Making Fools of Ourselves: 2014

Here we go! Let the embarrassment begin. Welcome to our 4th annual Making Fools of Ourselves blog post (also lovingly referred to as “How Many Hairstyles Can Carolyn Have in One Year?”). You’ll find that not much has changed since we first started this. Geoff’s main facial expression is still lovingly annoyed with me and/or chronically surprised, while pictures of me range from tired to excited to panicked to happy to fist-pumping to Journey going on hour 9 of 10 in a totally delirious state. We laid on a lot of floors, wrangled a lot of dogs, recovered from tendonitis only to get it again only to recover again only to get it again, ruined a lot of one another’s pictures, talked to a bunch of guests we don’t know, let our hair grow only to shave one side of it only to cut it completely off only to grow it in again. A lot of people on social media try to present the best versions of themselves, but we’re firm believers in presenting your worst. That way, you know, it can only go up. Here’s to 2014.

CSP Class of 2014.

In 2014 we were on the road. A lot.

We ate a lot of snacks out of a lot of different vending machines. We had to ask guests at a wedding in Georgia to clarify what a “fill-up” station was. I found myself wearing a tank top in Michigan in August, only to find out I was woefully unprepared for it being 49 degrees when we arrived. We snorkeled with sharks, sting rays, and sea turtles at our first destination wedding in St. John, USVI. A woman who owned a diner in Connecticut showed me her teeth she was having worked on that afternoon. A little boy in NC answered the door for us wearing a werewolf mask. We finally got to see the Gaffney Peach in South Carolina. Babies were born, hands were held, and cats were most definitely petted. We were happy to see old friends and meet new ones in comfortable, familiar places like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland.  And we went on a personal trip to Iceland with clients from a few years back who have become dear friends of ours. We went through a lot of different camera bags, cracked the screen on the back of one of our 5DMIIIs, split at least one pair of pants, and racked up hundreds of flight points on the rewards card and thousands of miles on the Mazda.

In 2014 we made a lot of new friends. Here are some of them.

Virginia+Carson // Engaged // Durham, NC

This was our very, very last shoot of 2014 and we have to say that it was a very good year. Soon we’ll be posting our year-in-review posts, but we had to put this up first to officially end our year right. :) We couldn’t have asked for two better people to round out the last twelve months with! Also, we’re kind of oddly similar. Apparently Carson just recently shaved his beard, or else it might be difficult to tell us all physically apart. My sister saw the sneak peek I posted of them right after the session, and had a strong negative reaction when she thought some other guy was kissing me (right before the holidays, no less!) and wondered what I had done with Geoff, until she realized that was not, in fact, me in the picture.

Virginia and Carson recently got engaged, and they also recently moved to Durham. Virginia accepted a position as a librarian at Duke and Carson is in law school, and Durham happened to be a great location for the both of them to do their adult job stuff. So they moved into an adorable house with their furry friends: cats Spike and Pickles, and Brittany Spaniel named QuiQui (who is, obviously, European). Virginia really wanted to have engagement photos, but she really didn’t want to have them actually taken, but she promised us she wouldn’t roll her eyes through the whole session, so we showed up at their house and went to work. And throughout the entire thing, both in their home and out on 9th street in the cold, Virginia didn’t roll her eyes once! In fact, her and Carson were just plain adorable. They cooked in their kitchen (mmm, cheese spread), played guitar for us on their porch (they are talented musicians and singers!), and were generally very receptive to cuddling on their couch with QuiQui and also posing by strange vans in alleyways. We had an awesome time getting to know them both, and we’re so happy to have been able to finish our year with this really cute duo.