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I appreciate you taking the time to visit my website. Please contact me if you would like to purchase enlargements of photographs. They reproduce well on 20x30 stretched canvas.

I’m the author and photographer of five nonfiction books whose subject matter ranges from the value of purchasing local food to the awareness and protection of nature and the importance of preserving the historic and vernacular in architecture. Also, because the cowboy is an American icon- a symbol of independence and of the American Frontier- and because I spend part of the year in Montana, there are two children’s books about what it’s like to grow up on a real Montana ranch. 

As an author, photographer, naturalist and preservationist, I use my photography as a springboard for sharing and storytelling. 

Photography awards and recognitions.  

Most recently, in 2022 one of my images won a second place award in Share the View’s International Photography Competition. (see Recent Images Gallery).  In 2020 and 2021 more than a dozen of my photographs won recognition in International and North American nature photography competitions (two honorable mentions, one finalist (Top 250), and eleven semi-finalists).  I have been published in preservation, conservation, regional, and photography magazines, (Antiques Magazine 2010; Antiques and Fine Arts 2011; Coastal Conservation League; Montana Quarterly Fall 2020; Expressions and Share the View’s Photography Magazines.) Ten photographs from Kirby’s Journal were chosen for the 2010 North American Nature Photographer’s Annual Summit Show. 

Book awards and reviews. 

The Faces of Local Food is the recipient of three gold medals—The National Indie Excellence Awards NIEA for Best Coffee Table Book and Best Regional Non-Fiction Southeast, and the Independent Book Publishers’ IPPY Award for Best Regional Non-Fiction Southeast.  In 2018 it was chosen by FoodTank (The Think Tank for Food) as a Must Read Book. 

Kirby’s Journal received highly acclaimed reviews from Kirkus Book Review, Science Magazine, National Science Teachers Association, Library School Journal, and the Children’s Book Review; it was the recipient of the 2015 Moonbean Children’s Book Award for environmental issues -Bronze Medal; a Finalist in the 2016 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science)/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books for their Middle Grade Science Book Prize; and a finalist for the INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards.  The North American Nature Photographers Association chose ten insect photographs from Kirby’s Journal for presentation at their 2010 Annual Summit show.  

Visions and Voices was awarded Montana’s Preservation Excellence Award in 2015;   the Montana History Foundation’s Vernacular Architecture Forum’s National Award for Advocacy in 2017; was selected by Humanities Montana and the Montana State Library to represents Montana to the rest of the nation at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. in 2014; was finalist in the nonfiction category of High Plains Book Awards in 2013, and in 2014, I received The Outstanding Individual Achievement Award from Montana Preservation Alliance. Most importantly, as a result of the publication of Visions and Voices, Montana’s rural schoolhouses were chosen as one of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2013 List of America’s Most Endangered Historic Places. This honor and important designation is valuable for providing the preservation forces with the opportunity to rally additional awareness and resources to prevent the loss of these beautiful historic rural schools.  

Background: My childhood was spent on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, where I was introduced to nature through total immersion. My free-range childhood of climbing trees and rocks, observing tadpoles and insects, fishing, hiking, and exploring woke me to nature’s beauty and mysteries. As a young adult, I learned to record nature’s beauty through a film camera, and spent hours exploring the magic of developing images in a darkroom. I graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, and hold master’s degrees in environmental studies and education, both of which continue to inform my perspectives about the world, the environment and ways to share those insights with others. 

Today, in addition to hiking, flyfishing, golfing, shooting clays, traveling and exploring nature, my husband, Jeffrey Schutz and I love playing with our children, six grandchildren, extended family, and friends. We divide our time between our home in Charleston, South Carolina and our ranch outside Clyde Park, Montana.

In the past decade, my awareness of how everything is connected to everything else and my deep caring for the preservation of our natural world evolved into a wider interest in our purchasing habits, especially how we choose to purchase food. Ergo, my fifth and most recent book…

The Faces of Local Food: Celebrating the People Who Feed Us addresses why we should eat local. We step into the world of farmers, fishermen and ranchers; chefs and retailers to hear their stories—histories, motivations, experiences, challenges, and insights. We visit an urban food desert, school farm programs, a high-tech vertical farm housed within a shipping container, and the warehouse of a local food distribution center. I recognized that the distribution hub is key to providing critically important local infrastructure necessary to successfully move food from family farms to our plates.

Through The Faces of Local Food our perceptions about our daily food choices are reframed and we are inspired to become more mindful consumers and purchase locally produced-sustainably grown food.  Ultimately, we realize that this subject is much bigger than food alone; it is a paradigm shift toward how we think holistically about all of our purchases.  

The images and prose in Visions and Voices: Montana’s One-Room Schoolhouses tell the story of childhood, education, homesteading, and the culture of the Western Frontier through the eyes of those who attended or taught in rural one-room schoolhouses.    

The engaging story and macro photography from Kirby’s Journal: Backyard Butterfly Magic inspires children of all ages to go outdoors, watch inquisitively, and share the wonders and magic of nature.  The North American Nature Photographers Association chose ten insect photographs from Kirby’s Journal for presentation at their 2010 Annual Summit show.  

In both the Cow’s Boy: The Making of a Cowboy, and its sequel the Cow’s Girl:The Making of a Cowgirl, my photography is wedded to the prose of daily life, drawing the picture of childhood on a family ranch. 

Charlton deSaussaure’s Cottages and Architects of Yeamans Hall is accompanied by my photography.

(To see more information about awards, reviews and endorsements, please click on the book title in red or go to the BOOKS section on this website.)

If you are interested in purchasing any of these books or photographs, please contact me. 

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: All photographs, images and books appearing on Charlotte Caldwell’s website are the exclusive intellectual property of Charlotte Caldwell and are protected under United States and International copyright laws.

The intellectual property MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED or SCREEN CAPTURED except by the normal viewing process of the web browser. The intellectual property may not be copied to another computer, printed, transmitted, published, reproduced, stored, saved, projected, manipulated or altered in any way, including without limitation to AI, digitization or synthesizing of the photographs, alone or with any other material, by use of computer or other electronic means or any other method or means now or hereafter known without the written permission of Charlotte Caldwell and payment of a licensing fee.

 No photographs are within the Public Domain. Use of any photograph as the basis for another photographic or fine art concept or illustration is in violation of copyright laws.

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