Portraits by Lisa

So, way back in March I ran a little contest. I thought that it would be straight forward enough, nominate, choose judges, finalists, some voting, a winning family would get a portraiture sitting. Well, silly me.

First, one of the finalists was a family who had lost everything in a house fire. The winner, however, was a group of women–a “friend family”–who shared dinners and joys, trials and tribulations, and generally supported one another through life, over meals. The actual nominee was one of their group who had rolled with some pretty serious punches, supporting the others all the while. You can read the story (and all the finalists’ stories) here.

But, upon learning that they had won, these generous women asked if I would transfer the prize to the family who had lost it all in the fire. Instead, I agreed to do photo shoots with BOTH these women and the Lexington family.

Then, when following up with the family whose house burned down I learned that the year had gone from bad to worse. After losing everything a family member had a health crisis so desperate that they had to relocate to Europe to care for him, and, since the fire had effectively disentangled them from responsibilities in Boston, they were not at all sure that they would be back.

Several months later (in fact just a couple of weeks ago), the Lexington family again dropped me a line adding yet another wrinkle to the story–at the time of the fire friends from outside the country were relocating to Boston. All of their possessions had also been in the house when it burned. Since the home owners were unlikely to be able to redeem the prize, could they pass on the family portrait to these friends who would be anxious to have the portraits. Hmmmmmm. Let me think. OF COURSE! And so, we are organizing a time for that portrait session.

Meanwhile back to the Glorious Ladies of the Potluck. We scheduled our shoot (no easy task to get 6 women in two states to find a date–and then I needed to be available). The first shoot was called off due to injury. It took months to get another possible date. Well, we finally did the shoot during the later part of November and the wait was COMPLETELY worth it. So much fun to watch these women catch one another’s glow, encourage and tease each other, all while getting gorgeous portraits. Honestly, as I was going through them I was amazed at how few actually BAD photos there were. Six people are a lot to photograph and to have many great group photos is practically a photographic miracle. But, then, these women have created something special and celebrating it was bound to release some magic.

And it does not hurt that all of these women are gorgeous:

Stay tuned for this year’s contest this winter!