Kathy+Andrew // Raleigh Family Portraits

Kathy and Andrew are beloved previous wedding clients of ours from way back in 2012 where their wedding culminated in a fierce game of competitive ping pong. We’ve since followed their many adventures living in Chicago, and now their current adventures back in the Triangle. Most of these adventures involve Andrew decorating his beard in some way, or pictures of their adorable cats Brewer (tabby!) and Addy (calico!). Now they’ve embarked on the brand new adventures of both homeownership and parenthood, and kindly asked us to capture a bit of both. Their newest addition’s name is Alden, and his favorite activities involve staring into your soul with intense, prolonged eye contact the likes of which I’ve never seen in a baby, and hanging out with his mom and dad (in between staring into their souls as well). And when I mean he stares into your soul, I mean HE STARES INTO YOUR SOUL. It’s the type of eye contact where you’re like, woah! I feel like this person knows literally everything about me right now, and I’m a bit uncomfortable, even though it’s a baby. He definitely is 100% probably clairvoyant. If I photograph him as a toddler or a teenager, I may make Kathy and Andrew sign a nondisclosure agreement depending on how discreet he is with his release of information.

When he’s not finding out literally everything about you via telepathy, he makes cute faces and has adorable cheeks and hangs out in his rad house. The cats aren’t troubled by him (probably because he’s able to communicate with them mentally somehow) and allowed us to give them some belly rubs while we were there! We did not give belly rubs to Kathy or Andrew despite them also being adorable, but I might have pat Kathy on the head once or twice because I like her haircut. We are quite happy to see our clients doing fab things years later, and we loved meeting the littlest members of Kathy and Andrew’s home!

At Home w/ Andrea+Mark.

Andrea and Mark are a great wedding couple of ours from back in 2013 and we were super thrilled to hear from them! Like, really really thrilled. Well, we heard from Mark, who bought this session for Andrea for Christmas. And attached to said e-mail was a statement proclaiming that they’d like photos of their tiny human!! And then he sent us a picture of said tiny human for proof of his a.) tinyness and b.) humanness and c.) existence. And he was SO CUTE. And we were so happy for Andrea and Mark! And we were REALLY EXCITED to shoot in the exact same house that they got ready in for their wedding, only this time the room where Andrea put on her wedding dress was converted to Albert’s room, and it felt like our work with them had come full circle. :)

And we met Albert. And we can say with 100% certainty that he realizes exactly what he’s doing in all situations. He saw us. He saw our cameras. He ran to his mom, hugged her, and smiled at us charmingly. He saw us. He saw our cameras. He ran to his dad and smiled at us charmingly. He saw us. He saw our cameras. He cried until they gave him an entire block of white cheddar which he ate by himself in the bushes. Albert is hilarious. And seriously, seriously adorable. And also, he has a taco shirt. I mean really.

Raleigh Family Photographer: Gabby+Mike+Evan+Olive+Max

So I don’t advertise that I do family portraits because I concentrate mainly on weddings and those are 99% of my time. I’ve typically narrowed it down to only photographing friends’ families, or friends of friends, or families of friends, etc.  But I received this e-mail in my inbox a few months ago, and the wording was so funny that I agreed to take this woman and her so-called “crazy bunch” on. Upon further stalking of my blog, Gabby (the mom), discovered that my friend Alaskan Kate (who was my bridesmaid and featured a few times in my blog as a photography subject) is her son’s preschool teacher. We both thought that was strange and a small world, but it got even weirder when I said, “Oh yeah! I just volunteered for Kate’s bookfair to raise money for their preschool tonight! I made the buttons!” And it turned out that they were there and we had already met each other and Evan (their son) made a button and the button maker malfunctioned and her husband Mike gave me a rating of C- button making!!! SMALL WORLD.

Anyway – Gabby’s been keeping me entertained for weeks now sending me funny Twitter messages and I’ve been busy stalking their family pictures on Facebook. Now their family pictures are here! Gabby is mom, Mike is dad, Evan is the handsome 3 year-old, Olive is the adorable 15 month-old, and Max is the senior dog. All of them are equally adorable. You’ll see. It’s kind of hard to choose. Special thanks goes out to Chacha and her son – the Fekete family’s trusty neighbors who wrangled children, dogs, shoes, jelly beans, socks, bags, and were able to make everyone smile.