Beginner to Pro in 2 years: How To Learn Photography Fast with Nick Church

#547 Nick Church is a UK-based wedding photographer who transitioned from a full-time career in the software industry to photography within 24 months. The central theme revolves around Nick's journey from picking up a camera for the first time in 2014 to becoming a professional photographer. Key learning objectives include understanding the steps involved in transitioning to a photography career, leveraging multiple photography niches for financial stability, and effective marketing strategies for acquiring clients. 

KEY TOPICS COVERED

1. Transition from Software Industry to Photography - Nick shares how his background in physics and art facilitated his understanding of photography fundamentals. He emphasizes the importance of a deep dive into learning photography and the role of creativity and passion in pursuing this new career.
2. Marketing and Business Strategy - Nick highlights his strategy of utilizing Facebook advertising as a primary marketing tool for attracting clients and replacing his previous income. His approach involves targeted ads to engage potential clients within a specific demographic, maximizing return on investment.
3. Workflow and Organization Techniques - Nick discusses using workflow management systems to organize client interactions and projects effectively. He introduces the concept of Kanban for prioritizing tasks, ensuring efficient use of time and resources.

IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS

• Kanban: A task management system that helps prioritize and streamline workflow for increased productivity and efficiency in business operations.

DISCUSSION & REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. How does Nick’s approach to learning photography through doing rather than reading formal books resonate with different learning styles?
2. In what ways can Nick's marketing strategies be adapted to other forms of photography beyond weddings?
3. Reflect on the challenges associated with transitioning to a full-time photography career and how proper planning can mitigate these challenges.

RESOURCES:
Visit Nick Church's Website - https://www.nickchurchphotography.co.uk/
Follow Nick Church on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nickchurchphotography/

Download your free copy of
46 Creative Photo Ideas to Get You Out of a Rut
at https://creativeimageideas.com/

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Connect with Raymond!

• Join the free Beginner Photography Podcast Community at https://beginnerphotopod.com/group
• Get your Photo Questions Answered on the show - https://beginnerphotopod.com/qa
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Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Transcript

Nick Church: 0:00

What I love it is that you are in absolute control of success and failure, and if you do a shoot, you're not happy with, you've got no one else to blame. If you learn something from it. Then it's still a positive thing. You think, wow, I didn't deal with the poor light very well at all in that shoot. I need to up my game. I need to do this next time. And that's really productive because you can then go straight into your next shoot with a refreshed attitude about what you're going to do differently

Raymond Hatfield: 0:25

Hey, welcome to the beginner photography podcast. I'm your host, Raymond Hatfield. And each week I interview one of the world's most interesting photographers to learn what it really takes to capture beautiful images so that you can start to do the same. In today's rewind episode, we are chatting with wedding photographer, Nick Church, about how he went from nine to five to full time photographer in just 24 months. But first, the beginner photography podcast brought to you by CloudSpot. You know this. With CloudSpot, you can simplify your business with studio management. You can organize clients, send professional contracts and automate invoice payments and more. Keeping track of everything in your new photography business just got a whole lot easier. So grab your free forever account today over at deliverphotos. com and only upgrade when you and your business are ready. Now, Nick Church did something that many of you listening right now, aspire to leave your job and start earning a full time living with your photography. What's crazy about Nick story is as you'll hear, he went from picking up a camera for the first time to opening the doors of his wedding photography business in just two years. So obviously today we talk about business, but we also talk about the technical skills that are required to do so. How he learned the skill that is photography in a calculated way that would grow skills and not just go out there for fun and hope for the best. So in today's episode, you're going to learn how to create a structured learning approach for your photography. How to start marketing your photography within a budget and how to create opportunity that will get your name out there. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's interview with Nick Church. Today's guest is Nick Church, a UK based wedding photographer who, until 2014, had never picked up a camera. Twenty four months later, he left his full time job and has had photography replace his income. Today, I'm excited to find out How Nick did it so quick Nick, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Nick Church: 2:28

Hey, no, you're welcome You have to be here.

Raymond Hatfield: 2:30

So before we get started, I know that there's gonna be a lot of listeners Thinking not a wedding photographer. This interview isn't going to apply to me But you make an income of several different types of photography. Is that right?

Nick Church: 2:44

Yeah, I mean, it's primarily weddings But, sure, professional headshots, um, a few family shoots and some landscape stuff and a bit of everything really. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's applicable to all.

Raymond Hatfield: 2:55

Perfect. That's exactly what I was going for. Just to have somebody come on who's going to share knowledge that is more than, than just wedding photography. Because I think that your story is unique going from, picking up a camera one day and then within 24 months being able to leave a full time job, which as I've read online was, was a pretty good job. So knowing that it's more than just wedding photography is going to help a lot of listeners. So before we get into that, I want you to take me back to 2013, right? You had never picked up a camera.

Nick Church: 3:24

2014. What

Raymond Hatfield: 3:25

were you doing and how did you get your start in photography?

Nick Church: 3:29

Well, it was, I've always been into art, so I've always been, you know, had a creative, creative outlet and that's either been music or art, creating, you know, pen and ink drawings and things like that. The job that I, the career that I had was in the software industry and since, moving from being a software architect and software engineer, which is quite a creative job, bizarrely, because you're, you're creating software designs and so on, moving into management that I found that extremely dry and I needed to have this sort of creative side as well. it was purely that I was doing quite a lot of traveling with work. So I was going to the Middle East, going to the Far East and, uh, I wanted to, to take some pictures so that I could draw them when I got back, you know, some just different things to draw. so I bought a, micro four thirds camera, just, Olympus and thought, right, better read how this works. And I had no idea about, you know, so I was, it was on automatic mode. So I thought, right on the flight, I worked out how, how that worked. and just realized it worked out the things that I didn't know. So I didn't know how, what aperture meant. I didn't know how that affects the depth of field. I didn't know the sensor. And just so that that was a few months of just learning about that. Cause I want to, the way that I tend to learn is to do a deep dive straight away and just get from the ground up. so I'm not one of these people that could just put it into mode X and just start shooting, I don't know what that mode is. What have I just done to the camera? That's different from mode Y. so yeah, and that was it. So I was, suddenly found that the process of taking those pictures was actually a lot more immediate for a start than going home and drawing them. but it was just something I really loved doing. And it was, when I came back to the UK after that trip, I started shooting, just scenes around my local city, Bristol in the UK. said, Hey, these are pretty good. You know, these, you should exhibit these. So I did that. And before I knew it, I was, just doing some exhibitions in cafes, some galleries, took some stuff in and I was selling a bit of work and it was, and that was an amazing feeling just to be able to, when someone comes along with 20 quid, sort of 25 equivalent. Um, and says, yeah, we really like that. We'll give you some money for it and to be rewarded financially for something that you love to create. And it was a creative process is amazing. But a couple of people that did that also then said, do you shoot weddings? Which, I've never shied away for a challenge. So I said, yes, absolutely. Um, and then thought, right, I better work out how I'd actually shoot a wedding pretty quickly. I had about nine months or so, to do that. And. Yeah, so just, just spent that, that nine months really working out what the differences between, shooting a nice church that stays nice and still or a sunset that stays pretty still and loads of stuff happening at a wedding where you only get one chance and, so that, that was kind of interesting learning, learning that process. But I, I think it was after that first wedding. delivering those photos back and seeing their reaction. I haven't looked at the photos for a while, so I'm not sure if I, I don't think I dare look at it now. but to see that reaction, I thought, wow, that this is the most rewarded I've felt for years, And I thought, right, I've got, I was toying with the idea. could I do this? Am I good enough to be able to do that? Could I build up the business to do it? And my son who was 10 at the time was listening, I was boring him to tears with this. And he said, he said, just do it. What's there to lose? And I said, there's a career that I've had for 20 years. There's our house, but all those things, he said, well, you can always go back to it. And I thought that's quite hard to argue with that kind of logic of a 10 year old. Yeah. So that's what I did. I thought, right, what would I need to do to get from where I am now? to position that I could leave my current role without being irresponsible to my family and, us all being on the streets, and just set the plan in motion. so how'd that as a target?

