IWPOTY- Wedding Photography Awards with Luke Simon

Nick and Steve put wedding photography awards under the microscope with Luke Simon, the curator and founder of the International Wedding Photographer of the Year awards. The International Wedding Photographer of the Year showcases the work of Wedding Photographers worldwide and has become the new benchmark for Wedding Photography competitions. Nick, Steve and Luke discuss judging criteria, the impact of technology on photography, and the future of awards in a rapidly changing landscape. The guys also reflect on the importance of recognition and connection in the photography profession. Steve has been buying and selling gear (again), and Nick is working hard on content for the Nick Church Academy. 

IWPOTY awards https://iwpoty.com/

Steve's 2019 Wedding Photographer of the Year award https://www.samandstevephotography.com/news/steve-vaughan-wedding-photographer-of-the-year

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01)
Nick, you said, good job. I've only got the camera on the top half of me today because I'm not wearing an awful lot further down because it's really hot in my little study today. Are you warming up right now in this heat wave?

Nick Church (00:09)
I am, but I've now feel slightly sick. So thanks for that.

If that tripod moves, we're in trouble. We'll get canceled.

Steve Vaughan (00:17)
I do have a new standing up desk, but I promise I'm not going to make it stand. I'm definitely going to stay head and shoulders only. It's seriously warm, isn't it today? Yeah.

Nick Church (00:23)
That'd be an awful height. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's not too bad here in my studio. It normally gets pretty unsufferable from about three or four o'clock. then it's yesterday, my Mac, you know, Macs don't ever really overheat. just slow right down. So I was just trying to, I was trying to edit through a set and every image was just taking ages to load. And was obviously just running about 2%. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (00:43)
you need to buy a new one.

Nick Church (00:45)
I'll this, but a new one. exactly.

I was going to mention that later.

Steve Vaughan (00:49)
Any Apple sounds when listening to this? No, she turns to getting so, uh, yeah. Um, we've had lots of new listeners over the last few weeks, which is great. Our numbers are going really exponential. So it's, it's great to hear. I thought it might just be worth reminding people or perhaps people are new to the show, what this podcast is all about. So I'll just quite quickly do a quick, uh, 30 seconds on that. And then introduce you as the primary host. Um, so

Nick Church (00:51)
Yeah, certainly.

Excellent.

Steve Vaughan (01:18)
Yes, it's called the photography part. So we're both working photographers, although my photography is coming towards the end of my career. And whereas Nick's very much on the, on the up and growing. And we basically just talk photography for about an hour. So it's aimed both working professionals, but also enthusiasts as well. And we do also invite guests on the show and we've got a great guest coming up shortly. And I'll let you introduce and explain who the guest is Nick, but

That's what we do. I'm based in Oxfordshire and Nick you're down in the West country in Bristol.

Nick Church (01:49)
Yeah, so I'm basically, yeah, we're how far away? We're about two hours away, we? As I found out.

Steve Vaughan (01:53)
Well, normally

it's about two hours. When you came to our training course the other week, it was about three hours for you, but we won't go into that.

Nick Church (01:57)
No, when

I came to the training course the other week, it was about Aaron 10 minutes because I went so fast. So I haven't got, I haven't got a ticket yet, but I'm waiting for that. The, uh, Oh, you did. Oh, look at that.

Steve Vaughan (02:02)
Actually, I did get a ticket that day. I'm not kidding there. I got a parking ticket. There we go. Parking ticket.

Because I completely forgot that where I parked, you're supposed to pay after two hours and I completely forgot. So any money I made on my training course has just gone. But anyway, that's not the point.

Nick Church (02:22)
Yeah, so

I'm to all the new listeners there. I'm a wedding and commercial photographer and also founder of the Nick Church creative Academy, which you can go and find more details at www.nickchurchcreativeacademy.com. So it's an online training courses on Lightroom, and photography in general and a community on there as well. So that's Anyway, right. So let's crack on with this episode.

Steve, have you got any awards from your long and successful photography career?

Steve Vaughan (02:50)
Well, yes, although I'd have to say it's not me. Of course, as you know, we are a partnership, my wife and I work together. So, yeah, I've won a number. What kind of award are you thinking of?

Nick Church (03:03)
So if you want any wedding awards.

