We got back into town late Monday night from our Sonoma Workshop.

The workshop was amazing–the almost to good to be real type of “amazing”. I feel every part of my being reflecting on so many moments over the last four days.

When I have a better handle on how and why this workshop impacted me so deeply, I will be sure to share. But for now, I’ll give you a peak at one of the moments. Michelle took this image our last night. We all went into the fields and played around with the sunset lighting–being as goofy as can be. This is what Brian and I call the “Reversed Trophy Pose”. You got to love it. (great job Michelle! :))

To all the beautiful women who were with us these last few days…we already miss you so much. Such deep transformations took place in so many of you, including us. The transition to coming back home can be brutal with catch up, kids, work, and errands all waiting for you. If you can, find a way to carve out some time to reflect with your journal or camera. For example, I took the kids to the beach yesterday–to play with them, to soak in their smiles, to be away from the phone and ALL the vm’s waiting for me. Then for about twenty minutes the kids played in the sand, and it gave me a great opportunity to write about our workshop. I have so much to process. Can any of you relate? Our Add On Day alone with Rick blew Brian and I away…we can’t stop talking about the stuff he shared. Where to start!

If you are a photographer, you need to know these guys. I feel like I’ve been saying “you need to know…” a lot these days. Is it okay I’ve been giving you lots of sites to look at? Survival in this industry is all about networking and sharing, but let me know if you want me to back off on passing this much info to you.

Even if you’re not a photographer and want a window it to the one of the biggest stresses photographers deal with, go to Shoot Dot Edit’s website and watch the cartoon. It will kill you, it’s so stinking funny. But if your not a photographer, it may not be that funny. I don’t know, you check it out and tell me.

This gang of awesome wedding photographers started their own company last year. Their mission was to provide post process services to wedding photographers. This means they can do your white balance, color correction, categorizing, numbering and such. Brian and I love these guys because not only are they great at what they do, but because they are all successful photographers, they totally “get” what photographers need.

While we were at WPPI this last March, Shoot Dot Edit asked a few of us to do an interview for them. It was one of my funniest memories from WPPI. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants on several accounts. I so hope that when the final cut is finished they do some kind of blooper role because there were some FUNNY moments. And Marc the other day was kind enough to send some shots from the interview.

Marc Weisberg has his head to us, Dane is next to him, then Sara, and then me on the end.

Another great shot of Sara! She is so dang beautiful! I just love her. She also has these sparkly blue eyes that kind of put you in a trans when you’re talking to her and you totally forget every thing she’s saying. Sara’s also miss savvy business woman aside from talented photographer. She’s one of the new faces for Apple and just came out with her own photographer bag called GoBee. You have to love women like this!

In the bottom left hand corner is Jared Bauman, one of the founders of Shoot Dot Edit, making sure we don’t say anything stupid. Can’t you tell by how serious his face is? (j/k, you know we love you Jared)

So the cool epiphany that we all had in the middle of the interview is once we outsourced our post process we all had HUGE things happen in our business. Dane wrote a freaking book! Sara came out with a new bag and now does icon stuff for Apple. And you know all our crazy stories with the DVDs and 101 Kits with possible future explosions we’ll keep you updated on.

Bottom line, if you are a small business owner you must not make the mistake so many do: being a jack of all trades and a master of none. Define what you are the best at and most passionate about (besides photography) and then start handing off the rest. This is the key to making your business successful and thriving.

In June PDN (Photo District News) magazine will come out with an article on outsourcing. They did a 90 minute interview with me about the topic in regards to small businesses, and I’m really excited about it. In the meantime, start thinking about what you can let go of and trust someone else to do. Like Shoot Dot Edit’s motto, what will you do with your free time?

p.s. Shoot Dot Edit now take portrait shoots too! There is a God in the World of Outsourcing, especially for Portrait Photographers!

How many of you love personality tests? In graduate school I ate them up. Kari, remember when Marshak split the room up with those kinds of personalities on that far side, and us over here. Wasn’t your husband-to-be, Dave, WAY the heck over there? What’s up with that? Is that when you started eyeing him, or was it when he did that math problem in front of the whole class with the grid and formulas?

OK, back on track.

Ever wish you could do an aspiring photographer personality test? I know, you never thought it would be possible huh! Guess what, it is.