Raymond Hatfield: 7:08

Yeah. So a lot to tackle there, a lot to unpack. Okay. So the first thing I want to, clarify, did you say that you bought a camera for a trip and then on the flight, That you were taking the trip on, you learned how to use the camera?

Nick Church: 7:21

Yeah, yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 7:24

Bit last minute, but hey, it worked out. Yeah, a bit last

Nick Church: 7:26

minute, but I didn't need it for the trip, you know, right? I mean, you got children, Raymond? I do, too, yes. Yeah, so you can imagine, Being on a flight for 10 hours is the most peace and quiet you have that you've had for years, right? So that was the perfect time

Raymond Hatfield: 7:39

to

Nick Church: 7:39

get it back. So I just sat down and read what I needed to read. And that's

Raymond Hatfield: 7:43

great. That's great. Okay. so based on that, when you were reading through this manual, what would you say was the hardest part, technically for you to comprehend or understand,

Nick Church: 7:52

I'll be, I am very lucky. I do have a background in physics and maths. And so from that. I know how light works. I know how optics, the theory of it. So that whole side of it was just already there. So I already had that knowledge and that, and that was a great, advantage, but there's about an hour's worth of YouTube videos that you could watch to, to bring you up to speed on that side. yeah, it just all seemed to make sense, really. The, the technical side of photography. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It seems to make sense. I mean, it's it is very much trial and error. And I think you do need to then go into going to get into the field and see what it's like to try some of these these settings out. But once I knew how, aperture priority mode was going to work, what my variables were in each of those cases, the classic exposure triangle, those all that stuff, that's really easy. Yeah. The basis of what I thought I needed to be able to go in and shoot photos and get and be able to record on that sense of what I had in my mind that I wanted to do

Raymond Hatfield: 8:47

right now. That makes sense. So later on, you said that when you got back from that trip, you had a few photos. You started shooting around Bristol, and then you said, one thing led to another. And then I was doing, exhibitions and selling prints. There's something in between there. There's something in between the, Hey, I took a photo and now I'm selling prints. So when you say that you're doing exhibitions and putting in coffee shops, was that, I mean, you had a full time job at this point. Was that on purpose that you would, would you just approach coffee shops and ask to put up?

Nick Church: 9:18

Yeah, absolutely. So there's, I'm real believer that, apart from maybe one or two percent of people are going to get someone come up to them and say, Hey, we want, we're going to give you this fantastic opportunity for no apparent reason that you've not earned, that, that just doesn't happen to most of us. So the, for the rest of us, it's legwork and effort. And that is really tough when you have family and you've got a full time job, it's tough to be able to put the amount of time in that you need. So what I've realized was, all right, I've got these photos. I want to be rewarded for for this. I want to get that feedback from people buying this or at least appreciating it if not buying it So that was quite a drive. I wanted to I thought right where can I do that? So I had a list of things I could do which was contact all the art galleries around my city or the coffee shops. I thought all this wall space in, cafes, and as it turns out, they will bite your arm off if there's a local photographer with some free artwork that they're going to put on the wall, loads of them said, and in the end, I just had to, just pick a selection because they all pretty much wanted it.

Raymond Hatfield: 10:19

What was it that you were hoping to get out of displaying your photos in a coffee shop? Was it sales? Or was it just recognition? Yeah,

Nick Church: 10:24

recognition and sales. I think you can, you know, you from with the advantage I've got of having had a career in business and in software, where you have to lots of marketing. And, if you're going to do anything, you have to have a brand and you have to start growing that brand and, making it a thing. And I think when we start out, it isn't a thing. It's just, whether it's your name or whatever you call it, it's just, that's just what you've called it. As soon as it. People see it on the wall, they see it on Facebook, they see it on your website, they see it on a business card. It's becoming something that is tangible then. And I think that's all part of it. And I'm not sure I was really making some big intention to think, right, I'm going to get my name across this group of this part of Bristol through the coffee shop. just knew that if I was going to do anything. Other than just enjoy my own photography, then I was going to have to start pushing my work out there and it is pushing, people aren't going to come and knock on your door and ask for it,

Raymond Hatfield: 11:16

even though that's what everybody wants. Everybody thinks that about a website too. I think that's one of the main things that you're like somebody I literally read the other day that somebody put up a website last week and they hadn't got the response that they were hoping for in terms of bookings. And I thought to myself, like, wow, like one week, There's going to be a lot of failures in your eyes in the coming future, if, if within a week, you don't have a, a successful business. So, you're absolutely right. You know, you do got to put in that work and it's great to hear that you went out of your way to, figure out kind of just test things out and, put them up. So at this point, you still had your full time job, right?

Nick Church: 11:51

Still, yeah, still full time. And

Raymond Hatfield: 11:54

when you, when that couple approached you to shoot their wedding, what was going through your mind in terms of, were you ready to, to leave your job that day? or what, what was the thought process?

Nick Church: 12:04

No, it was, at that stage, I was, still just going with it and thinking, wow, that that's what a compliment that somebody wants me to shoot their wedding. So that was still the thing, if you've got one booking in nine months time, you're not gonna, in your right mind going on Monday morning and hand your notice in and leave your job. Um, but I knew that that, that was in the place. And before I got to that point, I had done a few more had come along. so by the time I did that first one, I had about four more, following months, a few months after that. And it was there at that point when I had sort of five or six, I thought, right, I'm at the point now where, I'm busy enough as it is anyway with, with the children, with work is not even a nine to five job. It was a ridiculously busy, executive role. I'm going to either need to, artificially stop It. It may be what a number, 10 a year perhaps is the most I could reasonably do while not making myself ill with too much, work at the weekend, having no downtime, or need to go, from 10 to a lot more than 10, if I'm going to make it something that I leave my job for. And so that's what I decided to do. I thought, well, I've seemed to stumble onto something. It's something I love doing. I'd love, when I woke up. In the morning to go and shoot a wedding. I felt that kind of feeling you get when you do the first job that you love when you're younger. And I hadn't had that for a long time. it was addictive and I wanted to do that. And so I decided to think, right, how can I make that? put that in center stage rather than going back to work on Monday morning and, going through the motions of that part of my life. And so it was just what a, then a strategy of how to build up from the 10 or so I had up to the 30 or 40 bookings that I would need to provide this, an equivalent level of income that I had before.

