Kara's photography

I photographed a series of staff portraits for a local non-profit, Project REconomy, a research team helping people with foreclosures.

"Mission:

Project REconomy works to empower the people, tell the real story of our economy and who it works for, build the movement for an economy that serves our communities, and change the system through empowered action."

http://www.projectreconomy.org/

To see my photographs, click here.

Brianna in a white dress

In our latest Quinn Sisters photoshoot, Brianna was photographed at an old barn at sunset during the last week of summer. Brianna and I were joined by my boyfriend, also a photographer. We were aiming to capture images of Brianna in a style you might find as an indie folk singer's portrait: moody and mysterious in a country setting. Brianna wore a white dress from our mom, who got it in the '70s. I chose the song "Season of the Witch" by Donovan as the theme song for a slideshow movie of my pictures from the shoot...Enjoy!

A Quinn Sisters Production

Brianna has been learning to sing her favorite songs. The first song she sang and posted online was a cover of "Anyone Else But You" by The Moldy Peaches. It was after her first week of learning to play guitar (her teacher now calls her The Girl Who Can Learn a Song in One 30-Minute Lesson). She's also working on Gary Jules' version of "Mad World" as well as "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega. Posted below is Brianna singing The Kills' song "Black Balloon":

I took the photographs in the video as part of a model/photographer team project Brianna and I have been doing called Quinn Sisters. We work together to produce themed photo shoots. Our first shoot was called "Pretty tomboy and pretty nerd". Brianna has been coming up with the themes and picking out the outfits for it. Then we decide on a location, I choose the time, and we go from there, each of us directing the shoot.

Last year, I photographed a couple of senior portraits for Brianna's friends, and this year I am going to start marketing my photography to other high school students. (I'll post more about this soon.) I want to include the bundled option of both my photography and Brianna's styling/posing assistance.

I hope you enjoy the video. It was my first "reel" effort :) I am using Windows Live Movie Maker. It was a lot of fun to make, so be ready for more movies!

Quinn Sisters

Brianna and I have collaborated on a series of photo shoots. We started working together as a way to each gain experience at our interests: modeling, for Brianna, and photography, for me. Brianna had many ideas for settings and wardrobes for photo shoots; and with me as her photographer, she had the freedom to call her own shots (no pun intended).

With Brianna as a free and willing model, I was able to experiment with different photographic styles and get practice going out and setting up shoots in a variety of locations, including a stretch of train tracks and an indoor studio.

Each of our shoots had a theme: 1) Pretty tomboy and Pretty nerd, 2) Electric guitar rocker, 3) Punk in a pink dress, 4) Train tracks glamour, 5) Hippy and Country girl, and 6) Mysterious indie singer in a white dress...(see this post for a video of our most current shoot as of 11/8/11)...

Upcoming art show!

My photography and my boyfriend's ceramics will be featured at one of the local businesses participating in the Talent Art and Music Festival on Friday, July 8, 2011 (that's tomorrow!).
Our pieces will be at A Colorful Talent Stained Glass Studio, 250 E Wagner Street, starting at 5 p.m. through 8 or later.

I'm also going to include some of my latest paintings (not for sale). I paint with oils and focus mainly on portraits as subject matter. I've been taking painting classes with Stefan Baumann for over a year and am excited to show some of my pieces to the public!

A whale of a project

My dad and I have been working on editing his book, Alki, After the Drunkalog, together since 2003. Without me, he'd been working on it on and off for at least 10 years. It's definitely a whale of a tale :)

I just finished a fact-checking stage in the editing process, and as I read the last page before finishing I realized how powerful his story and his words really are. Maybe I'm prejudiced because he's my dad and his story is part of my history, but I know that my dad has a powerful, mostly beneficial, effect on people. I write 'mostly' kind of tongue-in-cheek because my dad, while always coming from a place of kindness and fairness, can be quite honest and blunt with people, and for those who aren't used to being talked to that way, it can be not so nice.

So, in honor of my dad and the perfect timing of Father's Day (which was yesterday, I know), I'd like to share the beginning and the end of "Drunkalog" - the first part of my dad's magnum opus that is his life story.

*Note: I'm changing names, including my dad's, just to protect anonymity. You'll see why.

Drunkalog

Thank you, Dave. My name is Butch and I'm an alcoholic. Today is my second anniversary of sobriety in AA. I'd like to tell you what my life was like, what happened, and what it is like now. Please bear with me if I bounce from story to story because my life has been really scattered.

