Every month we have a special meeting for photographers. If you’re in the neighborhood, join us!

People have come from Idaho, Oregon and of course, Washington. But if your visiting from out of town and want to jump in on the fun, we’d love to have you!

What do we do?

We start with wine and appetizers, everyone brings a little something. Then we have a focused topic for the night. Sometimes the topic has to do with growing your business, marketing, or shooting techniques, or the nuts and bolts to your business.

Right now I have a series of people coming who help photographers with the “business” side of their business. Last month our wonderful banker, Dani Collins from Columbia Bank, came and talked to us about becoming bankable, when to consider commercial financing, tax benefits and so forth.

This month our meeting is on Wednesday, April 23rd (two days before our Sonoma Workshop starts! Yeah!). It starts at 6:30pm.

For this month, I’ve asked our lawyer, Jennifer Huddleston Wing, to come and talk about the differences between having an LLC, Corporations and being a Sole Proprietor. Airika also had a great idea of asking Jennifer to discuss the Top Ten Pitfalls of a Small Business. If you are in need of lawyer type input, I got Jennifer to join Facebook. You can find her as Jennifer Huddleston Wing or just go to my page Me Ra Koh and you’ll see her as a friend there too. But seriously, I’ve known her for years–she’s amazing. For those of you who have bought and loved our 101 Kits, particularly the Wedding, Portrait and Associate Kits, Jennifer has been the legal mastermind behind all those contracts. She’s a contract queen!

If you are a veteran in the industry or considering starting a business, you are totally welcome. The appetizer/wine part is 30 minutes or so, the formal part of the meeting lasts about 1 hr. This officially ends our group around 9pm. Then we eventually have to kick people out at 1am.

We love this night and everyone who comes! Sometimes there are 12 of us, sometimes there are 40 of us! Each year we also do a Martini Garden Party every summer and a Christmas Party.

But I’m also super excited to have new leaders for the group. Brian and I starting leading it a couple of years ago, but our schedule has become to crazy to do the job justice. We are still going to be hosting, but Gerald and Airika Pope have volunteered to take over the leadership side of things, and they are so cool! I can’t wait to see how their leadership will take this group to another level!

This is Airika (the one sticking her tongue out). As you can see, she’s very unapproachable.

If your interested on info and details to the meetings, shoot Airika an email and she’ll hook you up! (airika@geraldpope.com)

And most of all, be encouraged to find a community of photographers that are safe and encouraging. If you are feeling looked down upon by other photographers, get out of that situation and find a new group where people love you, cheer you on, and believe in you. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, but there are more of these types of wonderful photographers than the Negative Nellie’s. Just got to hang in there and find them.

Just curious to know your thoughts on this one.

Have any of you heard of Twitter? And if so, what do you think of it?

For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is my best explanation of it is a way to update what you’re doing at any given time from any given place. It feels similar to Facebook’s feature of being able to say what you’re doing right now. You can check out my Facebook Profile (search for MeRa Koh with all the spacing and caps done right) and you’ll see what I mean. At the top it will say “Me Ra Koh…is wishing she was at her Zumba class! updated x amount of hours ago”

This little feature on Facebook is fun b/c I can just pull up my page and see what friends are up to. (BTW, I’m only a week old in Facebook and totally getting addicted to it!)

But even though the feature in Facebook seems fun, the Twitter thing makes me feel anxious. Not sure why. I love seeing my friend, Sara France’s twitter updated. If you click on her blog, you’ll see the red box pop up on the right side. I think it’s hilarious when she twitters about having a drink at this moment and watching American Idol.

But when I went to actually start my account, I backed out feeling anxious about the whole thing.

Just wondering if you any of you have thoughts on this whole Twitter business and how much “up to date info is too much”?

Somehow I convinced my buddy, Carey of Barefoot Memories in San Diego, to sell me her wide angle lens before she even took it out of the box! She’s the BEST!!!

But it was on one stipulation. I promised to show her on the blog how I used it at the next wedding.

Let me just say Brian and I were in heaven!

Since the rain was being stubborn, we ducked into this local Seattle cafe on Capitol Hill. We did some fun shots of Monica and Ryan that I can’t wait to show you when the wedding is done being processed. They give me goosebumps! The light coming in through the front windows was perfect as the couple snuck a quick kiss. There isn’t any photoshop done either. This image was straight out of the camera. (and of course it helps that Monica and Ryan are a beautiful couple! :))

A wide angle helps you grab so much more in the shot. And the flexibility of having more width in your frame opens up all new possibilities for composition. Especially when you’re shooting groups. This was my favorite shot from the groomsmen! Without a wide angle, I wouldn’t have been able to get that close to the groomsmen on the right and still have the others ones in the shot.

Thank you Carey! Your (or now mine :)) wide angle did just the job!

This has nothing and every thing to do with photography! I had to share!

For those of you who own your home, you know how much your credit score plays into what kind of loan and interest rate you end up with. It’s almost sickening when you realize how much these three little scores affect your life. Brian and I have been working hard at improving our credit scores. And we’re so fortunate b/c one of our closest friends, Zane Ferry, has also been our loan officer for years. His daughter was the Easter bunny hit!

So a couple months ago, Zane came across this new tool where you can pay $30, and it will run a report telling you what exact amount to pay on a specific credit card and how many points it will raise your score! To good to be true, huh! He tried it first and has been keeping Brian and I updated. So far every thing they advise has worked even better than what they predicted. So last night we had him run the program for us, and I about fell over when we got the results!

I had been thinking about paying a large amount on one of our credit cards to get the balance down, but the report said that if I only paid $462 down on a different card it would boost one of my credit scores 37 points! What do I have to lose but try! I’ll keep you updated on what happens!