Raymond Hatfield: 13:51

Right, right. So during this whole process, you're obviously still very new to photography and you're trying to learn as much as possible. And I know that you said that you learn a lot by doing, but were there any other sources of education that you had to master your skills as a photographer?

Nick Church: 14:05

it was largely looking at other people's work, I think was, think if you can in whichever genre of photography is your thing, I think for us all to improve, we have to be able to appreciate what it is about someone else's images. And it doesn't need to be someone that's really well known. It could be someone that's their first image they posted. You think, wow, I really love that part about that image. And to understand what you're seeing, why you think that's better and understand what. your image, your images are lacking that don't have, don't create that feeling. If you can understand all of that, then you've got everything you need to actually start doing the things that you're seeing. Cause it's the same skills, right? To be able to, to be able to critique an image well, is the same skills you need to actually create an image that's got all those positive points in it. So I did a lot of that looking around and thinking, right, I can see that my stuff's okay, it doesn't really communicate a story as such, and my editing, ah, when you see other people's editing, wow, it just jumps from the page. So I, I started just listing the things that I needed to know. As I said, time was short. So if it was, right, people are using Photoshop. I've got no idea how to use Photoshop. Next time I'm on a train and I'm going to a meeting, that's what I will do. I'll, I'll spend that hour looking at a couple of YouTube videos, working out to use Photoshop. So by the time I get to the meeting, do all that stuff, But I've also then acquired that skill of, that I can go back and take some shots, put them in Photoshop and try and recreate some of the same looks that I'd seen. So that was always useful. I've never been one for books. I can read, um, but I've never been, I've never been, I've never been one that thinks, right, I'm going to find, you know, read, read a seminal book on photography or anything like that. I probably should have done, but that's not the way that my brain's wired up. So it's mostly trial and error, and that was shooting every opportunity I could. In a commercial sense. Well, I wasn't particularly interested in doing loads of shots of the cat because I didn't really think that that was going to give me any particular feedback, but there are loads of other opportunities like, every small business needs photos of their products and they don't necessarily want to pay for it, but then you don't necessarily need to be paid for it. So if they do, so for, for ages, people's birthday and Christmas presents were the things that people were making that I was taking their photos of and that was how we you know, But that and that's still being rewarded for what you're doing and you're getting feedback plus you can refer to their website to show your work off and those other things. There's some local history renovations going on near me where they were renovating a very old gatehouse to an old mansion. So I volunteered to be the photographer for that. So that was something for about a year that I did, just charting its development from like a ruin to a space that's now used for conferences and all sorts of things. Again, didn't get paid, but the exposure you get in the paper. And on TV because they're showing all the photos and you get a credit every time it's invaluable. So some of that stuff you just can't buy that kind of marketing sometimes.

Raymond Hatfield: 16:52

Yeah. And it just feels good. I get that. I totally get that. So I want to go back to that first couple who approached you to shoot their wedding. Okay. I want to know, how was it that they found you? I want to know, so how you booked them, were you nervous and how did it turn out?

Nick Church: 17:08

they met me at the gallery. So I was exhibiting this work. So we talked about that and I did explain, I am pretty bullish in what I will go for. But I'm not going to sell myself. I'm not going to sell something I don't have. So I did, I was open with them and said, I haven't shot a wedding before. But I think I can, I think I can do it. And. I said, you can see that, you know, if you like the work that you're looking at now, then, so I was selling, managing expectations from the outset, but also at the same time, I couldn't afford to be that guy that's doing 200, 300 free weddings, whatever, because that's never then going to get me to where I need to go. Yes. and even at that point, time was, my time is so limited. I'm not going to be doing four or five days of work for free. You know, I just don't have time. There's, you know, for a start, my partner would say, we've got quite a lot of stuff here you could do for four or five days if you don't want to be paid. You know, um, so, I manage their expectations, but all the while selling the fact that I have got an eye that they obviously like. I've got a style that they like from my, my work. And then, yeah, it was to then a lot of researching to find out, right, how do you book a couple for a wedding? How, what do you take payment for? All up front, you take a deposit. What's the contract look like? And, how'd you manage the workflow of that wedding, the appointments, luckily again, for my own, for my, the career that I was still in then meetings, workflow management and everything else. It is, is fairly, something I was, I was familiar with. So. I've put down what I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't call it a contract, but put down what I thought was, should be my terms document. This is what you're going to get. And took that booking. So I took that 20 percent for the fee. I think it was, 900 pounds, I think. I'd say about 1, 000

Raymond Hatfield: 18:53

How did that wedding turn out? When you shot it, you mentioned earlier that you haven't wanted to go back and look at it. I totally understand that. I'm sure a lot of other people do. but did they react to the photos?

Nick Church: 19:04

they loved them. And I was really pleased. They really loved them. the venue still, you do use a couple of the photos for their, on their website. I think it went well. I was, it was a beautiful venue. I've been there several times since. So I was dealt a pretty good hand opening hand. It's a lovely, it's a pretty venue. It was a gorgeous blue day. So it was the one of the three days in the year here that it's like that. So it was an outdoor ceremony, which two years ago was still relatively rare in the UK because There's different rules to get the weather and the licensing. You can't just get married anywhere in the UK. You have to have to get a license for a particular building And so if it's a nice day, if you haven't licensed the bit of the garden then you can't get married outside. Oh my goodness. So so it was um, yeah And I've got some shots now that I think are probably a little bit cheesy. but There were some that I thought, well, I'm just going to try this. It might not work. And I think that's really important in whatever genre of photography, if you want to do something a bit different, you've just got to try some stuff. And, especially once all the safer shots are in the bag, just try some crazy stuff. And probably two thirds of it won't work, but occasionally you'll get something that just really works well. And I think on that one, it was, uh, I was trying to get a shot of the bride and groom and some bridesmaids, beyond the venue, but in the way was this, this old, I think it was a Cadillac, an old fifties, Cadillac that they, they use. And I completely messed the focus up and focused on the word Cadillac of this car. And they were in the background out of focus. And that was the front of the album, sort of, and it's just a happy accident. but if you, you know, if you're up for just playing with things and seeing what comes out of those sorts of accidents, I think that's really useful. Right. But yeah, it was great. I did the album for them, took it round. they sat down and they, they were happy that they've referred me to other people. So I have, I have picked up a booking from them. So I don't think it was just lip service. I think they were quite happy, but I'm sure looking back on it, they probably, um, Could have got a better photographer for their first, you know, if they'd looked

Raymond Hatfield: 21:00

around but hey, you know, it's too late now So after that first wedding Did you know at that moment that you wanted to take wedding photography and photography full time to eventually leave your job?

Nick Church: 21:15

Yeah, I had tried all sorts of, photography at that point. So I was, I had this wedding for a while booked in, but all the while I was thinking I'd love, you know, I love music, so I'd love to do band photography. So I was doing all sorts of things like live events, some baby stuff, but the practicalities of it are, if you want to earn serious money, then, weddings is where it's at. And I think, certainly it's not the only place it's at, but it's one of the easiest places to sort of get a foot in and start, it's where most of us are going to buy photography for as well. You know, it's for a wedding. We're likely, less likely to get our own headshots done or anything like that. so that, that's why I decided to put my focus and that's when I started. Once I thought I'd, I love that place for the wedding. I was nervous. especially now looking back, then I had my Nikon D750, a 50 mil lens and a 7300. And that was it. No backup, nothing, you know, nothing. So, looking back, I think I probably should have been more nervous than I was, because if something had gone wrong, I would have struggled to have fulfilled that task. But I don't think that's particularly unusual. I think probably a lot of us are, I like that to start because you don't want to go out and buy two cameras. from the outset when you can't really afford one.

