Gallery | Erica Nix shoots queer weddings, works out

Erica Nix lives and works in Austin, Texas, photographing queer weddings and running her rather excellent workout programme, Workout with Erica Nix. Here she talks more about what she’s about.

I actually live in the backyard that first hosted GayBiGayGay. I have nothing to do with that except that my neighbor and roommate own GayBi, but I’m pretty proud to live somewhere so gay. I started wedding photography after a year of doing retail for Thrift Town, Toy Joy and Wheatsville all at the same time and decided I should use my degree to make money. After some time shooting weddings with a good friend and excellent photographer Jessica Attie, I found myself, being fem, constantly ‘outing’ myself – or worse, not outing myself – and I realized I needed to work within my queer community. I also know that it can be difficult to look for photographers as a queer couple. I’ve heard stories of vendors turning people down or locations only allowing queers to reserve on non-Saturdays, fucked up shit like that.

Being queer isn’t everyone’s identity, but it’s mine. I have always photographed environmental portraits of my friends and my life. Now I just meet new parts of my community and do the same thing. I essentially do Austin Queer Weddings through word of mouth. What’s really cool is that straight people contact Austin Queer Weddings too. They tell me they’re queer allies and love what I do. Being from Arlington, TX it took me almost 10 years to really BE OUT. I was out in Austin, but I was still visiting family with my ‘roommate’ because my parents were embarrassed. Austin Queer Weddings has allowed me to be myself wholeheartedly.   I also work for the badass Whitney Lee Photography and have volunteered for Project Transitions, I Am Equality and worked in collaboration with the Q.

As well as photography, I run Workout with Erica Nix. It’s also queer-focused, but not just queer-attended. I’ve always been a fan of diversifying, so having two passions / occupations works for me. Workout started as performance that was fun, queer and centered around body image, and now happens three days a week at the Center Spot. We’re still very silly and fun.