Steve Vaughan (03:06)
Yeah, so I won an award in 2019 2020 interesting time to win an award. course, I won UK photographer winning photography competition, was jointly run by Locksley color, the print lab in Scotland, the photography magazine or newsletter that goes in all the camera shops and also Fujifilm. And it was for my photo. I say it's the one good photo I've ever taken. It's my black and white photo of the

of the board grandparents at the wedding. I'm sure you've seen it. Yeah. Thank you. But we've also won a number of customer services awards. So we don't do a lot of work with many wedding directories, but we do advertise and attend wedding fairs from guides to brides. And we've won their customer services awards three times, which we're very proud of.

Nick Church (03:52)
Okay. All right. Good. mean, cause I've got a, a sort of, mixed view of photography awards because it seems to me there's a variety of different types. You've got the, the well curated awards and that's like, international wedding photographer of year is where we're going to be talking to, Luke, who's the curator of that award body, shortly. and you've got your Fearless and your Repertar, you know, this is Repertar. These ones where they are curated and they are judged on merit.

Steve Vaughan (03:57)
Hmm.

This is a reportage,

Nick Church (04:19)
alone and yeah, you might have to, you know, you have to pay to enter because these things have to be funded, but that's, that's where it ends. Then you've got awards that recognize service. So like the ones that you've, that you've even some have received, which I think is great. And they're, they're voted for by your clients. So it's, it's a, it's a very direct kind of nod towards you as a, business that you're doing well. It seems that there's also some less valuable ones where you're paying to enter for a start and you're, you're, you're having to get all of your couples to, um,

Steve Vaughan (04:33)
Yeah.

Nick Church (04:48)
to vote for you with their details. And they're kind of masquerading sort of threading that line between a service award and a photography award. And it's not clear to me whether they're sort of data collection exercise or just money making schemes. And I think that they're the ones that seem to mean that everybody markets themselves as an award winning photographer. And that's a shame because it's hard for anyone to see the difference between them. And in any case, I think awards probably are less.

Steve Vaughan (04:49)
Yeah.

Mm.

I agree. Yeah.

Nick Church (05:12)
Interesting to our clients. don't think people are that bothered about it, but it is important for us as industry, industry individuals. you think.

Steve Vaughan (05:16)
⁓

Well, first of all, I agree about the paid for ones and we don't, we don't do any of those. And I won't name them, but I think people will know which ones we're talking about where, know, you, you have to shell up a couple of thousand pounds to me. That's just advertising by another name really. Um, um, but the, um, the ones where, um, you know, I think to get recognition by your peers, which, you know, we're going to come into this now, but where, you know, reclaimed or recognized, you know, top photographers are

and know, giving awards to people. think that's great to have, you know, it's great for, but I think it's also great to have recognition from your customers because as we've said many times, and you do talk about this on your talks and given at the photography show, you know, it's not just about the photography, it's about what you do on the day, it's about how the customers feel at end of the day, you know, and yeah.

Nick Church (05:55)
Agreed, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And it is all

about that. But if everyone's an award winner photographer, then it's impossible for a couple to really know whether the award's got any clout or not. I like your point about the recognition in the industry. I think that is really big thing. And I think a lot of photographers are a bit shy at acknowledging that that's partly why we do it. What we want to be recognized is good. Otherwise you're a bit of a kind of sociopath if you don't care at all about stuff like that.

Steve Vaughan (06:17)
That is a joke. Yeah.

think it's different between getting the likes on Instagram, everybody likes those, but so what? But this is recognition by your peers. And I think what the most photographers struggle with from time to time, it's imposter syndrome. Why am I doing this? I'm not a good, wow, I can't look at that image. I can't do that or whatever. But to get recognition by other photographers, I think is a great confidence builder. it is, yeah.

Nick Church (06:49)
Yeah.

It is a really good, absolutely. It's a really good motivator as well. If you see

progress, like anything, we've talked about this before, any job you're doing, if you're seeing progress and a form of mastery developing, then that is a massive motivation for you to get up and do the same the next day and keep pushing forward. very much in that first category of the curated, structured, really high quality wards, we've got the International Wedding Photographer of the Year award, which Ill Potty is a...

Steve Vaughan (07:12)
completely.

Absolutely.

Nick Church (07:24)
it seems to be the good acronym for that because it is quite mindful. So the ear potty awards, and we have with us today, our guest, Luke Simon, who's curator of those awards. So Luke, thank you so much for joining the podcast.

