Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Carolin Schild of Hollywood

Carolin Schild shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Carolin, we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: What battle are you avoiding?
If I am honest, I have been avoiding the battle with AI, even though I know the future is already here and it really is unavoidable. As much as I don’t like it, I need to start getting on board with it, which is why I challenged myself to add this into my daily routine, learning more about how to use it to my advantage, for 10-20 minutes every day – even though in my photography I don’t feel the need for AI at all. I am a Visual Story Teller, known for my intimate and authentic style, portraying real people, creating work that’s emotionally resonant and based of something true. I believe AI has nothing to do with my work and does not belong. Nonetheless, I need to prepare for the future, to stay relevant, regardless if I end up using AI in my photography, or even creating entire images with it later on or not, I know that I need to have the skill set.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am a visual story teller who creates thoughtfully composed imagery through light, composition and the scenes I create, that I hope evoke emotions and thinking in my audience.

Portrait and editorial photography is my specialty, and I also shoot commercial work for clients. Though I would love to work on more on sets as OTS/BTS shooter.

When I create personal projects they are topics that are close to my heart, such as “Mountains and Valleys” – a series showing women who love themselves by finding comfort, trust, and acceptance when they showed up as their truest, rawest self in front of my camera – nude. “Something to show the kids” is a series that gives the LGBTQ community a platform to be heard and seen. By photographing couples of the community in an artistic way, showing moments that are beautiful, loving, yet somewhat “ordinary”, between two people. I say ordinary because that is the purpose of this series, I want to normalize love, as well as spreading it. It baffles me that I even need to use such word as “normalize” for something so normal and beautiful as love!
Most recently I’ve been working on a series which captures people in the animal rescue world.

Originally from Hamburg, Germany, I’ve been living in Los Angeles for the past 8years, art directing most of my shoots as well as photographing them. Since I was a teenager my eyes can’t help but seeing moments as little scenes that should be captured, viewing them through my L shaped fingers, noticing beautiful light when I walk through this world.
My heart just beats for cinema/photography.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who saw you clearly before you could see yourself?
These are quite deep questions you got. So lets be vulnerable and honest here – imposter syndrome is an ever arising and falling thing for me. Its a big part of being an artist I think, perhaps in any profession.

As an artist I see other peoples work daily, on Instagram, on the street, friends having their work on a billboard and archiving other big things…it is easy to dismiss your own talent and accomplishments when you compare yourself to others.
So while it is important that you find trust in your own self and your work, it is also important to surround yourself with good people/artists, talented ones that you admire, but who you can also talk to openly with – about your work, your ideas, your self doubt, your newest accomplishments.

Why is this so important? Because if you do surround yourself with good people, they will cheer you on, talk you up until you realize they are right, or give you guidance and ideas when needed. And I don’t mean this sugar coding fake talk, you can hear insincerity and when they truly mean it! Now, I don’t have a single person I can name you, I’ve been blessed to have met many incredible artists throughout my journey, artists who I admire, who I cheer for, who cheer for me, who I bounce of ideas with if needed and who have lifted me up many times by noticing and admiring my work, or by talking me up when I feel low about my work. And I am incredibly thankful for all of them, doesn’t matter if they just past through my life, are still around, or being a close friend of mine, they all helped me see my talent and who I am, even when I sometimes can not.

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
For the longest time never thought to give up on photography, or living in LA, which both were really difficult achievements with lots of growing pain, doubt, feeling depressed at times, but also lots of beauty, fun, excitement, experiences and connections I wouldn’t have had without it.

I love the life I have created for myself and I never done anything else but photography as my main profession.
Though to be completely honest, in the past year I started to think about it, feeling defeated and scared with AI coming in hot, taking a lot of job opportunity from many creatives.

As I said earlier, my kind of photography which is raw and real, does not ask for AI improvements. I barley touch up my images in Photoshop as is and mainly play with color and crop. I also don’t see myself as someone that’s typing in words to create an image, that’s not where the beauty lies in my creations. The beauty lies in thinking of a concept, coming together with artists and to create together, shifting and tweaking as real moments accrue! So yeah, when I am honest, I have been thinking of Plan B’s, of “what if”..what if there will be no more/not enough work for photographers and so many other creatives? It is a scary time, surely an exciting time too, but it worries me for many reasons. And while I do not know what the future holds, I do know that I will always be a photographer and will never give up my passion and profession fully. I am just trying to prepare and think ahead while I keep creating my art, feeling grateful for every day that I get to go on set and do what I love most!

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What’s a belief you used to hold tightly but now think was naive or wrong?
That I don’t want to grow and that I don’t need to. – HA, that makes me laugh right now! I actually said that out loud once, in my 20th. Thankfully I have been surrounded by amazing people that do seek growth, to become their best version, and people who want to be up services to others.

I am so grateful to all these amazing human beings who have introduced me to active self growth, the want to grow, just by sharing about their journey, their experience, asking me as much as one profound question that changed everything, introduced me to one podcast or a book that changed everything, invited me to a ceremony (I know, so LA, but life changing for me). It has made me do a 180 from that statement, and today my constant question is: “How can I grow, what could I do that gets me out of my comfort zone and leads me to this exhilarating feeling one gets after?”. That’s what it always does, and only if you over come your fear you can feel this deep excitement and pride, because you did something that is courageous!
This can be as small as talking to a stranger that day, or as big as moving countries because you want to try it.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
Oh I definitely do what I want to do – if I was born to do it, I mean, my passion is deep and its all I ever wanted to do, so I believe yes? in a way I was born for it! I’ve been extremely lucky to have parents that always supported my dreams. Many creatives don’t have that and I am grateful for mine.

See, I wasn’t really good in school, the way school works didn’t work for me. I felt antsy in class, and I always felt like I am not smart, but in art classes I always felt confident, lighter and happy.
Though unfortunately no one in the academics cares for art or if you’re good at it, not until you get to university where you get to choose what you wanna study. I remember feeling proud and excited about art from 1st – 4th grade, after that it became less and less valued and even less taught. At least in Germany where I grew up.

So that being said, I am glad my dad gave me a little camera when I was 14y or so, and I started to create and set up little scenes to photograph. From then on I knew that this is what I am gonna do with my life, and thank god I did, because my work often doesn’t feel like work, it feels more like a privilege! I get to do what I love and work with new and amazing creatives constantly, go to work at breath taking locations, learn from others about things that actually benefit me and my career, light my subjects and get giddy about it when the light is just right. I am never taking any day of work in this industry for granted, not when I get to light for others, and definitely not when I get to shoot and/or art direct myself!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.carolinschild.com
• Instagram: @caro.schild
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolin-schild-39156a235/