I can’t believe it’s taken me over a week to fill the blogosphere in on Blographer! First of all, I can’t even tell you what an honor it was to have been asked to speak. I adore Joel and the entire Adorama team so working with them was a dream come true! And adding to that dream was the fact that I got to travel and present with Amanda who has been my buddy, both online and in real life, for the last several years.
I mentioned a few weeks back that I was operating in full-fledged “if you wait ’til the last minute, it only takes a minute” mode. And I can’t tell you how relieved I was to find out that Amanda was doing the same! In fact, while we both had a firm idea of what we wanted to say, we didn’t actually compose our presentations until the flights to New York!
I felt pretty confident in what we prepared though…until we walked into that room filled with blogger/photographer fabulousness.
And then all bets were off!
I think I had underestimated how nerve-wracking the experience would be so I took the edge off by snapping a few shots before we started. Here’s sweet Amanda exuding pre-presentation confidence!
And “Miss Blographer” herself, Jill Krause from Baby Rabies, who came representing Clickin Moms…
Thankfully when snapping pre-session shots ceased to work at calming my nerves, I was greeted by some of the absolute kindest women EVER. I begged via Twitter for preemptive hugs and nods of support (I would have gladly accepted shots as well) and boy did I get them ! Like from this sweet mama who even came bearing treats straight from Rhode Island!
And then when that stopped working, and the room slowly started to fill up I saw some familiar faces in the hall and a flood of relief washed over me.
My very own SEESTER was there! And my supper club/pool/neighborhood friend Kelly!
And…
With friends, family, and some good ol’ Rhode Island lemonade mix in my back pocket, I was finally starting to settle in.
Then they announced my name and all bets were off.
In the end, Amanda did a phenomenal job…even when all the notes we had carefully prepared were suddenly unavailable to us at the last minute.
And I don’t think I made a complete fool of myself, so I’ll count that as a win. Although I regret wearing tangerine colored, skinny jeans on an elevated stage but that’s a whole ‘nother post.
Adorama served an incredible (kosher!) lunch and coordinated the most amazing giveaways all day long. Seriously, almost every person in attendance took something home…including me! And when all the presenters were finished, we had a bit more time to snap away…
Then it was off on a photo tour of New York City! After several blocks we had done a lot of chatting, worked up several blisters, and still had taken a single photo.
So I rectified the situation by grabbing this shot…
…and then offering everyone a bandaid. (Blisters had been my achilles heel the day before so I was well prepared.)
We chatted a bit more and got to know some truly fabulous women…
And in the end, I took this single, very uninspired architectural image on the whole walk…
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