Family Info

I mostly photograph sessions in (and around) peoples’ homes. I feel like kids are naturally more relaxed there in their natural Cheerio-covered habitat, and parents are also more relaxed due to the readily available wine and coffee. It’s also much easier to switch tactics if your kid decides they don’t want to do any of the various activities we’ve planned for them. Kids also get hot, and hungry, and start tearing off the outfit that you carefully picked out for them, and it’s super easy to chill out for a bit and “reset” when you’re at your house with resources available to quickly feed or reclothe someone. Not everyone loves every aspect of their home though, so I do make exceptions and will shoot on-location somewhere else if you:

• Already have another location in mind (I don’t make recommendations; it’s best for you to choose a place your kids love)
• There are lots of kid-friendly activities at this location (Duke Gardens, for example, is a bad location for my type of photography since there aren’t any built-in activities for kids)
• You have to make arrangements with the location. Ex: If you’re shooting at the Museum of Life & Science, you need to contact them to ask permission and let them know we’ll be coming, etc, and are responsible for any fees to get yourself and me on the property
• Promise I don’t have to carry your stuff (please leave purses/bags, cell phones in the car)

Home is mandatory if you have a baby or a child who isn’t old enough to walk around and explore on their own. I still do all my sessions documentary-style with a small handful of posed shots. If you want an entirely posed 4-person+ family session in a city or a field, I am not your girl. ;) I will, however, shoot directed 2-person couple shoots anywhere.

You can also shoot at:

• Air BnBs (permission from the owner is needed)
• Peerspace rentals
• Your sister, your parents, or anyone else’s home if you like their house better (I’m just assuming you’d have permission for this)

Absolutely! Two people are a family! You and your cat are a family! You and your mom are a family! It does not need to be a traditional, nuclear family by any means. I’m more about focusing on relationships. Some of you may know me from my days as a wedding photographer. My husband Geoff and I shot weddings together for 10 years, so a large part of my background is photographing couples and various types of traditional and nontraditional families. My own family is myself, Geoff, and our 3 cats!

Yes, I do! I love photographing high school seniors, and we can do the shoot outside at a place of the senior’s choosing. They’re welcome to bring an outfit change and any family/friends that they want to come along. I don’t photograph college campus cap & gown senior shoots, though, sorry!

Nope! They can be any age. However, I find that the best photographs of kids are taken when they’re 12 months and older, since they begin really smiling and interacting around that age, and you can do more with them once they start to move more independently.

Great news – no, it does not! I welcome all shapes and sizes and cleaning states of houses. Your house can be certainly be messy, dusty, or disorganized. I will photograph and blog it exactly as it is, so if mess or stuff in the background bothers you, just throw that stuff in a closet and shut the door. But if it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t bother me. My job is to document your family and home as it is, so you don’t need to worry about having a picture-perfect space. You can have a fancy home or a simple home, a big home or a small home, a clean home or a messy home, a maximalist home or a minimalist home. Your home is your home, and it’s a privilege of mine to be invited into your space.

Make breakfast, play with Legos, build a pillow fort, play hide-and-seek, have a dance party, cook or bake, play dress up or put on Halloween costumes, have a puppet show, have a wrestling match, play instruments, sing karaoke, do some finger painting, make paper airplanes, make a lemonade stand, paint a cardboard house or make a cardboard fortress, make slime, do arts and crafts, decorate a cake or cookies, make ice cream, read favorite stories, eat some snacks, play charades, give everyone temporary tattoos, jump on the bed, do some science experiments, make your own pizzas, tie-dye some shirts, do any ordinary routines (brush teeth, nap or bedtime rituals, bathtime, special snacks), carve a pumpkin, decorate for a holiday, Nerf wars

Try gardening, jumping on a trampoline, swimming, flying kites, riding in a wagon, have a picnic, make s’mores at a fire pit, do water play with sprinklers/water guns/pools/hoses/water balloons, blow bubbles, ride bikes/skateboards/scooters, play sports, set up a tent for yard camping, have an egg toss, play tag, make a sandcastle in a sandbox, play with sidewalk chalk, have a scavenger hunt, go out for ice cream, play on a playground, grab a bite at a food truck, pick pumpkins or Christmas trees

