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.

At home with the Coreys.

We’ve been waiting for a family session like this to fall into our laps for a while now. We’ve even been approached by a few families asking for family portraits who have disappeared once  we’ve suggested how we’d prefer to shoot the session. :) So we were beyond thrilled (and honored!) when (amazing!) photographer Emily Corey e-mailed us and asked us to document her family in a come-to-our-house and photograph-us-hanging-around-on-a-Saturday-morning type of way. As she worded it: “a snapshot of life.” She was pregnant when she e-mailed us and wanted to wait until after the baby was born, so we’ve had it on the books, but we waited for a bit until the timing was right and it couldn’t have been more perfect.

Meet the Coreys. They live in an awesome house and make chocolate chip pancakes on Saturdays and walk their dogs and graciously let us follow them around with cameras while they did all these things. There is an amazing and incredible amount of love and patience and kindness in this family and not one single tear was shed (except maybe for like ten minutes with the baby, but even then they were kind of like those baby cries where babies just scream but no actual tears come out).

So here is it. We are kind of addicted to this type of session now. Addicted. So much fun, so little pressure on the kids to act a certain way and pose a certain way (and they’re much more relaxed since they’re at home), and the parents aren’t stressed out because they’re just doing their thing. It’s probably one of the most chillaxed sessions we’ve been on. Feel the love!

Brandrew Have A Baby

Pennsylvania’s very own Brandrew is back on the blog! Well, Ohio’s very own I guess. Brandrew (Brandy and Andrew, respectively, although I’ve given up trying to call either one of them by their correct names because for whatever reason my brain has decided to run the two permanently together) used to live in Pennsylvania, but have since moved to Ohio for Andrew’s job. During the session at Andrew’s parents’ house in Pennsylvania, we had a conversation that went like this (Brandy and I went to high school together):

Me: Brandy, I miss youuuu!
Brandy: I knowww, I miss you too! I wish you still lived here.
Me: But Brandy, you don’t even live here.
Brandy: … (really sad face)… I know. :(

:) I don’t normally do maternity sessions, but Geoff and I shot Brandrew’s engagement and their wedding, and instead of a traditional maternity shoot, they really just wanted pictures of the two of them and their pup Cody while Brandy just happened to be pregnant. Cody likes to growl at anyone who comes near Brandy now, but I quickly won him over by talking to him about squirrels and chipmunks, and then we were best friends. Brandy and Andrew are having a baby girl, named Eliza, in March. I’ll then have to think of another name combination. Maybe Brandriza. Or Ebrandrew. I’ll think about it.

Remember these guys from last year?! They’re back, and I couldn’t be happier to document them again exactly one year later in the same spot with Gabby (mom), Mike (dad), and Max (dog) looking pretty much the same but the kids a lot taller and with longer hair and a newfound love for plastic dinosaurs (this is why they’re my clients). All four of them had on cute shoes. Max didn’t have on cute shoes, but he had a cool skull and crossbones leash. Gabby and I determined that we both bought the same jeans at Old Navy because they’re supposed to be clam-digger height on normal humans but they’re regular jean length on us, and we’re really happy about that because we don’t have to hem them. Their ever-faithful and awesome neighbor ChaCha came with us to wrangle Max and help block out light with her sweater and tell me about gluten-free things. We all romped around the woods, made a bunch of ridiculous faces, and ran around until Olive puked. Then we removed the puked on sweater and continued. All in a day’s work.