Ever been to a homeschool convention before?

If not, here are some photos to give you an idea of what it’s like!

The Indiana Association of Home Educators (IAHE) invited me come out to Fort Wayne last weekend to cover their annual event and teach the IAHE Photo Class. I took hundreds of photos, but here are my top 10 favorites.

One thing you will be sure to see a lot of at a homeschool convention is . . . families!

With a ton of families, it’s only natural that there would be a children’s program . . . with what looks like a very special guest!

And a teen program, of course, that’s more than just boring lectures.

But of course, you do have lectures . . . which are certainly not boring when you have scholars from Unbound as your speaker!

You know a good speaker when everyone in the audience is taking notes. Those are the kind of speakers photographers appreciate. 🙂

And then there’s the keynote speakers that draw in the big crowds!

And stages in big auditoriums are usually more interesting to have as backgrounds for speaker photos.

One of the most challenging things in event photography is you don’t have control of the lighting. Sure, you are happy when a Convention center has lots of windows. And you are super happy when a good photo happens to be in the right direction!

But you learn to do what you can with what you’ve got, especially when a split second is all you have when “the moment” happens. (No, it’s not a cactus or a sponge. It’s some exotic animal that I had never heard of before that’s all prickly on it’s back but isn’t your regular hedgehog!)

When you are used to making the most of each lighting situation handed to you, it is a fun and refreshing change to be able to customize your own lighting with a little studio set up. In the Photo Class for IAHE, with a theme of “Learning To See Light,” I enjoyed showing my students different angles of light and was thankful for willing subjects to illustrate my point.

But I think putting a portrait from the Photo Class into the top 10 is kinda cheating. How about we go back to the animal-petting-zoo-booth and choose this photo!

Gotta love that expression! Smiling at the camera isn’t the only way to communicate that you really like something.

Though, I’m the kind of guy that if I do like something, I can’t help but smiling. Maybe you didn’t know that about me, but yeah, I like snakes. 😉

Big, in-person homeschool conventions are fun. Thank you, IAHE, for inviting me to come and help out with the photography!

But did you know there are also online conventions too? One of them that I know of is called “Homeschool Summits“.

The next one they are doing is coming up April 7-11. Instead of having to pay for travel and tuition, you can attend completely free! (Registration is here.) And they still host big-name speakers in the homeschool world like Ken Ham, Kevin Swanson, Jeff Myers, and Andrew Pudewa.

There are exhibitors too, with “virtual booths”, but they still have the same random selection of resources and curriculum that you’d find at any regular convection . . . like photography education! Yup, Lenspiration will have a virtual booth there this year. 🙂 You’ll be able to check it out when the summit actually starts.

Until then, if you’re on Facebook, go to the Homeschool Summits Facebook group, check it out, and then take a minute to share your favorite aspects of Lenspiration with everyone there. Tag us with @Lenspiration so we can see your post. Thank you for spreading the word about Lenspiration!