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.

December 19, 2019

At Home with Kim+Peter // Candid Family Photography

Kim and I have been trying to set up a magical photography date since 2017 but the stars just would not align. Then this year I finally got to photographer her and her beautiful family! And in one of the strangest coincidences of my professional life, it turns out that Kim and Peter had been frequent visitors of our house before we owned it! I just mentioned that we live in a contemporary in a certain neighborhood, and they mentioned their friends’ names who also used to live in a contemporary in that neighborhood. But the previous owner had kind of a unique first name, so I recognized it and was like WAIT A MINUTE, I THINK THAT’S OUR HOUSE. And BAM! Same house. Small, crazy world. It was a small chance of it coming up, a smaller chance of names being exchanged and remembered, and an even itty, bittier chance of it being the same house. Whoa!

Anyway, besides having a Twilight Zone connection with me now, Kim and Peter have a fantastic family consisting of 3 kids (Luke, Thomas, and Ellen), 3 dogs, 1 cat, fish, and chickens. All creatures and children were extremely friendly. The kids are outgoing, funny, and like to talk to me about what Star Wars video games we have in common. While this age group is not overly eager to have their pictures taken, eight and ten year olds DO tend to make a lot of ridiculous faces at the camera on purpose which I personally enjoy. They’re also excited and willing to attack their parents in pictures, and enjoy decorating Christmas cookies in a variety of hilarious ways. Ellen and Kim did take great care in decorating theirs, but I think Luke and Thomas had a competition of who could make theirs the weirdest, and they turned out like wonderful Christmas monsters covered in ooze and with google eyes scattered about. A game of Memory at the end was won by the children (as Peter pointed out, they had him and Kim beat with numbers and youth), which won them additional video game time. They were very excited to explain Fortnite to me before zoning out completely. I had a joyful afternoon spent with this crew and was happy to finally meet and photograph them!

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December 12, 2019

Amy+Ben+Nathan // A Family Session

Amy and Ben welcomed little Nathan into the world in the spring of 2018 and now he’s somehow a walking, talking toddler who likes bubbles and DeLoreans. And while Amy and Ben are now part of the prestigious CSP 6 Timer’s Club, little Nathan is being welcomed into the CSP 2 Timer’s Club (not as devious as it sounds)! Nathan is an incredibly cute little boy who’s friendly and intelligent, much like his parents and also their cats. He has a friend named Mr. BokBok who is an oven mitt shaped like a chicken.

Nathan is the only toddler I’ve met who cheerfully volunteers to banish himself to his crib and wants to be buckled in his high chair (Amy and Ben claim that he does not, however, want to do either of these things if they’re not his idea first). He likes cheddar bunnies and has a 1980s-looking puffer jacket of which I’m profoundly jealous. He enjoys wearing it while driving around his dad’s model DeLorean car and looking so, so, so very Back to the Future. In his spare time, Nathan also enjoys looking through Amy’s credit cards and talking about trucks. He’s a busy fellow, but Amy and Ben keep up. They bought a new place that has the best wallpaper ever and, even better, a door where it’s now impossible for me to accidentally lock them out of their own house. Amy and Ben have been a part of my client family for such a long time, and I’m so happy to be documenting Nathan now too. GREAT SCOTT.

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November 21, 2019

Katy+Jereme+Lucy+Sammy // Family Photographer in Raleigh

When I spoke with Katy over the phone before their portrait session, we got along quite well and talked for a long time about things totally unrelated to portrait planning. And Katy and Jereme are super funny people who have the same sense of humor as myself, so I was quite excited to meet them. And Katy was really talking Lucy up, the way you might talk about someone you’re trying to set your friend up with. “She’s really funny, you’re going to love her.” And she’s her mom and stuff, so naturally you’re going to think your kid is funny and that everyone will like your child (I think this about my cats), and I like children and I was sure I would at the very least like Lucy, BUT SHE WAS RIGHT, I DO TOTALLY LOVE HER. I think my jaw literally dropped open when I saw her. First of all, Lucy has the habit of staring very stoically at people in a quite serious way (which I was warned about ahead of time) but it is SO funny because she has the most INCREDIBLE EYELASHES that I have literally ever seen on ANYONE and this just makes her look so adorably cute that it is instant love. Like, I’ve never seen eyelashes like this. Ever. Well, maybe not in person because she is 100% like that guy that plays Richard on Lost that everyone thinks wears mascara on both his upper and lower lashes but actually just looks like that. It’s incredible and she will never need mascara or eyeliner ever in her life.

In addition to having beautiful eyes, she alternates between extremely serious expressions and THE CUTEST SMILE AND LAUGH that reveals exactly two bottom teeth and is seriously heart-melting. Someone get this girl an ad campaign stat. She loves both her mom and her dad, but I’m not sure I’ve seen any baby look at anyone the way this girl looks at her dad, which is also heart-warming and adorable. Her hobbies include chewing on plastic ducks, hanging out with her very good dog Sammy, waving like the queen as she walks her cart around the house, hugging her narwhal stuffed animal, mailing envelopes to her birthday party (THE CUTENESS), and being generally insanely cute. Her parents are in the medical field, and Lucy is named after a 98 year-old patient that Katy took care of. Grab the tissues and observe the cute.

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