Raymond Hatfield: 22:25

I don't know how big it is, over in the UK, but I know here in, the US, there's a lot of services where you can, uh, rent camera gear, lots of lenses and bodies. If you could go back in time, would you have rented, a second body in less? Yeah,

Nick Church: 22:36

yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. it's something that, that I still, have never done. And I think I probably could have saved myself. over the last three years of buying lenses thinking, yeah, I'm not going to switch camera system, selling those, the amount you lose each time. And at the time as well, shooting on a, a 70 to 300. You know, 4. 5 to 5. 6, thank goodness. It was a bright day because I'd have, um, much better would have been to, yeah, just to, to rent a 2. 8, you know, 7, 200. I don't know why I didn't, but I just figured that I've got what I need and I'll limp along. I think I did bring a compact camera with me. My partner's camera just to, is a backup. I think they're sailing a bit close.

Raymond Hatfield: 23:23

Save a few bucks. I got that. So after that first wedding, I wanted to know, when and how you made the decision to go full time and how can the listeners know when it's the right decision to go full time?

Nick Church: 23:35

Well, I think the, there's, it's all about having a strategy and I, decided, um, after that first one when I had a few more in the pipeline, I thought right this I want to try and see if I can do this full time and make a decent income from it. I didn't know at that time if that was going to be successful, if I could do that, but I knew that I was going to try to do it. So you have to have that as your long term aim. The, whether you want to do it, I think is, is a really important decision because as you know, and lots of people listening will know as well that once you do go into, making it more of a serious thing, then it kind of gets a bit less fun, you know, and, and now when the kids are doing something pretty cool in the garden, or there's a beautiful sunset, I think, right, can I grab my camera? I think, oh, forget it, can't be bothered, you know, because I know that all those images would just go to the back of thousands and thousands of wedding images, I've still got to add it, so there is that side of it, If you want to make it a full time thing because you want to shoot more photos, it might not be the right thing to do because that's probably the one thing you don't do is shoot more of what you do do more of is on Facebook all the time, emailing everybody, editing lots and lots of stuff. the actual shooting bit becomes quite a small, a small portion of the day. but I think it, That's not to say that if you love taking photos, if you could then be rewarded for doing that and all the surrounding stuff that does it, that is a great feeling. and I really wanted to have that. And I, and I knew that, I had a good chance of doing that. So for me, it was then working out what sort of time period I would need to do that. I knew it wasn't going to take, I couldn't do it in a year. I also knew that I couldn't take 10 I couldn't just wait for referrals. It's like you said earlier, Raymond, you can't just get some nice images and put them out there and expect people to come and say, Hey, can you be our photographer as well? Because it very rarely happens like that, especially when you're starting. It's like an exponential kind of thing, isn't it? There's, if you've not done many weddings, there's not many people that have seen you work that are going to, When you've done when you've done 500 weddings is quite easy because there's thousands of people that you've met and spoken to and that know your name. So for me, it was a case of working out how to do that in the quickest way possible. And that was Facebook advertising. So I put a lot of effort for me into Facebook to just get as many bookings as possible, and start to see, when those started to come in, right? And if I'm getting two bookings a month, how long is it going to be before my pipelines? I start looking at what that income might be in the next 12 months, next 24 months. At what point is that going to, you know, equal my current salary because that's the point then that you start to plan to move from one to the other

Raymond Hatfield: 26:08

Okay. So if somebody's listening right now and they want to eventually leave their full time job the number one thing that they need to consider is they need to come up with a plan of how they're going to Replace their current income, which is what it sounds like what you just said, right?

Nick Church: 26:25

Yeah. Okay. So

Raymond Hatfield: 26:27

when I You I get, and I know that I told you this before we started, but I get a lot of emails from people asking to come on to the show. And usually, these people are trying to sell some sort of new course or something else to the beautiful people of the beginner photography podcast. Right. So I always ask a followup question and just to make sure that they are legit. Right. So when I read about your success, I asked you, why do you think photographers struggle so much to get bookings? Why do they struggle so much?

Nick Church: 27:40

Yeah, and I think that's, because you have to appreciate that you do need good work, you need to have good work there. Most people that want to do it as a career, whether it's wedding or whatever, you would hope that they've got the quality, they've got the skills there, but there's no point. You can be the best photographer in the world. If you're not getting your work in front of the right person at the right time, then they're not going to book you. And that's where the other side of the coin is the marketing and conversely, if you're not a great photographer, but you're a great marketeer, you just give, you're just putting poor quality work in front of everybody. So you're, you're wasting your money. So it, it does need both of those. And I think, you can work on those separately. So if, if you can identify what you need to improve your game technically to get, your image is looking better and start a course of action to improve that. Now, what I did was a list of things that I needed. I wanted to improve in my work. I didn't have time to do it all straight away. Now, a lot of people will have full time jobs that are very difficult in the software industry. As a manager, you've got a bit more advantage that your is desk based. So during lunch, you can maybe do half an hour of, look at Googling and reading stuff. A lot of jobs, you just don't have that. Luxury. if you're a builder, if you're, whatever it is, you know what, whatever you're doing. so I had to, work, I created a list of, and I used a, an online platform to do it. just a, a list of the things that I thought I needed to know, how long I think I would need, and just try and have that list of tasks. So when you're sat on a bus, when you're sat on the train, you think, well, I've got an hour. Let's pick something off the, off the list. And that's You're then making really good use of your time because it's so easy otherwise to sit just watching tv and you have to be mindful of the fact you have got a partnership with your partner if you're in if you're in a relationship And you have to be protect that as well, you know be precious with that but there is a lot of time where we're just kind of In a standby mode that we could actually yeah, what wasting time. the other advantages of having a list like that that's prioritized and you know what the important stuff is, is that every day, most of us are going to have half an hour every day that we could do that, even if it's in the bath and we careful not to drop our tablets in the bath. you've got half an hour and you've, but you feel then that you're making progress. So sometimes when you've really flat out at work and you've got this dream of being a photographer and it just sometimes seem impossible. But if you've just sent one email that day, or if you've just learned about focus stacking that day, you feel that you're a little bit further forward. And that's really important, I think, for the to keep that drive and keep the momentum going.

Raymond Hatfield: 30:09

So when it comes to the booking side of things, I think we talked a little bit about this earlier is the reasons why I think beginners have a hard time making the leap is that they don't know where bookings are going to come from. When I read an article, from you, that was all about Facebook advertising. And we just talked about Facebook advertising there. Is that where you focused all of your attention to get your bookings? And if so, can you kind of walk me through an example of a Facebook ad strategy?

