Audrey Woulard - Professional Photographer Magazine

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