The Nichols family live a life rooted in creative devotion, soulful education, and unwavering integrity. With six brilliant and beautifully untamed children, they are quietly dismantling the modern education system—replacing conformity with curiosity, and standardization with wonder. Their home in New York’s Finger Lakes is a living sanctuary: a place where learning spills into the soil, stories are stitched into heirloom projects, and every corner holds the hum of something becoming.

Whitney, formally trained in antique-process photography, brings over a decade of experience as a professional portrait artist. Her work evokes a romantic and painterly world, marked by rich shadows, subtle textures, and ephemeral details. Each image carries the hush of something remembered: a longing, a season, a flicker of something eternal.

Michael’s journey led him from a career in law enforcement to a calling more ancient and elemental. Now walking a shamanic path, he brings a profound reverence for the human condition into everything he does—from ceremonial officiating to co-photography to daily life. His journey informs their family’s entire rhythm: rooted in spiritual sovereignty, energetic awareness, and the healing of generational wounds. His presence is steady, intuitive, and deeply attuned to the emotional layers beneath each moment. He sees people clearly and holds space with care, humor, and sacred attention.

Together, the Nichols don’t just seek beauty—they live it. In forgotten ruins, wild forests, abandoned books, and quiet rituals, they uncover meaning in places most overlook. Every photograph, every workshop, every act of creative offering is a thread in their greater calling: to help others remember the sparkle between here and there—the place where dreams still peek through.

A creative family  forging new paths in upstate New York 

Our origins are abundant, but if we pause to witness the beauty of the wild, we are reminded of our oneness