Yep, I went up in weight. Figures. Then Troy told me to hold the metal bars while the machine calculated body fat. I wanted to hit him and Brian with the machine. Stupid grins on their faces. Until, until, the results popped up.

I lost 5% body fat! I ended up screaming in the gym, jumping up and down, and hugging sweaty people!! In the midst of our high season and all our traveling, crappy meals and crappy restaurants, and dreary weight rooms in hotels, I still lost 5% body fat from training with Troy on the Cross Fit program! Amazing! Seriously amazing b/c I never drop anything. In fact I worked out with the triathlon group for over a year and stayed the same. But Troy, he’s my man now! I had to share the good news with all my “suffering friends” that have been on this journey with me for months.

Before we break for the weekend, I want to remind all you lovely ladies that our Early Bird Registration for the Seattle December Workshop ends this Saturday night at midnight.

This workshop is going to be so special. We’ve already got an amazing group of women forming, and they are flying in from all over the country! If you want to give yourself a COOL Christmas gift and join us, take advantage of the $799 price before it bumps up to the regular price of $999. Make sure you register before Saturday night at midnight PST! Click here for details and registration.

Also, we had a BLAST Wednesday night at our Martini Garden Party. Lots of yummy food, flowers everywhere…

I think we had 50 photographers show up at our house!

Crazy fun! Brian set up his own bar in the backyard and reminded me of Tom Cruise in Cocktail! (expect Brian was sexier of course) Did anyone get a shot of Brian mixing drinks?! And, check out that HUGE speaker to the side of Brian.

The music was awesome! The BEST DJ in the WORLD, Michael of Integritas, was there DJing fantastic music. I can’t believe our neighbors didn’t kill us. They REALLY love us.

And check this out!

We made our own Me Ra Koh Pink Martini! I know, I know. They look red. But it was late, sun was going down, and I wasn’t to in to my camera settings. You get the picture though, right.

Yummy stuff! Want the ingredients to my favorite martini, the Me Ra Koh Martini, that Brian and I made up? You know you do!

Thanks to all the wonderful photographers who came Wednesday night. We host this Annual Garden Martini Party to celebrate YOU and how hard you shoot all summer. Brian and I are honored to know all of you and proud to call you friends! As always, great to laugh with you, catch up and just have fun being together!

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For fun photo exercises, check out our popular Instructional DVDs Refuse to Say Cheese , our 101 Kits for starting or expanding a business in photography, click on the words of your choice! We just had a great review done on our DVDs, read about it here!

The Chicago Workshop is sold out. But the Seattle December Workshop is now open for registration! Click HERE to register!

We are a busy family with a crazy schedule at times, but somehow it doesn’t seem exhausting. Seems okay…actually a lot of fun. But three days ago, we bought our first puppy (mind you, both Brian and I did NOT grow up with dogs and feel completely out of our league here!). I feel like Brian and I are going to collapse with total exhaustion. What were we thinking?

That’s right, not a single photo to show off the puppy. The puppy hasn’t held still long enough for me to even consider grabbing the camera. But this should all change soon, right? Photos to come. Details for now, she’s a beautiful Golden Retriever with BIG paws.

I’m wondering if Andrew Niesen from LaCour is exhausted…

Andrew came up to visit our Pictage User Group

and stayed the night at our house. We had a great time together, and it happened to be the same night we got our puppy. Andrew, Airika and Gerald were all great sports about all the chaos. But the next morning he went to our Cross Fit training session with us. How’s he doing Rachel? He was a serious trooper and busted out the chin ups! Mark, you would have been proud!

But the deadline news, let’s talk about that. I’ve had my hands full with the puppy adventure at our home, and I just now got caught up on everyone’s comments the last two days. We didn’t realize the mailbox was full for the WATER themed photo contest. So Brian and I want to extend the deadline for you. The mailbox is now bigger, and if you haven’t, you can still submit your WATER themed photo contest. Just to be fair and make sure everyone gets a chance to get their image in (particularly those of you that had trouble earlier this week), we’re going to extend the deadline until this Friday at midnight PST . So send your submissions by email to contest@merakoh.com. Attach your image submission as a small sized JPG.

