As I sit here typing this, I can hardly believe what I’m about to share with you…a good friend, and one of my longest friends, Christine Organ and I are going to have a book published! How can this be!? What started out as a fun weekly collaboration, something we did to share in our creative endeavors, her writing, my photography, has turned into something I never in a million years expected…a book!
About 4 years ago we got together so our kids could have a play date and we could catch up and have some much-needed adult time. Well, as much of an adult conversation as you can squeeze into an afternoon with very young kids underfoot. We were talking about her new blogging venture and me trying to take my photography to the next level, then Christie had this spark of an idea. She suggested that maybe I could share an image or two each week and then she’d write a blog post inspired by one of the photos. It was simply a fun way for her to have a jumping off point for her writing and for me to share my photography with a broader audience. It was also a fun way for me to share some images that fall outside of my typical architectural photography. Those outliers that didn’t really seem to have a home found a cozy little spot on my good friend’s blog. Even more, it’s been so inspiring and fun to see what those images sparked in Christie’s writing. And how often those messages (and hopefully photos) resounded with so many others.
What started out as a weekly Photo Inspiration Challenge has kind-of fallen into a whenever-we-get-around-to-it situation as we’ve both gotten busier with our creative endeavors and our kids. But, it’s still something we both love doing. So, last fall during one of our catch-up lunches we started talking about what the next step might be…Do we continue to do what we’re doing? Do more workshops like the one we did last summer? Do we self-publish a book? Or do we dare try to get a book published by a publishing company? We decided to go for it!
Over the last few months we’ve tossed around ideas, researched and tweaked. Then, a couple days ago we both signed a publishing contract for a coffee table book featuring Christie’s words and my images!
We’re both beyond excited and filled with gratitude for everyone who has supported us. By following our blogs, commenting on and liking the images and our collaborative blog posts. Thank you very, very much! And thank you to 220 Publishing for making this book a reality!
To hear Christie’s thoughts on this collaboration and our upcoming book, check out her blog post here. I promise you, it’s much more eloquently written than my words here. Afterall, her forte is writing and mine is photography.
Thank you for sharing in our excitement!