I started at Manhattan Bride magazine in 2010. I wore many hats. I was the stylist, the beauty editor, the travel editor, the real weddings editor, and the person the team called "eagle eye" because I could catch a typo from across the room. Twice a year I attended Bridal Fashion Week in New York City, running from showroom to showroom, pulling looks, taking notes, absorbing everything. It was exhausting in the best possible way. Glamorous and chaotic and completely addictive.
At the helm was Rick, the editor, publisher, and photographer. An award-winning one at that, the kind who had photographed Gloria Steinem's book cover, helmed Studio 54 magazine and Manhattan magazine, and built a career most photographers only dream about. Working alongside him was an education I didn't know I was getting.
On shoot days I was the one who made sure everything actually worked. I organized everything, kept the energy up, and made sure we stayed on schedule even when the end of the shoot brought that familiar scramble that every set knows. While the model was in hair and makeup, I was right there with her. We would talk, laugh, get comfortable with each other. By the time she stepped in front of the camera she wasn't nervous, she was ready. That was by design.
And then I was behind the dress, literally. Helping her in and out of gowns, carrying trains so brides could walk, making sure we shot the biggest advertisers first. It was unglamorous work in the most glamorous setting, and I was good at it.
What I didn't realize at the time was how much I was absorbing. I watched Rick work. I watched how he moved around a subject, how he waited for the right moment, how he talked to people to put them at ease. I coordinated with wedding photographers on our real weddings section every issue, learning what made a photograph tell a story versus just document one. And on my travel assignments covering honeymoon destinations, I started taking the photos myself. Some of them were published. That was the first time I thought: maybe I can do this.
I stayed close to the magazine long after my first two years there, freelancing through 2022. But life has a way of quietly closing some doors, and I found myself looking for a creative outlet I hadn't had in a while.
I had moved to Woodbridge, Connecticut in 2021 with my family. Connecticut is nothing like New York, and I mean that as a compliment. The beauty here is quieter. It is in the light through the trees at East Rock Park, in the way the tide goes out at Sea Bluff Beach and the sand stretches on forever, in the old colonial architecture of a small New Haven County town that actually knows its neighbors. And the subjects are different too. In New York I was always around weddings, that singular electric day. Here it is about families. A different kind of love. A different kind of beauty.
I picked up my camera and started photographing it.
If you are looking for a Connecticut portrait photographer who will bring real care, a genuine eye, and a lot of heart to your session, I would love to meet you.
