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.

Portraits in Raleigh: Dana+Daniel+Midori+Hermine

I first met Dana and Daniel when I photographed their cat Hermine for a benefit I did early last year to raise money for Safe Haven for Cats, a no-kill shelter for cats in Raleigh. Dana was volunteering at Save Haven at the time and decided to have a session done of Hermine at their house. Hermine was really scared around new people and had a particular dislike for the camera, but was a beaaautiful kitty! Then this year I was contacted by Dana again, saying that her and Daniel and Hermine had welcomed in little Midori in June. :) I was so excited to meet her and to see the couple and their feisty cat again! Hermine apparently hasn’t been taking Midori’s entrance all that well… but actually she was quite less skittish this year than last (perhaps she’s gotten used to people coming and going and lots of noises from the baby). She still isn’t quite sure about Midori… and general avoids her, but Midori loves Hermine and is about to get to that crawling-and-tail-pulling age that I’m sure Hermine will appreciate. ;)

Dana and Daniel moved from Germany a while back and have jobs teaching psychology at NC State. They wanted a few pictures of Midori in her baby Santa dress(which is ADORABLE)! I asked if they had their tree up, but in Germany it isn’t custom to put their tree up until the night before Christmas, which I found very interesting! It must be nice to live somewhere where the Christmas decorations don’t start creeping in before Halloween. :P Enjoy the adorableness of this family!

 

Raleigh Family Photographer: Melissa+Jimmy+Harper+Frank+T-Bone

If this session doesn’t make you want to run out and buy a matching set of weiner dogs, I’m not sure what will.

Meet the McGuinness family! You might remember them as Melissa and Jimmy. :) Melissa and Jimmy had Frank, their first Dachshund, when Jimmy was stationed over in Germany. Frank unfortunately could not make it over to their wedding that I shot in October 2010. I was brokenhearted as I had been stalking Frank’s various outfits and adorableness via Facebook for some time. After they were married for a little while and moved back to NC, they adopted T-Bone, their second Dachshund (you’ll see that T-Bone is kind of tiger striped). Then, recently completing their big happy family, came Harper, their adorable baby girl and little sister to the adopted fur-children. :) I was so pleased to meet and photograph the new new additions, and it was lovely seeing Melissa and Jimmy again. Their family is beautiful. Harper is a little angel, and Frank and T-Bone are completely and utterly ridiculous… but in a good way.

Jimmy just recently left for a one year deployment in Afghanistan, and they wanted these pictures taken before he left. Jimmy – I wish you a safe and healthy deployment, and I hope these pictures bring you a little bit of comfort.

Raleigh Family Photographer: Gabby+Mike+Evan+Olive+Max

So I don’t advertise that I do family portraits because I concentrate mainly on weddings and those are 99% of my time. I’ve typically narrowed it down to only photographing friends’ families, or friends of friends, or families of friends, etc.  But I received this e-mail in my inbox a few months ago, and the wording was so funny that I agreed to take this woman and her so-called “crazy bunch” on. Upon further stalking of my blog, Gabby (the mom), discovered that my friend Alaskan Kate (who was my bridesmaid and featured a few times in my blog as a photography subject) is her son’s preschool teacher. We both thought that was strange and a small world, but it got even weirder when I said, “Oh yeah! I just volunteered for Kate’s bookfair to raise money for their preschool tonight! I made the buttons!” And it turned out that they were there and we had already met each other and Evan (their son) made a button and the button maker malfunctioned and her husband Mike gave me a rating of C- button making!!! SMALL WORLD.

Anyway – Gabby’s been keeping me entertained for weeks now sending me funny Twitter messages and I’ve been busy stalking their family pictures on Facebook. Now their family pictures are here! Gabby is mom, Mike is dad, Evan is the handsome 3 year-old, Olive is the adorable 15 month-old, and Max is the senior dog. All of them are equally adorable. You’ll see. It’s kind of hard to choose. Special thanks goes out to Chacha and her son – the Fekete family’s trusty neighbors who wrangled children, dogs, shoes, jelly beans, socks, bags, and were able to make everyone smile.