Carrie // Shop Small

Several weeks ago, my friend Erin sent me a link to a blog, telling me that I should go check it out. Since she ALWAYS knows exactly what I love (and what I love to waste time doing on the internet), I wasn’t surprised when I immediately fell in love with Carrie Rollwagen’s Shop Small blog.

There are a lot of words thrown around these days… “going green,” “eating organic,” “supporting local business,” etc. But sometimes it’s hard to get past all the hype to find people who walk the walk and who have fresh opinions and perspectives on these kinds of practices. Carrie is one such person. She made a commitment at the beginning of the year to only shop and eat at local Birmingham establishments for all of 2011, and she’s chronicling her adventures on the Shop Small blog. What I loved about Carrie’s writing right off the bat was that she never comes off as being elitist or self-important (which is how many people who talk about this stuff sound to me, personally). She’s just a normal girl on a mission to uncover local gems and do her part to keep them alive and vibrant. I can totally appreciate this because I often find myself craving local flavor and a small-town feel, but I don’t always know where to look. It’s so helpful to have someone go out and do the research and point you to the best places. You’ll have to go check out her blog to really get a feel for why I think she’s so darn likable and why her opinions and thoughts matter.

So anyway, as soon as I read through all the entries on the blog, I immediately emailed Carrie and asked if she would let me contribute by taking her headshots or going out to shoot certain locations she was spotlighting or something along those lines. For awhile now I’ve been thinking about taking on a side project, but I wanted to make sure it was something I could really get behind and be motivated about. So when I stumbled across her blog, I just felt like it would be a great opportunity, and a fun way to stretch myself creatively and shake things up a bit.

Fast forward several weeks, when Carrie sends me an email Tuesday night saying that Birmingham Magazine is running a story about the blog in its April issue and wants a photo of her to go with it. Carrie told me that my enthusiasm about wanting to help made her think of me immediately, so she asked if I was available and willing to do a mini-shoot on the fly since everything was due on Monday. My response? YES PLEASE! I’m so honored she asked, because it turns out she’s pretty good friends with several awesome photographers in the area whom she could’ve easily asked to do it.

So yesterday we met up at Urban Standard to snap a few quick shots, then headed across the street to the most darling accessory boutique called Charm. (Seriously, if you haven’t been, check it out. Chatham, the owner, is so incredibly sweet, and ridiculously talented to boot.) It was such a fun shoot that by the end of it, I was itching to get home and edit and share the images. Soooo…. viola!

If you’re not already thinking it, it has to be said: this girl’s got the stunning beauty of Zooey Deschanel. I mean, LOOK at those gorgeous green eyes! Dang!

AND she drives a Vespa! Could she possibly be any more adorable?

Thank you so much again, Carrie, for asking me to do this. It was a pleasure! And big shout out to Chatham for letting us run wild in her store. :)