Rich Nicoloff started his journey into photography in college as a Journalism major with an Art minor emphasizing photography in both. “I remember frustrating both my art and journalism professors because my art photography had ‘too much documentary style,’ and my photojournalism was ‘too artsy,’” says Nicoloff. Walking the line between photographic genres is something that never went away in his photography.

Working at the daily college newspaper as a photographer & an assistant photo editor gave him the necessary experience and skills to jump into a photojournalism career. He spent some time working for both a daily newspaper and a group of weekly suburban Chicago newspapers, and while it was a very exciting, fast paced life, it wasn’t the one he wanted. “I couldn’t be as creative as I wanted and that was slowly killing me inside.”

Frustrated and in need of a change, Rich Nicoloff and his interior designer wife, Kristie, moved to Charlotte, NC. Shortly after moving they took a weekend trip to North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Nicoloff says, “It was in those mountains that I found my calling, or more accurately, I heard the mountains calling to me.” He found that he could take the creativity and timelessness of fine art and enhance it with the storytelling of photojournalism to share the beauty, energy, and healing properties of the natural world.

“I adopted the moniker, Journey Fine Art,” says Nicoloff, “because my art is an extension of me, of my life, and the exciting, crazy journey that I’m on.” His art certainly reflects that by ranging from bright and cheerful to foggy and moody. Nicoloff firmly believes that art should make one think, and his intention is that his photographs bring inspiration & healing to their viewers.

Rich Nicoloff and his family currently live in the small town town of Travelers Rest in the South Carolina foothills near the North Carolina border as Rich continues to grow in his photographic vision.