I’m freaking out and pinching myself all at the same time! DVD 1 is actually here and ready for parents to order!!!!

The DVD turned out better than Brian and I even imagined! The cover art and layout are beautiful! The printing of the images is AWESOME (and I’m super, super picky!!) The booklet of exercises that I included is so fun to read, and I’ve read through it a million times! I’m dying! I can’t wait for you to get yours! Brian and I sat and went through the whole DVD to make sure all the menu items worked, the Special Features are all in place, the music is so cool! I seriously can’t believe it’s here and this beautiful! And wait till you see the trailer for upcoming workshops! So excited!!!

Just so you know, we have a team working on them today and tomorrow, getting them addressed, packaged and ready to ship. I’ll let you know when the first one ships!

If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, we’ve got them in stock! YEAH!!!

**Click Here** to order your own copy of Refuse to Say Cheese and Capture the Story, a DVD for parents to learn how to document their children’s lives with the camera!

To see the cover click here, to see the text and layout of the back cover, click here! For the trailer, click here!

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To learn more about me visit About Me Ra.

For information on Me Ra’s popular photography workshops visit “Documenting a Child’s Life.”

To see our day job, visit our website.

This last week a handful of you sent me your photos, and I had to share!

This shot is by a wonderful woman named Liz. She attended one of my workshops this last year, and I screamed when she sent this to me! Liz, you are AWESOME! Steve must be seriously proud! (and I love that you’re now telling him what lens to buy and why! :)) I’m so excited you grabbed this! The joy and energy of your little guy is bursting of the photo! Cheers on many more to come!

This sweet photo is from a dear friend. I wish she’d write a novel b/c every time Kari emails me my side hurts I laugh so hard. She’s been playing with the camera, and look at this sweet shot she captured of her little guy. I love it b/c the image is so quiet to me. I love the eyelashes too! (Kari, how did Ty grow up so fast? Weren’t we just doing his baby shoot a month ago?)

This next photo is great! Take a look, need I say more?!

Alyssa emailed me this photo. She brought her camera to a birthday party and decided to play around with a couple of the exercises. Could the expression on this guy be any cuter?

I looked at Alyssa’s blog, and she has some great stuff. My favorite part to read was the first line on her “About” page;

I am a photographer. I wish I were a great photographer. This blog is my journey from point-and-shoot to artist.

To see some of Alyssa’s journey, check out her blog. I’m totally inspired by how she’s going for it!

You have no idea how wonderful it is to get your emails and photos. It’s so fun to see the results you’re getting from the exercises! Keep sending them my way! mera@merakoh.com. And wait till you get DVD 1, lots more exercises to try with your kids!

John and Lauren are an AWESOME couple in LA. Brian and I shot their wedding a couple weeks ago and had the best time!

We’re getting ready to share their slideshow with you. Reception in a funky LA garage, totally decked out! With a flower girl and ring bearer to die for! But we have a fun intro first!

We took a couple “behind the scenes” video clips during the day, and I thought you’d get a kick out of seeing it all. The BEST part of the day was on our way to the reception. I heard this Mariachi band start playing as we drove past an outdoor park! This man was doing a concert in all the costume! Great singer!

When he finished his song, I went on stage and asked if he’d sing a song to the couple for everyone. Brian, John and Lauren thought I was NUTS, but it’s their WEDDING DAY!!! We had to do it! You’ll see a clip of them right after their dance and hear the music. It was a blast!

Love you John and Lauren! Slideshow coming in the next couple days, you guys are stars!!! Enjoy the video!

Before you read the below post, I have to say that I made a mistake and feel so embarrassed! Jesse, the mom, in this post, and I totally miscommunicated. I thought she was a beginner with photos, but it turns out she’s been doing portraits on the side for a while. How I missed this, I don’t know. (Brian’s not surprised though. :)) Anyway, you’ll love what she captured of her little one. This story is so moving. And Jesse’s work will totally inspire you without doubt! (Thanks Jesse for the heads up!)

This is posting a little later than I had planned today, but that’s what happens when you find a leak in your kitchen sink!

I have to share an amazing story with you. Meet Jesse–a beautiful spirited mom of three kids. Jesse was at my house a couple weeks ago for a parent school meeting. It turns out Jesse loves photography. So of course we went crazy in conversation! We talked all about capturing and documenting our kid’s lives, and the gift we can give them from doing this.

That night Jesse went home and looked through the blog, and read a bunch of the Photography Tips for Moms exercises on detail, documenting, storytelling. And then the worst nightmare happened. Her daughter, Violet, started a temperature that ended up hitting 106! They rushed her to the hospital, and Jesse felt pulled to grab her camera.

This is Violet’s and Jesse’s story. Get Kleenex, it’s amazing.

Violet was so delirious from the fever, she couldn’t follow the doctor’s light.

Jesse said it was as if she had makeup on b/c of how flushed her face was from the fever.

Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 went by with test results coming up empty handed and a fever and headache that wouldn’t let go. I can’t imagine how helpless Jesse must have felt as a mom. She touched on how the camera and capturing this experience was so powerful with all that she was going through.

Chase, the therapy dog, came in and put his soft head on Jesse’s lap. Jesse said she cried when Violet reached out and responded to this gentle dog. A connection was made, even though the fever was still there.

Clowns came to bring smiles.

The kids from Pascaline and Jesse’s class sent cards.

By Day 7, the doctors found that it was a kidney infection. Violet was soon smiling after they were able to treat her!

She was finally sitting up and laughing with friends, when days before she slept through all the visitors from her high fever.

Jesse made this beautiful book with My Publisher (love them!) and wrote the story out of the whole experience so Violet would always have it. As Brian and I looked looked through it, we both started crying. It was so moving.

I asked Jesse if she photo shopped these images. She said she doesn’t know how to use photo shop and just did a little bit with the photos in Picassa. I asked what her camera and lens were. She had the Canon EOS Digital Rebel and a basic lense that came with it. She shot all these photos at a 5.6 aperture. Can you believe it.

Jesse was so kind to let me share Violet’s story with you. It’s one of the most moving examples of a mom, taking a risk with her camera, and documenting their child’s life. As parents, we see the tender moments and recognize the vulnerability and details (like cards from the class and dogs that touch our child’s heart) better than anyone. Who better to document our children’s lives than us. I know some of you email and share how you feel overwhelmed and intimidated with the camera, but hang in there. It’s such a worthy pursuit. And I know you’ll get it figured out, just takes practice.

Much love and blessed dreams tonight, Me Ra

to see more of Jesse’s photos, visit her site.

Blog #2!

I’m so enamored with our little girl, Pascaline! Yesterday was her last day of kindergarten. Big day for the family!

Lately, Pascaline has been wanting to practice public speaking. Totally her thing. She says she wants to be like her mama and so practicing now is really important. So last night as we were celebrating at dinner, she asked if she could make a little “public speaking speech.” Check it out, the end is what kills me!

Since this is a BIG BLOG DAY with 3 posts coming up, don’t forget to check out the first one of the three, right below, the DVD Back COVER!!

Are you going to kill me? I have three cool blog posts today! Yes, THREE! I could probably spread them out, but I can’t wait for you to see these! The first is the back of the DVD Cover! I tried making it as big as possible so you could read it w/o it taking forever to view. If it’s small, you can click on the cover and the size will get bigger!

**Click Here** to see the back cover! Let me know what you think! I’m so excited for how it turned out!

Blog 2-coming in the next couple hours is Pascaline’s speech that she wanted to make after graduating from Kindergarten yesterday. You’re going to die when you see this video!

Blog 3-is a mom I talked with yesterday and how she used her camera to capture a life changing experience her 6 year old daughter went through. It’s the most moving photos I’ve seen in a long time, and she said I could totally share!

So buckle up! It’s a BIG BLOG day for WEDNESDAY!

Hey guys! I’m so excited! We got an update from the replication company, and DVD 1, Refuse to Say Cheese and Capture the Story, is going to be here next week! Which means we’re shipping to you next week!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!

Check out the front cover the design team did, and later tonight I’ll try and post the back cover on here so you can see that! The back turned out super cool! And yesterday, we had a big name camera store ask to order it for their customers!! Yeah! It’s coming together!

FYI, DVD 2, Beyond the Green Box, is in production. We hope to have that in your hands by end of August! The chapters are looking so great! I can’t wait for you to get these!

Oh, the little gifts I ordered for all of you came in too! Fun, fun, fun!!! Thanks again and again for supporting this project! We’re planning a big release party for August if any of you can make it! More on that later!

If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about (:)), check out our DVD series for parents by **clicking here** or this link, www.RefuseToSayCheese.com.

With all the sun we’ve been having, I’m wondering if any of you parents are feeling frustrated with how overexposed your photos are. You see a great shot and shoot it but for some reason it’s totally overexposed.

What do I mean by overexposed? There is to much light so you lose skin tone, detail, and have an overall washed out look.

One reason for this could be that your ISO is to high. Lots of digital SLR cameras come set on a default ISO of 400. If your photos are looking like this lately…

try going into your menu and seeing what your ISO is set at. If it’s 400, try bringing it down to 100 if your shooting Canon and 200 if your Nikon. I’ve heard that Canon and Nikon have what they call “native speeds”. This means the camera was engineered to shoot the best, most color saturated, detailed photo at it’s native speed (or ISO). Canon is 100, and Nikon’s native speed is 200. Try it out!

Brian and I will shoot 95% of the wedding at an ISO of 100 to get the best color possible. Sometimes I’ll start shooting and see that my shots are overexposed like the one above. It’s almost always because the ISO was to high.

Here is the photo at an ISO of 100. The difference is crazy!