Nick Church: 30:39

Absolutely. Yeah, it was, I would say that certainly in the, I mean, even now, probably half my bookings are through Facebook, Facebook advertising. In those days, it was all through that because, as I said, those other streams like I hadn't, you know, I wasn't using Instagram then referrals were coming through. So it was all about Facebook. way that I do this, as I've said in that, article that you referenced there is, just create, cause we were all used to as our, if we've got a business page or if you have, if you've got a business page for your photography, even if it's a hobby, quite often, we've got that you create a post with some nice images on it, a bit of text. You post that as usual to your page. The main mistake a lot of people make when they first put a foot into the world of Facebook advertising and paid advertising is to boost the post by clicking boost post. Cause you'd have thought that does exactly what you want, right? But it does the, it's crap. It does. It. It doesn't do it. It doesn't do what you want, it doesn't know that you are trying to target brides, potential brides. All it does is just send that post in front of a mixture of people that may want that, that respond well to adverts. So that could be a 16-year-old boy, could be someone who's 90. It does, it is just somebody that, that is gonna be clicking stuff. So you don't want that. So you've made your post. You then have to go into Facebook's advert manager. now this is a. Pretty complicated platform, but it, most of it, you just don't need to touch. if you go into there, it's less complicated than it looks, because all you want to do is target the, what you can do through face through the ad manager that you can't do through boost post is to target an audience of the right people. So you can't shape that, that audience who you want to send your advert to. So through, the ad manager, you can select, women. I don't know what it's like in the U. S., but in the U. K., blokes are never going to book a photographer, maybe once. I think I've taken two bookings ever. so there's no point. though you might think, well, there's some that will, but there's no point spending half your budget to target them. You want to keep it as concentrated with the right group. So women between 25 that that's what I tend to do. depending on what your market is, if you're a landscape photographer or family, those are going to all be completely different. So for weddings I'm talking about, and then you go, go through and say, I want this audience. It starts off when I do that, you set a, geographical area. So for me, that's about 80 miles around where I live. I don't mind traveling. Some people that don't want to travel set a smaller area. It doesn't matter. that gives me about 200, 000 people. I then say, I'm only interested in those women in that group that also have their status as engaged. So that then brings it down to about 40, 000 and that's then a much more concentrated group of people. So you put, that, that's your audience. Rather than creating a new ad in the creative bit of it, you just select the post that you previously created and you're going to now just, spread that post around to that audience. And it means in their feed, it's going to come up with that advert. so the advert, um, In that post, there's three things you need is your best photos, so some really nice images that are going to grab attention, some text so people know what's going on. what you're doing, you did wedding photography. I have always put in a, an offer, even if it's 5%, 10%, doesn't matter. Put your prices up by 10 10 percent offer in. But if you don't put an offer in, I've tried this, you won't get anything. So people on Facebook are looking for a bargain. add a call to action. so you're saying if you would like a no commitment quote, contact me here, PM me, whatever it is. And that, so people are really, it's really obvious what they do. I firmly believe. That seems to be anti everything in this space that you shouldn't push people to your website because I think you've got them on that platform Don't let them go Don't walk out the door onto another onto somewhere where you might never see them again Yeah, keep them in there engage with the messenger keep them into there get their email but keep in touch with my messenger and that that's the way that I work it and the other thing I have found that you do have to And this is tough for a lot of people starting out. You do have to invest It obviously costs to, push these adverts around. and you can go from, I think,$1 to a, to with, with no upper limit. It just, you know, it will just send it to more and more people. There seems to be in the UK, at least when I've tried it for$5 a day, that it doesn't even get like a quarter of 20. It just seems, it, it, you don't get any feedback at all from it really. There seems like there's a low limit that below which you're wasting your$5 a day. I tend to do about$20 a day. for seven days. Now that is quite a lot. but what I do find is a lot of us will quite often go and spend 500 on a lens that we've got, and unless you've got any means to make that for that lens to make you money, then it's just a, you know, it's because that's nice thing to buy, isn't it? It's something you own. Whereas something like advertising, it feels like it might be, you're not getting anything concrete from it, but it's worth trying that 20 a day, seven days, five days, whatever your limit is. whatever the budget is. And I typically do 20 for 10 days and I will normally get between seven and 10 bookings, wedding bookings from that. Now that what's that 30, 300, 300 pounds, 30 pounds of booking.

Raymond Hatfield: 36:25

So we're talking a little bit about the the facebook ad strategy that you have there and how much to spend on these ads. Yeah, Okay, I guess I got two questions. First, in the ad that you have, you say, obviously, give some sort of offer, right? But is this like a general ad that you're saying, like, look, Nick Church Photography, here are some sample images. If you're interested for your wedding date, here's a 10 percent off or 20 percent off or whatever, contact me now. Or is it something more than that?

Nick Church: 36:51

It's a target, so, because my, the advert, Text has to be targeting, sorry, has to be tuned to the audience that you're, sending it to. So I'm sending it to women are about to be engaged, that they're engaged. So it's all about weddings. It's very clearly stating that I'm a wedding photographer. You know, I wouldn't send, I wouldn't use the same content and stuff too. If I was doing an architectural post, that would be a completely different set of parameters there. So it's all about weddings. If you get in touch, I'll be able to give you a quote and you'll get 10 percent off if you quote this code and you make a code up. so people are very clear what you're offering, what you're going to provide them, what their images are going to look like, because you can show the images there, and how to get in touch. And you know, you're one click away and people, they get in touch. Often people will leave comments in the post, they'll comment their partner, they'll comment friends or family, and that's great as well because like I said you do have to go and meet people halfway, you can't just sit back and wait for those emails to come in any more than you could just put up a website and wait for people to come and come by and book you. So each of those people that comment you want to go in and message each of those saying, Hey, thanks for commenting. Thanks for showing interest in my post. Would you like a quote? Some people say, Oh, that would be great. And then book the next day. But you think, well, why didn't you then contact me? But people just need that bit of a shove sometimes. And if you're polite and you're not being spamming and you're not bothering them, then people are really happy for that. And, sometimes they go quiet and you catch up with them a bit later. my workflow system reminds me a few days later, just ping them again and just say, hi, you haven't got back to me. And after a few times you just let it go because you're diminishing returns. But occasionally they'll say, thanks for keeping in touch. We were looking for a venue. we've now got it. Are you free? Can we, you know, and again, you're off again and you're having that, that dialogue with them. the other side benefit is that with this post going around people, a lot of people like your page as well. So when I put in this. 20 a day for 10 days, 200, 200. So I will get, seven, 10 bookings or so, which is, great, you know, really great return, you know, compare with advertising compared with standing at a wedding fair all day. It's amazing. this is why I use it so, so frequently, but the side benefit is you also pick up, I pick up 30, 50. page a day while the advert's running, on top of the usual kind of organic people that come into your page. so you're also boosting that audience of people that the next post you do, which you're not paid for, hitting those people again, they're the right people. So you're improving the richness of your, the people that are liking your page because you're filling it with engaged. Women,

Raymond Hatfield: 39:30

of course,

Nick Church: 39:31

as a wedding photographer, that's who you want to see if you're architectural, you want to fill it with architects or landscape on people that love art and buy art. And, you get, you get it. It

Raymond Hatfield: 39:39

makes sense. That's a great strategy right there. And it's definitely, I'm not sure if it's more than what we would pay here in the U S I do a lot of Facebook advertising, but, I think my strategy is a little bit different. I think that yours is a lot more direct and I think that's why it works so well. And I think that I'm, I'm going to have to give it a try. because like you said, I mean, you don't know until you try something. so thank you. You have to try it.

