My dear friend, Kari, has started her own blog.  And I am LOVING it!  It’s called Mamabloo.  Some of you may recognize Kari from her funny comments on my blog posts, and then there was that incident where Oprah rebuilt her HOUSE!  (no, I’m not joking.)

Kari has a down to earth style of writing that nine out of ten times makes me smile.  When I post Photo Tips or Exercises, Kari will bust out her camera and give it her best go.  She’s not a professional photographer.  She is a full, and I mean FULL TIME mama, with FIVE kids in tow.  She doesn’t know all the camera jargon, but that doesn’t stop her from capturing her family stories.  What is so great is that she’ll often email me the stories behind what happened and her fun results.  Some of her stories have me rolling…and that got me thinking…why don’t I ask Kari if I can share some of her stories with you!  So for experiment sake, we’ve got our first Mamabloo Photo Tale.

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I love Christmas trees.  Every year I load the family up in the mini van – all 7 of us – the Saturday after Thanksgiving and head out to someplace to get a tree. What happens next is predictable and consistent from year to year. My husband, Dave, and I get in a fight.

We are in complete and utter disagreement over everything regarding the tree. What size it should be, how much we should spend, and, of course, where it should go in the house. The truth of the matter is, I always win. And Dave always sulks. This year, he took a different approach and just said “I’ll do whatever you want” over and over – sorta like a mantra — and the whole day was much better. Ahhhh…Merry Christmas. So it is not a coincidence that this year I think we have the best tree ever. Ever. So, it is finally time to take a picture of it.

Me Ra tells us that taking a good Christmas Tree photo requires 8 simple steps. Gee, only 8. Off I go to try the first step.

Step One says to set the shutter speed at a VERY slow speed. Check: 1/5

And to set the camera to TV mode (I didn’t even know it had a TV mode, but, hey, I watch a lot of TV, so it should be fine) Check.

And put the ISO up high. Check: 1600

Here is my first crappy picture.

I GUESS I AM GOING TO HAVE TO READ ALL THE STEPS!

The next steps actually involved the timer on my camera!  I actually had to Google it to find out where the stinkin’ timer was on this thing.  I spent the next few nights in short bursts of time shooting my favorite parts of the tree using Me Ra’s advice.

So……I wasn’t able to completely adhere to all the steps – anything called “RAW” scares the ba-jeebers outta me.  The imagery that word, RAW, conjures up is just wrong.  And I am glad I have had some ballet and yoga in my past because I needed to contort myself to see through the viewfinder. But, I was able to fiddle around with her 8 steps and come up with something to forever document the best tree ever. Even Dave agrees.

To try Me Ra’s 8 steps for photographing a Christmas tree, CLICK HERE!

If you are hungry for even more Christmas Tree Photo Tips, check out THIS POST where Carey Schumacher of Barefoot Memories chimes in!

Mamabloo and I would love to know what you think of Mamabloo’s first Photo Tale.  Should we share another one with you!  Post a comment and let us know.  (and post one fast b/c you know we are both going to be refreshing all day!  :))

xoxo, Me Ra

p.s.  Oh!  Wait!  I just got word as I was preparing this post that we have TWO NEW CONFIDENCE Workshops to announce for the Spring!  We are coming to Jersey City, NJ for all our East Coast ladies and also Huntington Beach, CA for our West Coast ladies!  It’s going to be a GREAT Spring!  If a CONFIDENCE Wkshp was on your Christmas Wish List, stay tuned this week for Registration Details—either Wed, Thursday or Friday :)!