Luke Simon (07:37)
Thank you having me, Nick and Steve. I appreciate being here.

Steve Vaughan (07:39)
Great to have you here.

Yeah. And we should say it's 6.30 in Australia right now. So thank you especially for being here at this time of day.

Nick Church (07:41)
And I would.

Luke Simon (07:43)
Yes, yeah, not alone.

Nick Church (07:45)
I was

gonna say that, yeah, Luke's at the other end of his day. This is why I'm a bit less in our pre-match chat, a little bit less chatty. I'm not a morning person, shall we say. My coffees have kicked in there, so okay. Luke, I'm gonna talk obviously about the awards in detail shortly. Do wanna give a background about your photography?

Steve Vaughan (07:57)
Hahaha.

Luke Simon (07:57)
Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Sure, yeah, yeah. So I started my business back in 2004, I think. And so I started out actually doing surf photography back in the day, because I thought that might be a way to meet girls, actually. That's what I thought. I loved it. No, well, it did eventually. I found the love of my life, which is awesome. no, so I started out, I did, started.

Steve Vaughan (08:26)
Did it work?

Nick Church (08:25)
You

Luke Simon (08:35)
started my study in photography. I had a background in hospitality, which I think has also really been beneficial with my photography. But when I started my photography business, I moved from, I live in South Australia, which is a little place called Adelaide. You might have probably drunk wines from some of our wine regions. And I moved across to Western Australia, to Perth. And great surf community over there. So I started floating around in the ocean with a

Nikon F100 back in the day with a roll of Velvia, 36 frames and I'd float around in the ocean and like shark bait and shoot away and get maybe one frame, a decent frame out of the roll and then swim back in and do it all again.

Nick Church (09:06)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (09:13)
You

Isn't that where the Fremantle

Docter is, Perth? that right? The breeze, yeah. I only know that because I'm a cricket nut and I remember them talking about it when they played cricket there. ⁓

Luke Simon (09:23)
Yeah, that's right from... ⁓ Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

so had a great time in Perth. It was awesome. I started my studies and then I loved learning by getting on the tools. So there was a woman that worked in the same pub that I was working in who was a wedding photographer, funnily enough. And so she said, you should come out sometime. And so I went out and assisted her. And I think I wasted a lot of her film. I'm not sure how much...

good stuff she got out of it, but she was great in mentoring me with my sort of journey. And then I met my wife, who is from your side of the country or the world, I should say. She's from Buckinghamshire. And she was a backpacker and it was a very well-worn romance. And nine months later, we were engaged and then we moved back to Adelaide. And so that's when I sort of started my real

Nick Church (10:01)
Okay. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:02)
down the road.

music.

Luke Simon (10:15)
career as a photographer. Started working in a cafe and then sort of tipped the scales from having to work in foreign coffees and shooting Beyond Wedding to just eventually just going, you know what, we've just got to do this. And then just went in the deep end, which was great.

Nick Church (10:31)
Yeah.

I think, I think that sort of having that, that kind of job, is helpful, isn't it? Because it is, it's a job that's hard. It's hard work. when you're doing the job and there's no time. I I suppose office jobs and things have got the advantage that you could do a little bit of cheeky kind of editing while you're supposed to be working. But the advantage that you've got with that is it when, when things shut, right. There's some stuff to do, but then you, can keep your creativity, your energy to put into stuff, you know, along the side as well.

Luke Simon (10:38)
immensely.

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that I loved about the hospitality industry as a sort of a gateway into photography is so much of what we do as photographers and wedding photographers is about people and about how we connect. And I would say that probably 90 % in a way, 90 % of what we do doesn't involve a camera. It's, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (11:11)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Totally agree.

Nick Church (11:19)
Oh, yeah, couldn't agree more. We've

said before, there's still a few photographers that Steve and I both know that, or aware of, should we say, rather than know well, that don't seem to have those skills, they don't seem to have the interest. And I don't know how you would do a good job. And I don't know how you would even bother getting up in the morning if you weren't interested in people.

Luke Simon (11:32)
No. I don't know how you operate.

Steve Vaughan (11:35)
No, normally.

Luke Simon (11:39)
Nah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (11:41)
Yeah, completely.

