We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nicole Kiser. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nicole below.

Nicole, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

The road to “success” has been a winding & unclear journey. To first become successful, you have to define what success looks like within yourself. My concept of success or “making it” is constantly evolving and changing as I grow in my thoughts and business.

When I first became a photographer, all I wanted was for people to think my art was good or at least passable as a professional grade. I spent a ton of energy worrying what others would think of me, from strangers on the internet to my coworkers at the hospital who knew me as only a nurse, to people I have known my whole life. When I was being validated in my art it felt like success, but inside my happiness & fulfillment was based on the perceptions others had of it.

When I started to get bookings, success then looked like booking higher & higher packages and being able to finally financially support myself from my art. Every milestone it seemed I would hit in business my entire first year felt amazing but left me always wanting & longing for more. Begging me constantly to re evaluate what success was.

I don’t have it defined as clear as I would like still. Currently, I’ve found myself working towards more balance and being gentle with myself, achieving those concepts feel “successful” to me. I’ve learned this year the hard lesson that my art is my headspace. If my mental health feels low, the way I direct my clients is just inherently different than when I am feeling full and inspired. Success recently has felt like achieving a balanced life and thus being able to make art and wedding photos that both myself & my clients are inspired by.

I truly think anyone can be successful. It just takes knowing the ins & outs of yourself and spending ample time defining what success looks like to you. My clients hire me for the way I can see a landscape and compose them artfully within it bringing them back to the way it felt to explore the space or the way I feel the emotion in their family members eyes and capture those photos on their wedding or elopement day. They want my direction and my input, and it took me longer than I like to admit to understand that fully! Especially in a creative profession, “you” are the one part of your art that no one else can replicate. Success, like art, is fully open & welcome to subjective interpretation.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a Nashville, Tennessee based wedding and elopement photographer. At this time I photograph couples exclusively. Whether it be an intimate vow renewal at the top of a mountain to an engagement session in a bar in downtown Nashville, I love photographing the unique & tangible connection that all lovers inherently have with one another. I travel all over the country for my art. I’m actually in Iceland right now for a proposal as I conduct this interview!

I first started photography when I was fourteen years old. I grew up slow in Ohio, which is arguably one of the most flat and simple landscapes in America. When I got to be older, I started exploring surrounding states and eventually went out to Yellowstone National Park. It was then that I became obsessed with photographing landscapes, especially mountains, and photographing them the way they felt to me. I dedicated most of my early twenties to just being outside and traveling to explore all landscapes. Desert, forests, beach, mountains– every biome was so different and inspiring to me. It was all of this experience with the variety of landscapes that pushed me into the traveling wedding & elopement field!

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. My 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 both 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! My landscape approach is why most of my couples hire me and I love showing them the landscape we are in through my lens. Over half of my weddings are travel and the rest 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’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I actually first met my business partner twenty-four years ago when she was brought home from the hospital. My sister, Alyssa, works for me as my videographer and second shooter. She has been doing second photography for me from the beginning. But now in 2023 she has taken on the role of becoming my videographer, thus a lead in the business. We already do timeless Super 8 vintage films and are in the final beta phases of being able to offer digital video for weddings & elopements!!

My couples love her because she is so genuine, hilarious, and goes above and beyond for them. There have been so many busy wedding days that she bustles the bride’s dress or fixes the veil in her hair. I love also that my couples receive really consistent galleries because Alyssa and I work together constantly. I can trust her with my whole heart which to me means everything, as I can commit with confidence to my clients in our ability to document one of the most important days of their lives!

Together we have so much fun but really only the clients who I have worked wedding days with get to know her, which feels like a shame because I wish all of my clients got the chance to know Alyssa.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Making people feel beautiful.

Giving couples tangible images that radiate the feelings they felt on their elopement or wedding day.

Being the person who puts them at ease who reminds them to breathe & soak in the moments they are having.

There is just so much reward in being an artist. I can think of a new reason every second it seems. So often couples will come to me nervous about having their photo taken, and by the end they are laughing and completely themselves. I have a really boho & adventurous look to my photos, and often I will have brides express that they want photos of their love that look like that but they are unsure how. I love directing them into moments with their partner that emit that feeling.

The career is so rewarding as you are entrusted to photograph truthfully & artfully a couple’s biggest moment they share together. Lots of times it will be just me listening to a couples private vow reading as I take photos, it’s such an honor to be let in on these vulnerable moments. The trust from clients that comes with being a wedding creative itself is rewarding & fulfilling.      

Contact Info:

• Website: www.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