Meet Nicole Kiser

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicole Kiser.

Hi Nicole, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I started off as a landscape photographer, I did this for over a decade before ever transitioning into elopement & wedding photography! Most of my early twenties I spent outside exploring different areas of the states! I’d wake up at sunrise to go photograph an alpenglow on the side of a mountain or stay up late to try to catch the Milky Way on camera. It was so fascinating to me to be able to photograph landscapes in the most beautiful composition possible.

It wasn’t until 2021, and meeting my boyfriend now fiance, that I felt inspired to start to photograph people in love. Just like I originally felt about landscapes, there is something so nostalgic about being able to capture the way a place, or in this case, a relationship actually feels. The first couples shoot I ever did was at Harpeth River State Park outside of Nashville, we went at sunrise and it was the foggiest most peaceful morning and I found myself photographing the landscape just as much as I was the couple. They loved their gallery so much and it was then that I discovered my “niche” of lovers and landscapes.

Today I am all about making wedding & elopement images that both look and feel like the couple, but also images that bring them back to the nature in which they made their promise! About half of my weddings are travel and half are in Nashville this year. I love going into new landscapes for work. I truly believe lovers and landscapes are meant to be photographed together.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There have definitely been some struggles, mainly adjusting to working with people instead of just nature! For example, a mountain has no opinion about what it looks like. I have had to learn so much about directing and communicating with couples to display the honest connection they have. Every relationship a couple has together is incredibly different and it constantly challenges me to portray that special “thing” that makes them so unique in my art.

I was really so lucky to get to do a year-long internship working constantly as a second shooter and associate for another Nashville local photographer, Fox, and Fig Photography! She acted often as my mentor and now is my close friend. She took me everywhere with her and I learned so much that I carry with me still today. Our working relationship helped me have a smoother road in the elopement & wedding industry than I would have had alone.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an elopement and wedding photographer that specializes in destination landscapes! I service most frequently in Tennessee but also work in Montana, Wyoming, and California. My imagery is very naturally toned and I do pretty minimal traditional posing! My trick is to genuinely get to know my couple ahead of time so they know they can be their honest selves around me.

I am known for my landscape-forward approach, it is truly what makes my art different. I love zooming way far out to capture the entire scene a couple is experiencing. I will often frame my subjects around nature, using trees in the foreground or focusing instead on the mountains behind them. My current favorite technique is where I literally lay on the ground and photograph up at the clients, using the full blue sky as the background. It makes for the most dreamy photos.

I’m also super detail-oriented in my images, observing those stolen glances and the minimal ways a couple interacts with one another. I love close crop details, whether it be the way her hair blows in the wind or the way he looks at her when she laughs. My couples in general are so inspiring to me.

Besides my shooting style, editing is a huge part of my process. It feels like painting to me and I try to keep all my images truly toned to the way the scene looked while my couple was experiencing it!

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
This is such an insane question for me to answer because though I do photography basically full time, I actually am a licensed intensive care unit registered nurse. I still have my license and work for Vanderbilt Health in Nashville just on an as-needed basis in their neurosurgery ICU!

I have been an ICU nurse for almost five years now. Before launching my business at the end of 2021, I was actually a COVID ICU travel nurse. I worked overtime every week for different hospitals across the country in need of nurses helping to provide relief to areas that were surging with Covid cases. It was a meaningful and (hopefully) a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I traveled to work in Los Angeles, California, and Phoenix, Arizona. It was a traumatic time, to say the least, and my mental health was in a really low place when I was doing this line of work. I didn’t realize how bad it was until it was mostly over. I lived in these places by myself and my only friends were coworkers I would meet overnight, all trying to do this impossible task of caring for more people than we had the resources for.

On my days off, I would go by myself out to the Saguaro desert or drive up the coast to Big Sur with my camera just to take pictures of the new landscapes I was living in. I rediscovered my childlike love of photography during this time in my life, while also getting so comfortable shooting in and editing these spaces.

I remember being tired and sitting at a coffee shop in LA just journaling about how I didn’t want to spend my life in a dark and stressful ICU anymore. That I wanted to be outside making art for others to love and remember their memories as beautifully as they happened. It was so impactful that I spent the rest of my off time as a Covid ICU responder working on my website and forecasting to launch my business.

Pricing:

• Weddings start at $3700
• Elopements start at $3000
• Couples/Proposals start at $600
• Hoping to launch a Landscape Print Shop so soon where the proceeds will go to COVID-19 Survivors – stay tuned.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nicoleleniakiser.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/nicolelkiser
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085541059179
• Other: https://www.zola.com/wedding-vendors/wedding-photographers/nicole-lenia-kiser-imagery

Image Credits
Nicole Lenia Kiser Imagery