society pages

We’re excited to have a new vendor / guest post from one of our favorite advertisers at Paperie – The Wedding Photographic Society.

Welcome to The Wedding Photographic Society (WPS)

Welcome to The Wedding Photographic Society (WPS)! We’re a network of professional wedding & portrait photographers who come together to collaborate on photographic ideas, thoughts, and information in an attempt to elevate the artistic, technical, and business standards of the wedding photographic community. Membership in the WPS offers many professional & personal growth opportunities via bi-monthly educational meetings, networking, critiques, and general camaraderie during such gatherings. WPS meetings, forums, blog submissions, & web pages are open to any and all professional wedding photographers throughout the world.

The WPS’s origins date back to 2005, when Raleigh, NC wedding photographer Christobal Perez organized quarterly photography meetings in an effort to help build relationships, share knowledge amongst peers, and help create a competitive, yet supportive photographic community. The spirit of Christobal’s movement has grown exponentially since that time and has since evolved into the WPS (which became official in 2009) with the further support of other local photographers, Martha Manning, Stacy Borelli, & Brian Mullins. Leaders & members of the WPS donate their time to organize topic discussions with guest speakers, collaborate on ideas and offer guidance, all without compensation.

Membership
To join the WPS, you need to meet the following minimum criteria:

- Actively pursuing business as a professional wedding and/or portrait photographer (or aspiring to be a professional wedding and/or portrait photographer).

- A professional photography website showing your current work.

- Willingness to share your knowledge with others (we don’t ask for state secrets but a general willingness to be open and help others when possible).

There are two levels of membership in the WPS; aspiring and professional.

Aspiring
An aspiring member is someone who is not yet a professional photographer but looking to gain knowledge in photography, learn about proper business practice and grow as a photographer. Typically these are newer photographers in the field of weddings & portraits. Membership grants permissions to attend the monthly meetings and have limited access to the forums. This insures an open environment to ask questions in without fear of hostility.

Professional
A professional member has all the rights of the aspiring member, but has full access to the forums. A professional member will be actively pursuing business and working in the field of professional wedding or portrait photography.

The review process
Each application is personally reviewed by a WPS board member to determine which classification the applicant will be granted. Any photographer granted “aspiring” status can petition, at any time, for “full” or “professional” standing at which time their application will be reviewed again.

Application
To officially become a member of the WPS please first read the FAQ then register here.

Meetings
So as you enter into the WPS, you will undoubtedly see and hear about local meetings with some really cool topics and opportunities to network with other photographers in your area. These meetings are the true essence of the WPS and we HIGHLY encourage your attendance. If you don’t have local meetings in your area, then contact us at admin@weddingphotographicsociety.com to aid in assisting in starting a group local to you.

Forums
The WPS forums are our home away from home. As we started our organization based on face to face meetings, we quickly realized we needed a place to compile information such as emergency shooter lists, buying and selling gear, meeting announcements, etc. You can use them to get help with a sticky situation, help resolving a client issue, to vent or just to network. In the WPS, you definitely get out of it what you put into it so contribute whenever possible.

Thank you for your interest in becoming a member of the WPS and we look forward to your future contributions to the society.

Stacy Borelli
WPS Executive Board Member
www.TheWPS.com
919.602.1050

Last but not least, in honor of “springing forward”, all new Paperie advertisers will receive a huge discount off the published rates. By request / popular demand, we’ve extended our “spring forward” ad sale through April 15th. What the tax man giveth, you can taketh to boost your site traffic and SEO with Paperie Boutique!

2012 is already off to a great start – on the heels of our 2011 Wrap Battle in December, we logged 453,452 unique page views in January and 8.34 million hits as the winners were announced!

“Anybody wanting to advertise really should. I love browsing your ads to find new vendors and resources.” -Kim, momtriedit.net

“I’ve received triple the amount of traffic from your site than any other site I’m advertising on! I’m so pleased with choosing to advertise with you!” -Kathy, boudoirbusinessboutique.com

In addition to the deep-discounts off our normal ad rates, we are also going to feature each new vendor (that signs up between today and Sunday, April 15th) in a blog entry for better Google indexing through text links!

Sound good? Here’s all you need to do to sign up. Just select your ad-purchase in the pull-down menu ↓ below ↓ , send your payment via PayPal, and voilà!

Miss the sale? Go here to advertise with us!

Once payment has been made, write todd AT paperieboutique DOT com and include a copy of your receipt and attach an image for the ad-size purchased.

If you are interested in being a sponsor + advertiser, please e-mail todd AT paperieboutique DOT com for the additional discounted rate. And if you are a current vendor who would like to renew, please contact Todd for that as well – we are currently offering 15% off renewals!

We look forward to having you join the Paperie family!

I’d like to share a group I recently “faved” on Facebook – the Professional Photographers for Baby Safety:

“We (as a concerned creative collective) have started watermarking/stamping composite images with a ‘seal’ of sorts as a ‘best practice’.

This seal lets everyone know that the image is two different photos edited together to create magic.

Both photographers and parents alike will see it and instantly know when an image is a composite without reading (nobody reads the fine print anyway). And will be educated that these are composites and photographers who offer/attempt the poses without compositing are working outside the generally accepted safety norms.”

For more information, and to join the cause, please visit their Facebook page!




We have a winner in our ribbon iron / ribbon cutter contest – it’s Dana at createlittlejoy.com!

Congrats to Dana and thanks to everyone who entered! Stay tuned this week for more fun!

-Robyn & Todd

P.S. Check out just-completed Panache Collective packaging sets on Facebook!

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