What does this have to do with photography? Every thing! If you get to the point where you want to apply for a SBA or line of credit for your business, the first thing they look at is your credit scores. So having your scores as high as possible (710 or higher) can save you a lot of money! Brian and I are wanting to invest more in the real estate arena, so we’ve already hired ecreditattorney, but this little tool Zane found is so GREAT! I’m smiling ear to ear this morning!

If you want to have Zane run this tool for you, here is his cell. He’s probably going to kill me for giving this out, but seriously, this program he has is unbelievable (and he’s an AMAZING loan guy!! 253-752-3325.

So many wonderful things happened at WPPI last week! But the best things were all the people we spent time with! I didn’t have my camera, but thank goodness others did! Here are a bunch of fun photos I’ve found on other blogs! I’ve also included their links for those of you wanting some visual inspiration!

The first day we got together with two beautiful, amazing photographers, Carey from Barefoot Memories and Amber from Holritz Photography. Carey, Amber and I are conspiring on some fun stuff for women in 2008 so Brian and Nathan (Amber’s husband) got some fun promo photos for us. These are from Amber’s blog!

And Brian trying to make me laugh (b/c it’s so hard!).

He loves Nathan too!

I had to steal this one too of Dane Sanders. If you haven’t checked out his site, you must. Dane is such an incredible guy that is giving such good stuff to the photography industry. I had the best time hanging out with him and talking about fun ideas for 2008!

The next day David Jay and I had a blast speaking at the Pictage booth on the tradeshow floor. Thanks to the beautiful Daria for shooting this! Check out her website! She’s a sweetie and incredibly talented! After I finished my talk I had a group of women wanting to chat about motherhood, balance, work, all the above. Engaging with these women felt like water to my soul. If you were one of those women, email me b/c I don’t know if I got your cards and would love to stay in touch!

Later on in the day Mike Colon and Denis Reggie did a talk in the Pictage booth. I think so many people would agree that Pictage did an amazing job of hosting an awesome show! Mike and Denis deserve so much credit to where our business is today, and every time I hear them talk I learn something new. This picture was from Mike Colon’s blog. (Thanks Mike! So great to see you and catch up!)

During the Pictage cocktail hour, we met these two great photographers, Tom Flint and Corey McNabb. Check out their work! They are so fun and cracked me up b/c they put our business card in their name badges and just walked around the tradeshow like this. I had to grab a picture!

Brian and I also got to know Forest and Raya Carlisle. Our associates, Bleu and Ginger, have been telling us how cool these two are forever, but wow, Brian and I just fell in love with them! Forest and Brian are two peas in a pod with how techy they both are! And Raya, ladies, you have to visit her blog! She has got to be one of the most creative women I’ve ever met. Plus, she does incredible album design with her business party Shelly and their business Pink Penny.

Enna Grazier and I finally got to have coffee and talk face to face! She and her husband Matt are another amazing husband and wife team on the east coast. And I had a blast with the LaCour team. We both had interviews with the new HBO series, and Rachel and I could have talked for hours about our passion for women needing women in the photography industry.

And if you’re wanting one last link, here’s a video Steve Depino posted on his blog. It’s a fun recap! Enjoy!

I’m leaving so much out (like my video partner in crime, Josh, buying me lunch! You’re so awesome!), but I figure these links should inspire some of you this week! With 10,000 photographers coming together, how can you go wrong at an event like this? Inspiration was everywhere. I came away feeling so thankful to not only do what I do, but be in an industry full of people I respect and admire. Much love to all of you!

Wow! In the first 24 hour release of WORKFLOW, we had a 100 plus photographers from all over the world purchase it! The photographers come from the UK, to Argentina, to all over the US and Canada. And best of all, the feedback we’re getting is fantastic! Here’s a few comments from photographers already.

“Thank you for this!! Amazing!! Exactly what I’ve been trying to create myself for the past couple of years and just haven’t quite figured it out.” (Delaware Photographer)

“I loooove this Me Ra! You and Brian continue to amaze me! I looove that I can see EVERYTHING. This is how I choose my yearly calendars and stay organized…when I can see it all!” (Florida photographer)

“Thank you so much for your generosity! I am going to look this over. I always like to know how others manage and can look at my flow and make tweaks accordingly. Thank you!” (Pennsylvania Photographer)

We can’t tell you how great it is to see so many of you benefiting already! Keep us updated, and we’ll be sure to post more tools up!

____________________________________________________________________________________

As promised at PhotoPlus Expo, we’ve got our Me Ra Koh Photography WORKFLOW excel spreadsheet up and available to download. To download WORKFLOW, click here.

Workflow is the biggest issue for digital photographers. How do you stay sane with the intense post process? WORKFLOW, designed by my awesome husband Brian, is our answer.

We showed this for the first time to our Tacoma/Seattle PUG group when we discussed ways to speed up workflow for the digital photographer. Since then Brian has added even more incredible tools to this spreadsheet!

Basically, all you have to do is fill in the blanks. Fill in your client’s name, contact info, and wedding date, and you’ll see all the due dates (based on a 2 wk. turnaround time) automate based on their wedding date. Put in the package price, and you’ll see your payments (made in thirds), their due dates, reminder dates, etc. all automate for you. If you need to charge tax or travel expenses just fill in the blank, and all the numbers will automate! It’s AMAZING! Brian is AMAZING for designing it! And we’re so excited to have it available to all of you! We know this will help keep you and your studio sane! It has for us without a doubt!

To order your WORKFLOW application, click here. The cost is $15. Just click on this link “WORKFLOW,” and you’re set!

Enjoy! And let us know what you think! We’re SUPER excited for you to keep your sanity with this tool!