Author: Ali Carras

So here I was, on a Saturday morning…thinking about my day and making plans to go to a Jug Band Festival in San Francisco, when I got caught up in a project and couldn’t stop.

It all started when I began taking photos of my recently completed felted bag:

I decided that while I was taking photos of this bag, I might as well take photos of the 293875923875 other bags that I have made that are just sitting in my apartment.  So I took 12908501985098209359283749827395872375 photos of the 293875923875 bags…

and created an account with Etsy, an online crafter/artist buying and selling community! My site is here: http://www.aszichild.etsy.com.  It was always a life goal to try and do something with my 293875923875 bags.  How rewarding it is to knock off a goal on the list.  Perhaps next I will try my hand at investing.

Oh, and because of my major detour with my project, we never made it to the Jug Band Festival. If anyone know of a good Jug Band album, please pass the info my way.

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Cooper and I finally named our fish (it has only been a year since we first got them): Dr. Beckord and Carpenter Carras…named after our fathers.

Isn’t it always the way when you are trying to eat less or attempting not to spend $$ that you end up eating twice as much or blowing your entire wad?  Yup, it happens, and it happened to me last week big time!  I don’t know what came over me but all of a sudden I couldn’t stop buying.  I am not really a consumer, but I guess there are times when the body finds a void that needs feeding.  It all began with my first purchase from Design Public: a Matteo Due Stitch duvet in brine.  Yes, it was a bit of a splurge, but my gut just said “Do it, Allison, Do it!”  Oh boy do I love this duvet.  Then later that week I had a conversation with my pappa and he said he had just written his last tuition check ever (assuming my little bro graduates on time).  In honor of this momentous occasion, I thought I needed to treat my hard working father to the one thing from Design Public that tickles his fancy: a Fatboy Headdemock.  I figured the cost of a headdemock was a drop in the bucket compared to college tuition for four kids.  Thank you, daddy bruce, for edumacting all of us!  By Friday evening I made a pact with myself to not spend a dime over the weekend.  But Allison, you are weak! I headed out on Saturday morning to try and find something for my niece to sleep on when she comes to visit, but I never made it to the kid store.  I got side tracked and went into a used clothing store and loaded my arms.  My mind was smart enough to say, “Allison, go home and find some clothes to sell and maybe you will break even if you buy a couple of things.”  My plan failed.  I guess my clothes are too outdated and they only took a pair of jeans.  Maybe I should sell a kidney in order to pay for my extensive shopping spree.  Man alive. 

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Sunday Cooper and I shot a wedding for Cooper’s friend Colin and his now wife Joan.  As always, I love the photographing the “getting ready photos” simply because there are so many crazy tricks us ladies use to get all dolled up.  I learn a lot from this time of mass estrogen and hairspray high, but unfortunately I am too much of a minimalist when it comes to makeup and hair that I rarely actually apply any of my new found knowledge.  In Mexico, one set of girls curled their eyelashes with the back of a spoon…ingenious! (if only I curled my eyelashes).   The one trick I am consistently dumbfounded by is the technique of making extremely big and curly hair, then brushing it all out to make it smooth and sleek.  I don’t get it, but it always produces a great end result that I trust it as necessary in some way.

Perhaps the cutest ring bearer I have see yet:

The Mission at Santa Clara University.  Oh, the memories from my college days.

Joan and Colin own a dog named Gus, seen below.  This is a first for us to have a dog at a wedding, but being the dog lover that I am having him around couldn’t have made me any happier. 

After a long day trying to find an assembly man in Arizona who could immediately put together 3 new cribs for a woman with triplets (the babies needed to go down for a nap and had no place to sleep), I treated myself to an impulse buy.  As I headed down the escalator towards the underground world of BART I found the clarinet player who greets me every morning with a tune.  I thought to myself, “Self, this guy plays some really good old skool jazz and he gets your mornings started in such a positive way, why not buy a CD from him?  You could spend $15 towards the cover at a bar to listen to someone you don’t really care about or you could pay $15 bucks to someone who plays music for you every day.”  I rounded the corner to make sure I had a few dollars and bought a jazz CD from the BART entertainer.  Don Cunningham is his name and I believe he may be one of my new favorite characters.  I wanted to stay and talk to him and possibly give him a big bear hug, but I got shy and thought that maybe he wanted to get back to business playing his instrument, but he was the sweetest man I had met in such a long time.  He even signed my CD cover for me.  Perhaps tomorrow I will buy another and ask him to make it out to daddy bruce (my papa).   Thank you, Don Cunningham, for making my day and filling my apartment with some amazing melodies.    

To purchase a CD from Don Cunningham, or to sample his music, view the following link: http://cdbaby.com/cd/doncunningham

This is a little delayed, but now that I have a few minutes to myself and our laptop is free I get to post away.  Cooper and I have been back from our Oregon/Washington trip for a week now, but I am still soaking in all that happened.  We did lots with Cooper’s family, saw friends at a bbq at Katie Tolan’s apartment, had our yearly lunch in Portland with Connealy and Alex, then went to the main event in Hood River…Charlie and Katie’s wedding.  Do I have some photos to share!  As always, my photos below don’t do the wedding justice…if you want the good stuff you have to go to Cooper’s website.  We didn’t do a very good job of getting many photos of ourselves, and unfortunately all of the photos that I took of Cooper were out of focus, but at least we got good shots of the important people.  Katie and Charlie did an amazing job of planning their wedding.  The site itself was perfection…right at the base of Mt. Hood between pear orchards and vineyards, complete with a barn, horses, swings, gardens, and old trucks. Not to mention the owners of the bed and breakfast were such sweet people and know how to cook a darn good b-fast.  I want to relive the event!! 

