Hi there! I’m Nicole, the girl behind the camera. I am a 23 year old Utah native and I could not love the state I call home more. I grew up along the Wasatch Front mountain range in a smaller country-feel town that had the whole wilderness behind me and the continuous city stretch of the Front ahead of me. I spent most of my childhood in the canyons and mountains or walking along the picturesque river bottoms behind my home. Even though my hometown had nothing more exciting than a Macey’s grocery store and a huge rodeo fairground growing up (it waited until I moved away to explode with awesome restaurants and stores of course) it was a magical place and I’m still in love with it.

I now live in Provo with my hottie husband Ammon, and we spend our days together laughing and exploring around our state + beyond. Everyone ever says they love to travel, but we seriously couldn’t be happier doing anything else- there’s literally no greater or happier feeling than walking hand in hand with my lover in a new city or country and I’m actually addicted to that feeling. Ammon and I actually were brought together while living in a state not our own while serving as full-time missionaries for our church in Iowa, so we have traveling in our roots! We were wed on a windy, weather-bipolar day in May 2016 in our home state of Utah after returning home from our service as missionaries and are now nestled in a little studio apartment with green carpets and a temperamental AC unit while Ammon goes to school here in Provo at Brigham Young University.

If you get to know me for very long, you’ll soon find out that some of my favorite things are the mountains & driving up the canyons in the rain, that the vast majority of my clothing is striped and navy or grey colored, and I’m obnoxiously obsessed with weird music. I have Crohn’s Disease, so any fellow Crohnies out there come say hey (and if you’re just curious what the heck that is come say hey anyways)! I was diagnosed with Crohn’s back in March 2015 a month after I returned home from my time in Iowa and I’ve been learning to adjust living with the disease ever since! If you were to ask me what my spirit animal is, without hesitation I would say either a shark or a velociraptor, unless you count food as a spirit animal, in which case I’d for sure be a Costa Vida steak burrito. I’m addicted. I’m actually literally eating a Costa Vida steak burrito as I type this. The obsession is real. If I don’t have a burrito handy, you’ll most likely catch me snacking on chocolate-salted-caramels, blueberries, or peaches.

I discovered photography when my parents first thought to hand me a cheap little point-and-shoot camera for Christmas when I was in middle school, and from there I was hooked. For a few years I mostly drove my friends crazy by showing up to every activity with my camera in hand and posting every picture I took of them on Facebook or setting up really weird shoots with my little sisters, but then as a sophomore in high school I took one photography class that taught me the basics of DSLR’s and editing and have never looked back since. I’ve been photographing weddings for six years and I consider myself the luckiest human alive that I was able to turn a passion into a job and travel all over the world photographing people in love.  I am forever in love with people, their stories, and the connections that bring you together. Documenting love is my greatest passion and I cannot wait to capture yours!

I’m all about meeting new people, so please feel free to drop me a line to chat about photography or burritos or honestly anything else in the world. I’m so grateful you’re here and can’t wait to meet you!

photo by Eden Strader