…found only in the wild. :) Gobble gobble!

I really dislike ranting and I never do it on my blog, but there seems to be a rash of people who are very angry with photographers as a profession lately, and I’m here to address them.

For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you probably know about my recent encounter with a man in the RDU airport. If you already know this story, skip the next two paragraphs.

For those of you who don’t know this story, gather ’round the fireplace and let me spin you a tail. ;) I was taking my mom to Chicago in January as a Christmas present because she had always wanted to go. Of course (because it was January), our flights were cancelled and we could not go. Before we actually took off to fly all the way to Chicago, circle around, and get stranded in different airports in the midwest, I was at the RDU airport when Southwest started making announcements about the Chicago weather. My fellow passengers struck up a conversation, and a man asked me why I was going to Chicago in January. I told him I’m a wedding photographer, so the winter is the only time of year I have off.

He proceeded to become really (actually visibly) angry. He told me that I’m a criminal, a thief, “as bad as a lawyer” [my apologies to you lawyers out there], and that I should be flying my own private jet to Chicago. He informed me that his daughter is getting married in Raleigh in April and her wedding photographer cost $4,000. “It’s an absolute racket. You people don’t do anything but charge us an arm and a leg because you can because it’s for a wedding.” He said a bunch of other things that I don’t really remember because at one point his phone rang and I used this as my opportunity to get up and leave in tears. I wasn’t able to justify out cost because he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise, but also because I was too choked up and flustered to explain to him the super complex reason for wedding photographer costs.

There are a million reasons why wedding photographers (and wedding vendors) charge what they do. Trust me: Geoff and I were married in 2010. It’s not a cheap thing to do and I recognize that. But being an “insider” in the industry, I also know the person I am and the people I work with, and I can honestly tell you from the bottom of my heart – we are NOT ripping off people because we can. Most of us are struggling to pay our bills ourselves. Now, I know that doesn’t immediately make sense. Lots of people see my website, see that I charge $x a wedding, calculate that by the number of weekends in a month, and seemingly I’m a millionaire. But that’s not how it works.

I thought and thought and thought about writing a response, but honestly, the list of reasons why we charge what we do is so expansive that it’s hard to even cover. Then someone posted an article in a forum where another photographer had done it already. :) So at the risk of completely plagiarizing this one photographer’s blog post, I’m simply going to link to it. She breaks down, cost by cost, the trust expense of being a wedding photographer… and why charging $3500/wedding doesn’t equate to my own private jet.

Please read her post here: http://blog.nikkimaydayphotography.com/2012/01/26/why-wedding-photographers-prices-are-wack-erie-pa-wedding-photographer-response/

Now – one thing she doesn’t cover in her post is cost of talent. With wedding photography, you typically get what you pay for. If you want an experienced professional with a full time gig as a wedding photographer, it’s going to cost you because of the aforementioned expenses but also that person’s specific talent (which is why they’re charging what they do – if their pictures were as good as your friend’s Uncle, we couldn’t charge for talent). This, in essence, also spells out why there’s a huge difference in wedding photography costs: Professionals have a lot of overhead, but they are also charging fairly for their time (Editing may seem free, but how it is different than anyone else having a 9-5 job at a computer?). They’re also charging for their talent. Amateurs don’t have overhead because they aren’t paying the appropriate business expenses (generally – not as a rule), but they’re probably also not charging fairly for their time, or they may be less because they haven’t reached a competitive level of talent yet.

Another thing – I have the utmost respect for those of you who don’t understand what we charge and ask us. Politely. I love to have conversations with people who are curious and polite. But to blatantly act as this man did in the airport (and as the bride on Craigslist said in her Craigslist ad mentioned in the link above) is completely ridiculous. Contrary to what you believe, we’re not criminals. We’re not thieves. Please do not treat us as such. We’re humans too.

So dear guy in the RDU airport… I hope you read this. And dear photographer who’s shooting the wedding of that guy’s daughter… I wish you the best of luck. Too bad there isn’t a charge listed in that expense list for emotional abuse you’ll take from people like him. :)

And dear all of my clients: I love you. You know I love you. I love that you support us and understand us and think that we are worth what we are charging. You are the reason why I put up with people like that guy in the airport. Because you get it. And I’m sending you all sorts of virtual hugs and high-fives right now.

**NEW EDIT: This is not, absolutely not, a place to complain about or bash certain types of people or clients or weddings or whatever. This is simply a piece written to explain to the people out there that there are reasons behind what we cost and the actual math involved. It’s about how we are actually honest people who run small businesses and aren’t out to “get” the average Joe. I will be deleting all comments that are viewed as off-topic or negative in nature.

