Happy to see this beautiful family again! <3
say nice things
Durham Family Photographer
Carolyn Scott is a Durham family photographer. She specializes in candid and documentary at-home family photography in the Triangle area (Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Cary, etc). Carolyn’s work has been published in several popular books and magazines, including Apartment Therapy, BuzzFeed, and Fangoria. Locally, she’s been voted Best Photographer in Durham Magazine’s Best Of Durham and INDY Week’s Best of the Triangle. She lives in South Durham with her husband Geoff and three cats.
I believe this is my 7th time photographing Cat and Mitchell and that calls for a toast… of gluten-free pizza… which we did immediately after the session. Cat might be my first gluten-free friend in NC, and I am incredibly grateful for her wisdom and guidance in my first months of diagnosis, and her resolute assurance that Italy was the absolute best vacation destination for the gluten-free (she was right). It’s been nice having a partner in rice-based recommendations. We don’t live super close to each other but we always try to base our get-togethers around food (which is the right choice), and we’re always trying new gluten-free restaurants. This session ended in us splitting multiple gf pizza flavors which resulted in two leftover boxes in the fridge (one for mine and one for Geoff), which their son Cameron labeled for us with a crayon, and it was very helpful.
I love these guys and I’m not sure what more there is to say. Cameron’s our bud and Sarah was a baby but now she’s our bud too. Sarah, I think, is just me somehow. Like my having photographed her parents enough somehow embedded my DNA into Cat and Mitchell and now Sarah is like, 25% Carolyn. She’s obsessed with Halloween and her favorite song is the Ghostbusters theme and Halloween and spooky things are really all she wants to talk about. I relate to that on a deep level. I need to work on getting her interested in cats (I tried to show her the pictures of our cats, but all she really wanted to see was a video of our 12ft skeleton at Halloween… I’ll work on it). I also have a lot in common with Cameron, who likes animals (especially their dog Biscuit) and basically any food that’s sweet. They are truly good, sweet, polite, funny, fantastic kids. But of course they are because Cat and Mitchell are their parents and they are wonderful people.
If I ever tell you that I watched some weird horror movie recently but mostly talked about the themed food that accompanied it, chances are these were the other people involved. The best of those situations, in my opinion, was when we made assorted deviled eggs for the Easter horror movie about a giant killer bunny, and the worst was when we tried to put spaghetti in a plastic brain mold for Halloween Ends. They can’t all be winners. Jon makes amazing fried pickles, and Jen makes the best charcuterie boards. And there to pick up all the pieces that we drop on the floor, is SamSam, their… black… golden retriever? Long haired black lab? Fuzzy doggo butt? I don’t know what breed SamSam is but she is extremely cute and extremely fuzzy and likes to boop you on the leg with her nose when she doesn’t feel like she’s getting her fair share of snacks. SamSam LOVES it when Declan is around because Declan is a primary floor-snack source. I love it when Declan is around because he’s just plain funny and adorable. Usually he makes me food in his play kitchen, but during this photoshoot I was introduced to candle-sniffing Declan, which is apparently his favorite Target shopping activity. He takes a candle, opens it, sniffs it extremely dramatically with a scrunched-up nose face, and then runs over to you so that you can do the same thing. He’s precious. Then he smartly puts the candle in his Target shopping cart and off he goes. These folks are truly incredible people and friends, and I’m happy to photograph them again. Oh, and if you’re looking for a dose of Dad humor, Jon runs the best Dadstagram there is.