If you liked those guys from earlier this week, you totally need to meet this guy! (get some Kleenex, his video gets me every time especially when he’s tossing his little girl up in the air–the music gets louder and you see them through fountain–oh man–don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

Dane came over last summer and told Brian and I about this book idea he had for aspiring photographers. Brian and I were entranced! The outline he was forming was AWESOME!! We were like “Dane, you have to write this! It’s going to be gold to people who want to be photographers! The content is AWESOME!”

And then I felt myself take a step back.

Why?

I’ll tell you why.

Ever since I published Beauty Restored, I’ve had 9,469,352 million people tell me their ideas for a book they want to write. People hear that I’ve published a book, and now they want to tell me all about their book ideas. It was a great conversation starter the first fifty times, now when Brian wants to get even with me he tells people I’ve written a book and walks away.

But if it’s a good idea, I get all excited about it. Out of the 9,469,352 million people that have told me their book ideas a lot have been exciting, cool ideas. However, I know maybe 4 people who actually finished writing their book. Dane Sanders now makes it five. He finished his book Fast Track Photographer last week! Somebody give him a BIG AMEN b/c this is no easy feat! Not to mention that he is a daddy to FOUR children!

As a prelude to the book being released, Dane created this stellar personality test you can do. It’s called pDNA (Photographer DNA).

Quoted from Dane’s site;

Ever wonder if your photo business is any different than everyone else?

Ever wish you could know exactly what you uniquely bring to the table?

Ever dream you had a piece of paper that told you exactly what to do to flourish?

The pDNA is a kind of personality profile custom built for people who dream of being a photographer, or they are new to the business/industry. What’s cool about it is you can treat it like a litmus test or benchmark of where you’re at today and where you’re headed tomorrow.

The test has over 200 questions. You create a profile here. Put the promo code refuse in so Me Ra Koh Blog readers get a 15% discount (I believe the price is $20 before the discount). Walk through the quick questions like you’ve done with other personality tests, click the dot that best describes you, and then fifteen minutes later you have this run down on yourself as a photographer. Great idea, don’t you think! You must share your results on the blog…well actually you don’t have to but it’d be cool to hear them if you want too!

Now what are you? Sanguine, Choleric, Golden Retriever, Busy Beaver, or ENFG?

And Dane, thanks for the discount to our readers! You’re AWESOME!

We had the BIGGEST photography group ever last night! I’m thinking we had close to forty people. There were people standing behind all the people you see sitting, as well as coming off the stairwell, going out doorways–it was crazy great!

Our lawyer, Jennifer Wing, came and talked about the essentials for protecting your small business. Jennifer was fantastic! She is the mastermind behind all our great contracts and photo releases in our 101 Kits. After over an hour of her sharing, we had to cut it off to not exhaust her. The questions were great, and I could tell she was giving her all. But we didn’t want to scare her away from not coming back.

(not the best photo, but it’s still fun to have one right? :))

So I was thinking about how the only other time we’ve had this many people attend our monthly photography meeting was when we did our Martini Garden Party last summer. Who would have known that Martinis and Lawyers pack them in?! Scary to think about what would happen if we had Jennifer come back while serving Martinis at the same time…we’d probably break a fire code!

I have to apologize to those of you who came and asked about where I went after 10pm. I did something I NEVER do. I snuck upstairs and went to bed! Brian had suggested I retire early since I’ve been feeling a bit depleted, and I was mad when he said that because I love a party. But I ended up taking his advice. Blaze got in bed next to me, and we both listened to people talking and laughing downstairs. We couldn’t make out what anyone was saying, but I can’t tell you how wide my smile was. It was so wonderful to hear photographers having a great time together, laughing, sharing stories, talking about whatever–it was a the best background noise to fall asleep too. And I promise I will not retire as early at our next meeting. (but thanks for understanding–and thanks to all my secret elves for cleaning up! Wow! that was super great of you guys–whoever you are!)

Now on to much more serious and important things. Batman is turning 4 on May 5th! Yes, Blaze is a Cinco de Mayo baby. You would have rolled your eyes at my drama when I was in delivery. It was time to push, and I was crying out “No, we have to wait until May 6th, otherwise he’ll be a party boy for sure when he’s in college!!!). But at 10pm, I couldn’t wait to push any longer, and out came this HUGE 10.7lb baby boy!