This is my second-to-last blog post before the end of the year (my last one, coming in a few days, is our best of 2011 post). I don’t post personal stuff terribly frequently, but before the Best Of post I wanted to say Happy Holidays to all of our clients in all different parts of the world and of every religion and non-religion. This is a glimpse into our corner of the world’s holiday cheer which consists of really bizarre family traditions like dressing up the CSP spokescats in t-shirts, taking your sister’s plastic dinosaur and placing it in the tree with a crown on its head while it simultaneously eats a reindeer and plays the saxophone, and feeding a healthy dose of eggnog to your nutcrackers. Happy holidays, ya’ll and yinz guys. ;)

Hey everyone! I’m here to announce a brief blogging hiatus as I take my Thanksgiving vacation. :) I’ll still be shooting, responding to e-mails, and stalking people on Facebook, but I won’t be editing, placing orders, or blogging until my triumphant return on November 28th. Thank you for your patience during this time. Also, since it is that thankful time of year, I’d like to tell my clients past and present that Geoff and myself are always thankful for you. :) You make our world go round! Now go enjoy some quality time with the family, eat all the turkey you possibly can, and eat a lot of things containing gluten for me. ;) I’m going to go be a big pain in my family’s butt as I make them eat gluten-free pumpkin pie, turkey with stuffing on the side, and furiously scrubbing down the kitchen to avoid cross-gluten-contamination. :P Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! See you in a few! xoxo.

My family loves Hatteras. My mom and dad took their honeymoon there way back in the day (no offense, guys) and we’ve been going there for a while. When Geoff and I moved from Pittsburgh to Raleigh, my parents took it as a sign that they should vacation in North Carolina more often… and thus the series of vacations in Hatteras Village begun. I typically don’t take a lot of pictures when I’m not working. I used to, but once I went full-time I discovered that there were days when, after shooting portraits Monday-Thursday and two weddings on the weekends, I just wanted to go on vacation to relax and leave the camera at home. But I started to feel like something was missing and, with my nostalgia for the days when I used to shoot only landscapes coupled with my obsessive need to document, I decided to take pictures on this vacation. I only brought one lens, which I’ve found is the key to really enjoying taking pictures on vacation. You’re limited, so you don’t have to go through your gear every two seconds to switch lenses… get sand everywhere… and freak out about the sand scratching your lenses while everyone else is boogie boarding.

Needless to say, we were quite worried about Hurricane Irene and its affect on Hatteras, the Outer Banks, and all of the stray cats of the island. While it took out sections of Highway 12 (the only main road on the island), most of the island itself seems to be surviving. I am quite glad that I took pictures. Highway 12 sits right between the ocean and the Pamlico Sound, which Irene went right over. Below are pictures of both from the week of the 14th-20th of August.

The parents came down from the ‘Burgh and though my sister couldn’t make it and Geoff could only make the end of the week, we had a lot of fun. Here’s my vacation.

**The last few pictures are of the Pine Knolls aquarium far south where we attended a beautiful wedding. No Geoffs were harmed in the making of these photos. Further above shows a picture of a crab holding a hushpuppy. Crabs love hushpuppies.

Today is my dad’s 59th birthday! Avid reader of the Carolyn Scott Photography blog, I figured I’d write him up a little post. ;) I’ve found myself over the years turning more and more into my father. My family has always known about my dad’s list of strong dislikes such as:

- Shopping malls and large crowds

- Scented candle and/or perfume stores

- Desserts that are too sweet

When I was younger (a teenager especially), I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t like those things. Now I too avoid them like the plague. Unfortunately, I’ve also slowly inherited my father’s taste for really expensive hobbies. My dad’s been slowly accumulating a makeshift studio in my sister’s old room and collecting enough guitars for a small army. Now when I find myself needing a new lens or other piece of equipment, I curse my father’s genes that have a penchant for scouring the internet to figure out why expensive pieces of equipment you currently don’t have are better than the ones you currently do.  Thanks, Dad! ;)

Over the years I have always acquired my dad’s list of strong likes as well, such as:

- The beach

- Judging other peoples’ stereo systems and speakers

- NPR (when did this happen? I think starting to listen to NPR is the real sign that you’re officially an adult.)

