We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashley Rick a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ashley, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
Earning a full-time living from my creative work has never been a straight shot. It’s been more like a long Minnesota driveway after a blizzard: uneven, occasionally blocked, but absolutely worth shoveling through.
I built St. Paul Photo Co. while raising four kids, figuring out ADHD as an adult, and trying to trust that what I make with my camera actually matters. Some years felt like lift-off. Others felt like gravity was winning.
COVID was one of the big turning points. I had a studio, momentum, and a calendar full of sessions. Then everything shut down. My studio closed, my income disappeared overnight, and I had to rebuild from zero during a time when the whole world was trying to figure out which way was up. I picked up a serving job to keep my family afloat, and even though I’ve worked really hard, I still haven’t fully stepped away from that job because the economy has its own personality disorder right now. But I never quit the business. I refused to. I kept shooting, kept showing up, kept creating for my community in any way I could.
My work really started to root itself when I centered the people who feel like home to me: the LGBTQIA2+ community, the queer arts scene, and BIPOC families and creators who deserve spaces where they’re seen, safe, and celebrated. That’s the heart of my business. It’s where I feel most connected, most creatively alive, and most purposeful. I don’t just take pictures of people; I make space for them to exist exactly as they are.
My biggest milestones weren’t equipment upgrades or big bookings — they were learning moments:
• charging what my time and talent are actually worth
• building community instead of chasing algorithms
• saying yes to collaborations that lit me up
• and trusting that the way I work — candid, relational, intuitive, human — is the reason people come back
If I could speed up the process, I’d tell younger me two things:
Charge earlier.
The right people will find you when you stop shrinking yourself.
I’m still here, still creating, still supporting my family with the thing I love — even when it means pulling espresso shots in between editing queues. The path hasn’t been easy, but it’s honest. And it’s mine.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My path into photography didn’t begin in a classroom or with a business plan. It started in the middle of a divorce, with three kids under six, no real work experience, and a life that felt like it had been swept clean. I didn’t know what I was going to do next, but I knew I had to build something of my own — something steady, something mine.
One night during that season, I had a dream. In the dream I saw a simple black-and-white camera logo with a heart as the lens and the words St. Paul Photo Co. sitting underneath it. It felt less like an idea and more like a download. I woke up, sketched it, and thought: “Okay. That’s it. That’s what I’m building.”
Soon after, I walked into a little children’s boutique called Teeny Bee on my way to brunch. I didn’t have a portfolio or a pitch deck. I just had an instinct. I asked the owner if she’d ever consider collaborating — maybe some themed mini sessions for her customers. She said yes. That one conversation became a ten-year partnership and a lifeline. We created everything together: Easter Bunny minis, black-and-white heirloom portraits, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Santa — a decade of community, creativity, and families growing up in front of my lens.
Those sessions literally sustained me. Financially, emotionally, creatively. They gave me a place to show up, even when my life was in pieces. They helped me raise my kids as much as I helped families document theirs.
I center my work around the communities that feel like home to me: LGBTQIA2+ folks, queer creatives, and BIPOC families whose stories deserve to be held with care and intention. Representation, belonging, and safety are woven into every shoot I do. I’m not just taking pictures — I’m creating a space where people can exhale, show up fully, and feel seen without having to explain themselves.
What sets my work apart is the way I connect to people. I disarm them. I make room for their individuality and their energy. Kids show me who they actually are, not the version they’re told to smile for. Adults soften. Queer families don’t have to translate anything. People trust me because I meet them where they are, not where a posing guide says they should be.
What I’m most proud of isn’t a specific project or award. It’s my resilience. I didn’t quit, even when quitting would have made more sense on paper. Every season where I could have walked away — I didn’t. I rebuilt after life fell apart. I adapted after losing my studio in COVID. I pushed through economy chaos, job juggling, algorithm disasters, and all the moments where it would have been easier to shrink.
My mission is simple: create honest, joyful, grounded images that make people feel understood. Build community through art. Tell stories with care. And leave people a little more themselves than they were when they walked in.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
There’s a stretch of my life that stands out when I think about resilience, and it happened right after COVID shut everything down. I had already rebuilt once — through divorce, raising three little kids, and starting a business from nothing — and then suddenly the studio I’d worked so hard to open had to close. My calendar cleared, and the work I relied on just… stopped.
Like everyone else, I had to figure things out piece by piece. I picked up a serving job to keep things stable at home, and I kept photographing whenever it was possible and safe. Some nights I’d close the bar and then stay up late editing a newborn session, trying to keep momentum going in any way I could.
Outdoor sessions slowly came back, and each one reminded me why I hadn’t let go of this work. It wasn’t glamorous — it was a lot of patching, adjusting, and rebuilding while the world was still unsettled. But it showed me something important about myself: that even when everything gets stripped down, I keep showing up. Not perfectly, not heroically — just steadily. One session, one family, one season at a time.
That’s the part of my journey that feels like resilience to me. Not the big wins, but the quiet decision to continue when nothing feels certain.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
For me, the most rewarding part of being an artist is witnessing people soften into themselves. There’s this moment — it happens in nearly every session — where someone realizes they don’t have to perform for me. They don’t have to smile a certain way, or hide the parts of themselves they’ve been taught to shrink. They get to show up fully, especially my LGBTQIA2+ clients, queer families, and BIPOC communities who don’t always get the luxury of feeling seen without explanation.
That moment — the exhale, the realness — is everything. It’s sacred.
Photography lets me create tiny pockets of belonging. It lets kids be weird and brilliant. It lets parents actually appear in the story instead of taking the pictures. It gives queer folks images where they’re celebrated, not tolerated. And it gives individuals and families a visual record of their lives that feels true, not filtered through someone else’s lens of what they should be.
The other part I love is the connection. People trust me with their babies, their relationships, their insecurities, their joy. They tell me their stories while I’m adjusting a light or fixing a collar. They let me into the quiet and tender parts of their lives, and I don’t take that lightly.
Art isn’t the photos — it’s the experience of making them together. That’s the reward: creating something honest that lasts, and giving people a version of themselves they’re proud to claim.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://WWW.STPAULPHOTOCO.COM
- Instagram: @STPAULPHOTOCO_MN
- Facebook: STPAULPHOTOCO
Image Credits
Ashley Rick @stpaulphotoco_mn