This is the first time an editor has used me for both the cover photos and the cover feature story! That’s my daughter in the picture, my son holding an SB 800 Strobist-style to camera left.

On the back cover (below) is Quinn (originally posted here.)  All of my clients around the time I was writing this story were photographed as potential cover candidates, but I knew Quinn was a likely winner with those big blue eyes and a shirt to match.

I didn’t realize until recently how much I miss my days as a writer. (Well, the writing part, anyhow. And the reading part; working for newspapers is the only job where you can be caught at your desk reading the paper and not get fired. And of course the off-beat social life. And the smell of ink. And the Glass House notes. And the sports desk that spoke its own language, the photo desk that could come back with a single image that said way more than all the writers and copy editors in the room combined, the art desk that lived in its own cult back there in the corner, the editorial desk that got the phones ringing and all that mail… But the 4 a.m. showtime to write for an 11 a.m. deadline, editors throwing things at me, basement quarters devoid of windows and plant life, that :ick: couch and again, the Glass House notes? Not so much.)

I could spend a whole post writing about the wonderful organization that is RIF — but that would be sort of redundant since I’ve already written a feature and a sidebar and I’m linking you to both.

So I guess the cat’s out of the bag: it’s true. I’m a writer masquerading as a photographer. But today is special because for the Summer 2009 issue, I get to be both.

Page 22-23

Page 24-25

My home is filled with them, the best ones gifts from the many thoughtful and generous people who fill my life. Yesterday, I got a surprise package in the mail from Miette with a note saying she saw this fleur and thought of me and that it was just too good to pass up. I think it’s meant to adorn a bottle of wine, but I draped it on my 105mm instead so that I can look at it while I work.

Today was tight partly because this morning, the lovely ladies from my Kappa bookclub met at the Patrick Henry Library in Vienna (we meet somewhere new in Northern Virginia each month) to discuss “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls. (If you’ve read this book, too, I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the comments section!) I love bookclub. I love reading, I love the ladies I’ve met through the club and I love venturing out into new places in Northern Virginia that I otherwise wouldn’t have found. Bookclub is a commitment to remind myself constantly not to skip over the little things that I love in the craze that is everyday life.

After two delicious hours of bookclub, I raced off into life, including editing the photos from my latest shoot:

Kristen loves to scrapbook, and she had an idea for a scrapbook page that she wanted to put together so in addition to her portrait (which was the main reason for the shoot), we experimented with some funky shots. Later, after she got home, she found her original idea and she emailed to tell me LOL that we’d gotten it all wrong! I immediately replied, asking if she wanted to try again tomorrow and she wrote back very graciously that no, she will be able to scrapbook just fine with the images we took but thanked me very much for the offer.

And then she wrote, “You must really love your job!”