Random List of Likes

  • Soul music

  • Surfing & water skiing

  • New Orleans

  • Supporting female creatives

  • Roller skating

  • Big skies

  • Italian parsley

  • Other laid back people

Random List of Dislikes:

  • Tame Impala

  • Focaccia bread

  • Allergy headaches

  • Closed-minded people

  • Making lists

Cathlin is a Photographer and Director based in Austin, Texas who loves telling stories with her camera. As a photographer, you get the sense that her portraits are challenging you with an achingly beautiful question about life you can’t put into words. (Either that or they’re playing up something funny.)

Cathlin used to work in the ad and marketing world as a User Experience Designer and it all makes sense when you see how she is constantly thinking about the brand and why she usually ends up bffs with the art director on set.

Cathlin is a mama to two children who are often depicted in her photographs. Her short film, “The Oldest”, is currently making its way through the festival circuit, racking up a handful of awards along the way.

Cathlin takes the photographs that don’t look staged. The in-between moments. The funny inside jokes. The commercial photography that doesn’t look over-produced and over-lit. Her sweet spot comes from observing how people naturally act and move, and directing them to “do more of that”.

She grew up on a lake in Iowa, and her adventure heart never quit those big open skies. Cathlin came to UT for grad school and fell in love with Texas. It felt like home. Since she lived in Austin in the 90s, she considers herself an honorary Texan.

She enjoys surfing whenever possible, which is almost never (land-locked in Texas). Her friends call her brave and scrappy, and her work weird. She thinks they should get out more.

CLIENT LIST

Adriene Mishler, Amity Worrel & Co, Apiece Apart, Apple, Balmorhea, Baylor Scott & White Health, Calling Mildred, Carve Designs, Claire Sommers Buck, Counterpart Studios, DDB Chicago, Duck Tape, FCB Health, Francesca’s, Her New Tribe, Krewe Eyewear, Lanai, Lansinoh, Liz MacPhail Design, Magnolia, McCann Health, Meridian Magazine, McKinley Mizar Jewelry, Miller Lite, Morningstar Magazine, Novartis, Ownwell, Peloton, Pedernales Cellars, Sissy Light, Southwood Financial, Stag Provisions, Tecovas, TX Highways Magazine, TheWrap, This Fiction, Thresholds Magazine, Tribeza, Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast

AWARDS & EXHIBITIONS

  • Best Director - Miami Women Film Festival 2026

  • Best Editing in a Short - Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema 2026

  • Best Child Actor - Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema 2026

  • Best Southern Made Short - El Dorado Film Festival 2026

  • Best Cinematography in a Short - East Texas Film Festival 2025

  • Best Debut Short Film - Berlin Indie Shorts Festival 2025 

  • Good Friend Studio Group Show 2025

  • 14th Julia Cameron Awards Show - FotoNostrum Mediterranean House of Photography, Barcelona, March 2020

  • Winner in the 14th Julia Cameron Awards, Portrait Category 2020

  • Finalist in the 14th Julia Cameron Awards, Women Seeing Women Category 2020

  • Speaker at Photo Native, 2019

  • Director’s Award - Women at Work Exhibit, PhotoPlace Gallery 2019

  • Women at Work Group Show, PhotoPlace Gallery, Vermont, 2019

  • Finalist Childhood Exhibit - PhotoPlace Gallery 2019

  • Childhood Show, PhotoPlace Gallery, Vermont, 2019

  • Finalist in the 10th Julia Cameron Women Award - Women Seeing Women category

  • Named in the September/October 2018 issue of Click magazine as one of “20 Women Changing Photography”

  • Named one of Click and Company’s 100 photographers to watch 2018

  • ATX Squared Art Show, October 6, 2018

  • Awarded the prestigious 2017 Photo Lucida Critical Mass Top 50 for the series “The Space Between”

CONTACT ME

Email me at cathlin@cathlinmccullough.com

COMMERCIAL LIFESTYLE + EDITORIAL + FASHION + PORTRAITS + FINE ART