Durham Family Photographer

Carolyn Scott is a Durham family photographer. She specializes in candid and documentary at-home family photography in the Triangle area (Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Cary, etc). Carolyn’s work has been published in several popular books and magazines, including Apartment Therapy, BuzzFeed, and Fangoria. Locally, she’s been voted Best Photographer in Durham Magazine’s Best Of Durham and INDY Week’s Best of the Triangle. She lives in South Durham with her husband Geoff and three cats.

It’s always a thrill to meet new people that you instantly click with and I just loved these guys. They’re fellow northerners who love their cats and their adorable daughter. Their adorable daughter loves whisking eggs (an all-time favorite hobby of hers) and painting (sometimes a canvas, sometimes her face). Her parents sent me a video of her wandering around the kitchen crying “Carolynnnn” after I left because she couldn’t find me and I apparently made quite a good impression. It was the best. Also the best: being busy photographing a toddler cooking breakfast but then turning around to find that the mom just came around the corner holding two enormous fluffy cats for me to also photograph. The cats are named Chunk and Rhu Rhu and we were best friends and I love them and they love me. It was a great day, ya’ll.

My first shoot of the new year couldn’t have taken place with a nicer family. This was my first time working with Danielle and Alex, their 14-year-old dachshund Honeybee, and definitely my first time working with their 7-day-old son. They were all so kind and invited me into their beautiful home to capture their baby in first few days at home (a lot of firsts here). These two met as professional classical musicians, which I think is so cool, and I’m sure that their son will inherit their talent and love of music. They were so fun to talk to as we hung around the house and talked babies and music and careers. I’m so happy for their new family and am delighted with their pictures (their son is beyond adorable but also Honeybee the dachshund has some serious modeling abilities).

Banff National Park

We went to Canada in late September and all we got was a case of Covid and some iPhone pictures. Here they are. Banff, though beautiful, is extremely crowded (all of these photos have throngs of tourists carefully framed out of the picture). For every outrageously gorgeous lake, there’s a woman changing her winter outfit into a more Instagrammable-one and having her friend take 5,000 model poses of her right next to us. It’s a very strange feeling to be in such a wild, vast place in such a densely packed crowd. It’s not ideally how we’d experience nature, but it was absolutely beautiful nonetheless. There are so many very isolated places to go in Banff if you want to go truly off the beaten path, but the main attractions are the main attractions for a reason, so you have to tolerate the large groups of people. Despite that, we’re feeling enormously grateful for our ability to travel and for our trip to see this gorgeous part of the world. Thanks to everyone who text us on our trip to make sure that we weren’t eaten by a bear.

Pictured: Calgary (to see Coheed & Cambria), Drumheller, Banff National Park, Yoho National Park, and Kootenay National Park.

All photos taken/edited on my iPhone.