As many of you know, he has gone through many identities in the last year. Right now he will only answer to Batman or The Dark Knight.

So to all the parents who have gone before me on this one, how can I make a great Batman birthday for him? Cake ideas? Decoration ideas? Out of the box ideas for gifts? Hook me up!

I did something so stupid the other day. At the time I thought it was a GRAND and perfect plan, but it turned out to be one of my more stupid moments.

When we come home from a trip, I always book our flight to be later in the day so Brian and I can have a good morning of sleeping in, thus be ready for the kids when we get home. Well, I decided to try something different! Something cool! Why not just book a super early flight instead? We’ll get home earlier, have more time with the kids, and if we’re tired we can just sleep on the plane. Sounds great in theory, huh!

Unless you’re up till 1:30am with these bad boys, being interviewed and filmed for a new episode on their website. Goodness knows what Brian and I even said in the interview after midnight. We said stuff about these and these and then talked about how we work and why we work the way we do, but we also laughed a lot and oh boy…I hope Kurt takes his hand to doing some serious editing, otherwise, let’s just say Scary with a capital S!

So our alarm goes off the next morning at 5:30am–are you feeling me now (that’s four hours of sleep–me not so nice when I have four hours of sleep!). I try to sit up and can barely move, I’m so exhausted. But somehow we make it to the airport, only to miss the flight by ten minutes. I completely LOOSE it with the lady at the ticket counter b/c our flight isn’t leaving for another 30 minutes. AND, AND there is no one in line for security. But she smiles and says “no exceptions, sorry!”

I start to cry, curse and then stomp off and cry some more. We end up in the airport fighting, crying, fighting, Brian calling Roger for another counseling session for us (:)) and then finally falling asleep on the airport floor until the next flight comes–which is only 5 1/2 hours later. Am I doing a good job of showing this “un-glamorous” moment in our traveling?

We make it home that night and oh, the kids hugging us, they never felt so good. The next morning I wake up and feel totally depleted of all energy. I try to go to the gym and end up going back home (but if you kept up with me before, I did make it to the gym while I was in San Diego–yeah!)

I wake up with this horrible soar throat and go see my acupuncturist. She says I don’t have a cold, just plain exhausted. This is when I realize I need to give back to myself to fill up for our next trip coming up. Place of refuge? My kitchen.

In another life, I dream of being a chef of some kind and taking photos of all the things I cook. So in my efforts to fill up a bit and soak in “being at home” I make my own recipe. I loved it so much I had to share it with you!

This is what I call “My Fix for Feeling Depleted”, Homemade Salad Dressing

First mince up some fresh garlic cloves. And don’t do it with a knife, use one of these quick and easy handy things. They are only $30! I love garlic, so I mince up around 10 cloves.

Blaze likes to go a little crazy pushing the buttons. Whoever pushes the buttons, just make sure it’s finely minced.

Then pick out a fun mason type jar and fill it half way up with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Then add Balsamic Vinegar to your jar of oil. I usually add one third of the amount of oil I poured.

Add 1 big Tablespoon of Italian Seasoning (like Basil and Oregano type flavors). After this add your minced garlic.

Here’s my secret ingredient part for your eyes only! I add 2 BIG Tablespoons of honey!

This is my little honey jar. Isn’t that sweet? Blaze picked it out for me last Christmas.

Then I find a cute little lid for my jar and shake that puppy up.

It is so yummy! Give it a try and feel free to adjust the amount of ingredients in any way your palette prefers. I mix this dressing into my salad and add chopped walnuts, feta cheese, dried blueberries, red onion and fresh avocado. By the time I eat this, I’m feeling so much better and not so empty.

Now for the recipe to the images…

Every shot was taken with the Sony A300. This is the DSLR that the Mommy Bloggers received. I decided to play with mine because it has this great Live View feature on the back that I thought I would hate and actually love.

I used the 85 mm lens for every shot. For the shots I took on my cutting board of the Garlic Chopper Upper and the Olive Oil, my ISO was at 800 because my natural light isn’t ideal in that part of the kitchen. The aperture was at a 2.8 and the Shutter Speed was 1/250 of a second.

