Meet Nicole Daacke | Photographer + Business Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nicole Daacke and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nicole, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I kind of stumbled into the process of starting my own business in the process of applying for jobs out of college that I really wasn’t excited about. Photography had always been something that I wanted to do professionally, and really loved, but I never really saw it as something that would be a viable career route, until I got to the point where I realized, it’s worth at least trying! I figured it was a great time in my life to give it a shot and if it failed, at least I would know I gave it a try, but if it succeeded, that would be the dream! And here we are 8 years later! I also really believed in betting on myself, and figured if I was going to work hard at something, it might as well be my own dream.

However looking back, it was only a matter of time until I started my own business of some kind. I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, non traditional jobs and flexible schedules. Doing something I’m passionate about, maintaining control of my schedule and being able to have creative liberty over my lifestyle design is incredibly valuable to me, and is something that I believe I would have learned pretty quickly if I would’ve ended up not having my own business.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I’m a lot of things in my business, but my main role is that I’m an elopement photographer. When I started photography, my interest in it was in photographing landscapes, nature and my travels. I was never “into” weddings, and really never expected that I would end up in the wedding industry. When I decided that I wanted to do photography as a career, weddings were an attainable place to start if I wanted to make money with a camera, so that’s what launched me into the wedding world. Before even photographing my first ever wedding, I was apart of workshop all about destination weddings + elopements, and that completely changed my perspective on everything, and completely rerouted my goals. I was the “model bride” for a mock elopement, and got to experience what it would be like to have a wedding day that looked entirely different and was focused on experience and the outdoors, and it totally changed my world. I came back from that workshop and decided I wanted to (already) pivot into destination elopements. It took about a year of traveling and shooting friends, family, and strangers anywhere I could that emulated the types of shoots I was wanting to be hired for. I spend SO much time working on the back end of things, creating a brand, creating SEO presence, creating systems, building a client workflow etc. It was about a year later that I started to book elopements and by the end of that year I was full time in my business. It definitely wasn’t easy, but I essentially put on blinders, saw the end goal, and worked through everything I needed to, until I was booking the types of gigs I was after.

Once I was doing that, I fell in love with elopements even more. I realized that my why in practically all things in life is based around experience of the natural world. Nature is incredibly grounding, inspiring, motivating, nurturing. All of my favorite memories and experiences in my personal life have all been in nature and experiencing the world with people that I love. As I photographed more and more elopements, I realized that elopements are exactly that. They’re a chance for me to help a couple design a day that they feel like the best versions of themselves, they feel connected to themselves, each other and the place they’re in, and they’re able to be fully present in that experience. When I realized that, it became about facilitating experiences for people, and photographing that is the cherry on top.

This same why has led me to also start sharing my work via fine art framed prints, so that everyone is able to have images in their environment that invoke the same feelings that traveling and being in nature does, in the ordinary everyday.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Oh man, there are SO many people that deserve credit and recognition in my story. The biggest one that comes to mind is my parents. I feel really fortunate to say that I have parents who fully encouraged, supported and believed in me to aim high and go after it. They never pressured me to go a more traditional route, or go down a path that way maybe more “safe”. In fact, they encouraged me to find what I was passionate about and good at, and to keep doing it. Indirectly, my parents both led by example of what it was like to have careers that you’re excited about, even if they were non-traditional. My dad, a passionate pilot of 45 years, led the example that doing something you really love will greatly impact your life, and you spend a lot of your life participating in your career, so you’d better enjoy it. My mom, a serial entrepreneur, showed me to bet on yourself, to nurture and develop your dreams, to pivot, and the beauty that comes from life when you fully embrace it.

Website: www.nicoledaackephotography.com

Instagram: @nicoledaacke

Facebook: Nicole Daacke Photography

Other: I also sell landscape + nature photography prints at the following: @nicolesprints www.nicolesprints.com

Image Credits
All images are mine