Luke Simon (11:42)
Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of where it started, shooting some friends weddings and then it sort of grew from there. And before I knew it, I was shooting 50 weddings a year and ⁓ having a blast, a great time. And then I started mentoring another photographer and sort of built him up to then be my associate photographer. And he shot for my business for a couple of years. And then he's now running a successful business of his own, which is great.

Steve Vaughan (11:49)
Wow.

Luke Simon (12:06)
And yeah, so that's kind of where that all.

Nick Church (12:08)
Is that

a model Luke that you that you continue with your business? Did you have another associate then coming through or?

Luke Simon (12:15)
Not so much for a while, because I also, I probably, I didn't plan things super well, I think I just grew. And then I brought in an office assistant and she was four days a week. And it sort of, I found then that I was spending too much time managing my staff. And it's funny.

Nick Church (12:31)
Absolutely. Yeah. That's what I was getting at because I've

gone through a similar kind of pathway of that. And whilst you're, the reason for it is you think, great, I can, I can have two streams of income here from doing two bad things at once. But then you were, you replaced a lot of what you did do creatively with managing people and making sure the quality is there and making sure the service delivery is there. And that gets harder and harder as you grow. it is a really tough one. What, what drew you then? congratulations on getting your business,

Luke Simon (12:36)
Mmm.

Mm, mm, yeah.

Yeah, indeed.

Nick Church (12:58)
up and running. It's interesting how so many of our backstories do have somebody in there that has got time to mentor us and give us, you know, be really open and generous with their time. and presumably that made an impact on you because you've done something similar with somebody else. So you sort of paid it forward in that regard.

Luke Simon (13:00)
Thanks.

Similarity.

Yeah, yeah.

And shout out actually to Samantha House who's over in Perth still. I don't think she's shooting weddings anymore, but that was who sort of gave me my start. So props to her.

Nick Church (13:25)
Well done Samantha.

So that's your photography. How did you then start an interest in creating awards?

Luke Simon (13:35)
Yeah, there's so many, well, there's a couple of key award platforms that I've always loved, namely two that you've already named, which are Fearless and This Is Repetage. And, you know, they have their own strengths. think this is Repetage obviously is all about that single capture and those undopted moments, which I love and so much of the feedback that comes back from weddings that I shoot. It's always about.

I love those shots that we didn't know you were taking. They're our favorites kind of thing. And I think that's a global, we globally recognize that that's the case. And so I just felt that there was, while those competition platforms and award platforms did a great job in that space, there weren't so many that were curating a great collection of other areas of.

Steve Vaughan (14:03)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Luke Simon (14:23)
of the wedding photography industry, including the adventure of the elopements, the beautiful portraits on their own, and those other areas. And so it sort of grew out of that. I had a friend here who also ran, he's a landscape photographer, fact, that's one of his up on the wall up there. ⁓ Yeah, and he set up and started the panel awards.

Nick Church (14:41)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (14:41)
wow.

Yeah.

Luke Simon (14:47)
which are the Epson panel, it was huge. And we were actually in the Maldives, which was a terrible way to spend some time, but we were over there shooting landscapes and yeah, yeah, someone's gotta do it, And so we were over there shooting some different islands from resorts. And we were just having a gin and tonic, I think, on a deck somewhere after a few hours of shooting. He's like, man, you've got such a depth of.

Steve Vaughan (14:56)
How cheap.

Luke Simon (15:13)
experience and knowledge in the industry, in Australia especially, and with weddings that are shot overseas and around the place, and why don't you set up an awards platform that celebrates that? And he's sort of helped me, guided me to a few sort of areas that would help in terms of the actual judging and the curation side of things, in terms of check out these guys and speak to them, which I did.

And yeah, so that's kind of where it all stemmed from in that sense. And so that's where the exploration began. I think I registered the business probably four or five years before I actually launched it and then just kind of chipped away at it. And it was in 2017 that we had our inaugural awards and we're now in our ninth. So yeah, it's great. And it helps to, sorry, now you go.

Steve Vaughan (15:57)
music.

Nick Church (15:58)
Well

I'm just going to share, just while you're talking, Luke, I'm just going to share some, just a selection of photos that I've taken. The photographer's names on there as well.

Luke Simon (16:08)
⁓ Yep.

Nick Church (16:09)
Yeah, I wanted to go back to what I really like about the Il Potty Awards and people just need to go to www.iwpotty.com. The categories, things like breaking the rules and specific areas where people have really sort of thought outside the box, I think is a really good idea. And I like the way that that's organized because I do find

Luke Simon (16:12)
I love that one.