Puppy’s nap is over. Gotta go!

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!

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.

The kids did not actually take any martini sips, BUT they did eat a ton of dessert, and they did dance on the couch (and the dancing on the couch is often a daily thing which Pascaline wants me to learn to appreciate—she’s serious.)

Here are some more fun photos from Erwin’s blog! Erwin is another awesome photographer based out of Seattle. Check out his blog!

I love the lighting Erwin caught on this shot of Brian and Blaze!

Ron trying out one of the AMAZING Shootsacs by the AMAZING Jessica Claire!

Jason, of Ella Blue Studio, helping Brian with the drink orders. Check out Jason’s site. He and his wife Crystal do some great work!

And Ron just posted this up on his blog! I LOVE it! Pascaline (still on the couch) singing about how Canon is better than Nikon! That’s definitely our girl!!

It was our first and is for sure going to be an annual Martini Garden Party event! We had door prizes, Michael brought his whole DJ set up and sweet vintage microphone. He has got to be the BEST DJ out there–besides the nicest guy! Check his site out if you need a DJ!

Who knows what the neighbors thought!

Here’s Ron, Laurel and Jen! It was Jen’s first time last night to one of our groups (we loved having you Jen!)!

And this last photo is seriously scaring me! Pascaline and Blaze went WILD on all the sugar, and at one point, Pascaline was actually mixing martinis. I’m seriously scared those two took little sips of their own (see my FYI not below). Here’s Pascaline dancing on the couch! The highlight is when she asked Ron if he shoots Nikon or Canon. That’s our girl!

Thanks for coming guys! It was such a great group with so many laughs! Ron Storer, these photos you caught are AWESOME! He’s also got more on his blog! And I think we hit a record of the last few people leaving at almost 2am!

FYI: For those of you who don’t know us well, Pascaline took one turn at shaking the mixer. And the kids didn’t take any martini sips, but they did eat a ton of dessert, and they did dance on the couch (and the dancing on the couch is often a daily thing which Pascaline wants me to learn to appreciate—she’s serious.)

But on top of seeing the albums, it was so cool to listen to Ira share. He’s been with Leather Craftsman for 23 years! He’s watched the photography industry go through so many changes that you couldn’t help but be mesmerized by all his stories. Here he is with Ron doing a self portrait. Ira’s in back and Ron’s holding the camera in front.

Brian and I were talking about Ron last night after the meeting. Ron Storer is one of those guys that every time you walk away from a conversation or just saying hello you think, ‘He is one of the nicest, most genuine guys.’ It’s so true. There is no doubt why Ron’s brides love working with him so much! Check out his site if you’ve never seen it.

This is another fun shot I stole from Ron’s blog of our wall of vintage mirrors in the living room. Kind of fun how Ron captured the different reflections.

The night was really magical for us. I love, love, love this community of local photographers. I felt so refreshed from the conversations I had with people, laughing and crying, and often both at the same time. Steve Smith hung out in our new garden with me until 11pm giving me all kinds of tips on gardening. Every one that came survived my horti-torture, I mean horticulture tour. And I think we finished off four bottles of wine in the process. For some reason people brought mostly wine and not food this time. Is this an indicator of stress with the busy season upon us?

If you’re a photographer and want to join us, we hold these meetings every month at our home. Shoot me an email, and I’ll send you the details! We’ve got some cool things planned for the summer, like a Garden Party (fun drinks, music, etc) and a Pizza/Wine Dinner at a local spot where we’re going to rent out the whole place!

Here’s a video with some of the highlights from the night. With four blogging tips, the rest are below!

A few other tips from Steve that have helped us!

#5 Make Categories! This way people can easily find a recent post or have their interest perked at going through your archives. This advice has totally paid off since I know a number of you check the “Photography Tips for Moms” category to find exercises and tips to try. Some of our blog visitors are brides and want to go straight to our Wedding Slideshows, or they want to know the latest on Fabulous weddings. All they have to do is click the VH1 category. Big time saver for your visitors!