Lots more detail! Lots more natural skin tone. Nothing is washed out. And this is a good, color balanced photo to try changing to black and white or sepia. So that it can look like this…

Recipe for this BW photo. I basically took out the saturation which makes it black and white instead of color. I up’d the contrast and brightness till I got the photo where I wanted it. You can totally do this!

Hope this helps you get some great color, saturated shots this summer. Just think ISO when it’s over exposed. And the principal applies to it being underexposed. Instead of bringing the ISO down, you can bring it up for more light on the photo.

Please tell me I haven’t made this to confusing! I did a whole chapter on ISO in DVD 2, so we could dive into to it more there.

A BIG thanks to the moms that sent me photos this last week from the exercises! I love seeing what you’re getting! I’m going to post some of the shots later this week, so you can all be inspired too!

Keep sending them, and put a note with the email that let’s me know if it’s okay to share your photos on the blog or not. Want to make sure!

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To learn more about me visit About Me Ra.

For information on Me Ra’s popular photography workshops and DVD series for parents, visit DVD series and “Documenting a Child’s Life.”

To see our day job, visit our website.

It’s totally Brian!

He’s been teased (all in love) a lot this week by our out of town friends and me, so I wanted to highlight him today. When people ask him if he ever has a hard time with our business name and branding being around me, Brian just smiles and says, “Me Ra knows I’m the wind beneath her wings.” How can you not love a guy who says that!

We had a simple and sweet Father’s Day. My own dad was in China for business, so the four of us decided to hit a local spot for brunch. The kids started it all by running in the room at 6:15am and jumping on the bed, screaming Happy Father’s Day. They LOVE their King Daddy Brian (Pascaline wants to call us by our first names so this is the name her and Brian have worked out. ;))

We got Brian a new bike seat so he doesn’t have such bad saddle soreness when we ride. The other gifts were a Batman book (big hit!) and this other book called, The Book of Useless Information. If you didn’t know, Brian is the MOST amazing, thorough, walking encyclopedia of useless information!

He’s been going nuts with this book telling me all kinds of useless things. Like… did you know that no two cornflakes look the same. Woah! Blows your mind, doesn’t it!

But the best part is a book he ordered finally arrived. Our counselor suggested it because it’s great for people who have ADD. We both died laughing though when we saw the subtitle. Check it out!

A Practical Approach to Meeting the Right Person for You! We’ve had the best time having this on the coffee table to see what people say when they read it. I always let them know it’s Brian’s book. BTW, both great reads!

I love my man, and so I had to do a post with Father’s Day being Sunday. Brian is AWESOME! Not only is he an incredible photographer, but he’s the most loving husband and dad. He makes me laugh all the time (except for when he makes me so angry I could throw things). You’ll get to know him a lot better on DVD 2, Beyond the Green Box, when he premiers as Coffee Driven Professor “T”. Good stuff coming!

Hope you all had a wonderful Father’s Day!

Thanks to new friends we met in the parking lot, Lane and his beautiful wife, Sarah! We rarely get a family photo! You guys are AWESOME!

I’ve got to share a favorite quote to share with you because it totally makes me think of all of you!

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. -Marcel Proust

Without knowing how else to put it, you have all made my heart so happy, my heart has blossomed into the Butchart Gardens from the love you’ve shared this last week!

On top of all the kind emails and posts on the blog, Carrie of Barefoot Memories sent this beautiful basket of hydrangeas from San Diego! Rachel LaCour sent the biggest bunch of yellow lilies from Tennessee. My brother came up from CA to see me, my other brother is making me soup tonight. The awesome Dane Sanders was up from LA to shoot a wedding, so he came over Friday night and teased Brian so much I almost wet my pants from laughing! (My favorite was the idea to have a website named, www.merakoh’s_husband.com. Brian totally doesn’t get the credit he deserves for our business!)

Our mysterious friends Chaka Kahn, actually got a babysitter for their 4 boys to come over and surprise us by making dinner and bringing dessert! The kid’s school dropped off a get well basket with O, a Life magazine of beautiful photos, cookies, sparking cider, fruit (I’m set!), a couple girlfriends stopped by to keep me company, my Korean aunt made a big pot of Kalbi-ton and homemade Mu-Chae to go with it! (and Dane ventured into sharing it with us! Totally brave guy, and he loved it!), my mom has helped so much with the kids, our neighbors have brought the best meals, and honestly I could go on and on!

If I would have known recovery from surgery was going to be this great, I wouldn’t have stressed so hard! The surgery itself was a success! When the surgeon got inside, they found I actually had three growths instead of one, and they saw that my ovary was really beat up from previous surgeries. That put Brian and I at ease, knowing we had definitely made the right choice.

So Friday night, Dane got me all excited to start doing video podcasts again. We have some fun surprises coming for all of you, and he’s got something SUPER cool in the works called CutFrame (more later!). But you may be wondering why I stopped the video podcasts a couple months ago.

Confession time…