game enough to hook them up. I left Shana with Sandra and Kat and I ventured over to the lobby couch area to scope the guy out. The couch was huge, so people were having conversations at every corner and all of a sudden, wouldn’t you know it, Sue Bryce is literally leaning across my lap to speak to someone sitting on the coffee table. We chatted her up and took drunken instagram photos and went about planning the hook up with Kat. In the midst of our diabolical plan Luke Edmonson sat down across from us and it was all over for the rest of the night. Somehow he got roped into our matchmaking scheme and led us into injecting ourselves into conversations surrounding the guy. This story has a crappy ending for Kat, but a really awesome one for me. At some point Kat gave up and went to bed, and while chatting with Luke a guy asked if he could take my picture because he loved my hair. I must be a really rotten story teller because I forgot to mention that on a whim before Mystic I decided to dye my hair lilac. It was fantastic while it lasted, which was about a solid two weeks before I realized the only color I could wear was purple and as much as I love purple, I don’t want to wear it every day. I also may or may not have had Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ haircut, thus why I currently have Demi Moore in GI Jane hair now. Yes, seriously. It grows back.
Man, did I just go off track.
So I went off with this nice guy and his friend down the first floor halls of the hotel, where I drunkenly posed in front of a backlit window for a complete stranger. It took around 5 minutes, we went back to the party, and I found my wife still hanging with Luke. Someone suddenly called the name “Parker!” to the guy who had just taken my picture, and after a few moments of my drunk mind trying to place the connection I realized he was one of the speakers over the next few days. He ended up finding out Shana was my wife and wanted to shoot us both, so we followed him to the same window to shoot the both of us. It was nearing 3am and we were pretty wasted, but it was a photography seminar and we were getting photos taken by one of the speakers there, so he must be pretty good, right?
The next day was quieter, you could tell a lot of people were hurting from the night before. We spent the day in classes, all amazing in their own ways, and went out for a nice Thai dinner with Seth, Cyn, and Kat. After dinner Parker was up to speak, and we were mega interested to see what he would be all about. This was another life changing moment for us. Parker J Pfister is what you can only describe as an artist. An amazing, fantastic artist. He shoots every day in a million different ways. He has bizarre cameras and lenses that he has modified to shoot like old film techniques. He’s gotten his hands on lenses taken from 50’s military surveillance planes and modifies them to shoot on new mirrorless digital cameras. He showed us how to shoot for ourselves again, for the art of it, and to try different techniques even if they’re not perfect. He inspired the crap out of us, and then he put up photos he’d shot at Mystic and on the way to Mystic and you couldn’t help but be wowed, even at your own drunk baggy eyed face at the screen.
I realize this is getting long, so I’ll try and wrap it up. Shana and I went to Mystic tired and uninspired, and we came back energized and more inspired than we could’ve ever imagined. We plan on doing this every year, for absolute sure, as we met so many incredible friends and learned more than our brains could handle. We came straight home and started shooting creatively for ourselves again and we can’t wait to show those in later posts. But for now, here’s the photo goodness. The photos came from everywhere, the shoot with Parker, the photobooth, Seth testing out a ring flash, instagram, whatever.
Disclaimer: I’ve made some pretty bad wardrobe choices in my life, but the highlighter orange shirt with lilac hair pretty much takes the cake. See why I went all GI Jane? SEE? Thank god for wigs and hats.
Wonderful so great to meet you. Awesome week