We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Caroline M Smith. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Caroline below.

Alright, Caroline thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.

I do free headshots for people who are trans and non-binary. After seeing a lot of my friends who are trans struggle with underemployment and discrimination, it just made sense to me to offer free photography to folks who are often the most marginalized.

I also trade with other small businesses. I’ve been paid in wine for doing pictures for a winery, gift certificates for taking photos for a restaurant, teeth whitening for photography for a teeth bleaching business, and dye jobs and haircuts in trade for photos for a salon.

My reasoning for all of this is that capitalism is killing us, but we also need business to survive. Anything we can do to help each other out is a small act of resistance.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started taking photos with an old 35mm camera when I was 8. They were photos of my everyday life like the family cats lounging in the backyard or pictures of my younger sister. Taking pictures of cats slowly morphed into taking portraits of humans. By age 12, I had started printing in a darkroom at school. By age 14, I was beating adults in local photography competitions. I was only 17 when I first sold a photo to a gallery. Needless to say, photography was a huge part of my identity as a young adult. It would only make sense for me to go to art school and receive my BFA. Little did I know that everything was about to change with the advent of digital photography.

I graduated in 2002 when photography started switching from film to digital. I don’t want to sound like a total dinosaur, but I learned to edit digital photos using the original version of Adobe Photoshop. At that point, digital photography consisted of scanning negatives and editing the film on a computer. I remember that the photography department at my school got a grant to purchase a $25,000 digital camera back to convert a large format film camera into a digital camera. The photos were only 5M or so….less than a crappy cellphone today. But it was revolutionary at the time.

Digital photography changed everything for photographers. In some ways, I appreciate how digital cameras have made photography more egalitarian. Professional photography is much more attainable for the average person than it was 25 years ago. Digital photography also made it harder to make a living as an average studio photographer. Old-school photographers who only wanted to use film folded and closed up shop. But here I am 23 years later after I graduated and I’m still doing the damn thing. I love that film photography is coming back around as fine art.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

My best source of new clients is my current clients tagging me in their social media posts. I mostly take headshots of comedians for a pretty specific reason and that’s because comedians are part of my extended community. I’ve been doing stand-up myself for the past ten years. Most of my clients are my peers and then friends of friends. A few years back I got another comedian a gig as a photo assistant. Later he asked if I could take some headshots for him. A few people saw those and then I had more and more people asking me. I had a studio for a while that I unfortunately had to let go of during the COVID shutdown. One silver lining of the pandemic is that I became more confident taking headshots and portraits outside without studio lighting.

I have also branched out into doing photography for restaurants, bars, and wineries. Everyone was trying to draw clientele back in after being closed for so long. It was fun getting to experiment with new studio techniques while getting to sample a ton of things as well.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The pandemic negatively affected everyone who owned a small business; my business was no exception. It’s hard enough being a portrait photographer but not being able to open my studio or be around people destroyed my primary source of income. I’m forever grateful that I received an artist’s grant and unemployment for sole proprietors.

Right when society tentatively started to open back up, my cat was diagnosed with a thyroid tumor. At the time it felt important to have a steady reliable income to pay all my vet bills, so I took on a 9-5 job in Digital Marketing.

I did that for almost a year and then I was laid off. Now I work a 9-5 at a comedy club and do photography as a side hustle. I would love to get back to photography full-time at some point.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @starryeyedcarolina

Image Credits

Caroline Smith