I'll begin by saying that I am a loyal member of the CIA. That is, the Catholic Irish Alcoholics. My mother's father, my mother, and her brother and sister all died from alcoholism. My father sobered up after 31 hospitalizations. Two of my older brothers preceded me into AA. If it wasn't for an intervention by my father and my brother Chris in 1962, I'd be dead now. I sincerely believe God protects fools and drunks because I'm here as living proof. "John Barleycorn," the booze, is an equal-opportunity demon who has no respect for money, education, power, sex, social status, or nationality.

My first drunk was in my mother's belly. She walked around intoxicated for the first six months she was pregnant with me. Our family was living in her parent's home in Boston because she had left my father after I was conceived. Occasionally, her sister or brother would haul her off to a drying-out center outside of Boston called Drop-Kick Murphy's. The story told to me later was that she'd sober up for a couple of days and then dive back into the bottle. Finally she went so far downhill physically and mentally that my uncle Richard, her brother, forcibly put her into the psych ward at the Cardinal O'Connell House of St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton Center. When I was born there in September 1939, I had the shakes, little resistance to respiratory illness, and could not tolerate milk. But at least I was sober.

-0-

In a way, what has happened to me the last three years is a miracle, but it is a miracle with rough edges. I have learned to love and accept who I am. I have learned to forgive others and myself. I have a spiritual life now and am actually a recovering as well as a practicing Catholic. I have been granted the grace of sobriety today. I have been open to being a vessel of hope for other suffering alkis by carrying the message as Step 12 suggests. The Step meetings have taught me a new way to live that is alcohol free and filled with love and compassion. The meetings have also given me a forum to share my strength and hope with others through talking about what my life was like, what happened, and what it is like now. In my heart of hearts, I will always be grateful to the Blessed Mother and the AA program for saving me from prison, an insane asylum, a broken body, or an early death.

This brings me to the end of my story. All I can say is that I am a grateful 24-year-old alki. I don't know what will happen next in my life, but I do know that this program has given me the spiritual and mental tools to stay on my feet no matter what life challenges me with so that I don't have to drink. If anything I've said is helpful to you, please use it and to hell with the rest. To "Nick Romano" I say, "I want to live slow, die old, and still have a good-looking corpse."

Stay sober today and keep coming back. AA works. Thank you for letting me share my story with you.

And there we have it, readers. I'm happy to be a part of this project with my dad. He's one interesting, amazing person whose story packs quite a punch. Happy Father's Day, Dad. Now let's finish this thing :)

*Note: Nick Romano is the main character from the book Knock On Any Door by Willard Motley. He was one of my dad's heroes when he was younger. His other heroes included John Wayne and his older brother "Chris," who taught him some tricks to get booze, skip school and win in a fight. Romano's famous line is: "Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse."

Hooked on phonics

I'm back to work on Alki today after a few-day hiatus, and I'm excited about it. Work doesn't usually inspire such positive feelings, but how can I resist this story? Here's the paragraph I'm starting with today:

"As the heat of summer weighed down on us, we began making plans to leave Florida. This time we wanted to leave the state legally. In order to make sure we would not be in violation of the court, we asked our attorney, Mr. ----, to double check with the judge and HRS, restating our desire to leave and start a new life in California. Mr. ---- wrote us a letter informing us that we could leave the state as long as we followed the court's stipulation granting ---- visitation. Given the good news, we made arrangements to continue the estate probate from California. We also figured out what we should do about Kara's dog bite case."

So much going on! And about my family. It's an exciting project to be working on.

Right now, we're at the tail end of the fact-checking/first-read-through stage. Soon, we'll be working on the structure (chapter breaks) and order (chronology) of parts of the story, and then comes the final editing stages(!), which is even more exciting - to be finished at long last and sharing the whole story with everyone.

P.S. I was bitten in the face by a German Shepherd when I was 4 years old. Thankfully, a talented plastic surgeon was called in and he did a great job patching me up. No follow up surgeries necessary. All that's left is some minimal scarring and a hefty fear of German Shepherds. :) -sorry German Shepherd lovers.

Model pics

Mom, Brianna and I just put together a disc of our favorite picks from some of Brianna's various photo shoots. These were test shoots, an industry term we picked up in L.A., meaning photo shoots done for free - the photographer or designer gets a free model and the model gets some free shots for her portoflio.