Nick Church: 39:59

You have to try it. I mean, it's just, you have, like I said, have to give it good enough go that it's got a chance of success and that where I see a lot of people, and I've, I've done this myself and this is, What I'm hoping to help people with is not to make the same mistakes I've done is I was initially thinking I don't want to spend 20 a day. That's a lot of money. That's there's quite a few beers I can buy for that. But so you put down 55 quid and it doesn't work, you don't get anything, so you haven't really given it a good try, try it for, shorten the number of days because the way the algorithm works is it will give your ad to the people it thinks that Facebook thinks are most likely to respond to it. So those first couple of days are going to be the best performing days anyway. So shorten it to three days if you're limited on budget and just see, see what happens. If nothing happens. Stop it. All right. You say you spent 75, but you've gained knowledge that that what you did then didn't work. So you're not going to do it again. And that's a really useful thing to have.

Raymond Hatfield: 40:52

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, can you kind of give me some of your favorite tools aside from Facebook advertising, favorite tools and techniques that you used in the software development industry and apply them directly to photography to boost your success?

Nick Church: 41:07

Yeah, I mean, I'm, by nature, probably the most disorganized person. I think I know, so that would be a

Raymond Hatfield: 41:13

close second.

Nick Church: 41:15

Well, I'd love to have a, disorganized off, but let's see your office looks tidier than mine. That's just one

Raymond Hatfield: 41:21

direction.

Nick Church: 41:24

so I do need to have these, this idea of a second brain. I need to have a workflow management system that is telling me when I need to book, book appointments for couples. So that's something that I've taken straight from when I used to, manage larger teams of people, software developers, projects, and customers, is just have all that information somewhere. So, the one I use is kind of called Lightblue Software, but there's, loads of others that are specific to Lightblue. photography. they just, when I get an inquiry, I get it, I put it in there and it will then it will track the quotes. It will let me prepare a quote through it and all the, all those other stuff. Now, the reason I did that is because I used to have a spreadsheet when I started out, because you, you want your tools to grow with you. I think

Raymond Hatfield: 42:03

you

Nick Church: 42:03

don't want to splash out on expense that you don't know you're going to get value from. So initially a spreadsheet, when you've got five weddings is fine. You're not going to forget them. What I had done was probably let that grow to a point where the cracks are starting to show in that system. I had a spreadsheet and I googled a calendar that was linked together. And I was in a meeting actually with, some colleagues from San Diego and Mumbai and old job. This was, I had a text message on my phone saying, hi, Nick, we're at the venue. We hope you're on your way. And I went white. You can imagine. I went white as a sheet. Everyone said, are you okay? And I was frantic. I didn't have an, Oh, what happened was a phone didn't know who it was. So I was. I was, I'd got the phone number. I was reverse engineering through my email to see if I could search for that phone number. Eventually found out that it was a venue visit with them, not the actual wedding. And so I, I did that noise and then, figured, right, this evening I need to buy some better software that's going to be able to track things more responsibly. Cause I'm just not, so that, that's been really useful. The other thing that I swear by is, a system called Kanban, which is a Japanese way of task management, and it's effectively in simplest form is you write things on post it notes and you put them on your wall, but as online versions, obviously, or apps for your desktop, but you just have columns of to do. Stuff I need to do, things are in progress, things that are done. And it seems so stupidly simple, but what we do without having that is we start lots of different tasks. We don't ever really finish them. We've got loads of things on the go. And when you've got loads of things on the go, you're really inefficient. and you get a rabbit hole. So you think, well, I need to do a website. I'll need some images. I'll be back and take some images of that before you know it. You've forgotten about the website and you're, you're off taking photos. What, what Kanban lets you do is you just say. going to do, I'm going to improve SEO on my website. You put it on a post it note, you put it on the wall. Then you, the next thing you say, right, I need to work out focus decking. Right? So you, you put that on there, you put it on the wall, you think for my business, is that more important than doing SEO or less important? You think it's probably less important. And so the, what you end up with is this to do list of very well prioritized things. So you never look at that again, apart from the top one, when you've got some time, you take the first card off, you put it in your in progress column, and you work on that task until it's finished. So it might be that you're going to improve SEO. So you don't do anything else until you finish that thing. And once it's done, you put it into completed and the complete column fills up and you get a real sense of achievement because you're moving stuff through. the other thing it's, it's really useful for is, you don't gold plate things. So things like website design is a classic thing that if you think, right, I need to approve the website to make it look better. That's really difficult. If you've not said, well, how, when do you stop that task? Cause you could carry on doing that forever. So you want, you want to be a bit more specific about what, what is it, right? I need to resize the images because they're slow to load. And I put just that bit on a card and stick it on there. And then you can do those very tangible things and they're quite, and then they become smaller as well. So you can keep that throughput really good. So that's, that's been an absolute godsend because, when I the full time job still I'd made the decision that I was going to, try and do this as a career. I knew all the things I need to do. I need to get bookings. I had to do an advert and you have so many ideas, especially for me. It's early in the morning. You get like a load of ideas coming to your head and the worst thing to do is then start working on those ideas before you've thought, are they going to cost me a fortune? Is it going to take me months of effort? Is it actually as important? Because the next day, actually, what seemed like a good idea yesterday, you think, actually, I don't think that's a very good idea at all. And if you spent, if you did spend yesterday doing that thing, you've just wasted a day doing something. So when you have these ideas, I could just put them on a card and you separate your thinking time from your doing time. And that's a really useful thing when you've got. time constrained, but when you're time constrained, like when you've got full time job, you wanted to say, right, I've got half an hour to do something. Let's pick from that list. Then when you get all these other ideas, you just stick them in the list. Do them at the right time, but you don't divert from what you're doing. And it just keeps you very focused on, on what you need to do. And over time, when you're saying, well, I need to get 10 more bookings. I need to, have a second shooter in place. You can start to see these things and you think, right, you can see how long it's taken to do each of these things. You can start to get an idea how long it's going to take you to get through all of that stuff. If that stuff is the things you need to do to go full time. And you could start to then schedule. Your life, you know what what that pathway is going to look like and for me It became clear about a year before and I did have a year where it was insanely busy So I did 40 weddings in a summer We're in a year

Raymond Hatfield: 46:48

on top of your job

Nick Church: 46:50

and it nearly killed me. And so this time last year was when I thought, right, I can't do that again. Now's the time the systems I had in place tracking my pipeline, which was based on actual bookings, but also what I thought might come in, prediction based on the year before when that gets a certain figure, I thought right now, now's the time to do it because I can't, do another year anyway, so you have to do it and you do get to that point where it's deal or no deal, there's no way back. And I think that's exciting time when you're at that point, I think, right, I'm just going to go for it now because you can't not, if you've got bookings, you've got 50 bookings in ahead of you, you can't continue doing a full time job and not doing that,

Raymond Hatfield: 47:27

right? Of course. That was a very, clear way of describing exactly kind of the workflow process that needs to be done throughout an entire booking So so for sharing that and just the idea of kanban is something that I found I think probably two or three years ago and I can attest to the power of it and how it can just organize almost everything if you really spend time to put in the work, but I want to know now that you have gone full time You You've left your job, you now work from home, you've now gone full time. What is a misconception that people have about going full time?

