Check Out Sara Kauss’ Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Kauss.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Growing up in Minnesota, there are plenty of hours, days, and months to hone in on being creative when it is -20° below zero outside! I was homeschooled as a kid and joke about spending my formative years doing more arts and crafts than actual school work.

I may not know a whole lot about protons and electrons from Science class, but I can draw anything, paint a pretty great portrait of a puppy and create anything with fabric, wood, and glue! All of those innovative hours upon hours sitting indoors when it was too cold to play outside, led to a must-have career in a creative field in my grown-up life.

We moved to Orlando, Florida when I was in high school and that’s where I began to organically direct my creativity toward photography. I was documenting everyone in my high school.

And in the late 1990s, photography was film only, so I would photograph everyone and make duplicate prints. One 4” x 6” print copy would go on my bedroom wall and one print I would either put in a little album or give to the person in the photo. I was destined to be a photographer!

In 2005, I learned that I could turn my passion for photographing people into a career photographing weddings. Wedding photographers were mostly men at that point and I brought a softer edge to capturing the details and being a female presence on a wedding day.

My wedding photography business, Sara Kauss Photography, quickly became an established South Florida brand with honored placement on “vendor lists” at places such as The Breakers Palm Beach, Four Seasons Palm Beach, The Colony, Bethesda By The Sea, and many others.

In 2009, my photography took me to Nashville where my love of country music began to align seamlessly with my photography. I was photographing a corporate event in Nashville and had just photographed an A-list musician in California with a friend of mine and had her photos in my portfolio.

The corporate event that I was photographing happened to be at the same hotel as the yearly Country Radio Broadcasters Seminar (also known as CRS) where all the Nashville music artists meet with all people on the radio from around the country. I made it my mission when I wasn’t photographing my corporate clients to introduce myself as a music photographer to everyone I could at that CRS event.

Today, in addition to my South Florida wedding photography business which is still expanding and growing, my Nashville music photography world has also simultaneously continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Since working on that first corporate shoot in Nashville in 2009, I have been  determined to create a name for my photography business as a Nashville music photographer.

I have now photographed tours with artists opening for Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney, and Zac Brown Band. I have photographed artist album covers and content for musicians from Iceland to Alaska, California, and back to Tennessee. I regularly work with worldwide photo outlets like Getty Images and music labels as a photographer for music events such as CMA Awards, CMA Fest, ACM Awards, and more!

All this photography was done while traveling from Florida to Tennessee and other parts of the country. At the beginning of 2020, I made the “artist dream” move from South Florida to Nashville and bought space to build out a photography studio calling it Tennessee Light House, (www.tnlighthouse.com).

The vision for my Nashville arm of Sara Kauss Photography is to continue and build my artist/music photography and dive into the Tennessee wedding photography world as well. The vision for Tennessee Light House is to also build a community of creatives here in Nashville, a place where photographers, filmmakers, and other creatives can have meet-ups and talk about all things the entrepreneur industry.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I strongly believe in the power of manifesting everything in my life!

Everyone who knows me well will say “Sara makes everything happen!” I believe that you can speak into existence struggles just as easily as you can speak into existence positive movement forward.

I believe in business if there is an obstacle, as frustrating as it may be there is a reason I am going through it or growing through it.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a photographer who specializes in capturing emotion from people (or dogs!). I photograph weddings around the country, with a focus on Palm Beach, Florida, and Nashville, Tennessee. I photograph musicians either on the road or posed for content for the album artwork. And I photograph dogs! All dogs!

I am most proud of the team of people who I work with and the network of amazing clients (who have turned into friends) I’ve built over the almost two decades of being a photographer. What sets my photography apart is the style I photograph in. My photography is mostly natural light-based and I am always looking for the sunshine!

And I would also say the very candid approach to photography that I have. I am not one to make people “pose” per se, I just like to place whoever I’m photographing in great lighting and then talk them through the expression or look that is a part of the final artwork vision.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I would say the most important lesson I’ve learned due to Covid-19 is the ability to genuinely pivot and let go of control of things that are completely out of your control.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sarakauss.com
• Instagram: @sarakaussphoto
• Facebook: facebook.com/sarakaussphotography
• Twitter: @sarakauss
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/Fwpu1kuJZeg

Image Credits
Sara Kauss Photography