Yesterday’s mail brought a copy of the February 2010 issue of Consumer Reports – I’ve got a photo in the Viewpoint column:

I know it’s a good day when I open the info for a shoot and see a word like ‘Lasermonks.’ How could that not be a fun assignment???

Turns out that Lasermonks is the business arm of a monastery in Southwest Wisconsin that sells (among many other things) toner cartridges. They kind of stumbled upon the toner business on their way to other ideas: in the process of exploring how the monastery would provide for itself, the monastery was producing a lot of research documents, Father Bernard McCoy went to place an order for more toner. He was flabbergasted by the markup on toner, and the Lasermonk idea was born.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I went to the shoot; it was my first visit to a monastery. But Father Bernard and Sarah Caniglia (the Business Development Manager aka “Monk Helper”) were extremely warm and welcoming. I had a preconception that the monastic life is austere and detached, but at least at Our Lady of Spring Bank, outside of the morning hours spent chanting and in other devotional activities, the brothers are encouraged to explore and develop their personal talents and gifts, and the economic necessity of covering the expenses of the community pretty much requires a certain connectedness to the larger world.

Many thanks to Sarah and Father Bernard for their time, for the Benevolence Biscuits Sarah sent home for my dog, and for the glimpse they provided of the Lasermonk life!

Here’s the original version of the image Consumer Reports selected, along with a couple more of my favorites from the shoot.