I’m more hands-on regarding posing for couples, but I still try to lean documentary-style wherever I can! Some ideas are: play records, make dinner together, bake a dessert, play a hyper competitive yet short-ish board game, play and cuddle with pets, garden, have a pillow fight, play instruments, take an evening walk, decorate your house for a holiday or season, tackle a home project. I’ll also do posed, on-location sessions for just couples outside of your home, so feel free to pick anywhere you’d like.

If the shoot takes place at your home, then yes! All pets are welcome to participate in shoots at your home. I do ask if you have a large jumping dog that he/she be restrained in some way until the jumping subsides (I’m very short and easily knocked over and therefore scared of large jumping dogs). I also ask if you have a territorial/angry/bite-potential dog to reconsider having them involved for my personal safety and the safety of my equipment.

I do not permit dogs (or other animals but let’s face it no one brings their cat to a park) to accompany on-location shoots to parks or other non-home spaces unless the shoot is specifically just you and your dog. It is too much to wrangle when it is a whole family and a dog in a public space regarding leashes, barking, tying up the dog, navigating the irrational fears of grates your dog has, etc.

• The primary goal is to document your family doing normal-to-you activities in order to capture this little moment in time for you all. It doesn’t need to be (and shouldn’t be!) high stress. You don’t need to come up with some completely original ideas – the idea is more to document little everyday things that mean a lot to you. So don’t panic or stress out while preparing for the shoot. If you are trying to come up with ideas, write some things down that you love about your family or people you live with, things that may be different in 5, 10 years that you want documented right now.
• If you want to shoot primarily inside your home, we need to time the session so that it takes place when your house gets the most natural light (ideally with other light sources turned off)
• If you want to shoot primarily outside your home, usually the best time to start is about 2 hours before sunset
• BUT – you need to avoid times when kids are usually hungry, napping, mealtimes, etc. Any time where a kid is going to be cranky is a BAD TIME to have the session. I can work with any light, so the comfort/happiness of the kids comes first.
• Activities that involve some motion and will elicit excitement/reactions in your children are the best! Sometimes you have to think of a novel thing that they might not have done before, or something that you don’t permit them to do frequently
• Have snacks on hand! Sooo many snacks
• No phones allowed! Turn off your phone and hide it somewhere before we start
• Don’t freak out. We can be extremely excellent planners but that doesn’t mean that your kid will want to do anything we planned. That is 100% okay. The goal, above all else, is to keep your kid happy during your session. If they refuse all activities and want to do something else, please let them do it! I am extremely adaptable, and my primary goal is to capture everyone having fun

No, sorry! I specialize in groups from 2-12 people only, and I don’t photograph family gatherings around the holidays as I’m with my own family at that time (Thanksgiving/Christmas).

Payments are broken up into two parts. A $100+NC sales tax deposit is made upon signing the contract, and the remaining balance is due 2 weeks before the session. All monies are paid through a secure online checkout using your credit or debit card in your client portal.

I travel for portraits within the Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill area and the kinda-extended-Triangle of Apex, Hillsborough, Wake Forest, Pittsboro, etc. I generally don’t travel outside of an hour for portraits, but feel free to ask if you aren’t sure. I no longer travel out of state for portraits.

If your session is taking place at home, we typically won’t need to reschedule on account of there being a roof and lights we can turn on. But occasionally it’ll be super dark indoors and rescheduling might be necessary depending on how gloomy it is, or if you just really had your heart set on some sunshine. If you want to reschedule due to weather, the deposit and remaining balance just carry over to a new date. Boom! Problem solved.

I’m happy to reschedule your shoot if it rains and is gloomy, or if anyone in your family is sick (pleaaaase let me know if someone is sick!). Just let me know and we can easily pick a new date that works for everyone. Life happens and I try to be accommodating.

