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. :)

At home with the Coreys.

We’ve been waiting for a family session like this to fall into our laps for a while now. We’ve even been approached by a few families asking for family portraits who have disappeared once  we’ve suggested how we’d prefer to shoot the session. :) So we were beyond thrilled (and honored!) when (amazing!) photographer Emily Corey e-mailed us and asked us to document her family in a come-to-our-house and photograph-us-hanging-around-on-a-Saturday-morning type of way. As she worded it: “a snapshot of life.” She was pregnant when she e-mailed us and wanted to wait until after the baby was born, so we’ve had it on the books, but we waited for a bit until the timing was right and it couldn’t have been more perfect.

Meet the Coreys. They live in an awesome house and make chocolate chip pancakes on Saturdays and walk their dogs and graciously let us follow them around with cameras while they did all these things. There is an amazing and incredible amount of love and patience and kindness in this family and not one single tear was shed (except maybe for like ten minutes with the baby, but even then they were kind of like those baby cries where babies just scream but no actual tears come out).

So here is it. We are kind of addicted to this type of session now. Addicted. So much fun, so little pressure on the kids to act a certain way and pose a certain way (and they’re much more relaxed since they’re at home), and the parents aren’t stressed out because they’re just doing their thing. It’s probably one of the most chillaxed sessions we’ve been on. Feel the love!