Steve Vaughan (16:15)
That's amazing.

Nick Church (16:36)
sometimes you can, when there's not a division of different category like that, I think there's these kinds of epic was it like, this is a good example, that sort of shot is always going to do really well on on things. And if you've got something that's a bit different, it can be quite hard to kind of be noticed in some award schemes because of that they don't have that categorization in place. And the quality of the photography is exceptional. That was what first drew me to this award award structure is really ⁓

Steve Vaughan (17:01)
completely.

Nick Church (17:05)
exceptional images that are not just your obvious ones, they're epic locations and there's actually a category for that. And just each one has got really something ⁓ to say and I think that's really well done. Who were the judges for these awards, Luke?

Luke Simon (17:20)
So it changes every year. Generally, I try to bring in a few of the past award winners or finalists from previous years. And this year we've done something a little bit different as well. I really wanted to an insight or I suppose some experience and knowledge from another awards platform. So this year I invited Alan Law from This Is Reportage who is not only a wedding photographer in his own right, but obviously runs This Is Reportage.

Steve Vaughan (17:44)
wow, okay, yeah.

Luke Simon (17:50)
does an amazing job with that. ⁓ there you go. Yeah. So, so I reached out to him and he's, been really excited to come on board this year to be one of the judges. We've also got Cameron Shirolov who's based out of Russia. he won black and white and the lit category, which is all about added light, adding artificial light of some sort to an image. we have, Patrick and Holly Matea who are from

Steve Vaughan (17:51)
And a podcaster as well.

Luke Simon (18:14)
your side of the world as well. Yeah, so they've been, yeah, unreal and great educators as well. ⁓

Steve Vaughan (18:14)
Amazing. Fantastic photographers.

Nick Church (18:22)
And I suppose that's

a key thing, isn't it? That if you've got, when you're, if you're going to make an award, something that's got real kudos to it, then the people that are selected, whether that, whether that photo wins it or not is quite important. And I guess, I guess having such a team on board is pretty important.

Luke Simon (18:32)
Hmm.

Yes, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (18:37)
So I've just got a question, if I may. So for somebody listening to this wedding photographer who thinks they've got a killer image and they'd love to enter the awards. So what is the process? How do I get involved if I'm a photographer wanting to put my image into one of the old categories? What is the process there?

Luke Simon (18:45)
Mmm.

question. Yeah, so obviously, by heading to the website and having a good look around, I think is probably the probably the first place to go and just to sort of get a bit of a sense for the different categories and the different and look at past past winners and sort of get a sense for what sort of a caliber is taking out awards. And then it's really just a case of sort of submitting through that.

Steve Vaughan (18:57)
Good start.

Luke Simon (19:16)
haven't yet gone down the road of setting up a Facebook community to do sort of, what would you call them, curation sessions, I guess. But that's something that's sort of probably in the wind for the years ahead is to either create an option in there for people to actually connect with one of the past judges or past finalists or past winners to have a curation session where we can do something similar to what we're doing here on camera where we're looking at images and where...

Nick Church (19:23)
Hmm.

Luke Simon (19:44)
making suggestions about how to improve images and things like that. Because I do get people connect and ask me, so they're oh, what do you think of these? And I'll give my honest feedback about how to improve them. And while that's not a service that I would want all 2,500 or 3,000 people doing, it's certainly something that can be arranged.

Steve Vaughan (19:46)
Mm.

Nick Church (19:52)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (20:05)
But it's generous of you

Nick Church (20:05)
So that

Steve Vaughan (20:06)
time to do so. Yeah, ⁓

Nick Church (20:06)
answers my question about how many submissions you get. Is that each year then, Luke? know, two and a half, three thousand. Wow. Okay.

Luke Simon (20:12)
Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. I said

last year was just over 2000 actually, but this year is going to be bigger. That's my

Nick Church (20:17)
Okay, well, what's

the process for whittling these images down then?

Luke Simon (20:22)
Good question.