Be comfortable and casual. With kids, you’re bending down a lot, so I’d advise against wearing something low-cut (unless heyyy that’s your thing!). Wear something you easily sit and lounge in. There’s usually a decent amount of kiddo wrestling or movement, so being able to be somewhat flexible is key. Patterns are fine, and so are graphic tees, just don’t put something like a Hawaiian shirt next to lumberjack plaid and you should be fine. Regarding colors, don’t all wearing the same color and don’t be super matchy-matchy, but try to wear the same family of colors… think blues/grays/greens or cream/brown/green or dark red/brown/tan or something along those lines. The only thing I would specifically avoid (besides everyone wearing the same thing) are articles of clothing that are neon colored (electric yellow, highlighter pink, etc), and the color white if you’re a pale person. Anything that makes you look like you’re about to help a bunch of children cross the road or are trying to avoid being hit while jogging along a busy street are usually colors that don’t photograph well. Bright, crazy colors often reflect back onto your skin tone if you’re pale, and then kinda turn your skin that color too. If you’re pale, white just makes you look a bit like a ghost. So go for more neutral, earth-toney, or jewel-toned colors. Ask if you aren’t sure! I’m happy to help.

If you’re interested in booking, please fill out the contact form with your information! I’ll respond within 2 business days with a date that meets your criteria, and you’ll have 3 days to accept it before I open that date back up to others. Make sure you check your spam and trash folders if you don’t hear from me in case my email gets lost. After we hammer out a date, I’ll send you info on how to login to your client portal where you’ll sign a contract and pay a $100 deposit to hold your date. You’ll also be sent links to a questionnaire and your final balance, both of which are due two weeks before your shoot. The week before your session, I’ll send an email reminder to confirm your questionnaire answers, what the weather is currently looking like for your session date, location info, contact details, and more. Then before you know it, it’ll be shoot time!

After your shoot, I’ll take the pictures home, cull them down to the ones where you look good and edit those with my snazzy editing style. My editing style is pretty specific, so make sure you like it! All of my shoots are posted on the blog, so feel free to have a gander and enjoy. You photos will be done and ready for download 2-4 weeks after the shoot. At that time, I’ll send you an e-mail to give you a heads up which will include instructions on how to access the gallery and send it to family and friends. Because photos take 2-4 weeks for return, If you’re planning on printing and using for holiday cards or some other announcement, please plan accordingly.

Because as a photographer my business is entirely visual, I rely on my ability to blog and post to social media every session I photograph. I post what I consider to be my best work and work I wish to continue doing, so I do not permit my clients to have control over which images I post. People seeing these photographs is how I continue to get more clients and grow my business. However, I also understand respect privacy concerns. It’s not my intention to make anyone worry or be uncomfortable in order to have good photos. So to strike a happy medium, I offer to keep your photos entirely private and kept hidden off every corner of the internet (no blog, no portfolio, no social media) for an additional $50 charge.  Alternatively, you can also ask me to keep your names and any written info entirely offline (no tagging, no words on the blog post to identify you, etc) for no charge and I’d be happy to oblige.

My editing style has a lot of colors and contrast, and is a bit bold and modern. Make sure you take a good look at my portfolio and blog to make sure you like how everything looks! If you like my content but not my editing, I’m not the right photographer for you, so please make sure we’re a good fit before booking.

When I edit photos, I edit for basic color and contrast in Lightroom. I don’t routinely Photoshop things, and I’m not a professional retoucher. I can take out a zit or two if they occur, but if your kid dropped chocolate all down the front of his shirt, it’s just going to have to stay there. Same thing with crazy rashes, the bangs that your daughter cut herself the night before the shoot, and that tattoo you didn’t give your son permission to get. 

North Carolina makes photographers collect sales tax. Yesss, we are a service, but it’s a service that results in a product (the JPEGs) so NC deems that the entire fee is taxable. It’s automatically collected based on your county. No, I can’t look the other way and you can’t pay me under the table.