It’s high time I took a photo of Carolyn Brogan, the owner of the Image Loft in Manchester, Center, Vermont. I often take photos of people who are important in my life, and Carolyn is one of the most important.

She prints and my photos with great love and care, they always seem to me to be better than when I took them. She and her colleague Sandy – Sandy does most of the photo printing, she’s on vacation this week –  keep a file of the photographs I want to sell or might want to sell.

I send Carolyn a file, she emails me a beautiful print. A week or so later it appears magically in a heavy tube delivered to the farmhouse. Then I ship it out to the person who bought it

I used to spend a lot of money framing and printing $400 photographs that nobody bought and doing expensive shows that lots of people came to but nobody bought my photos there either. I gave that up.

I don’t do many photo shows any more. They’re just too expensive and most people won’t pay hundreds of dollars for a photo of mine. Digital photography has shattered the fine art print world unless you hit a gallery in New York or master brilliant animal photography.

I finally figured out that working with Carolyn – widely regarded as the best photo printer in the region – I can sell signed prints for as little as $130, quite inexpensive for fine art photographs – makes much more sense, and it is a wonderful partnership.  I don’t sell them framed.

After this new arrangement,  I started selling my prints, not hundreds but scores, it blows hot and cold. Still, in the age of smartphone photography, it’s a small miracle. I’m a professional photographer now, and proud of it. I sell some of my photos some of the time.

I consider each photo an angel sailing out into the world. Some soar, some vanish, some have their own mysterious lives.

Carolyn is all class – 100 percent cotton rag paper, archival ink, with a world-class printer. She and Sandy do beautiful work, flawless, really, I couldn’t trust anyone with my prints more.

I went to Manchester today to pick up one of my framed photographs, it was called “Spring Light” and it was up for sale on Maria’s Etsy Page a few months ago. I took advantage of this to go and see Carolyn, e-mail relationships are efficient but cold.

I was very happy to see her, I am very grateful to her for taking such loving care of my pictures. I can’t imagine selling my photography at all without her. She respects my work and takes good care of it.

Carolyn Smith, a reader of the blog, offered to pay for having one of my photos printed and framed as a gift to the Mansion for our Mansion Art Project – getting some color and light into those walls.

This is the fourth piece of art Carolyn has donated to the Mansion Art Project, Sue Silverstein of Bishop Maginn High School gave six of her beautiful floral paintings.

I’m bringing my photo over to the Mansion in the morning, this will be the seventh artwork that will either go up in the Mansion’s new Memory Care Center or on the walls of the Mansion itself. There are a lot of gloomy paintings up on those walls. I signed it “to the Mansion with love, Jon Katz.”

The print is of Bedlam Farm on a gorgeous spring morning, I think it was one of those shots I took running outside naked to catch the sun. I’ve given some highway workers and joggers a great thrill at that hour. Is it indecent exposure, I wonder to run out naked behind your own house early in the morning?  Or is it a just sacrifice for one’s art?

Carolyn also printed out a picture I love, it is of Kelsie at Jean’s Place in her Wonder Woman dress, ordered online. I’m giving it to her as a surprise (if you are customer, please don’t tell her.)

I asked Carolyn to tone down the red a bit, but she said she talked to Sandy about it, and it was a bad idea, so they didn’t. I don’t mind being wrong, but I appreciate when there’s someone around to straighten me out.

Carolyn, like Kelsie, is one of those strong women I always write about, one Facebook poster wanted to know exactly what I mean by strong women, she said she thought that meant they were independent, but she doubted that was what I meant.

I replied that I couldn’t imagine why she would think I wouldn’t think of strong women as being independent. They are sure that, but more than that, they are strong people with conviction and compassion.

I don’t know that I would want to define the term so precisely, the thing about strong women is that you know one when you see one.