Yeah, so we have, well, we had here in Australia an industry or an institution called the Australian Institute of Professional Photography, AIPP, which I used to enter and submit my awards and they were all print entries. So you had to print them and they were to very specific dimensions and map board sizes, et cetera. And that was a really great process to learn about, you know, what is it that judges are looking for? And then I would, I was also a judge.

in the awards over in like in the national awards as well as the state awards. And I was lucky enough to win the state award of photographer of the year in its last year. But but so there was there's no real replacement for that in here in Australia. And so we use a pretty similar format to the judging sort of ladder or rubric or whatever you might want to call it in terms of how those images are judged. I use a

Nick Church (20:56)
Wow, okay.

Steve Vaughan (20:56)
Later.

Luke Simon (21:16)
It's like a separate program or separate platform to the actual website, which is called AwardForce. And that's all they do is awards. They run awards for whether it's sort of grant application companies versus a photography award sort platform. And so that's kind of connected to the website. And in the back end of that is where I can set up all my judges' profiles. And then they go in and basically go through every image and

Steve Vaughan (21:29)
I'll just take it.

Luke Simon (21:40)
rank every image. And there's two rounds of judging. The first round is a score out of 10. And that helps kind of refine down to the sort of the top 30 images in each category. And then it's down, it's out of 100 after that. And each image is then scored accordingly by all six judges.

Steve Vaughan (22:00)
One question I was going to ask actually, we mentioned at the start of the discussion some of the awards that we've won, mentioned the Guide to Brides Awards, we were judges this year for that and we didn't judge the photography award which I think would have been difficult to do because obviously we know a lot of people so we were judging venues, cake makers, florists and so on. So do you know who the photo is from?

Luke Simon (22:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

No.

Steve Vaughan (22:24)
And if

you do, was gonna say, that would, to my mind, if you think, this is an image from XYZ photographer, we know they're fantastic, so this image must be fantastic. ⁓

Luke Simon (22:33)
Hmm. Yeah.

there's, there's, um, what's the word? There's protocols within the judging process. It's like you can recuse yourself from an image if you know, you know, I mean, there's, there's that much information out there on, socials that there is a chance that you might've. Correct. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (22:41)
right

Yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (22:49)
You must, you might have spotted it before, especially if it's a very

unique one. I guess you think, I remember, I remember who posted that.

Steve Vaughan (22:56)
Yeah, yeah.

Luke Simon (22:56)
Yeah, yeah,

exactly. So or it's been entered in another awards platform, which is where it would also have been seen potentially.

Steve Vaughan (23:03)
Of course.

Nick Church (23:04)
When your judges are, do you judge as well, Luke? Do you do that as well?

Luke Simon (23:08)
I don't, curate. So I'll go through in the background and I'll just go through and if there's an image that some people leave a watermark, they'll leave their names on their images and just don't, know, so they might not follow the rules implicitly in that sense. So I'll go through and approach people that have done that and sort of just let them know and depending on the circumstances, sometimes they'll send me one without it and I can add that in.

Nick Church (23:17)
Okay.

Okay. So you get,

you get the boring admin side. What are your judges looking for in terms of image? What is it that tends to sort of rise to the surface in terms of the ones that they're selecting?

Luke Simon (23:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Good question. Yeah. So I use a similar sort of, and I can share this with you guys. I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but it's a sort of a, I suppose, what's the term?

Basically, what is it that makes an image professional? What's standard professional practice? What is it that we all should be able to do as wedding photographers in terms of providing a product to our clients that meets a standard?

Steve Vaughan (24:10)
So the basic photography skills, in other words. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke Simon (24:12)
Exactly. so

obviously that's not what we're looking for. know, there's a certain, you know, I suppose that's good for people to sort of work from. But as you would have seen through the galleries is that the photographs that we're seeing in these awards is something pretty special and extraordinary. So they are the kind of things that we, in terms of those words that sort of would explain or suggest

Steve Vaughan (24:16)
No, no.

Yeah. ⁓

Luke Simon (24:37)
a level of excellence beyond the norm. We want things like, have we seen an image like this ever before, for one? Obviously that puts something on a pedestal above pretty much everything else. And that's an incredibly hard thing to do, given the world we live in now, you know. Is there a level of technical excellence? Obviously it's got exposure, focus, if it's, and to be in focus, composition.

Steve Vaughan (24:53)
bit. ⁓

Nick Church (24:54)
Yeah.

