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.

Courtney+Kyle+Patti+Roy // At home.

We do a lot of important stuff like photographing weddings and babies and engagements and all that good, happy stuff that usually signifies beginnings rather than endings. This shoot was a little different. Courtney, whom we met a friend’s wedding a couple years ago, contacted us because her parents were selling Courtney and her brother Kyle’s childhood home. They were pretty bummed out about it, but with the kids gone (Courtney) or going away (Kyle), it was time for Patti and Roy to downsize. Courtney wasn’t going without a fight, though, and hired us to photograph her and her family hanging out inside their house one last time before the family moves in January. We felt incredibly honored to do this type of shoot as we knew how important it was for the family, and it was kind of our first shoot that signified an ending. Of course, it’s a beginning too with Kyle going off to college and the parents moving into a new house, but it was the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another, and for some reason it made me feel the significance of our job probably more than I ever have previously. We were really happy to do this for them.

Of course, the fact that the family is super awesome, hilarious, and fun didn’t hurt much either. They made us food (yum!) and welcomed us in with open arms and Vanilla Coke. We ran around their gorgeous house and yard and had a great time. Courtney and Kyle showed us how they climbed on the roof as kids, how they play board games and pool and hang out in the kitchen, how they fish and play baseball, and how they decorate the tree planted in their grandpa’s memory for Christmas. The cats hid from us, but… we tried. :) We loved doing this type of shoot, and we hope that we were able to capture their awesome family doing what they love in a space that they grew up in and called home.