We photographed Margaret and Bryan’s wedding back in 2018 (!) when we were lucky enough to meet and work with Barbara and Gordon, Bryan’s parents. Since then, Margaret and Bryan have moved away and welcomed a small adorable child into the world. Bryan’s brother Gray and his wife Christie now also have two children, and everyone was going to be gathering together at Barbara and Gordon’s house for a few days while they were attending a wedding, including Skippy, Barbara’s sister-in-law. Wonderfully, Barbara reached out to see if I could come photograph the family all together and update their family portraits as well as take some candids of everyone at the house. A basketball injury the day before the shoot left Gray on crutches but thankfully there are plenty of beautiful places to sit around their property and we soldiered on! And did we make a baby smile using an extremely haunted-looking doll? We absolutely did. It was so lovely to reconnect with their entire family and meet the two newest members!

Somehow I made it 17 years as a photographer and have never had a portrait shoot at the NC State Fair in Raleigh… until now! Absolutely thrilled to photograph Amanda and Joe and their crew again. I’ve worked with them many times and their children never cease to amaze me. They’re polite, helpful, funny, and consistently super nice to me and try to listen so hard, even when tired or hungry. Just genuinely good kids. We did this shoot early in the morning before the fair got really busy and enjoyed playing games, eating food, exploring fun houses, and getting lost around the circus that is the state fair. It was a beautiful morning and we had a lot of fun. It’s always a pleasure catching up with this group of amazing people!

It’s only been a few months since I photographed these dear friends of ours, but a lot has happened since November! Jen, Jon, Declan and family doggo extraordinaire SamSam welcomed baby Rhett into the family in April! He is adorable and a very good baby indeed. He stayed awake most of the time I was there; Jen and I presumed it was because he recognized my voice from all of our themed horror movie nights that involve good snacks, and figured good snacks would be involved. SamSam, doggo extraordinaire, knew good snacks would be involved (at least for her), and she was right. Declan wasn’t sure if there would be snacks or not, but he took great delight in alternatively watching big trucks on their road doing construction and running up and down the hallway calling Jon by his first name after he heard me say it. When he wasn’t doing those two things, he was being a phenomenal older brother to Rhett, whom he loves dearly. Declan is genuinely excited to have Rhett around and his spirits aren’t dampened one bit (I’m assuming because Rhett doesn’t know how to operate Declan’s mini Target shopping cart yet). I’m so happy for this new family of 5 and can’t wait to get to know Rhett!