#6 Good Titles! Google and other search engines specifically use the titles of our posts. So make sure you title your posts with key words to help those search engines find you.

#7 Link, Link, Link! I know it was said in the video, but it’s such a big deal for your Google rankings. Link to others and have them link to you. Hyperlink words within your blog. All these things get you higher on the totem pole when someone does a search.

#8 Do ads work? From Steve’s experience they don’t do much. He has ads on his archived posts only, and with the amount of traffic he gets, he still only gets a couple hundred a month from his ads. Definitely not something to quit your day job for.

Check out these great photos Bill Cawley of Cloud Spot took at our Christmas PUG Bash! We had about 25 photographers, wonderful caterers!, and a saxophone solo by the incredible Brian Hartman (yes, he not only shoots beautiful images, but he also brings the house down with his saxophone!)

Below is Todd Kim. He and his wife, Rebekah, have been coming to our meetings from day one! If you ever need to be encouraged Todd is the guy! He has such a BIG heart and always words to lift you up.

This is Stephanie! She has the best smile! And if you’re a photographer looking for album ideas, Stephanie is your woman. Her work with Art Leather is awesome!

The BEAUTIFUL AND TALENTED catering team! Heather and Carol! The food was amazing! But on top of that, they also did this incredible display with the food. Every thing was in silver and just gorgeous!

The man himself!

His beautiful and talented wife, Jennifer! (She won the door prize and was a good sport to where some fake snow for the shot.)

The below shots are to die for! These guys will probably kill me when they see this stuff posted, but I had to post! Bill helped me make this “winter scene” in our play room with snow tipped mountains in the background. And then Bleu and Ginger brought over their skis and poles, so we could do some wintry ski shots! I just love these guys for being such great sports!

Here’s Yuriy! Doesn’t he look like the ski stud! And don’t you like the effect of our fake tree with cotton looking snow on it? It’s almost to good to post! He also released his new website! Check it out!

Todd and Rebekah were such great sports!!

And last, but NEVER least, Steve and Larry! These guys are a hilarious! Not only do they make the most amazing pastries, have great taste in wine, but they can make you laugh so hard you almost pee your pants! And Steve’s a great photographer on top of it all!

Me and Jennifer laughing together!

Ron Storer, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet! A passion for photography and love for people! You can’t help but love Ron!

And the cutest, smallest attendee of our Christmas party, little Brogan, Bleu and Ginger’s daughter!

Thanks again Bill for taking these shots!

And thanks to every one who came! Brian and I loved being with all of you! Your friendship has made 2006 a blast! We love you all, and we wish you the best holidays!!!

Me, Jamie and Shelly

David Jay and Shelly Garcia were up from Southern CA, and they were so great to make time in their crazy schedule for a bunch of us in Seattle. DJ is an amazing guy in how much he gives to the photography community and also his incredible talent. He is ranked as one of the top 15 photojournalists in the world by WPJA. Shelly is co-founder of an amazing album design boutique type company. I can’t wait to send her some of our albums and see what magic she does!

David Jay, the beautiful Jennifer and her goofy, husband Brian Hartman of Photo Elan (a great husband/wife team who have done work for great publications like Elle Magazine.)

As I looked around the restaurant that night, I was so happy inside. We (Brian, myself and Jeff LaPlante) started the PUG groups in Seattle and Tacoma almost six months ago. Before these groups Brian and I didn’t really know many other photographers, and now I feel like we’ve been friends for years. It was so great to see every one having a good time, catching up, sharing helpful tips and just laughing.

The funniest part of all is when we tried to do a “big group photo.” You’d think that with how many group photos we all take at weddings, we’d be able to pull this off. Not even close! No one wanted to be in the front or be in it at all. It probably took six shots before we were paying attention and doing the right thing. See below!

One of our first six tries…

Another try…probably shot number 10.

And I’m still on the end laughing and not paying attention.