Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Caroline Carniel. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Caroline, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. So, we’d appreciate if you could open up about your growth story and the nitty, gritty details that went into scaling up.

I started photography about 7 years ago, but I didn’t really make money with it until 2021. I moved to Hawaii from Brazil in 2020, I had already traveled to a lot of different countries to where I had brought my camera along, and in my head I was always “just creating portfolio and practicing”. Hawaii was exciting but it seemed like everyone was either a model or a photographer so it was quite hard to break into the market and have people choose you, so there I was, one more time, “creating portfolio”. In 2o21, during the pandemic I was working at a food truck 5 times a week, sometimes I worked as a nanny and cleaner, too to make as much money as I could to buy more equipment. It was during such hard times that one day I thought to myself: “if I don’t take my business seriously, no one will” and it was about that time that I first heard of the 5 am club, which is something successful people do to get things done and be ahead of the rest of the world: you wake up early and dedicate those extra 2, 3 hours to your business. Everyday.
That was when I made my website, without any experience in the field, I also took some YouTube courses to edit better, to shoot better, to learn angles. Some of my friends were my models and helped getting better. I did the whole 5 am things for about a whole year and it was definitely worth it to sacrifice those hours of sleep to be here today.
I am not yet where I want to be, but its all about the journey, right? I am excited to see what the years ahead have in storage for me, but I am so glad I took that first step, which is always the hardest one.

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?

I take every project very personally and I strive to serve my clients with out of the box ideas, different locations and times of shooting, along with a diversity of models of different backgrounds, shapes and personalities (when working with brands). I normally bring a handful of projects with me when I travel so I can shoot and network with different people wherever I go.

Today I am a travel, lifestyle photographer that shoots on land and underwater(my favorite). To be fair, I always loved photography and I always loved traveling. My first time living abroad was when I was 9 years old and I knew that I would never stop exploring the world. As a kid I used to carry my sister’s film camera everywhere and save every penny to develop and buy film. Pretty meant to be, right? haha

The biggest message I would like to send when doing personal projects (not for brands) is that we are ALL beautiful, all of us have something unique, in a sea of billions of people, we are all different. Unfortunately nowadays more than ever, we have become very self critical and most women that look for my work tell me they wanna do a photoshoot for themselves and they want to feel beautiful again. I love showing them the results and have them falling in love with themselves all over again. Seriously, working with women is one of my biggest passions and I love being able to give them that, and making them feel comfortable around me and in their own skin.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I’ve always been a workaholic and very goal driven, so when I set my mind to buy a camera I was ready to make the investment, but it took me more than 6 months to come up with the money. I used to babysit in Morocco at the time, so I was not making a lot of money at the time. My friend who was from the area was way better at bargaining at the souk than me haha and he was able to find me a sick deal. My first camera was a canon t6 rebel with the kit lens. It was second hand (most of my equipment is) and I used to spend hours on YouTube trying to learn as much as I could, since I refused to shoot on auto. Later on, a friend told me about fishing salmon in Alaska and how I could make really good money in a couple a months, I just needed to be ok with living on a boat for 30 days straight, smell like fish and not shower for the whole month. I was like: “I will make money and have one hell of an adventure. Count me in”. That summer was the most profitable for me up to that point and I remember the first thing I did when I got back to land was to go search for better cameras, camera bags, batteries, lenses and finally, a water housing, then I bought a one way ticket to Hawaii and the rest in history.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think if you are a creative soul you know by know that comparison is the killer of joy. I used to compare myself to other creators so much, and I would be really really hard on myself for not being “there”, as if I could never get to their level or I would never get to make as much money or have the same lifestyle, as if there were limited “seats” for that spot in life. I wish I could go back and unlearn all day from day 1 and give myself more credit for the stuff I have done and were doing.

Other creators are not your enemies, they may be competition but if you look at it as a small circle of people that do the same thing you will realize that there are more reasons for you to be friends and help each other out that not.

I used to feel very self conscious about meeting other photographers because I felt like I didn’t know enough but after a while I realized that that was not a sustainable way to live and see myself, with a lot of self work, the right group of friends and therapy I was able to understand how much potential I had and still have, how my vision is different than X,Y and Z but it doesn’t mean it’s worse. Different is good. specially when it comes to your creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.carolinecarniel.com
• Instagram: @iamcarolinecarniel
• Facebook: Caroline Carniel
• Linkedin: Caroline Carniel

Image Credits
all pictures have been taken by me