I had the privilege of attending the Gulf Photo Plus PopUP Seattle event October 19th and 20th in Bellevue, WA.bIt’s a two-day, small boutique conference priced at $399 and designed to bring top-notch speakers for an in-depth series of educational sessions of interest to photographers.
I was able to get a few minutes with Mohamed Somji and his business partner Hala. The two of them run GPP. They helped me understand the mission and the people behind it. The company is better known in the Middle East since GPP’s main presence and event is in Dubai. While I have never had the honor of visiting Dubai, I have many friends who have either spoken at or visited GPP in Dubai and to a person, they rave about the experience.
(Photos courtesy GPP Social Media Feed…)
“Mo” as his friends call him and Hala are very passionate, gifted and talented entrepreneurs with a burning desire to help photographers experience all the joy that is available through this medium. In my brief time with them I am convinced they will succeed. The community that GPP has built is simply a photographer’s dream.
If I lived in UAE I’d be hanging out at GPP’s compound pretty much every day. But since I don’t live in UAE and since it’s obviously not the easiest place for those of us living in the USA to visit, Mo/Hala and their crew came up with the idea to bring GPP to other locations.
Previous GPP PopUP events were held in London and Singapore. The Seattle area was a great choice for the third such event.
The GPP Seattle was actually held at the beautiful Theatre at the Meydenbauer Centre in Bellevue, WA. It’s an intimate setting that is comfortable and easy to enjoy. The facilities were perfect. Which probably led to the good vibe I caught from the entire GPP team. Everyone affiliated with the event was just about as friendly and helpful as I’ve ever seen.
Those who were expecting a typical photo trade show were probably surprised. There were only three “booths” from vendors. Fuji is a big sponsor for GPP but was typically humble and just featured a table with two staffers showing off Fuji camera gear. Profoto USA showed off some lighting gear and Midwest Photo showed up to handle retail transactions.
The main thrust behind the GPP Popup event is education. Rather than the typical one-hour photo conference talks you get at big shows like WPPI or PPE, GPP has opted to offer more in-depth sessions lasting nearly four hours each.
There’s no doubt that the lineup was an impressive one. Zack Arias, Joe McNally, David Hobby, and Greg Heisler are four of the most gifted photographers/teachers you’ll ever see. All of them are extremely knowledgeable, talented, generous and helpful. This is the “A-Team” of professional photo presenters. I have heard all four speak several times and all four remain educational and entertaining. The audience was very appreciative of the information.
In addition to the educational sessions, there was some good networking. Photographers from around the world were talking and sharing experiences, making contacts, exchanging business cards, learning about photography.
There was a free evening session with Zack Arias on street photography followed by a mixer at a local pub. Both were very well attended. While I don’t have official numbers on the paid attendees of the conference, it appears that there were between 125 and 150 photographers in the room. The audience was big enough to generate some energy, but not so big that it was hard to get to meet people.
I was extremely impressed with the international flavor of the event. It was very exciting to me to learn that photographers from far away places share some of the same passion and problems as I do.
There seems to be a photo conference somewhere every couple of weeks. With a plethora of choices available, it’s important that photographers make informed choices about where they spend their conference dollars. I can say with absolute certainty that if your desire is for deeper forms of photo education along with ideas presented in a forum where international points of view are considered, this is your conference.
Highly recommended.
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Filed under: Photography Tagged: gpp, gulf photo popup 