You are the best! I hope you have a great 59th birthday. :) I’ll be bringing home your actual card and presents at the end of June! And I know you are working today, but hopefully you can spend your weekend like this! **

**Not meant to be sarcastic – I know you live in Western Pennsylvania and not at the beach, but maybe you can go fishing? :) You’ll be at the beach in August, yay!!

So we end up taking a lot of pictures at weddings. Sometimes these pictures are of ourselves because hey, this is what we do on our weekends too. And, like all good party-goers, we have to take pictures of ourselves to document our whereabouts so we remember when we’re old. I found these ones of Geoff while editing Liz+Chris’s wedding (coming soon). Here he is, in his various states of modeling. ;)

I apologize for all the extraneous photographs of ourselves lately (and now, ourselves and our cats), but I just got a new lens this weekend and we’ve been testing it out. A lot. Because it’s awesome! It was a dreary, wet weekend but we ventured out into Fletcher Park and downtown Raleigh and practiced. Once in the day, once at night.

A lot of these could’ve totally been used for senior portraits if Geoff was a senior. :) The one of him by the door a few pictures above is my favorite! Now we’ll stop posting pictures of ourselves for a while. ;)

Last night we decided to change the blog and bit. I like simple designs. The website is simple, my album layouts are simple, and I felt like the blog was a bit overkill with the green background and kind of distracting watermark. So we went back to basics (white!), the OLD old school watermark (also white!) and developed a few storyboards for a different layout. :) The photographs will also be a little bit larger. Geoff and I were out and about last weekend practicing with some new photography toys and brushing up for wedding season next month. Pictures of Geoff courtesy of me, pictures of me courtesy of Geoff, my husband/assistant/2nd shooter/website creator/Donkey Kong partner. You can tell he’s been modeling for me for a long time by his Zoolander model face.

Let us know what you think about the new design!! :) We love it!

Some of you know that I’ve been decently sick since February of 2010 with a yet undiagnosed illness that carries a lot of awful symptoms with it, one of which being a sudden onset of multiple food sensitivities. Currently I have cut about 5 main foods out of my diet, which doesn’t sound like much, but they’re foods that are in everything. I can’t eat anything that has these foods in them, or derivatives of these foods, without becoming very sick. It’s hard for us to go out to eat, and we have to check the labels on everything. So right now I am not eating any products that contain gluten (wheat, barley, rye), dairy, or potatoes, and can’t go near red onions or peppers for some strange reason. I am not allergic to potatoes, red onions, or red peppers, which makes this all the more perplexing.

Dairy is difficult to avoid in foods (milk culture, whey, cream, etc. are in a lot of things), but not impossible. I’ve replaced regular dairy cow cheese with goat cheese (regular and cheddar), and it’s pretty awesome, and butter has been replaced with butter-flavored Crisco in cooking or Best Life spread. I miss nachos and regular milk, but that’s about it. Skim goat milk tastes pretty similar though, so I’m surviving okay without the dairy.

So the problem is this: wheat or some form of it is literally in all things (breads, cereals, pastas, pastries, deserts, soups). It’s a thickener. So it seems easy enough to avoid when you go into a store and see things labeled “gluten free”, but the problem now is that they’ve replaced the thickener of gluten with the thickener of potato or potato starch. :) Which I can’t eat. :)

So Geoff and I make a ton of food ourselves out of fresh ingredients as we can’t really buy anything boxed anymore. This is a pain. A giant pain. But it’s better than being doubled over in a giant pain, so we’ll take it. My sister-in-law got me a great gluten free cookbook for Christmas and we’ve been making lots of delicious things in them, but we were most excited for the cinnamon rolls. And they are AMAZING. I don’t think I’ve ever had a better one, even when I could eat gluten and dairy. We’ll probably weigh 50 more pounds each by the summer, but we’re okay with that.

By popular demand from my Facebook followers, here is the recipe… modified slightly to accommodate my crazy allergies, and maybe yours too.

Dough Ingredients:

3/4 cup whole goat milk

1/2 cup sugar

8 tablespoons butter-flavored Crisco chopped into cubes (remember with Crisco extra water must be added to make butter, refer to package.)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/3 cup HOT water

4 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

3 eggs

5 1/2 cups Pamela’s Flour (this stuff is the best gluten free flour we’ve tried! available at whole foods and fresh market.)

2 teaspoons xanthan gum (this is a thickener that replaces gluten protein… you can get it in almost any normal store).

