Welcome to the twelfth episode of Sustaining Craft the Podcast, a series that features those in a creative field. Listen below to learn more or keep scrolling to read about Katie Childs and her journey towards becoming a successful photographer!

Katie Childs had every intention of being a graphic designer.

Artistically gifted, she decided to get a bachelor’s degree in studio art, with an emphasis in graphic design from the University of Central Arkansas.

In 2011, she nabbed what she thought would be her first design job after graduation. Then they handed her a camera. “When I had my first day on the job, it was the day that the governor was being sworn in,” Childs said. “I got there. I had no idea what I was doing. It was my first grown-up job. I was making pennies. … I showed up in leggings and a blazer. They handed me a camera and were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll go down to the house floor, it’s the only time that the house floor will be open to photographers, and shoot the governor being sworn in.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. Ok.’”

Taking advantage of the minutes she had before the photo shoot, she did a few Google searches and called her husband, Jonathan, for advice. “I did ok that day, and then I had close to eight months where I was basically just doing photography for the state capital,” Childs shared. “I didn’t end up really doing much design work. I think I did maybe five or six projects while I was there. … I mean, I fell in love with [photography] anyway. I shot events all the time, and I did headshots and portraits and things like that. The job itself, there wasn’t much room for growth, or anywhere for me to move up or do anything with it.”

Photo courtesy of Katie Childs

She decided to try photography on her own, using Facebook to ask friends if she could photograph their families. “I started building business on the side,” Childs said. “I started doing pictures of kids and families and things like that.”

Born in Louisiana but raised in Little Rock, Childs had a large social circle to tap into. “I know a lot of people just from being in Little Rock for forever,” she said. “A lot of people had kids and things like that. I didn’t know anything about the business side at all. I’m still figuring that out and asking questions. It worked out well, because Little Rock is a really good market for word of mouth stuff. Especially now with social media, you can make it work anywhere. I just put the word out.”

Photo courtesy of Katie Childs

She then worked her way into weddings. “There’s always someone looking for a budget photographer starting out,” Childs explained. “I did a bunch of cheap weddings at the beginning and then it slowly increased over time.”

Now, she photographs over 30 weddings a year, along with family portraits. In 2018, she booked 35 weddings, but hopes to reduce to 20 yearly. That may prove challenging–she’s already booked 14 weddings for 2019. Childs also started working with the Arkansas Times this year, traveling to farms for Food and Farm, and working on family-based shoots for Savvy. Savvy has brought projects that have been familiar due to her previous work, while Food and Farm offers opportunities to learn additional photography skills. “We’ll do the farmer’s portraits and try to pull a story from their farm and situation,” Childs explained. “With the cattle and corn, I’m just doing a documentary kind of style. A lot of the time, with these shoots, I don’t get to choose what time of day or what situation the cattle or the corn is going to be in. So it might be in the middle of the day. I’m trying to make the best use of whatever’s happening. And that is its own specific challenge, but I love figuring things out like that, it’s kind of my favorite thing. If it were super easy all the time, I don’t think I’d enjoy doing it. I like being thrown into a situation and having to figure it out.”

Photo courtesy of Katie Childs

She’s now able to maintain her clients, learn new skills, and enjoy having her business. However, when she started, there was a learning curve. She had to learn about sales and federal taxes, hiring Greg Young to help her sort through everything. “There’s so many things I didn’t know–name a thing, I didn’t know it,” Childs shared. “I think I posted–everything goes back to Facebook–I think I posted a Facebook status about needing someone who could help me with my small business. So I met with him and I just sort of put everything on a table, and was like, this is everything I’ve been doing. He was a godsend and did a lot of it for me.”

She considers hiring Young money well spent. “That’s the biggest thing I can tell anyone is to hire someone,” Childs said. “It’s worth all of the money to keep yourself out of jail. There’s so much, and it’s stuff that you wouldn’t know and stuff you can’t really know. Everything is state specific, too, or business specific, detail things. And it’s changing a lot. The tax code is changing all the time. Stuff you wouldn’t know or think about, that they do know, and it’s their job to know.”

Photo courtesy of Katie Childs

And while she didn’t originally intend to become a photographer when she graduated from college, her degree has been invaluable as she’s grown her business. “Having an art background helps in a ton of ways,” Childs shared. “Even just being able to apply the basic principles of art to photography was super helpful. even if I didn’t think about it, I would go back and look at it and think, ‘Oh yeah, I did use that then.’”

And she’s found that planning and problem-solving go a long way with her creative endeavors. Even before she pulls out her camera, Childs plans out the shoot. “I think a big part of it is your planning process,” Childs shared. “If I’m working with a client, usually we figure out what their end goal is, what they want it to look like. And then they tell me what they want. We have to start kind of from ground zero of, ‘Okay, it has to be at this time of day, because you want your pictures to look like this.’ There’s so many things. There’s your lens choice, each lens has a different look, and a different feeling to it, too. Depending on what you want it to feel like, you have to be really smart with your lens choice. I think a lot of it is just planning and knowing what your equipment can do and then how to best utilize that to reach your end goal.”

Photo courtesy of Katie Childs

With nearly seven years of experience, Childs brings all of her knowledge to each photo shoot. “When I was just starting out, especially doing weddings, … I knew what I was doing to an extent, but I didn’t have the experience,” Childs said. “There’s something huge about having someone that’s been doing it for so long. It really is worth the money. Because I know so much more now, and I feel I learn every time I shoot something, I learn something new. There’s so much I know now that I didn’t know then.”

Childs’ expectations have shifted over the years. “There’s a lot of things,” she said of starting her own business. “It’s so hard. And I think when I started, I didn’t realize it, of course. I’m just going to take photos. I think I’m going to do this, because I’m going to be able to travel and I’ll be able to pick my own schedule, which isn’t true. … If I want to eat next week, I have to do this based on everyone else’s schedules. It’s not as much on my own time as I thought it would be, but I love it.”

Photo courtesy of Katie Childs

Childs and Jonathan are having a baby next year, and she hopes to slow down a bit. She’d like to keep to her goal of 20 weddings a year, while photographing more commercial work. “I think my goal up until this point is just to make more money every year and just continue,” Childs shared. “A big part of it is, ‘Ok, it’s still working. Oh, I’m still getting to do this, good.’ … I think the main goal is to work a little less and have a little more work-life balance.”

Her advice for others in a creative field is to ask for help along the way. “If you want to do it, it’s going to be really scary, and it’s going to be really hard, but you should do it anyway,” Childs said. “Ask for help from someone who knows and pay them for their time, and that will make it substantially less scary.”

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Find Katie’s work on her website, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also follow her personal adventures on Instagram (spoiler — pregnancy is not slowing this lady down!).

And, as always, there’s lots more in the podcast episode. Take a listen!