He is the great-grandson of a famed Alabama governor. He grew up in the rich districts of Washington, D.C., before becoming a quintessential snowbird: part-time New Englander and part-time Floridian.
Nick Mele knows he grew up privileged, with the ocean-opulent milieu of Newport, Rhode Island, serving as his childhood playground in the summer and the aristocratic venues of Palm Beach during the winter.
He has rubbed elbows with the most elite of the elites, who have thought nothing of allowing Mele to hang out and photograph them in their “ordinary” lives. He compiled the highlights of his summer adventures into the book “Newport Summer,” a mesmerizing pictorial that mingles—as Nick dubbed them—“the last bastions of old school American high society” with his own family, including his wife and their two young sons. With his sweet sense of humor, Mele calls them his “kid monsters.”
The would-be envy of any photographer, the 39-year-old modestly regards those days as more of a hobby among friends. As far as wedding shoots go—the proverbial bread and butter of most pros—“I’d rather never do one again,” he breezily proclaimed.
Of all things, for the silver-spooned Andover (prep school) graduate, the thing Mele craves the most is being hired to do marketing shoots: to put his brand of photography on a brand, he explained, that teases the imagination with an entire story line.