Luke Simon (25:07)
the treatment of the image, if there has been Photoshop, if it's in one of the 10 categories that you can do your cloning in Photoshopping, has it been done well? And so it's all of those standards that would see it reach the sort of, it might be a seven out of 10 or 70 out of 100 sort of thing. And then it's looking at those little extra things that make it.

something special where it might be ⁓ the level of imagination that's been used in the creation of it. There's some images that stand out straight away for me from the past eight years that just sort of, it's like, see that image and it's not even just the, yes, there's technical accidents that ticks all the boxes in that sense, but it's something that there's a level of creativity and thought process behind the image that is.

just exceptional. Yeah. So I should have read my little notes beforehand before we had this conversation in terms of some of those.

Nick Church (26:11)
No,

that's useful because it because the listener can turn that around in a sense and think, well, okay, that's the things that they need to start doing if they're going to get considered for such things. it's useful to know. I should add at this point, I've shared that selection photos a couple of times. That is just from one category. I think there's a couple of epic locations, but it is a couple of portraits and there's loads more which I haven't got. When I do the podcast page for this on the website, I'll add a few more.

Steve Vaughan (26:21)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Luke Simon (26:22)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Sure, yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (26:39)
images from other categories just to, cause it is a really diverse

range. yeah, yeah, the, the thing that I often see when I, when looking through these, I'm always increasingly joining a party cause I'm on the photographer unleashed online course I'm creating, which is a hefty bit on depth of field and how getting that right. It's just so important. I think it's something that we kind of skip often is how that depth of field is really well chosen in loads of these images. And it doesn't mean it's wide open. doesn't mean it's completely.

completely stopped down, it's just right. And I think that that's something that I see people probably not paying quite enough attention to in a lot of examples of otherwise beautiful photographs. They just think, oh man, if you know, a couple of stops down, that would have been absolutely banging, you know, but

Luke Simon (27:05)
Hmm. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (27:11)
Great.

Luke Simon (27:14)
Hmm.

I was just going to say, the subject to background relationships, I think, is another really big one. Just simple things that sometimes maybe someone hasn't been taught about highlights and how they're distracting and pulling your eye away from the subject and the story and the image. And obviously, if you're entering that, let's say, for example, in the single capture category, then if you can execute that with that level of skill where

Steve Vaughan (27:21)
Hmm.

completely.

Luke Simon (27:47)
our eyes are not being drawn to highlights because you've framed it so well, because you can't remove them, then that takes something to another level.

Steve Vaughan (27:53)
No.

Nick Church (27:58)
Yeah.

mean, that's, that's what for, you know, that's what we're always thinking about, isn't it? As photographers we're always thinking about what all of these different elements, all, happening at the same time and, and just trying to get that perfect image at every, every time. And you don't achieve it all the time. You don't achieve it very often, but when you do, that's why it's so rewarding when, when you do get it all right. What are these, you mentioned there about Photoshop, what are the, I don't want go through the whole list, but what sort of things

Steve Vaughan (27:58)
Yeah, interesting.

Luke Simon (28:03)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

Sure.

Nick Church (28:25)
are allowed and what sort of things are not.

Luke Simon (28:28)
So I tried to liken it to back in the day when we, some of us who are old enough, would be shooting film and developing film. And what are the things that we have within our control in a dark room setting? can, so, sorry, I should go back on that a little bit because you can use Photoshop in 10 of the 11 categories. The only category you can't go to the extent of climbing.

Steve Vaughan (28:36)
Yeah, I am.

Luke Simon (28:53)
and adding things in all composite images is the single capture category. So in other 11 categories, can pretty much have creative freedom to the point of obviously not. It has to be of photographic creation by you. So you can't bring in something from AI, for example. No. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (28:59)
Go chill.

Nick Church (29:00)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (29:13)
You can't bring in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or something, you know, it's got to be, it's got to be sort of realistic, yeah.

Nick Church (29:18)
And how, how would you detect,

how would you detect that Luke? If, if, if say I created something, if I created one of those images, you know, I could probably put my company in a sort of scenic background like that. And I might be able to do it well enough in Photoshop that it looks exactly right. there, technical ways that you use to identify that?

Luke Simon (29:22)
Sure, so pardon.

Steve Vaughan (29:22)
Mmm.

Luke Simon (29:26)
Hmm.

