I photographed Laurie and Dwight’s wedding back in 2014 (!) and now it’s an absolute delight to photograph them as a family of four with their two kids. Davis is a smiley little guy who enjoys Cheez-its, swings, and asking a lot of questions via adorable little baby noises. June is me, except she’s 4. She likes cats so much that sometimes she prefers to be called by the name of one of their cats, and she’ll let you know which name she’s going by today (human or cat). She had a cat dress on. Almost all of the art on the walls that she’s made is of cats. She has many cat toys, some of which were so adorable that I’ll probably buy them myself. She looked at pictures of my cats and then repeated their names and qualities with total delight to her dad. She knows exactly where the Temptations are kept in the kitchen. She’s my kind of girl.
Laurie and Dwight are great people and Laurie’s also an amazing dentist in Raleigh! She became my dentist during the pandemic and I was delighted to find that she has televisions mounted on the ceiling of her office, which is, in my opinion, the most ingenious thing to ever happen in the field of dentistry. I’m so happy for her to have a thriving business and for their family to have two wonderful kids. It was so much fun to photograph them all together at home.
We’ve been lucky enough to have Tiffany and Neal in our lives for nine years now (!). We first shot their engagement session long ago, then the Christening ceremony for their first daughter Natalie. Tiffany, who once bought me a very wonderful bat scarf that I still wear all the time, runs an award-winning events planning company and we worked on several weddings together. And in between all the events and the coffee dates and photo shoots, they’ve always been our friends (for better or for worse – they agreed to have cocktails with us the other night and Neal unfortunately ordered a cocktail that I announced smelled literally like garbage that needed to be taken out… and then no one could “unsmell” it… and his cocktail was ruined. Sorry, Neal). It’s an honor to be asked to photograph the Christening of their second daughter Marion (who is like a mini Natalie at this age!), complete with Reverend Barbara Lodge and their family members. So happy to have this family as our friends and a huge congratulations on the birth and Christening of Baby Marion.
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!
