Hit Me With Your Best Shot own a camera when she started experimenting with photography, so she borrowed her roommate’s, began taking pictures of her college friends and unlocked a passion for capturing beautiful, authentic moments on film. That might explain why strangers often begin to feel like friends in front of her lens. Nikki graduated from N.C. State in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture science and a minor in horticulture, but when her sister asked Nikki what she wanted to do post-college, she blurted out, “I want to photograph weddings!” Instead of getting her master’s in horticulture (plan A), she enrolled in a graduate school photography program at Randolph Community College in Asheboro, North Carolina, and that same year started her business, Fancy This Photography. She moved to Durham in 2015 and married her husband, Jason Belch, in 2017. They celebrated with an intimate wedding in the
Photographer
Bahamas. Nikki Nikki Whitt always preferred Belch, photographing Fancy This small-scale weddings Photography – a trend recently popularized during the pandemic. Years ago, she recalls vendors doubting that her business could thrive on microweddings, but Nikki expanded her business tremendously over this past year. She taught beginner photography classes online, experimented with video and drone footage and hired an associate photographer. She launched a new commercial photography branch of her business - which offers branding, headshots, food and marketing photography – in February 2020. In fact, you can find a few examples of her work capturing other readers’ favorites on pages 42 and 52. Regardless of the subject matter, there’s one thing Nikki understands that can’t be taught – how to make people feel comfortable when the shutter clicks. PHOTO BY JASON BELCH
N
ikki Whitt Belch didn’t even
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