Portraits featured in UH Bauer's magazine --

Before I was a portrait photographer, I was a photojournalist. If you've read my "Meet Nicki" page, you know that my journey as a photographer began when I was 15 and received my first "real" camera as a birthday gift. That same year, I joined the yearbook staff and from there I knew I wanted to be a photojournalist. I ended up working as one for about 5-and-a-half years, if you count my work both during college and after graduation at a daily paper.

During my photojournalist days, I became good friends with Jessica. You've seen her featured on my blog before because I've taken multiple portraits of her and her budding family. After her work in the newspaper business, she took a position at the University of Houston as the director of communication for the Bauer College of Business. Around February of this year, she called me and said her photographer was busy and wouldn't be able to shoot an event for them later in the week. If I was available, was I interested in shooting the event? Of course I'll take that job!

From then until the middle of summer, I did contract work a few times at month for the Bauer College and was eventually offered a part-time position at the college.  I now spend about half of my time there photographing events and the other half of my time making portraits of students, faculty, alumni and various community members who have connections to the Bauer College. 

After leaving photojournalism, I didn't think I'd want to go back. But it's funny how when you give something a little space, you start to miss it a bit. I didn't miss the long hours or crazy schedule, but I enjoyed seeing my hard work published each day and getting to cover some pretty awesome events (Craig Biggio's last baseball game, the local filming of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," and the Wings Over Houston Air Show to name a few).

I'm not quite sure if my new job fully qualifies as "photojournalism," but I sure love it. It's the perfect mix of event coverage and portrait work. I enjoy getting to be a "fly on the wall" at events and seeing how awesome our college is, and I love being able to setup a temporary portrait studio to photograph people who are changing lives now or who will in the future. I especially love the people I work with. We have a really incredible team of media communicators, writers, web designers, graphic designers and a videographer. Everyone works together well, and it's a really positive work environment. We all share either a communication or art background, so we have lots in common. And we put out some ridiculously awesome work!

One of the biggest projects that our Office of Communication has is the bi-annual Inside Bauer magazine. From the time I started in July through the end of November, I put lots of literal "blood, sweat and tears" into making beautiful portraits for this magazine. Okay, so there weren't actual tears, because I'm not much of a crier, but you know with the Texas heat, there was definitely lots of sweat, and let me tell you, photography equipment is dangerous. I had multiple bruises, scratches and light-stand pinches from hauling equipment.

In mid-November when the latest edition of Inside Bauer came out, it was so fulfilling to see one of my portraits on the cover of the magazine, as well as tons of other portraits and event photographs featured throughout the magazine. All of my hard work paid off, as did that of my co-workers who made this magazine possible, and I'm proud to be part of this incredible project.

Enjoy some of my favorite photos that were featured below, or to read the full magazine, click the cover of the magazine. Also, to see more regular event photography, check out www.whereawesomehappens.com. 

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