Lynn Sanders

The Fortin and Sanders studio is situated in the upper floors of a adorable country home, including stain glass windows, and fine woodwork. Both Nancy and I have a great appreciation for architecture, fine art and antiques, you can imagine our delight in seeing the hand painted walls and the beautiful decorations as Lynn led us through the upper floors of the studio. 

 As Lynn led us on a tour, showing us their offices, and bedrooms, where models stay during photo shoots, she laughs and calls it her own "Bed and Breakfast" and tells us that everyone fights for the "Harem room". We can see why, being decorated very romantically and exotic.

               

    Since Nancy and I wanted to do an informal interview, not wanting to take up too much time out of their busy day, we settle in the kitchen. Lynn and Cherif having lunch while we chat.

Deborah: I want to do a dedication page for Lynn. *hear Cherif in the background, “Yee-ah!”*  *G* Umm, could we get some information on your background and photography experience Lynn?

Cherif: The dirt on Lynn….*G*

Lynn: Here now Cherif…we’re trying to keep that all quiet. (laughing)

Cherif: Yeah well, all the good stuff is coming out on Springer next week....(smiling)

Lynn: Now what did I tell you about making jokes (laughing) What about the last time you made a joke, it has spread from here to there…and we won’t mention WHAT joke that was. (big grin)

Well, basically I will be 60 this year…

Deborah: Congratulations, that’s wonderful!

Cherif: (whispers) July 11, if your wondering…*G*

Lynn: (Grinning) Anyway… I started in photography when I was 18 …well, actually before that. I started in some training, you know like in high school and I had college courses studying in art and so forth, to be a portrait painter. I could always make a wonderful rendition of a person that looked like SOMEBODY, but it didn’t look like the person I was rendering! *G*

    And so when I found photography, I said, “Oh my god, this is wonderful!  I have the photographic likeness, and I can still paint!” At the time, that was in the late 50’s and color film hadn’t come in very good. Everything had to be hand painted.  I hand painted photographs going into the 70’s, for about 10-12 years. And when color film really came in, in the late 70’s,  they started dropping all black and white really fast. By the late 80’s and early 90’s, you hardly saw any black and white at all. But I still painted, had my own photography studio, and did things like weddings and children’s photography. 

    It wasn’t until the early 90’s when I met Cherif and got the idea that maybe there was more fun out there, being an illustrator and doing things like setting up scenes.

    I met Cherif at Medieval Times , and he actually…

    Well the story is…I met him at Medieval Times at a performance and he was our knight, our groups knight that evening, and he won and everything. And he looked great and he was riding his horse, it was just very romantic and chivalrous and all things like Medieval Times would be. And it looks like so much fun, and I didn’t think about it too much, doing things like THIS at the time,      *pointing* the cover of our calendar is a typical Medieval love scene, I guess you would say.

    Well, at that time, I didn’t think about that, cause I was taking wedding and baby pictures. When we got done with our show, the knights usually greet the people in the Hall of Arms. Normally we wouldn’t stay, we’d just take off, trying to beat the traffic out of the parking lot. But a member of our party had to go to the restroom, so I’m sort of killing time until they come out, and so when the knights came out, I thought it would be nice of me to congratulate Cherif on what he did and say what a nice show it was. So I went up to him, took one look at him and said “Oh my god, look at that FACE!”

   All of us laughed as Lynn continued, " Actually I didn’t say that at all, he just looked very nice and I thought, well… we do look for unusual looking people for models, for competitions.

 I belong to the Professional Photographers of America and they have these big competitions, international competitions, and you are always looking for something different. And his face was just incredible, you know his bone structure and everything. So anyway I thought “Ah ha!” they have some sample pictures for sale here, I gave him my card, and I said if he would like, I could give him some stuff for his modeling portfolio, because I ASSUMED that he was already a model, and he told me he thought about it, but hasn’t done much with it.

    A couple of weeks later, he did show up and we did some photographs, then a few more, and then nothing much happened from there, but I had some great pictures, and my early pictures were wonderful, but what do I do with them? He’s good for competition but that’s about it, so I asked him again if he had an agent or somebody to promote him, and he said no he didn’t, but I think he said that he was looking for some work and he would be glad to do it.

    About 6 months later, our photography group needed models, and I said well I don’t know of any girls right now, but there’s this incredible looking guy (big smile), if I can still get a hold of him, he would make a great model for you. I called him up, and actually got him on the phone, which surprised me, because he was 23, and at that age a lot of times the guys are moving from here to there, and you can’t catch them. But he was home, I said the gig was for Monday and most people work Mondays. Well it was his day off!

Cherif : We first really started working together when Lynn got a background commission from a company, and they wanted something like 20 backgrounds and Lynn was kind of hoping that her sons would step up and help her with this. It was a fledgling part-time business, but she wanted to grow it and her son’s weren’t interested, they had other things going on, so she said to me, would you be interested in doing this, otherwise I’m not going to take the job. I’m like, sure , let’s do it!

Lynn: We had done some pictures together and I saw him doodling, you know he would get on the phone and he would do these little sketches and I say,” Are you an artist?” and he said ”Oh no, no!” (both laughing) I say, “You are too !!!” And when the opportunity came up to do these backgrounds, you’ll see how big they are (gesturing to Nancy and I), they take a lot of energy.

                

Cherif : Yeah it would be hard for one person…

Lynn: …for me, to do it alone. I asked my kids dozens of times *laughing* but anyway, yeah, he was interested so I said we’ll do double duty here. We’ll work on art and if we can get you some illustrations or some book covers, cause we really weren’t into Romance Illustration at all at that time, but I thought well, somebody does this. So what I did, one of the main things to do to find out about what that whole business is about, Romantic Times Magazine, they had a convention at that time…

    *Lynn goes in her office area to find us a Romantic Times magazine*

Cherif: What was the question again ?!? (all laughing)

Deborah: Is this how Romantic By Design got started ?

Cherif: Well, I think what Lynn was going to show you was how there was an idea that there might be an opportunity for our work in romance. It’s like we had the covers, and it seemed like a natural fit for our style. Because we are very motivated and inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, romance goes well with our technique, our glazing. So we put together this body of work which later became “Passions’ Blood”….

 

continued on page 2

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These pages are strictly for fan appreciation, and is a unoffical site. Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations are © Fortin and Sanders and used with permission.