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. ๐
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! ๐
It was an amazing event! Thanks Me Ra for yor part. You are a beautiful person, your istruction was amazing and so helpful, not to mention inspiring, and when you & Brian get sick of this photography thing, you should go on the road as a comedy duo. You guys are hilarious!! I hope to meet you again someday. It was a pleasure!!
I think it’s fantastic and I’d love to get my hands on a Sony!
Me Ra,
Thank you again for attending this event with us – I am so excited to use what I learned from you and Brian, and my husband can’t wait to go through your DVDs with our children!
There’s just one question I didn’t find time to ask: any tips on getting a great shot of all 9 children at the same time?
how fun! And what a compliment to get asked to teach them all their cameras – fantastic!
Wow..how cool for sony to do something like this..those lucky moms. I think it is great that a huge company like that is making it a priority to see what women want in a camera. Can they add some colors to the SLR’s..do they have to all be black?!
Wow, that’s so incredibly awesome. I can’t say that I’m not jealous, as I am in love with photography, but I am also so happy for the women who were there.
Also, my name really isn’t 97906. I just am half asleep and typed the code as my name. Whoops!
What a great event!! I love the great finds on your blog!! Looking forward to hearing about the 15 blog mom’s!
WOW! The power of blogging! The power of finding our own voice and connecting with others. Sony is so smart to jump on these women and to treat them to a weekend getaway. Very savvy marketing! I can’t wait to check out some of these blogs! I am guessing with your tips and their new cameras the blogs are going to get much more pretty. I taught high school kids photography which was a blast but I would love to teach MOM’S photography-how fun!
I got my body comp done this afternoon. Apparently I am made out of fat, water and nacho cheese.
Awesome Mera!!!
And even more awesome that you’ll get to be down here again soon!!!
You will definitely need to pay attention during my beach lesson — no more being surprised by waves, missy! You could have called me for that beach thing, you know! :p The waves in La Jolla are treacherous and sneaky!
What an awesome idea! Sony is definitely a step ahead of the rest of the world. I’ve already clicked through on some of these blogs and can’t wait to go back and read more. Thanks for posting all of them. Lucky you, Me RA!
I LOVE that shot of Leo! And of course I think my baby Olivia is super beautiful too. ๐
Thanks so much for all your incredible teaching. Meeting and learning from you was the highlight of the trip for me. You and Brian are just fantastic!
I agree with Jenny – you and Brian could pay the bills as a comedy act!
I gushed about how fantastic you are on my blog today and I hope I can interview you soon too. ๐
Oh – and is there any chance I could post those shots on my blog and link to you? THANKS ๐
Sony does rock for doing this. It sounds as though they really planned the event well and put a lot more thought into in than say the recent Baby Camp that caused such a Brouhaha in blog land.
I’ve been eyeing a Sony DSLR mostly because I could share lenses with my husband, but reading about what they did really puts them in an even stronger light in my eyes.
[…] I was checking out Me Ra Koh’s Blog (my new idol, person I look up to in the photography department) this morning and found out that she thought some of the photos I took at the Sony Mommy Blogger Event were pretty swank! Me Ra Koh thinks my photos are good! Imagine that. Anyways so while I was looking at my photos being displayed on a famous photographer’s website, I also noticed that my husband wrote an insanely funny post about his experience with a messy pamper. His story had me crying, it was so funny! […]
Janice, of course you can use the photos of your Olivia! And if you could link your readers to our blog that would be wonderful! Thanks so much for all your enthusiasm. I love who you are and the energy you hold.
Great photos! I love the two of Janice and Olivia! I’m a big fan of 5 Minutes for Mom so it was great to see a few photos of them.
I also loved the photo of Stacy. I hope to meet her someday. She seems so authentic and warm and fun.
Thanks for giving us a “glimpse” into the event! I wish I could have been there to listen to your session!
Codeine….
Codeine….
Doxycycline….
Doxycycline….
Valium….
Valium….
[…] at BlogHer, I also got to catch up with some of the wonderful ladies I met when I spoke at the Sony’s Mommy Blogging Event! It was great fun to see them again and catch up! Becoming more acquainted with the blogging world […]
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