For the shots on my kitchen windowsill (i.e. the Tablespoon of seasoning, my honey holder, etc) my ISO was down at 100 for best color saturation. Since I have lots of good light I can have my ISO that low. My aperture was WIDE open at a 1.7 (f stop) to give the Tablespoon and the lid on the jar a fantastic blur effect. Remember the lower your aperture (or F stop) the better your blur. And the shutter speed for the windowsill shots were all at 1/80th of a second.

So your turn! What do you do when you are feeling depleted and need to rest up? I was given strict advice not to exercise this week and just rest. My acupuncturist advised me to take some naps, and I tried picturing that with two kids. The last time I did this Pascaline cut her hair and gave every other doll a hair cut…hmmmm…

But for the record, I thought we had the worst time getting home and after ready this story, I think Amy totally wins! You go girl!

Roll call! If you haven’t already found them from googling Sony Mommy Bloggers, here are the fifteen women who came and the links to ALL their blogs. You’ve got the wide range in personality in these blogs. Every thing from Tracey’s sass and wit to Laura’s ability to survive having two sets of twins to Deanna’s adorable vintage aprons!

In fact, just to give you an idea of how funny these ladies were…some of the ladies were going around the table at lunch talking about how they said goodbye to their little ones before coming to this event. Laura (the mom with two sets of twins) piped up and said she didn’t even said goodbye–just slipped out the garage door when they were playing and figured they would all think mom took a REALLY long trip to Costco. I’m telling you, I could not stop laughing! That is being real when you have two sets of twins and a fifth child! And on top of that, half of these women were nursing or pumping which made me feel so at home with all my memories of doing these wonderful things…if you recall my Little Story About Leaking…

But one of the best feelings was being able to give them all a set of the Refuse to Say Cheese and Beyond the Green Box dvds along with a Mom’s Survival 101 Kit . I had about two hours with these ladies, and I know we covered a lot! Yet, it was so good to know they could review a lot of it on the dvds. This is one of the many reasons Brian and I produced the dvd series, and it’s amazing to see it bring such encouragement to women!

To visit all these ladies’ wonderful blogs, see below!

• Ciaran from MommiesWithStyle.com, Celebrity-Babies.com, CarandCaboodle.com
• Jenny from Momminitup.com
• Stacy from MomCentral.com, MomCentralConsulting.com and Mother-Talk.com
• Deanna from DomesticChicky.com, Apronista.com and HappyHousewivesClub.com/hotmama.html
• Kim from InAShoe.com
• Tracey from Sweetney.com, MamaPop.com and RocknRompBaltimore.com
• Erika from PlainJaneMom.com and emomsathome.com
• Heather from TheDomesticDiva.org and idivalicious.com
• Lisa from LisaReviews.com
• Anne-Marie from AMamasRant.com, MyReadableFeast.com, ThisMamacooks.com, The-Write-Spot.com
• Christina from GeekGirlfriends.com and Tynanwood.com
• Amy from Amalah.com, MamaPop.com and Advice Smackdown on AlphaMom.com
• Laura from PaulnLaura.com
• Janice from 5minutesformom.com

One last cool thing Sony did for this event was they brought in a company called RocketXL. This company specializes in marketing research, creating web based awareness by running on line campaigns like the Dove Campaign (we all know and love), as well as many other interesting things! On the last day Andrea, from Rocket XL, led a great discussion with the group on what works for blogs and what doesn’t work. It was a fascinating discussion! So much to process!

I had the pleasure of speaking to a specific group this last week. Some of you guessed the audience, 15 beautiful Mommy Bloggers! Here’s the story!

Sony blew me away (again) in how they not only talked about it, but did something extreme and beautiful to reach women. Instead of doing the expected Press Junction for their new camera line, they decided to invite fifteen, yes 15, of the top Mommy Bloggers in the country for an all expense paid getaway at the posh, La Valencia in San Diego,CA.

All of these women have incredible blogs with strong voices and powerful influences in the consumer world. Sony not only knows this, they acted on it! Each of the fifteen mommy bloggers were put up in the resort, given beautiful meals, spa vouchers, and amazing gifts like a Cybershot, camcorder and the latest DSLR 300. I was given the honor of being flown in to teach these beautiful women how to use their cameras.