Nick Church: 48:01

I think the, you probably find that you work longer. You're putting more hours in than you did in a, nine to five job for sure. Because The time when you've been working either out shooting, taking photos or editing, you get back five, six, seven o'clock and you think, right, now's the time. I'm going to just chill out now and spend some time with my partner. That's the time that everyone else is sitting down, but that's so everyone else is thinking, Hey, let's just message that photographer and see if they can take a landscape for our wall, you know? And so you, then you sit down and your phone's going crazy. And so you do have to compartmentalize your time a bit, which is extremely difficult when. You have a potential booking coming in. so you do, you lose a bit of time, but what I love it is that you are in absolute control of success and failure, and if you do a shoot, that's, you're not happy with, you've got no one else to blame. You look in the mirror and you can say, well, that's, if you learn something from it. Then it's still a positive thing. You think, wow, I didn't deal with the poor light very well at all in that shoot. I need to up my game. I need to do this next time. And that's been, and that's really productive because you can then go straight into your next shoot with a refreshed attitude about what you're going to do differently. So that's one thing. I think the other side of, as I said, it being that you're just going to be a creative that, sits there in coffee shops and edits and all those things, sometimes it is just really hard graft of plowing through emails, messaging clients, doing loads of editing, advertising campaigns, and those sorts of things. It's, a huge number of other things that I didn't imagine I'd be doing as much of as I am. But the reward is that it's something that's mine and it, and it's, taking the business further forward. and that's, yeah, that, that's something I could never give up and I do wish I'd done it years before I really do. Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 49:46

Oh really? Wow. That's really interesting to hear. But I hear the exact same thing from a lot of other photographers. they have this lofty idea that once they go full time, it's just free time except for when you're shooting, that you can dedicate all your time to shooting, which there's a lot more time that you can't dedicate. But like you said, it is, there's so much more that goes into it than just shooting. And it's not even just like other photographers, like even though that's like the dream, like, Oh, that'd be so great. it's everybody. Like every time we go out to dinner with like my wife's friends, one of my wife's friends made a joke the other day that I don't work. She's like, but you don't, but you don't work. Oh my gosh. I felt like, you know, triggered right there. I was like, well, did you just, you have no idea, but it's that misconception. And, I can't blame her for thinking that. but once you figure out what it is that you're doing and how to do it proficiently enough to earn an income from it. Like you said, there's nothing better in the world than that feeling of being in control of your own success. So, uh, thank you for sharing that. I want to know, if you had to go back to 2014, right? That flight that you took when you were trying to learn the camera. If you could go back to that date, is there something that you would tell yourself? Is there something that today Nick Church would tell that Nick Church, that could help them along their journey, to get here faster?

Nick Church: 51:02

What would I say? yeah, I would certainly, for a while I was convinced that, going into, you know, do I go into technical stuff, but I was convinced that this Micro Four Thirds, Um, I knew that this camera was going to be fine and for everything, and I invested too heavily in lenses for it. I'm thinking I need, I need a zoom lens for it, for a decent zoom lens for weddings and that kind of thing. And even before the first wedding, once my knowledge had, improved a bit, I thought this is going to be quite hard, to use this camera. And where we are now with mirrorless is a quite different place than we were in 2013, 2014. So, yeah, that was one thing I think, I think is take time to think, right, what do I need? if I'm going to buy a piece of equipment, what problem am I expecting that lens to solve? What is it that's got, if I'm, and that that's even, I think it's easier to get an actor to have that problem when you're running your own business, because you think, Oh, I probably could do the new laptop this year, but it does that laptop. is there a problem with the current one that you're not solving? Or do you just wanna buy a new laptop? It's kind of cool to, and I'm a sucker for that and I do struggle with that quite a lot. And, so that's something that I would definitely try and start off without having that problem. just trying to buy like

Raymond Hatfield: 52:10

as basic as possible is that it

Nick Church: 52:13

just get the tools that you need, work out, what do you need to do. A classic example is last year I went to a Sony system from Nikon, so I sold all of my lenses, bought Sony kit, which was fabulously expensive and I love it, but it hasn't solved any problems that I had. I was doing pretty well with Nikon and it's not helped me get any more shoots. It's not earned me any more money than I would have done with Nikon. It was just a cool thing to do, but not particularly sensible from a business perspective, you know, if there was. if you're a travel photographer and you're shooting, scenes in central Africa, say, and you want to travel light, then maybe a mirrorless system then does make sense. And that does solve a problem you've got because you haven't got tons of stuff to get to carry around. So it's just, Horses for courses, I think in, in who you are and what you're trying to achieve and get the right tools in place at the right time, not too early. and a good example is, as I said, with having a spreadsheet, if I'd had a huge, management system from day one, then it would have cost me, you know, the monthly fee and I've never would have used it until that first thing. So it's finding the right time. I think you do it too early or too late and just try to identify when it is.

Raymond Hatfield: 53:21

I had never even thought of it like that way. cause obviously picking up a CRM is, is going to be pretty expensive to get some sort of client management software. And if you don't have enough, work coming in, you probably just going to neglect the whole system. That's, that's right. Yeah. I never had to think about that. So thank you. Thank you. As somebody who recently started, right, and kind of has gotten to where you are now along your journey. Was there any, commonly, taught information that you think is just poor information for new photographers to hear or learn?

Nick Church: 53:50

Well, I, I did find that, yeah, I mean, things like if you've got a great website, that that's the main thing, get people to go to your website, that that's what it's all about. It's all about SEO. And I just don't think it is. I don't know. I'm not saying that if my website had, better SEO and I put more effort into it, I wouldn't have more direct bookings. I may well have done, but I've also got to the point I am now without doing that, so that isn't as important. I don't think, another one I think is, there's the, the SEO side. yeah, sorry, what was the, I'll ask questions again, Raymond, sorry, I've, I've got no

Raymond Hatfield: 54:25

worries. What are some commonly bad information that you hear being taught to beginners?

Nick Church: 54:29

Right. the other thing I heard quite a lot of through forums and, just through YouTube videos is that don't expect it to earn a huge amount of money. There's no rich photographers. And I think that's completely untrue. It just depends what. It depends what if that's what your goal is. If your goal is to make money from through photography and you've got the right strategy in place, then you can do that. And, so that that's something that I'm really pleased that I've been able to prove wrong because I couldn't afford it not to be. as you said at the start here, I did have a good career. It was quite scary to leave it after so long, you have a security in a responsible position in a company, and to leave that and just go out on your own with something completely different that arguably you've. been spending a couple of years working on is really, can be risky if you don't have the right strategy in place. But I was able to get it to that point that, that it was paying the same, which had the double edged problem of, for one year I was earning almost twice the salary because the wedding photography business was up and running and I was still doing another one. so this, the first year, last year was quite tough because I've gone back, gone back, but that's, but that's a nice problem to have, right? I mean, so yes, that's another thing. and I think that you need to, you have to know Yeah, I can't even give an example because I didn't do this, but you have to read the book by such and such, such and such. And if you don't read that, you're not going to be able to take good photos because they'll know more. And if you don't read them, then you're somehow disrespecting the industry because, it's crap. if you wanted, There's lots of ways to it. Yes, you can do it that way or you can decide probably possibly because I've come from an art, more of an art background that you probably don't want to just spend time learning how other artists do it. you want to work out how am I going to communicate what I want to achieve in my photos? And that might be completely different. And perhaps not reading the book that everyone reads is the right thing to do. So I think, so rather than saying don't read or do read, it's more about there isn't, there's no one way to do it. The way that works for you is the right way to do it. And, everyone comes to a position of success in any business, loads of different ways. That's why there's so many people that are multi billionaires that have never been to college. that, that's why there's not just one way to do it.

