We were lucky to catch up with Kaci Nelson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kaci, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons for waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?

Let me preface this by saying, I definitely believe that everything happens for a reason and I am grateful to have had the experiences I had prior to starting my business because they helped me grow a tremendous amount. That being said, I wish I had started my business sooner because I spent so much of my early adult life trying to force myself to fit into a box of “safe” and “reliable” careers which ultimately did not fulfill my desire to create. I’ve always been a very creative person at heart. Songwriting, drawing, short stories… I did any and everything I could throughout my childhood and teenage years to find ways to create things and share my perspective with others.
As I got older, I realized that it was tough to make a steady income as an artist (whether that be through music, or writing, etc.) and I became very discouraged. I worked in the service industry for about a decade and then transitioned into legal assistance – and was always just sort of pushing to the next logical step instead of pursuing any sort of passion.
As soon as I started getting into photography, I was finally able to find fulfillment in my work that I had been missing. I love finding creative ways to capture memories for my couples and bring them back to the way they felt on one of the best days of their lives.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into photography initially as a creative outlet. I experimented with some artistic sessions with family/friends and just had fun with it at first. Somewhere along the way a friend of a friend liked my “work” and I got an opportunity to shoot my first wedding (I’m pretty sure I did it for free, and it was about 8 years ago or so).

It’s hard to explain what it feels like to be entrusted with such a monumental moment in someone’s life. I fell in love with the way that weddings are just massive celebrations of the dedication people have to each other. Love is such a tangible thing on a wedding day. You can feel it in the room from the start of the day to the end of the night. It’s magical.

That feeling, combined with the opportunity to be creative was the hook for me. I started researching and investing all of my time and energy into honing my craft. Eventually, I took a big risk and left my full time job to start up my business. That was around 3 years ago. In those 3 years, I’ve captured hundreds of weddings (a lot, I know, but I’ve always been a bit of a busy body) and it has been an incredible journey. I absolutely adore telling people’s love stories through images and videos; and creating collections of memories they can look back on for the rest of their lives.

My photography style is all about getting my couples to focus on each other and move around… I want them to enjoy the moment and the time they are spending together and forget about the camera even being there. At my engagement sessions – we run around downtown streets and check out fun murals, we roll around in the sand, run through empty fields, pop champagne and talk about what they like to do together on the weekends. I focus all of my energy on getting them to connect. The magic in the images is that connection rather than some stiff Pinterest pose that’s been reused by a billion couples before. I take those same core principles with me into a wedding day – and I try to make sure that somewhere in the middle all of the wedding day craziness, they get back to center and focus on each other.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think my reputation is spring-boarded by my passion to give my clients the best wedding day experience. I have always had the mindset that if there is something I can do to help someone, I will do it. That means we’re not just taking photos on wedding days. Sometimes we’re bustling a wedding dress after golden hour photos to give the bride some relief from carrying their train. Sometimes we’re running out for late night Taco Bell for the bride and groom because their big catering order got cancelled last minute. So many of my present clients received glowing recommendations from past clients who considered me “so much more than a photographer” on their big day. I love that so many of my clients leave their wedding day considering me as more of a friend; and genuinely feeling like they had someone in their corner for whatever they needed throughout the day.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Unfortunately, I made the decision to go full time with my business right before disaster struck in 2020. I started off strong in January 2020 – booking a ton of weddings for later that year and investing most of that back into the budding business. However, when the world shut down a couple of months later – the cancellations started rolling in. I learned the hard way that having flexible policies and a bleeding heart were not the best qualities for a brand new business. Luckily, I made the most of the work I could do and focused on learning even more about my craft in that downtime which helped to prepare me for the surge of business that followed the end of lockdown.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rlftampa.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rlfphotosandfilms/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rlfphotosandfilms
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-fYQ53gzzWrV7I1Nob3OIA