Louis Athol Shmith AM, FRPS, (19 August 1914 – 21 October 1990) was an Australian studio portrait and fashion photographer and photography educator in his home city of Melbourne, Australia. He contributed to the promotion of international photography within Australia as much as to the fostering of Australian photography in the world scene.

Shmith was born in Melbourne in 1914 into a comfortable and cultured middle-class family, the youngest of three, after Verna and Clive, of Harry Wolf Shmith, an analytical chemist associated with Mr. George. R. Nicholas in the formulation of aspirin for mass production, and an accomplished pianist, and his wife Genetta, née Epstein, both born in England. When he celebrated his 21st birthday, Shmith's family lived at 'Grasmere' 181 Barkly Street, St Kilda. Shmith played piano and vibraphone and considered music as a possible career.

Shmith's father gave him a camera as a teenager and what was a hobby became a profession in his late teens when Shmith, who had an interest in theatre and played at charity performances, including acts with the 'Youth and Laughter Revue', was asked to take the publicity photographs and stills for a show. He saw there was a career in his former hobby and, for the first five years he specialised in theatre work and society and wedding portraits through which he first made his reputation. He exhibited his works in photographic salons at home and abroad. At age 17 his work, among 7,000 international entries was awarded a bronze plaque in the Colonial and Overseas photographic Exhibition, and shown in the Royal Photographic Society’s salon in London. In early 1933 and supported by his family, he established a studio in 'The Warwick', newly built by Joseph Plottel, at 75A Fltzroy Street, cnr. Jackson Street, St Kilda and in May that year his portrait of Mr. John Atkinson, an Australian Air Force pilot, was exhibited as the only Australian entry in the International Salon of Photography, Chicago.

Shmith's professional break had come in the early 1930s when he gained the contract to take portraits of visiting celebrities for the newly formed Australian Broadcasting Commission. Shmith's work expanded to include a range of commercial advertising and illustration and appeared in local society magazines including Table Talk, with cover images by 1934, by which time he was starting to concentrate on fashion, and had joined the social set himself, with his family holidays being reported in newspapers. At the age of just 19 he was appointed Vice-Regal Photographer in Melbourne, and was contracted for stage and publicity photography by theatre producer J.C. Williamson Limited.

When in 1936 he showed with Julian Smith and Spencer Shier in the annual exhibition of the Victorian salon of photography at the Athenaeum Galleries, modernist artist and Sun newspaper critic George Bell praised Shmith's "delicate tonal nuance in Nude in Repose," and a pictorial report in The Australasian featured his Technical Inspection from the same show. He exhibited in October at the Kodak gallery, when Harold Herbert of The Argus noted that "Mr. Athol Shmith is original in Nude In Repose. That year he was advertising as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), had secured the Myer Emporium as a fashion client, and The Argus ran a congratulatory article on his overseas successes at "only 22 years"; in Boston's American Annual competition; the Chicago Century of Progress Fair; receiving a request from Arnold Glngrlch, founder of Esquire for examples of his work; and as the subject of a special article in the French art magazine La Revue Moderne. He won prizes in Jugoslavia and Vienna, then in 1937 exhibited at the Cape Town and Dublin international salon, and in June it was reported that he had been made an Associate of the British Royal Photographic Society. By the late mid-1930s, he was seen as representing a new modern style of work, and to meet demand, he employed other photographers including Hans Hasenpflug in 1937. Shmith was active in the Melbourne Camera Club from 1938, for whose members he held demonstrations in his studio.

After the death of his father in November 1938, in 1939 Shmith, then merely twenty-five years of age, became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and moved his business to a studio in the Rue de la Paix building at 125 Collins Street, run with the assistance of his brother Clive, and sister, Verna, who was his receptionist and who became an expert negative retoucher. The studio had originally been fitted out for Helena Rubenstein, and retained her elegant powder blue and deep pink fittings.

Influenced in his early career by the soft Pictorialist style of turn-of-the-century art photographers and, as Newton notes, contemporaries May and Mina Moore, Shmith later embraced the clearer light, bolder compositions and design emphasis of art deco modernism which he admired in the fashion, product and portrait work of (Sir) Cecil Beaton, Edward Steichen and Hollywood portraitist George Hurrell. He exhibited again with the Victorian Salon of Photography at the Athenaeum in August 1939.

The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted the studio work Shmith had just commenced after his move into the city. When he attempted to enlist, he failed the medical examination, but he conducted photographic analyses for the army, including the interpretation of aerials of the American landing in Italy, and made donations to The Australian Comforts Fund. His studio produced portrait photographs of hundreds of servicewomen and men, including those of many Americans on leave in Melbourne.