The funniest footage on you tube I have seen yet (second to the inmates dancing to thriller, of course).  The first and last clips are my favorite.

Cooper’s feet in seaweed

Mud flats, Olympia, WA

Oh my.  Coming to Washington in the summer is like going to the most amazing dreamland when you thought you already had nice dreams.  Our time with Cooper’s family has included: hiking through the dense woods and eating our way through thanks to Cooper’s mom’s vast knowledge about botany, going to the local farmer’s market and picking prime produce for dinner, buying the forever wanted wool yarn so I can attempt to felt a handbag, eating good home cooked food, eating a picnic dinner while listening to seals bark at us, watching hundreds of bats leave their day spot at dusk, trekking through the mud flats during low tide and feeling the incredible sensation not only of the mud but the soft seaweed under my toes, lots of eating, more eating, good conversation, family, homebrew, and the list goes on.  I feel like a new woman after having spent so much time in clean air and beautiful surroundings.  Who knew you could eat the flowers from a fennel plant?  Oh, so good.

Tomorrow we plan to go to the Thurston County Fair then to Seattle to visit some SCU friends.  What started as a dinner with a friend and his gf has turned into a little SCU reunion bbq.  I can’t wait! 

Three more days until another friend ties the knot.  Whooo hoooo Charliemann!! Whoo hoo. 

photobooth action, 2007

I think the old saying, “You can’t help but love a photobooth” couldn’t be more true.   As a child my mom and I used to talk about the things we loved from each day before going to sleep and she would always remind me: “Assi, don’t forget, you love photobooths.”  Yes, mother, I always have and I always will.

None of the above is true except for the fact that people can’t help but love a photobooth.  Personally, I always get a bit shy when I see one.  I can hear it calling my name and I can sense it wanting me to come in and take a photo, but I get hesitant.  Until you sit in and close the curtain.  Then it is easy to become a different person and live in the limelight.

Notice how Cooper’s head looks like twice the size of mine.  We did another set in Color and I sat in front, but my little while head looks like a turtle so maybe I won’t post those.

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We are in Washington now.  Pierce Carsnon (our car) made the 12 hour trip very comfortable and speedy.  Our first stop along the way was at Burger King for breakfast, at which time I decided I needed to call my mom to report on what crap food I got to eat on the road trip.  Before we left BK we grabbed a crown which was deemed as our driving hat.  Too bad Cooper’s head is so big, the crown idea didn’t last too long on him.  The highlight in the crap food extravaganza: McDonalds in Oregon.  It was a luxury McDonalds complete with nice seating in front of a fireplace, a canoe on the ceiling, and a dessert bar!  We enjoyed a hot fudge sundae and dippin’ dots.  I put on 10 pounds in one day.  So it goes.   

Wedding season for the fall has begun…now it is full steam ahead!  This past weekend we shot a wedding in the south bay which had a stretch hummer limo, orange and red color theme, baby break dancing, Disney characters all around, and a good old fashioned photo booth.  At some point I’ll have to post the photos cooper and I took in the photo booth, but for now the above photos will have to do.

On Friday we are off to Washington/Oregon to see Cooper’s family and then shoot/attend the wedding of our friends Charlie and Katie next Friday.  I simply can’t gosh darn diddily wait. 

This is a few months old, but my sister just found this article online and reminded me that some of Cooper’s work in Puerto Vallarta was featured in Mexico in May!  The slideshow and photos are all his, but the video is from a local woman in PV.  If you look at the video you can see me in the lower right hand corner taking photos as Serena and Fabio walk down the aisle. This was the beach in Puerto Vallarta where we had to take a speed boat to access the site (and saw dolphins on the “commute” to work).  We will be going back down there in November to shoot a same sex wedding.

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The earthquake that rattled our area last night certainly got my sleeping heart a pumping, but nothing happened. If anything, we noticed a photo was askew in the morning.  It is funny how your body responds to something like your apartment shaking.  Cooper and I both jumped up and looked at each other in an odd way, then my first reaction was, “I can’t be wearing pajama pants during an earthquake! I need jeans on!”  Oh, Allison.

What do Cooper and Ali do when we have a few moments of spare time?  We look at pictures in magazines to try and figure out how the lighting is setup.  Yup, add one to the dorksimus maximus chart.  It is actually kind of fun and something I never even thought of before.  We look for whatever reflective pieces might be in the photo to see what sort of light boxes they use, where they are placed, where the photographer might be standing in relation to the light, etc.  If you look at a copy of the August 2007 Vanity Fair, you can see in the reflective space helmet the location of the photographer, his sidekicks, how the lighting is setup, what their vans look like, etc.  The main article of this cover story has an even better picture…five or six guys and they all have reflective helmets. 

Copyright Vanity Fair, August 2007

The magazine photos that really make me think are the close up portraits of an actor/actress where the only reflective surfaces are the eyes.  I never before had looked into the eyes of a celebrity as closely as I do now.  I always thought Cooper was just really into a certain celebrity and liked looking at her for hours, but really he was studying the photograph and how it was shot.  Then he showed me the secret.  In the eyes you can make out the shapes of the light boxes and where they are located.  Whenever I looked at the cover photos in the past I would read the tag lines, look at the celebrity, then dive into the magazine.  Now, (with Cooper’s guidance) I have a deeper appreciation for what is actually going on and try to imagine what might be on the other side of the cover girl/guy.  Ok, I suppose I have hit my geek level for the morning.