UAE is in the frame for photography entrepreneur

Cara Connell has had an unusual career path. Starting out as a zoologist, she became a lawyer, then a freelance photographer, and is now the founder of Lumitrix - a website which sells prints by emerging photographers.

Lumitrix founder Cara Connell. Courtesy Lumitrix

Cara Connell is the first to admit that her career path has been a little convoluted.

Starting out as a zoologist, she became a lawyer, then a freelance photographer, and latterly an entrepreneur. She is still only 35.

“I got very sick with tropical diseases from working [as a zoologist] in Africa. I got bilharzia – it is a water-borne parasite, you catch it from a snail – which really was my downfall,” says the Briton.

Returning to the UK, Ms Connell decided to become a lawyer, a profession which became “all-consuming” for five years until her mother became ill and she left her job to look after her.

“You know those junctions which happen where you are taken in the direction you don’t want to be taken in? I was kind of at this junction. These bad turnings happen, but the wonderful thing about them is it does lead you to where you do want to be,” she adds.

Where she wanted to be was photography – an interest which stretched back to her days in Africa. However, although she was finally doing what she wanted to do, she found working as a freelancer isolating.

She wanted to set up her own business and decided she could also do something to help fellow photographers, who often struggle to make a living.

“They were putting, say, £5,000 [Dh30,434] into a shoot, including make-up, models, artists, location, equipment, just to get some images, just to build up their portfolio so that one day they will then be hired for a job which will actually pay them for the work that they are doing,” she says.

“It was a combination of that, having my law background, wanting to set up my own business. I came up with Lumitrix and I haven’t looked back since.”

That was 2011. She spent a year working on the back end of the business and at the beginning of last year launched the website that sells prints by emerging photographers.

The project was self-funded with the most expensive aspect the site build. The website also features interviews with the photographers and a section which shows how the prints look in living rooms across the world.

“There are a lot of people out there who struggle to visualise how it will look on a wall,” she says.

Ms Connell now has five full-time staff and has signed up 15 photographers to feature on the site from countries including Russia, Malta, New Zealand and Mexico, but she has yet to find anyone in the UAE.

She is, however, on the lookout and has identified the Emirates as a potentially good customer base, even holding a launch event here as Dubai provided part of the inspiration for her company.

“I have a friend who now lives in Nigeria who was living in Dubai. We went to Ikea and we bought his whole house. He said I have got blank walls. I am going to buy [art] from Ikea. And I said on your death bed,” says Ms Connell, who lives in the UK.

“This is why I have created my company. The UAE is my perfect target market. It is for people whose furniture may not be for the rest of your life. It may not be your family heirloom but you can make your house look brilliant, and doesn’t have to be from Ikea and it can be affordable.”

Lumitrix sells A1 prints without a frame for Dh370.

“I think at the moment it is enough to sell here, but I would also like to have a freelance photographer based here.

“I have been going to galleries. I have been meeting people. I have been looking online and it’s about marrying aesthetics, so I haven’t personally found anyone yet.”

She is, however, satisfied that she has found the job for her, finally, as a photographer and entrepreneur. But had she not been struck down with a tropical disease, might she have remained a zoologist with an interest in photography?

“Well, at that cross-section in life I wanted to be an aerial photographer, and I wanted to live in Africa and I wanted to save animals,” she says. “It’s hard to say because so many things have happened since.”

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