Small Business Focus: Barb Carmen Photography, Part 1

My wife Barb is a gifted animal and child photographer. Her journey from photo hobbyist to a professional photographer is a fascinating story (and I’m not saying that just because I’m her husband). Many friends and family have helped her along the way. Since this is a holiday week, today’s post will cover a little of her backstory. Next week’s post will delve more into her special work with children and animals. Thanks for reading, and to my readers here in the U.S., Happy Thanksgiving! -- Jay

Barb Carmen took her first picture at the age of eleven. She needed pictures to complete a 4-H project, so she used her parent’s camera, a Kodak Instamatic, to take photos of her pets and of the infant son of a family friend. She finished the project and submitted it for judging at the county fair.

She doesn’t remember her score or receiving a ribbon. But she does remember the pictures she took and that she loved doing the work. Unfortunately, her parents saw the project as a bit of a nuisance and were glad when it was over. “Photography,” she was told, was just “too expensive” for her to continue as a hobby.

Reluctantly, she put aside the camera. But she never forgot what she saw through the lens.

Fast forward to 2009. Barb's husband*, a sales representative for a local plastics manufacturer, was looking to broaden his publication design experience and signed up for private lessons from a professional photographer who specialized in nature photos. The instructor suggested that learning the skill could be a shared experience and that she join the class as well. She agreed.

The first year’s sessions were all shutter speed, ISO, and exposure settings for film photography. The process was tedious, but the instructor provided the film cameras and lenses and she stayed with it. A year later the class moved on to working in digital. But six months more and the class was done and she wondered what to do next.

It was about that time that Barb received from her family a really good digital consumer camera as a birthday gift. Seeing on-screen and in-the-moment what’s captured in the lens accelerated her learning curve. But the turning point came when her college-grad daughter, herself a gifted photographer and illustrator, offered to tutor her in digital photography.

After only a few classes something suddenly clicked. Memories of her childhood love of the camera fell into place alongside a new understanding of the art and a sense of perspective and style. She realized she could learn to do this -- and that it could be her profession.

A steady stream of test subjects soon followed. Chief among her first subjects was her dog, Charlie. Charlie, a beautiful all-black labrador, was a particularly good participant. A stray who seemed born for pet modeling, she (almost literally) wandered up the family drive one day and into the studio the next. Speaking of the studio. Knowing her desire to become a professional photographer, a friend offered to renovate some unused office space and convert it into a photo studio. In the midst of the chaos of learning, Barb opened Barb Carmen Photography in the spring of 2015. She specializes in pics of the two things in life that, thousands of pictures later, still consistently capture her attention: animals (especially dogs) and children.

Part 2 of this article, Small Business Focus: Barb Carmen Photography, will be posted on Tuesday, November 28, 2017.