Yummy Inside:

4 tablespoons of melted butter-flavored Crisco

3/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

Yummy Glaze:

3/4 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons whole goat milk

Directions:

1. Dough: Heat the goat milk in a saucepan over medium-high heat until bubbles form around the edge of the pan, then remove from heat and stir in the sugar, cubed Crisco, and salt. Cool to lukewarm…put back on very low-heat if you have to.

2. Combine the HOT water and yeast in a medium bowl and let stand for about 5 minutes. The mixture should start bubbling at least a little bit.

3. Add the milk mixture from the saucepan to the yeast mixture and stir to combine. Add the eggs. Add the Pamela’s Flour and xantham gum and mix well until the dough is only a little tacky. Roll into a ball.

4. Clear and wash a large counter surface and sprinkle with flour. Put the dough ball on top of the flour and roll it out until it becomes a large rectangle (approximately 24×16 inches).

5. Filling: Get the melted Crisco and brush the rolled-out dough with it. Combine the sugar and ground cinnamon in a bowl and sprinkle onto the dough. Get a spoon or use your hands to spread out the cinnamon and sugar evenly.

6. Roll up the rectangle to form a 24-inch-long roll. Pinch the flapped edge to seal. Slice the roll into 16 equal cross sections, approximately 1 1/2 inches wide.

7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

8. Grease a lasagna pan and place the rolls inside. Cover and place in a warm location to rise for 30 minutes.

9. Bake the cinnamon rolls for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Remove and let cool for 15 minutes. Make sure the rolls are cool enough to apply the glaze without melting off.

10. Glaze: Mix the powdered sugar with the goat milk until thick. Drizzle over the cinnamon buns until gone.

11. EAT YOURSELF INTO AWESOME CINNAMON BUN HEAVEN.

dear CSP clients, past and future:

we have had an amazing year! i feel so privileged to have met and worked with all the amazing brides and grooms this year. all of you are in our hearts at the holidays and we thank you for allowing us to live an amazing life. i truly love what i do and couldn’t do it without the clients and other awesome wedding vendors in the area. thank you all! here’s to 2011 and all that lay ahead.

i will be traveling home to pittsburgh tomorrow to be with my super great family. i will be continuing to answer emails over the holidays (hopefully in a timely fashion… but this all depends on how much eggnog i consume), but i will not be available to place orders. thank you for your patience at this time and i’ll you all in 2011! have a great holiday season and happy new year!

xo,

carolyn

after our wedding we skipped town and headed to costa rica for two weeks. i’ll spare you the long and agonizing story of how continental lost our luggage, broke our luggage, and then manage to get 30% of the contents of my luggage sold on the streets of liberia. but after two grueling days without any contact solution and several very expensive and angry phone calls to continental later, we received our luggage (or what was left of it) and hit the beach. we stayed at the flamingo beach resort in playa flamingo in guanacaste, costa rica (the pacific side). the picture quality isn’t as clear as i’d like it to be as i took my non-professional camera gear, but they came out pretty good!

helloooo view from our balcony!

the food there was outstanding. david, the head chef at the restaurant, is fantastic. everything has tasted awful since we came back to the states… and that’s a sign of good food.

giant birds! the footprint on the left is geoff’s size 12 foot for comparisons. they were everywhere and usually looking at you in a threatening manner.

me feeling very bad for homeless cats and dogs was, unfortunately, a large part of our trip. peta needs to intervene in this country stat. all of the dogs were ridiculously skinny, everywhere, and would chase after your car, atv, or anything that moved. the cats were a little more subdued and slightly less malnourished. here’s one of the locals who lived near the resort whom we befriended because he looks like our cat, dolfy.

the sign below is pretty self-explanatory. they sat on every table outside placed outside and around the resort. and while at first we laughed, we later realized that these critters are serious. the bird on the left, for example, will steal all the food off your plate if you get up for one second to go to the bathroom. or, if the can’t find food, we found several of them stealing splenda packets, ripping them open, and eating them.

next we introduce you to the bane of the hotel management’s existence. yes, he’s a racoon inside the hotel. the walls of the resort were basically structure supports, so most of the resort didn’t have walls, so critters could just walk up the stairs and come in. most of the time the recycling containers would be knocked over and he could be found head-first in a garbage can while the hotel staff could be seen running around yelling at him in spanish and picking up his garbage.

one of the only 3 monkeys we saw while we were there. super disappointed in the ratio of monkeys people said we’d see vs. the monkeys we saw, but they were cuties when we did see them.

again, animals just chilling around the hotel. old school CSP watermark on this puppy to avoid stamping over the bird.

