cary & co.

So 2009 has started off on so many high notes, professionally speaking. The latest and greatest all started with an email a month or so ago, from a Ms. Cary Cooper, asking if I would shoot her album cover. Yes. Album cover. Turns out Ms. Cary is a popular and influential artist in the folksy song genre (she's even married to the King of that category, so she's like folk songstress royalty), and she is debuting her new album, "Dirty Little Secret" this spring. Cary had found me through, as she put it, "a string of emails through a friend of a friend on myspace" and had seen pictures from my portrait session with Cello Girl. Nervous doesn't even begin to describe my state of mind in the weeks leading up to this session. I did some reading on her (you can, too, by checking out http://www.carycooper.com/), and Cary seemed like a remarkable person. In person, she was even more so. She brought along a very talented make-up artist and a dear friend for moral support; both Josie and Ann could not have been more fun. She also brought along a cd of her new album for me, to which we rocked out during our studio session (and to which I listened all night as I edited picture after picture from both my weekend shoots). It's definitely a "sip a glass of red (or two) by the fire" kind of cd, and I highly recommend it to any woman out there who has ever experienced love, loss, joy and/or heart ache. So, pretty much everyone. Anyway, Cary and her entourage could not have been more professional and polite, and my whole nervousness was for nought (seriously, I was debating whether or not to rip a hole in my jeans, paint my nails black and wear sunglasses the whole time, just to give off that rock star vibe). But seriously, people, I've got Beyonce's people holding on line 1, and I've still gotta call back Rhiana and JT's agents. JZ out. All kidding aside, Cary, here is a sampling from our session. I'm also throwing in the mock flyer for the conference. Let me know if you want to go with a different pic. Thank you, so very much, for such an incredible opportunity. I am officially a groupie!