Wake Forest Magazine invited five professional photographers who are alumni to return for 48 hours. They zoomed in on the Wake Forest they want you to see.

Deni McIntyre on set with producer and husband Will McIntyre, crew member Adam Pinnell, featured artist Rissi Palmer and series host Rhiannon Giddens

Deni McIntyre (’80)

I wish I could say that my memory holds the full spectrum of college life, but I wasn’t a typical Wake Forest undergrad. I never lived in a dorm or joined a sorority (or any clubs), never played a sport or attended a game. When I came to Wake Forest as a day student in 1977, I was already married and living with my husband, Will, out near Old Town, a few miles away, in the house we would buy the following year. I had a full class load and a work-study job writing for the alumni magazine; I also did some proofreading of Irish poetry for Wake Forest University Press. If I had an hour between classes, I would spend it at the library, either in the stacks or in one of the lounges at the ends of the floors.

Wake Forest, for me, was the professors and advisers who guided me through the maze of requirements and electives and who inspired my reading and writing. I’m thinking of Bob Lovett (P ’91, ’92, ’98), my academic adviser and an English professor, who lent me his library card so I could have access to the special collections; Carl Harris (’44), a professor of classical languages who taught me to decipher Koine Greek and brought Xenophon’s “Anabasis” to life; Bianca Artom, a professor who taught Italian and made me determined to visit Venice; and Donald Wolfe, a professor in the theatre department, whose sense of humor and breadth of understanding embraced even a drive-by student of theatre.

My work-study boss at the magazine, Will Ray, was also the carillonneur, and his office was in Wait Chapel. In those days before cellphones, I had to chase him down for meetings and would sometimes find him working on music up in the carillon room. So for this assignment, I found a willing facilities staffer with keys to make the climb with me — and discovered that alumni now can take tours up there during special events!

As a professional photographer, I’ve worked in 80 countries on assignments with my husband, Will, for magazines and corporate clients. In the early 2000s, we made the transition to shooting video and are now producing our second TV series for PBS, “My Music with Rhiannon Giddens.” I’m grateful to Wake Forest for confirming and deepening my love of the liberal arts, which help me feel less like a stranger wherever I travel.

Deni McIntyre (’80) has worked as a photographer in 80 countries on five continents. Since 2015, she and her husband, Will, have produced two music series for public television, the Emmy-nominated “David Holt’s State of Music” and their current series, “My Music with Rhiannon Giddens.” McIntyre lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.