this was the 3rd critter on the “do not feed the animals” sign, sitting on the table next to the pool chair like he did every day for two weeks unless it was raining. we got super lucky with the weather and it only rained at night, for about two hours in the afternoon, and our last couple of days. oh, and the entire time we were in monteverde, but that’s a different story.

the sunsets at flamingo beach were cool and turned everything orange.

you might be wondering what you’re looking at in this next picture here. if you’re wondering, “is that a…?” then yes, you’re correct. that’s a dog in a bag… traveling on the back of a motorbike. really? wow.

so after spending almost a week at flamingo beach, we headed up to go see the arenal volcano, which is located about 3.5 hours inland. we stayed at volcano lodge, which had awesome gardens and the ability to walk out our little patio door and have a volcano in our backyard. we stayed there for two days and saw the volcano for 30 minutes. it doesn’t come out much. it’s often so foggy that you’d have no idea  volcano is even there, but you’re reminded of one of the world’s most active volcanoes exists in your immediate vicinity by the signs that show people running frantically out of your hotel room, down the street, towards the hotel lobby.

don’t mind us… the drive was incredibly grueling. the roads in costa rica are horrendous and we drove ourselves, which involved us getting lost in dangerous places several times and me almost throwing up everywhere. (this trip had a lot of motion sickness and vertigo problems brought on by a mixture of extreme sport adrenaline and panic attacks caused by: scuba diving, ziplining, whitewater rafting, climbing inside a ficus tree to a skybridge, atv driving, nightwalks with tarantulas, and trying to survive in a spanish-speaking country for two weeks after taking 5 years of french).

the sunsets are unbelievable.

one of the nights we stayed up in arenal we hit up the baldi hot springs on the recommendation from several of the locals and the couple we whitewater rafted with who were staying there. they filter in the mineral water from a stream that runs through the volcano and input it into a bunch of different pools (i think there were twenty-some). all of the pools are different temperatures ranging from a flesh-burning 152 degrees to a normal 82.

so after being in arenal for two days we decided to try and make the trek to monteverde, one of the rain forests in costa rica. it’s technically a cloud forest which differs from the rainforest in species of plants and animals as well as weather, but it’s close. the drive to monteverde is extremely treacherous. you can and should take a tour bus. the road below is an example of why. not so much because of the oxen being driven up the street, but because you can see the “lanes” aren’t really big enough for two cars and that, oh wait, there really aren’t any lanes. or pavement for that matter. see between the gap in the cows? all those big rocks? that is the road. and we drove this for 4 hours (mostly because we got lost) in… wait for it…

A YARIS. yes. highly un-recommended for driving unpaved roads through a rainforest in a developing country. surprisingly enough, despite it sounding like it was going to shake apart at any moment and the battery light flashing on and off and a weird squeaky noise coming from what we think was a belt somewhere, the yaris survived! it was safely returned to the rent-a-car place and we got our $1,000 deposit back… which is good, considering they don’t tell you that you even have a deposit and that they preemptively charged your credit card with it. the yaris in monteverde:

on a skybridge. those things are pretty high up!

this owl wouldn’t stop “staring into my soul” as geoff called it. it was pretty freaky, but he was cute.

so there is most of the pictures of the stuff where we could actually stand still and take a camera! we had a most excellent time, but it was nice to be back in the states where i could take my first hot shower in two weeks and actually put things in the dryer (everything in the entire country seems to be perpetually wet from the humidity). it’s a very lovely country and if you get a chance you should definitely visit. the resort we stayed at was amazing and all of the locals are super nice, helpful, and friendly. pura vida! :)

are you ready for a lot of text?! it will be worth it when you get to the pictures. :)

as you can imagine, it’s hard for someone like me to pick a photographer for the biggest day in my life. for the past year it has been a nonstop question and answer session that goes something like this, “so who takes a wedding photographer’s photographs?” everyone from clients to friends to family to my dentist to the ups man. i was probably asked at least every other day.  in fact, i was in the ER two weeks ago and, already married but knowing my occupation from my charts, i was asked again, “so you’re a wedding photographer. who took your photographs?” i’m not sure that i’ll ever stop being asked this question.

so let’s answer this burning question for you all: who was our photographer? david e. jackson.

he’ll get a lot of promotion for the rest of my life. not that he needs it… his work speaks for itself.

