Fast forward to last year. I received a call from a young mother who’d heard of my work and was interested in baby portraits. We scheduled her pre-session consultation, and when I opened the door, I was thrilled to see Miss Lisa with her adorable new baby Emma! Since then we’ve done not one but three sessions together.

It was at Emma’s 6 month session that I worked up the nerve to tell Lisa about the concept I had for photographing her. I thought for sure she’d think I was crazy, but she actually loved the idea! We looked through her closets and put together the perfect outfits. Here are some images from that session…

Renae and Jesse have been wonderful clients for years. I shot their engagement session and their wedding in 2005. And early last year, they called me for their newborn session with their adorable son Jaiden. I love working with them – they’re fun, artsy, and, as you can see, stunning. So oh-what-fun it was for me when they contacted me in November for a holiday session, and started the conversation with ‘we want something un-typical.’ Music to my ears. Here’s what we came up with…just love this. 

The  Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure is a formidable physical challenge, and everyone has their own reasons for doing it. For some, its to support a friend or family member who’s struggled with breast cancer. For others it’s even more personal – many of the walkers are survivors themselves. For Joanne Harrington,  a businesswoman from Washington Township, it was simply a desire to help raise money for a cure. She’d been kicking the idea around for a few years, but what finally hooked her were the commercials.  “It’s true,” she smiles. “I got sucked in by those commercials that they start running in January.” So in the spring of 2006, inspired by the Walk for the Cure TV ads, she enlisted her friend Kym Rizzo (“I wasn’t going to do it alone”)  and together they signed up for their first  Philadelphia 3-Day. 60 miles of walking in three days.  “I don’t know what I was thinking, ” she says.  “I’ve never been an exercise person –  never have been. So 60 miles?”

Harrington (top row, center) with her J-Walkers for the Cure.

Word got out to her other friends, and before long she had a group of 15 women signed up to walk with her. She decided to establish the group as a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation, and the ‘J-Walkers for the Cure’ was born.

That was 2006.  Since then, the J-Walkers have been involved in 10 walks, most of them in Philadelphia, but  they’ve also walked  in Seattle, Tampa and San Diego. Looking ahead to next year, Joanne and Kim are already planning to participate in the San Francisco 3-Day in September, as well as the October walk in  Philadelphia.

To get in shape for her first walk, Harrington followed Komen’s suggested training schedule, and was glad she did.  “You can’t wake up and go to the walk and expect to do 60 miles,” she warns.  “You need to make sure you train – even if you’re a runner.”

Harrington walked in 2006 and 2007, but after a back surgery for previous condition, the walking became a challenge, so now she works on the crew, manning the pit stops, and helping out in other ways. This year she and her friend Joanne Faccenda (the other J in the J-Walkers) drove a ‘sweep’ van, which loops around during the three days picking up walkers who need a break.  They outfitted themselves and  their van in a ‘pajama party’ theme, and had a blast.

Harrington, with Philadelphia Police Officer Patrick Owens, at a recent fundraiser.

Along with the physical challenge, walkers face another obstacle – the entrance fee.  Each walker has to raise $2,300  just to participate in the event. Harrington says the first year it was easy enough to ask their friends and family to contribute.  But  realizing they couldn’t  keep coming back to the same people year after year, Joanne has organized group fundraisers to help the J-Walkers get the money together.  She’s orchestrated golf tournaments, bingo games, beef and beer raffles, and more.   In 5 years she and her J-Walkers have raised $350,000 for Komen.  Along the way, she’s discovered a hidden talent she may never have discovered otherwise.  “I finally found out  what I’m good at in life.” she says, “and that’s fundraising. It’s given me a new direction.”  She’s also learned that she’s got what it takes to be a leader. One year she actually had 30 people on her J-Walkers team, and it took a huge amount of organizing.  “We all live in different places with different schedules, and you have to have meetings.  They used to call me the e-mail nazi because I was constantly sending emails.”

Harrington, far left, with J-Walkers at this year's Philadelphia Walk for the Cure.

All of this she’s done while running her own business, the Harrington Insurance Agency in Washington Township.  Her friends will tell you she never stops.  “I guess I just enjoy it,” she says. “ I’m always trying to think of something fresh, something that’s never been done before, to make a difference.”  And even though she’ll probably continue to do the 3-Days, she’s already thinking bigger.  Last year she acquired a new office building, with lots of extra rooms (a few of them even painted pink) Her dream is to create a support center for cancer survivors, complete with computers for internet research, and other services like fittings for wigs and undergarments, and therapy groups.  She’s already applied for a $45,000 grant to get the project going. She’s hoping it will be a way to make a very tangible difference in the lives of cancer patients.  “That would be awesome,” she says.

In the 10 years since the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center, Lou Giaccardo has spoken dozens of times, to high schools, colleges, and other groups who are anxious to hear his story. But when he spoke last Friday, at his alma mater, Audubon High School, something was different. “I cried more in that speech at the high school than I’ve ever cried before,” he said. Perhaps it was because of the significance of the 10-year anniversary. Lou was working for the Corporation Services company, on the 87th floor of the south tower, when terrorists attacked the building. He and a coworker helped keep people calm in the stairwell as they made their way down the 80 plus flights of stairs to safety. He was a mere 3 blocks away from the tower when it collapsed.

Lou says he’s gotten tremendous support from his high school classmates, friends and family, as he’s dealt with the complex emotions he’s felt over the past ten years. But he says another important event, the completion of the 9/11 memorial on the site of the twin towers, has become an emotional turning point for him, and that was a new element in his speech Friday. “It was the first time I was changing gears. In the past, I was always talking about ground zero. But now it’s no more ground zero. This is another chapter. It’s a rebirth. It’s hope.”

Lou is anxious to visit the memorial with his two sons, Lou, Jr., 14, and Shane, 12. He had every intention of being there today for the 10-year observance. But, his loved ones, fearful of the warnings about a possible terrorist attack, wouldn’t hear of it. So he decided to stay home. “It upsets me. It angers me. But I will take the boys back up.”

In the meantime, Lou says he’ll continue to speak whenever he’s asked. He says he’s come to realize how much it means to people to hear him, to see him. In the months following 9/11, he made many press and speaking appearances. But it was after his speech on the Art Museum steps, at the one-year observance hosted by Philadelphia Radio personality John DeBella, that he realized he was making a difference for people. After the event, a long line formed – people anxious to ask him questions, to tell him something, to touch him. He remembers two linemen from the Temple football team who waited to speak to him, one of them reaching out in tears to embrace him. And the woman, who put her hands on his face, and repeated, over and over, ‘you’ve helped so many people by coming here.’

And then there was the EMT who had spent three days at ground zero, trying to help. She hadn’t been able to save anyone. And when she approached Lou after his Art Museum speech, she told him she had to see the face of someone who had walked out of there, so she could feel like she’d done something good. “From that moment on,” says Lou, “I knew that anytime I was asked to speak about this, I would do it. Whether its one-on-one or an assembly…I will do it.” He says it means the world to him when he hears that people have been moved by him. “That’s what I want to hear. That’s why I do it.”