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.

CSP Class of 2015.

We are so, so grateful for all of our wonderful clients in 2015. The best part of this job is meeting so many new people, and we had some of the best this year. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for being a part of our small business and our lives. This year we photographed two Rachels, two Carolines, two Matthews, three Saras (some with an h, some without), four Jessicas, three Jennifers, three Johns, two Tims, two Emilys, three Abbys, two Michelles (one with one L, one with two), two Alexes, two Erins, two Erics, and a lot of other people who didn’t have a name twin. We love you all, and cannot wait to meet more of you in 2016. :) Looking forward to going into our 8th year of business. Congratulations to the CSP Class of 2015!

Jessica+Ron+Liam+Lila+Lucy+Rudy // At home.

We welcome this awesome family to North Carolina from upstate New York with open arms! They are a pretty rad addition to the area and we’re happy to help them come in from the snow. ;) We met them on a sunny weekend morning at their house to photograph them going about their usual business. They moved into the house with the idea of a complete renovation, and it’s become kind of a fun project for them (I’m not sure if they’d use the word “fun” as they’re doing the work themselves, but I kind of love house projects, so I say it looks like fun. Note: This is not an offer of free labor, Jessica and Ron). They’re doing the work as they go and wanted to document this part of their lives in transition, as well as their new move from the north. They’ve already built a pretty fabulous chicken coop in their yard for fresh eggs, and are making full use of the best tire swing ever in their beautifully wooded front yard.

This session gave us the opportunity to meet our first Bullmastiff clients, Lucy and Rudy, who are quite large but not at all fearsome. Lucy is the larger of the two, and she is Rudy’s aunt. Rudy, the “smaller” Bullmastiff, is 4 months old. Go ahead and look at him. He’s four. months. old. He’s already 75% of my bodyweight. Liam can ride the larger dog like a small horse. They’ve commandeered the two giant bean bag chairs in the family room that were meant for the kids, but they look really adorable sleeping in them so nobody cares. The kids are pretty great themselves and spend their time playing video games, wrestling the dogs, painting, and drawing. Lila, slightly unhappy with the candid direction of the shoot, took over the session at the end and started directing everyone into a variety of very dramatic poses in front of the fireplace. Look for her directorial movie debut in about fifteen years.

Jodi+John+Jack+Nicky+Winnie+Maci // Family Session

If you live in the Raleigh area you’ve surely picked up a copy of The Indy. And if you’ve read the Indy, you’ve probably seen an ad somewhere along the line that pictures a tiny floating head of a smiling woman giving humorous advice out of a speech bubble on a 1960s-esque funky background. Below everything reads “Jodi Foy – The World’s Nicest Dentist.” When we first moved to Raleigh, I saw another dentist exactly one time before I became captivated with Dr. Foy’s ads and told Geoff that we needed to switch to this woman who was claiming to be the world’s nicest dentist. Turns out that she is, indeed, the world’s nicest dentist, but she is also the world’s most hilarious dentist, the world’s most-into-photography dentist, and the world’s biggest champion of the Carolina Hurricanes dentist. We love her and all of her incredible staff (“The Foyettes). And if you need a new dentist, she has the official dentist CSP endorsement.

This was our first time turning the tables on our jobs and us working for Jodi and her beautiful family! Her husband is a super nice guy who is very close with their dog Winnie, who has been sick, and they wanted to document some of their life at home with him, their smaller and younger spitfire of a dog named Maci, and their boys Jack and Nicky. Jack and Nicky are incredibly polite and really nice kids who have two hobbies that seem to occupy 98% of their time and attention: hockey and anything involving Star Wars.  Jodi is an awesome hockey mom who takes them to practice and supports them at all their games (and takes a lot of fantastic photos!) while John plays with them in their driveway at home. Together, they are a really, really fabulous family. We’re so grateful we found her head floating around the Indy all those years ago. :)