Could this be any more fun?! These women took their new gear and totally went for it! In fact, the photos you see of me without the borders are taken by one of the moms who attended, The Domestic Diva! I think she did a great job!

Two different moms volunteered their babies for our live shoot. The “live shoot” was a funny moment in our time together because our idea was to do the shoot on the beach but when the waves almost washed everyone away we retreated upland. The moms were so PATIENT with me on this (thanks ladies!).

Meet Model #1, sweet Leo. He was such a trooper while his mama, Ciaran went back and forth from nursing to being in the workshop. Did I mention how amazing Ciaran is? She writes for two different blogs: Celebrity Baby Blog and Mommies with Style.

And I have to introduce you to beautiful baby Olivia. She was the sweetest thing ever. Olivia’s lovely mama and photo enthusiast is Janice of 5 Minutes for Mom.

For those of you who love it when I share the recipes, these images were all taken with a wide open aperture to get the blur effect in the background. I believe they were 2.0 or lower. The ISO was 100 for that maximum color saturation. And the shutter speed…where did that shutter speed go?

Stacy of the Mom Central blog, the woman pointing and laughing at the camera, had this amazing experience of using an DSLR (camera where you can remove the lens) for the first time. I hope she posts some of her images on her blog because I was blown away at what she captured for her first time! It was incredibly exciting for both of us!

The lady sitting to the side of Stacy is Catherine. She is working on a book called The Geek Girlfriend’s Guide to Technology and has a great blog called geekgirlfriends.

I plan to highlight all fifteen of these wonderful ladies on the blog because you must meet them, visit their blogs and in return, you will be inspired! For example,one of the ladies in the shot below was pregnant with her 9th child! Yes, beautiful Kim already has eight children! You can see them all lined up and sitting on the couch of her blog.

Below are two more fun ladies! I had a blast chatting and laughing with them. Turns out that we will be speaking at BlogHer’s Conference together this July–we just booked it last week! I’m so excited to see Amy (amalah) and Tracey (sweetney) again and love this new community of women bloggers. Both Tracey and Amy have their own personal blogs and are now doing one together called mamapop. They receive 40K Unique Visits a month!!! Check them out!

What do you think about Sony for doing something like this? Do you think it gives us all a bit more hope for women having their voice in the industry, particularly mommy bloggers?

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Today was also the due date for our Five Steps to Prepping! From the growing comments in this post, it looks like you are making some great headway! If you haven’t finished your Five Steps, keep going for it! And let’s talk about suffering more this week!

Del.icio.us : DSLR, camcorder, cybershot, mommy bloggers, sony
Technorati : DSLR, camcorder, cybershot, mommy bloggers, sony

The event is being held here!

And it’s way more beautiful than the photos!

Two clues: Amazing women surround me, and lots of talk about blogging! (Carey, you can’t spill the beans! :))

I’ll try and post the answer later today if I can sneak away from my speaking sessions.

In the meantime, is my “Suffering with MeRa” gang still out there! I’m out of town, errrr–traveling while trying to stay committed to suffering! And I commit to all of you that I WILL NOT drink more than one glass of wine today at this event! AND I will pull my gym clothes out of my suitcase at least once–once, once! I can do it once! Right!!!

(I can do this–I can do this–I can do this! :))

How are we coming on the Five Steps to Prepping? Anyone have all five done yet?

Kim, I saw your post!! Good for you!! The eating past 7pm is a BIG one for me, but I can already tell how much better I feel in the morning! You go girl!!

And totally random, but I just came across this and had to share it. This was right after we got our Sony cameras in the mail and took a walk around the block to test them out. Ooooh! I could eat this little guy up! He makes my heart thump!

Amber Joy. Your name in itself is a healing sound.

Your husband and sister have both nominated you for the Running On Empty Award. Several people read the nominees, and the winner was narrowed down to you.

Would you give us the honor of joining the workshop in San Diego this May? The workshop is sold out, but we have saved a spot for someone like you.

We eagerly await your answer.

Through reading your husband and sister’s submissions, it is clear you have freely given beyond the call to your family and the people of Kosovo. It would be a wonderful honor to now pour into you.

Much love,

Me Ra and Brian

(to read what Amber’s husband wrote when nominating his wife, read here)