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.

I absolutely love this crew! Geoff and I photographed Dwight and Laurie’s wedding back in the day, and now Laurie is my beloved dentist! It’s been so cool watching their family grow and watching their daughter become the cat-crazed child that she is (their son is now also showing signs of intense feline fandom). I was extremely excited for this shoot because it’s been a year since I saw them, and last time I saw them, all their daughter and I did was talk cats. So I was pretty pumped to see my cat friend again, and she did not disappoint. There was even more cat art up this time in their playroom, and there was even a Fisher Price plane filled entirely with cats. She boarded the cats on the plane, and unboarded them, and put them in little “rooms” made of magnet tiles, and did not want me to photograph this. She said the cats were tired and sleeping and she could not keep boarding and unboarding them, but she also didn’t want to me photograph them sleeping in their rooms or getting on or off the plane. I had to respect this – the cats must be famous or have some sort of privacy clause agreement – but the many rubber cats on the older Fisher Price plane was one of the best things I had ever seen.

Their son, also extremely excited about cats but also excited about trucks and me (!) and wagons, also put a bunch of little rubber cats inside his Jeep and drove the cats around. He also really likes those waving maneki-neko Japanese cats, and this beautiful wooden truck that his grandpa made for him. He’s such a sweet boy and was very concerned that I would not be following them into the backyard for the outdoor portion of the shoot.

Then their real cat, Brie, made an appearance (their other cat Stilton did not want to join us this year), and there was intense cat hugging/cuddling. It reminded me of myself at that age with my own cat. (Laurie and Dwight – I had a full-size camcorder at the age of 6 that I made my sister use to film me on a show I wrote and directed called Catnip Live! where I would “interview” my cat with a microphone. I hope you have this in your future). It was a full-on cat fest with cat people and I’m glad I was there to document it.

Death Valley + Las Vegas

We recently visited Death Valley National Park and Las Vegas on a western sojourn to see U2 at Sphere. We absolutely LOVED this trip and cannot recommend Death Valley enough and would definitely go back. I thoroughly enjoy my desert National Parks – there’s never anyone there, the weather is always great, and the views are unmatched (if you’re a desert person). Las Vegas was wild, as expected, but I’d go back there too if there was a show or something in town that we’d want to see. Always grateful that our jobs and lives allow us the opportunity to travel and see different parts of the world. In order of appearance, roughly:

1. Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada (red rock formations and narrow canyons)
2. Death Valley National Park, California (palm trees and pool are at The Oasis at Death Valley hotel inside the park, which I cannot recommend enough!) – so many amazing parts of Death Valley. Our favorites were the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Zabriskie Point, Artists Palette and Badwater Basin. So glad that we got to see Lake Manly after the rains DVNP received last year!
3. Las Vegas (Hello Kitty cafe is adorable, Sphere is incredible, Meow Wolf is delightfully weird and wonderful, Neon Museum is delightful)

All photos taken/edited on my iPhone (a few from Geoff’s Android as well).

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.