dave’s from wisconsin, so i don’t remember how i found his website. it was before i started my own photography business two years ago, so sometime prior to that. all i remember thinking is that i had never seen photographs like it. the color, the lighting, and something about his style really stuck with me. for those of you who rigorously scour photography blogs, you’ll know that nobody has the exact same style. taking a photograph is kind of like signing your signature. although if someone’s style is particularly well pronounced and you’ve been stalking their work for long enough, you can pick one of their pictures out of a lineup and know who took it. and i feel as though i can definitely identify dave’s work out of the bajillion photographers out there.

when geoff and i got engaged, during the first week of our engagement we found a venue and a photographer. geoff told me that i could choose the photographer and he’d design the cake. that was our deal. now i had been following dave for over two years and other photographers as well as i grew my business. there are so many incredibly talented photographers out there. however, there was really never anyone that had that same funky style that i could identify with… his work was like an old friend. so after years of stalking his website, we signed a contract with dave, and it was like signing up to have your idol at your wedding.

needless to say, he and his assistant trevor were remarkable to work with. we all got along super well and had a great time. i had an awesome time not taking pictures. besides actually marrying geoff, the best part of the day for me was the ability to leave my camera home and to completely trust someone else to take the photographs. dave was the only one that i trusted to do this job and do it correctly and of course he did, and did it beautifully.

dave and trevor made our day and now, it turns out, made our life. we received our pictures yesterday and were beyond thrilled with them, although i can’t say i was surprised. we sat down, turned on the slideshow, and went through the photographs. awesome, beautiful, exactly how we remember the day and exactly what we wanted. we’re already plotting which ones we’ll be making large prints and canvases of, but it’s incredibly difficult to decide. i have a feeling some room in the house will become the wedding photographs shrine, but isn’t that how it should be? you should totally love your photographs that much. and thanks to dave, we do.

so, without further ado, these have been lifted from dave’s blog with his permission to share with my clients and the family/friends for whom i don’t have email addresses and who aren’t on facebook. ;)

please take the time to visit dave’s website and blog (our ridiculously badass engagement pictures are on there too!). he does incredible work in both the wedding/portrait world and the commercial world.

THANK YOU, DAVE.

and a special thank you to the rest of my fantastic vendors! you all made the day so wonderful.

venue: artspace

hotel: the sheraton, downtown raleigh

wedding dress: la sposa

hair: alter ego

make-up: carly byman

officiant: reverend barbara lodge

flowers: the english garden

cake: geoff’s aunt, leah lamotte-kerr with toppers by my mom, christine scott

dj: stephen scott

ceremony musician: jason campbell

transportation: raleigh rickshaw

we had a great time, a great wedding, and are so thankful for our many family and friends. we had a little over 100 people, 9 of which were from north carolina. you guys all rock for traveling so far. we love you.

got an adorable thank you card in the mail the other day from amanda and christopher, whose beautiful wedding you might remember from june (if you don’t, you should check it out – it was fab!). i have the best clients ever and their support and cute thank-yous like this keep me going. thank you, amanda and chris. this means a lot to me. :)

here’s to you, mom! having super buff arms and being totally awesome since 1950. happy birthday, mom. :) i love you!

my sister’s birthday is today and i couldn’t figure out whether or not to post an embarrassing picture from our childhood. i figured i might as well go for it… become used to the public humiliation slowly before our wedding reception slideshow destroys our lives and the lives of those around us with a flood of mortifying pictures.

so happy birthday today to my wonderful sister laura!! she is the best sister anyone could have. :)

copyrights must go to carolyn scott photography’s mom on this one, but she doesn’t have a watermark, so i just took the credit instead. ;) thanks, mom!

work it, geoff, work it.

on a mission at a recent wedding. looks determined.

last weekend we had two different weddings in two different states with two different grooms named chris. it was seriously good stuff. however, sometimes you’re placed in a position where it’s very dark, you’re outside in an area lit entirely by dim moonlight and candles, and you’re concentrating on trying to take pictures when you fall into a small hole in the ground, trip on said hole, and land your knee squarely on a sharp, pointy tree stump. and a few days later you have the following gnalry picture to post on your blog.

here’s geoff messing around with the backup cam on saturday’s wedding, and here’s my resulting injury from sunday’s wedding. :) grossssss. i spot at least 6 different colors, what about you? :P

happy belated father’s day, dad!!! (geeeez, it’s like dad week or something around here lately).

this is to remind you – you’ll be here soon! i love you!!

happy birthday to the most avid reader of carolyn scott photography’s blog – my dad!! :) he turns 58 today and is as awesome as ever. I LOVE YOU, DAD! i’ll be home soon!