I’m Nina Merklina, a portrait and headshot photographer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I photograph families, high school seniors and grads, professionals and teams, and the occasional event that needs someone who notices faces.
 

I picked up my first camera at fifteen in Moscow and learned to develop film in our family’s only bathroom, alongside my father, a scientist whose travel photography opened up a world that wasn’t accessible to me then. I could see through his eyes, and it was magical. Those darkroom hours planted something that stuck.
 

For a long time, though, photography ran alongside a very different career. I spent more than 15 years in executive search, placing senior executives at companies like Cisco, GE, IBM, Microsoft and others. I also helped smaller businesses and startups build their teams. It was work built on first impressions: sitting across from people at the most nerve-racking moments of their careers, learning to read them quickly, put them at ease, and see them the way a hiring committee would. I still use all of it. I know what makes someone look confident rather than guarded, and how to create the conditions for the former.
 

My first Nikon DSLR came in 2008. In 2010 I moved to the United States and started shooting in earnest in New York, and the first paid clients came in 2011. In 2014 we moved to Chapel Hill, and by 2019 Nina Merklina Photography had become my full-time practice.
 

Today I work with families, seniors, professionals and companies throughout Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham, Raleigh and the rest of the Triangle. I’ve worked with universities, Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits, and you may also know my work from the monthly covers of Southern Village Neighbors or Triangle Review’s theater coverage. I work in English and Russian.
 

Families come back to me year after year, some since 2015, and kids who hate being photographed are my specialty. My favorite clients are the ones who show up ready to trust the process and have a good time. I treat every session as a special event, so people feel elevated during the shoot, after it’s done, and when they’re reviewing their gallery.
 

I’m fascinated by faces. The way physical features, personal history, and emotion combine to tell a story. The best photographs happen in unrehearsed moments, when people forget to perform and just exist. That’s what I’m after: images that are polished but not fake, intentional but not stiff, and honest enough to still matter in ten years.