I love living in Orlando, Florida! We are so fortunate to have so many great events that take place in this town. I think it’s the draw of Walt Disney World and Universal that makes Orlando such a great stopping point for tours. New York wedding photographer, Doug Gordon, came to the Lake Buena Vista Hilton today to host his Fashionable Wedding Photography Workshop. He admits how much he loves Orlando, visiting here nine or ten times a year.

I saw Doug as one of the presenters at last year’s WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) Road Show that came through Orlando. While there were many great speakers that day, I felt that one hour was not enough time for all of the content that Doug was trying to cover. So, I was so glad to hear that he was coming back to Orlando.

Since then, Doug was honored with the United Nations (Yes, THAT United Nations) International Council of Photographs Leadership Award, an amazing and well deserved honor. Having been a wedding photographer for over 20 years, he has definitely made a name for himself, running a business that photographs over 900 weddings every year.

His energy and humor from WPPI came through today as well. Doug Gordon has a great wit that keeps the students very entertained as he goes through a great deal of information.

The four hour wedding workshop was held at the Hilton Lake Buena Vista across the street from Downtown Disney. After a brief introduction and some awfully coordinated “YMCA” dance steps, Doug launched in to a very powerful motivational speech.

We had two models for our class who filled the role of bride and groom. Doug started the class by briefly going over some lighting concepts, demonstrating them on our bride.

After that, we all headed outside for about two hours of shooting. I have to thank Wendy Gunderson who posted a review of the May 24th workshop in Chicago. That blog post gave me a heads up that we may be doing some photography outside. And, yes, it was in the 90s today.

Doug went through his flow posing with the bride and groom on the lawn of the Hilton Lake Buena Vista. Great posing is extremely important to great photography. It’s amazing how Doug goes from pose to pose. That is where the 20+ years of wedding photography experience shows.

Even though I brought my camera for the wedding photography workshop, I knew that there were going to be over 50 people in the class. So, I mostly used my camera for note taking and grabbing pictures to share with everyone on this blog. I’ve always been apprehensive about using workshop photos as part of a portfolio, and all of my portfolio photos are from actual weddings and portrait sessions.

Just like the WPPI road show, I walked away seeing so much great stuff, but out of the over hundred poses he demonstrated, only 5 – 10 will I remember. So, I opted this time to pick up some of his instructional DVDs.

His next workshop will be in Los Angeles on June 26th and I strongly recommend it to anyone in the Southern California area. Doug is a great educator and an extremely nice (and funny!) guy. Visit his site at: Doug Gordon Workshops for more information.