Dwight + Laurie // Chapel Hill Family Photographer

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.

At Home with Rachel+Kevin // Lifestyle Family Shoot

It is so much fun to have repeat clients, and even more fun when you get to see newborn brunette baby clients turn into blonde big sister clients who have a whole lot to say. We revisited the ever-wonderful Rachel and Kevin (whom you may know from their first newborn shoot with us a couple years ago) and joined them in welcoming new baby boy Jonah into their lives. This also involved reuniting with previous Baby Evelyn who is now Big Sister Evelyn. Previously, she had done a whole lot of sleeping and eating. Now, her days primarily consist of running frantically from room to room, hiding from you in a cardboard box castle, eating string cheese, and jumping on the bed because the photographer asked her to, thus creating a terrible downward spiral insistence to always be jumping on the bed that I suspect Rachel and Kevin might still be dealing with to this day (sorry guys).

Jonah is currently in the Whole Lot of Sleeping and Eating Phase so he’s slightly less energetic than Big Sister at this point, but I’m sure that he’ll progress to the String Cheese Phase in no time (and hopefully Evelyn will have forgotten about my bed jumping request by the time he gets there). A big thank you and congratulations to the wonderful Rachel and Kevin – you guys are awesome and your family is really cute.

At home with Rachel+Kevin // Durham, NC

Rachel and Kevin had the super good fortune of not only giving birth to a beautiful baby girl, but also having her a few days before we sent our camera equipment away for a couple weeks to Canon for yearly maintenance. ;) We were hoping Evelyn Grace made her appearance on her due date, Jan 31st, and she thankfully made a timely arrival on February 1st. This enabled us to meet and photograph her in the adorable curled-up baby stage before they start throwing their limbs around all over the place. :)

We met the new parents at their home where they introduced us to Evelyn, who is a big fan of sleeping, napping, swaddling, sleeping, eating, and avoiding facing the camera at all times (don’t worry, babies are slow, so I was able to photograph her several times facing me before she caught on and turned the other direction). She is freaking adorable, with a little head full of hair and really adorable baby clothes and baby things. When my sister and I were little we had a babydoll we called Baby Evelyn, so I was even partial to her name. ;)

We were also introduced to Shirley, a tuxedo cat who has that amazing cat ability to sense when a door is suddenly opened into a room they’re not normally allowed to go in, enabling them to make a run for it, go into the “forbidden room”, and jump into the newborn’s crib to cuddle up with a stuffed elephant. Bandit, their tabby cat, also has that exact same the-door-is-open-to-the-forbidden-room-quick-lets-go-in-it cat sense, and hides under the crib. Clearly, it’s just a giant cat bed. Nora, their hound, who seemed like she was much more interested in cheese than her new baby sister, did not get in the crib.

Rachel and Kevin were just as much of a joy to work with as all the smaller creatures in their house, and it was such an honor to come into their home and photograph their little ones. :)