Oh what a weekend! For the past few months I have been working and planning for the Photography Workshop for Women by Me Ra Koh. The workshop is geared towards women who want to learn the ins and outs of their Digital SLR. I have wanted to participate in one her workshops for a long time. When they decided to run a workshop in Chicago, I emailed Me Ra to tell her about my downtown office space. She thought the space would be perfect and asked me to serve as hostess for the event. It was a TON of work each day but I throughly enjoyed the women I met this weekend. My roommate, Tara, was wonderful and down to earth. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to room with. She needed white noise to get to sleep and brought a Sound Machine to give her white noise. YEAH! Anyone that knows me, knows I have to have white noise in my room. I met up with Lauren from Kalamazoo, Michigan and what a doll! She has such a wonderful calm about her. Tara, Lauren and I had a wonderful dinner of Sushi and a great glass of wine. After a short get together with Me Ra and her husband Brian, we were off to bed. I don’t know if Tara or I slept at all that night. I was up early to race over to the training rooms to get everything set up for the breakfast. We spent the first part of the morning, meeting everyone and hearing their stories. It was heartwarming and emotional to hear everyone’s stories. We spent the morning learning about Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. I realized that all those mornings of reading online with my camera in hand, really paid off. I actually know more than I gave myself credit for. Did I mention that I must have run up and down the 4 flights of stairs at least 4 times before lunch?? After lunch we settled back in for more playing with our cameras. Me Ra has such a way of getting her message across. She is so down to earth and truly loves sharing her knowledge. We had planned a shoot in our offices but the light from outside just wasn’t there. So off we were to find a new place. Did I mention our building has TEN floors? I think we hit every one of them looking for “good light”.  Me ra decided that we needed to learn how to handle challenges like this since we won’t always have perfect light if we went to someone’s home for a shoot. So in came our models and we turned into the paparazzi. I think I shot about 150 pictures and below are my favorites. I think they turned out well.

Don’t you just love this baby’s little yawn? Could she be any cuter?

I think I am in love with this little girl. I think my heart just about melted when I saw this photo.

Babies and men…what more can I say? Thank you Kathleen for bringing your friends in for the shoot.

The tiny little feet. So yummy!

I am still trying to digest the whole weekend but will add more things I learned in later posts. I wasn’t really thinking about photography as something other than a hobby but who knows now. I know I love to take photos but perhaps I need consider doing something with it since I need to save for a new lens!