Audrey Woulard - Professional Photographer Magazine

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Audrey Woulard photographs children au naturel BY LORNA GENTRY All images ©Audrey Woulard
espite being stuck in rush-hour traffic on an unsually warm autumn afternoon in Chicago, Audrey Woulard is upbeat and talkative. As she wends her way home to the suburbs from her downtown studio loft, Woulard is energized, even though she’s been shooting all day. Not much seems to faze her. Not traffic. Not babies urinating on her. Not even balancing motherhood—she has four boys aged five to 15—with a weekly average of 35 photo sessions in studio and on location. Success came quickly to Woulard, who had been a professional photographer just a couple of years when a guide for new moms, “City Baby Chicago,” anointed her one of the city’s top children’s photographers in 2004. Early this year she acquired an agent to handle her editorial work, which sharply increased after a catalog assignment for Pottery Barn Kids. Her work has also appeared in InStyle magazine, Better Homes and Gardens magazine, the Chicago Sun Times newspaper, and on CBS news. She was chosen to be one of 14 photographers nationwide featured in the 2007 book, “Professional Children’s Portrait Photography: Techniques and Images from Master Photographers” (Amherst Media). Three years ago she stopped marketing altogether. Word of mouth and repeat customers keep volume high. All this was unexpected. Born in Winfiled, Ill., a village about 30 miles west of Chicago, Woulard earned a degree in computer science at the University of Illinois. As her children were born, she faced the uncomfortable choice between career and full-time mothering. She chose to stay home but grew restless. Her husband, Byron, bought a small Fuji digital camera hoping it would give her a creative outlet. She photographed her kids—a lot. “Then I got serious about it,” she recalls, when she borrowed her father’s Pentax SLR camera. “I started shooting every single day and bought a big purse so I could carry the camera with me everywhere. I didn’t intend for it to be a career, but when people started seeing
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Audrey Woulard - Professional Photographer Magazine

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