Rachel and Brandon got engaged! And then, while searching for wedding venues in New Orleans, they serendipitously stumbled across some weddings I shot down there and contacted me to do their engagement session in Durham where they live. They were super pleasant and friendly via e-mail and phone and I was already excited to work with them and their dog Jovie. But then, a few days before the session, Rachel casually sends me an email that reads, “And a heads up. We recently rescued a kitten, so he’d have to be involved here as well.” I like how she worded this: the kitten has to be involved… as if to imply there might be some sort of chance I wouldn’t accept?!?? Or would tell her, “NO. ABSOLUTELY NO KITTENS.” Rachel did not know me well enough when she sent that email but I think she does now. This is when I grabbed my Crazy Cat Lady cape from the back of my office chair, slung it around my shoulders and got to work converting her engagement/family session into 100% a kitten session without even trying or thinking about it. I did try very hard to pet Jovie the dog and hug Rachel and Brandon equally but let’s face it, I think they all knew I was there for Crash the Cat. Crash is really good at posing because he’s really good at sleeping when he’s not running full speed around the house. Jovie is really good at eating Crash’s cat toys and also entire Dominos pizzas when we weren’t looking. Rachel and Brandon are good at looking cute and adopting a lot of animals and eating pizza. I wish I was still shooting weddings so I could follow them to Nola, but these kitten photos were a good consolation prize.
Geoff and I photographed Katie and Tony’s wedding in Virginia back in 2017 when Katie wore this incredible pantsuit. Thankfully, the Durham area gained Katie and Tony back recently (!) and now we can have dinner with them and talk about podcasts. In addition, I was lucky enough to get to photograph them recently for a couple’s session! I love doing portraits with couples as it’s low-key and fun, and it’s cool to look back on them later with your partner (the best part is that no matter how old you think you look now, when you look back on pictures later, you will always look younger than you currently do! Isn’t that great?). We did a few at their house with their dog Caroline who is really adorable but only likes a handful of people (and I am not one of them… probably a Caroline vs. Carolyn thing) so I took photos of her from 25 feet away, and then we moved on to downtown Durham. Part of the fun of shooting in August is the fact that the weather doesn’t make a lick of sense, and even with a 10% chance of rain in the forecast, some sort of gnarly front moved in on us with 40mph winds and crazy clouds and we all ended up hiding underneath an overhang for a bit. But I’d happily hang with them under overhangs any day of the week, especially when it stops me from having to photoshop out a bunch of little rain dots on their shirts.
Sarah and Dustin are the best type of people. They like card games and video games and pie picnics, but most importantly, they can weather an extremely rainy engagement session without so much as blinking an eye. The weather is so unpredictable in North Carolina in the summer, and we had already rescheduled once due to rain. The forecast for their particular day was about evenly split, but toward the evening it was down to almost a zero percent chance, and nothing on the radar. Of course, because of this, it rained literally the entire time. For no reason. The radar still said it was clear, and the forecast still said it was not supposed to be raining. It did not let up. It was primarily a constant mist, but it did become heavier on occasion, but despite all this, they did not complain once, and were some of the happiest clients I’ve had, rain or shine! They met in the Archives while attending school, and are getting married later this year on Dustin’s family’s land in Tennessee. They’re excited to later bring Sarah’s dog Moses into the mix (who’s currently living with her family in New Mexico) and vow to continue to remain united over their love of desserts. I’m super happy to have done their engagement session, and can’t wait to see what life has in store for them in future. Congrats, Sarah and Dustin!