Meet Carlo Parducho of Mid City

Today we’d like to introduce you to Carlo Parducho.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I did my first photography job in 2009, shooting a cookbook cover and food images. After that, I bounced around different freelance gigs — restaurant features for a newspaper, an author portrait, construction site documentation — basically anything that paid one of my bills. A few months later, I was offered a full-time in-house photography job and took it because #steadypaycheck. I stayed in similar roles (women’s apparel and fashion accessory companies) for 15 years until getting laid off last year (2024).

Right around then, food jobs started coming back into my life, almost by coincidence. So I leaned in, pivoted, rebranded my business as Soy Carloco (Soy as in “soybean” and also “I am” in Spanish + Carloco = my name + “loco”), and refocused on food photography. Now I shoot food and drinks for restaurants, cafés, and food trucks up and down SoCal.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not at all — more like rough and jerky, with some smooth patches here and there. Making a stable and sustainable living as a photographer is no small task. Competition, constant tech changes, shifting standards — it’s a lot. I was fortunate to spend most of my career as an in-house photographer, which gave me stability but also a front-row seat to how quickly the industry evolves and how much you have to adapt to stay relevant.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve done a full circle and went back to photographing food and drink items. I mostly do it for food establishments on location, so it’s a lot of hauling gear, setting up in businesses, and photographing their dishes IRL instead of the highly controlled environment of a photography studio. I love that I get to work with different dishes in different environments often – that’s very different from working in the same commercial studio type setting day in and day out for years at a time.

One thing I learned in commercial photography is that we don’t always get to “think outside the box.” We work inside a box — budgets, timelines, physical space, staffing, and whatever the real-world setting gives us. But once you know the size of the box, you can be genuinely creative within it. Of course things always change and I’m glad that my experience of being a full-time in-house photographer for 15 years has given me the foundation to be able to adapt when things end up changing.

What I’m most proud of is simply still being here. Photography has changed so much over the years, and somehow I’ve managed to adapt, pivot, and find my way back to the kind of work that genuinely excites me. It’s nice to feel that spark again.

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Networking? Be genuinely curious about people. Don’t connect just for potential ROI. I often see folks “network” and then quietly exit the conversation once they realize the person might not be immediately useful. Focus on real conversations, not immediate payoffs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.soycarloco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soy_carloco
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlo-parducho-commercialphotographer

Image Credits
My “profile image” (the one where I’m holding a coffee cup) is by Sara Saito. All the rest are images taken by me.