Raymond Hatfield: 56:38

Yeah. Right. I mean, if there was then. That would be the book to read, right?

Nick Church: 56:42

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 56:44

And I'd be writing it if I could.

Nick Church: 56:46

That's an opportunity.

Raymond Hatfield: 56:47

I probably wouldn't read it, only because like you, I don't pick up anything from reading, really. I do have to go out there and do, but I know other photographers personally who, they've learned everything about photography from reading books. So, thank you for sharing that perspective that, You really have to be self aware, in order to learn that you do.

Nick Church: 57:05

And I think that's a really good way for you. You've got to be self aware of your work, your photography itself. And that means if you can either, pick up in other people, what you want to do, the bits of their photos, you want to try and achieve and use to give that same feeling, then that's great. But also Get critique from other people that who's people that you trust, not just people on Facebook, when you know, they're going to just slate your photos, regardless people that can give you an honest appraisal of, what your photos are like. I think that's something that you have to be quite brave. But It's better to know before you start paying for your marketing. That your images aren't quite up there because you've then got the opportunity to say, right, what can I do to get to the point before you start spending money, then you're just selling the wrong products and you, you've missed that opportunity. So that, that's really important. I think, getting a, your own style is very important as well. And I think so it's, it's learning from others, getting critique, critique, but also. Making sure that when because the goal for I think for most photographers rightly is that when you see a photo It's kind of cool If it looks like a Nick Church Photograph or someone else photograph and you can kind of tell Who it's taken by because you've got a style and it takes a while for that to happen But you can't just do that and you can't just follow other people either

Raymond Hatfield: 58:22

right, right That was good. I think if anybody's going to pick up anything from this episode, that's going to be a big piece of it right there for sure. So this is my last question here for you. And it's kind of a fun one. I know that I say this every episode we've gone way over our time. It just, I get so excited asking questions and talking. I do this every time. I apologize. going from, from starting, having never picked up a camera again, to where you are today in a very, short time. And as somebody who, like myself, has to do something to be able to learn something, I'm sure that you've made a few mistakes along the way, right? Have you ever had an embarrassing moment, on the job that you'd be willing to share?

Nick Church: 59:01

I, almost every, every shoot, I think there's something. Because, the thing that, happens almost probably 50 percent of the time is I forget to format my images before I take photos. Okay. So I've always got bunches, bunch of cards. So I know that I do this. So I've always got, maybe half a dozen, 64 gig cards in my pocket because I know I do this all the time. So I just forget to format them, record a hundred images on card. And then it runs out of space.

Raymond Hatfield: 59:27

And you're like, what?

Nick Church: 59:28

And you can neither format the card then because you've got the images. So you have to swap it out, but not lose that image. Oh, and then when you get back, I've got 15 cards from a shoot because I've done it on both cameras. so that happens frequently.

Raymond Hatfield: 59:39

have you ever accidentally formatted a card that, uh, had an undelivered wedding on it?

Nick Church: 59:44

I haven't, I haven't done that. Um, thankfully. I've knocked my camera into low quality JPEG mode for some, dancing shots at the end of the day. And I was pleased that I did it in that last hour and not the first hour, because I just didn't notice. So that that's one for sure. what else? Yeah. Things often, because I take quite a few of my bookings without meeting people just the way, you know about half half of them. I don't meet people so that first meeting sometimes you don't when you get to a wedding I sometimes don't know especially if it's a bride and they're all in the same pajamas, right? I don't know who's here and there was one time where I had spent 90 minutes shooting what I assumed was the bride and it turned out it wasn't and I only picked her up. But then I thought I don't know how to get out of this now without, um, making it too obvious. So I, I just then took loads of photos of all the others to try and dilute the problem, which in hindsight, I'd been better off saying, Oh my God, I'm sorry. I've just, Yeah, I assumed you were, I assumed you were the bride, but anyway, so yeah, so I ended up with, over a thousand, bridal prep images. Oh

Raymond Hatfield: 1:00:47

my God. So

Nick Church: 1:00:48

I just taken so many. Yeah. To try and cover up the mistake.

Raymond Hatfield: 1:00:52

I can totally see myself doing that. Absolutely. And what's, what's bad is that I meet with all of my couples before the wedding. I'm sure that I, I don't know if it's like face blindness or like when you show up, they're in makeup and they look different than when you first met them. But I always walk in the room like. Okay. I'm not going to say anything until somebody like Raymond, like points me out and like, Oh, Hey, there you are. Cause they would be the only one, but that would totally be something that I would do. That's great. Thank you for sharing that. Nick, like I said, we've gone over our time. You've been incredibly gracious with your time. You've answered a ton of questions that I know that the listeners are going to get a lot of value out of. If they want to find more of you online, can you share where's the best place to do that?

Nick Church: 1:01:34

Yeah. The best place, is the usual suspects in my Facebook and Instagram are both at Nick Church Photography. So that's N I C K C H U R C H Photography, Nick Church Photography. So yeah, please connect to my Insta and Facebook and any comments or messages or questions. I answer every question I get because I know that when I was, a couple of years ago, I had a ton of questions. And quite often you get nothing back from people and I definitely don't want to be that guy. So I will always respond. My website as well is www. nickchurchphotography. co. uk.

Raymond Hatfield: 1:02:06

Okay. I got one action item that you can take from today's interview with Nick Church to implement into your own photography. And it is this. Get critique on your work to learn what skills need improvement. You know, in this episode, Nick talked a lot about testing and refining. Trying something different and then trying it again, but trying to get better at it. But sometimes when you are real close to your photography, it can be difficult to see where the room for improvement is when you feel like it all needs improved. There's that line that it's difficult to see the forest through the trees. And oftentimes photography feels just like that. Now, there are five elements to a photograph. There's camera settings, light, composition, moment, and editing. So here's the action item. Take a handful of your favorite photos. Five or ten, that'll be enough. Set a timer for ten minutes and look at each one through those lenses. How are my camera settings? Where could I improve? How is the light in this image? How could it be improved? And so on. When you do this for a handful of images, you're going to start to notice those patterns. Maybe you'll realize that the composition, keeps coming up for all your photos. Well, that's good news because now you have direction on what to work on first and improve. Then I want you to take your newfound realization and bring it to us in the beginner photography podcast community. We would love to hear from you. And find out what you discovered. Chances are you're not the only one struggling with it. We can figure it out together. So come join us by heading over to beginnerphotopod. com forward slash group. And that is all for today.