So once it gets down to that final, but that's another part of my job, suppose, as curator, is once it gets down to those final few images, the top two, three images in a category, is when I generally have that conversation via email with people, and I'll say, hey guys, one of your images is, it's up there. And it could be a winning image, we're yet to find out the final results yet, but we need some verification that this image is being.

created by you, could you send me through a gallery from that wedding, which is where platforms like PickTime, for example, which is one of our sponsors, shout out to PickTime, and have been supporting us for many, many years, is people send me the link to their galleries. And in the case of the single capture category, if I see any doubt, I'll ask for the raw file.

Steve Vaughan (30:14)
Yeah.

Wow. That's good to hear.

Nick Church (30:28)
I mean, suppose it

Luke Simon (30:28)
Yeah.

Nick Church (30:29)
must be quite rare that someone's trying to pull the wool over your eyes a bit on that because it's what's the point? You it's just, it's just like cheating, isn't it? I there's no, you're not really, you're not really benefiting. You know, there's no real, win there is there, if that was the case.

Luke Simon (30:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (30:37)
You're only fooling yourself really. Yeah. No.

Luke Simon (30:42)
No,

no, although I was reading recently that I think Sony was at the Sony Awards. think one of the winning images in the Sony Awards was pretty much AI generated. I think it came out afterwards.

Steve Vaughan (30:52)
wow, really? I've not heard that. Oops. Yeah,

Nick Church (30:56)
Oops.

Steve Vaughan (30:59)
yeah. We're big pick time users as well. Massive fans. Big shout out to pick time. Yeah, yeah. Couldn't.

Luke Simon (31:02)
How you are? Yeah, yeah,

Aga and the team near it and they're awesome people.

Steve Vaughan (31:06)
Yeah,

I'm trying to convert Nick. He hasn't got it yet.

Luke Simon (31:09)
where are

you, Nick? are you... yeah, that's so yesterday.

Nick Church (31:11)
I'm team Pixie Set.

Steve Vaughan (31:16)
If that doesn't get a PICTAS sponsorship for us, nothing will. I just want to go back to the conversation we were having right at the get-go. Nick and I were having about our own personal thoughts. You won't be on camera at that stage when we put this on YouTube, but I was looking at your reactions and seeing if you agreed or disagreed with anything we said. So what are your personal thoughts regarding the awards process?

Nick Church (31:16)
You're right.

Luke Simon (31:20)
Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, yeah,

it's a fine line, isn't it? You know, I think the beauty of awards is it is an opportunity for you to showcase some of your best work. And from a photography perspective, like we have we have some award platforms here in Australia as well that are relating to the wedding industry as a whole. And like you said, you can be nominated for that and then you can approach your couples and say, hey, I'll be nominated.

I think I do a great job, but what do you think?" So that's getting that, I suppose, that direct feedback from your clients, which I think is acceptable and great. And like our awards, know, there is a cost involved. But without it, I couldn't operate them, and I couldn't have my social media person and my marketing and, without the help of the sponsors as well. So there's a certain level of, you know, I don't make money out of the awards. I cover some of my time during the, some...

Steve Vaughan (32:13)
No, of course not. No.

Yeah.

Luke Simon (32:26)
down times, but that's about it. And we give back in terms of the prizes and things as well and prize money. But yes.

Nick Church (32:28)
Yeah.

We should.

So sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, we should mention that there is a pretty significant problem. What is the first prize? Remind us.

Luke Simon (32:36)
Hmm.

First prize is about, I think, $5,000, $5,500 with US, and there's $1,000 cash. It's all in the US. And then there's prizes from ProGrade Digital, one of the sponsors and supporters, and they're fantastic. We have Harlow, who you may or may not have heard of, but Harlow is a lighting brand that does constant lighting. Beautiful looking things. They look like Hasselblad cameras. They're so beautifully made.

Steve Vaughan (32:45)
Wow.

Yes, I have. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

It was previously called Hubberlite,

I think, were they or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a strange name. ⁓

Luke Simon (33:10)
Yes, yeah, that's right. Yeah, which was a strange name. So yeah, and then we

got Holdfast Gear. We've got Pick Time. We've got a local, actually a local supporter of mine here in, from South Australia who make stunning ranges of kitchen knives and EDCs, everyday carries. I'd never heard of that term before these guys mentioned it, but they make, like little, kind of.

knives like this, pocket knives and stuff like that, but they do beautiful kitchen knives and stuff. there's thousands of dollars worth of that sort of stuff. ⁓ It's cash. No, Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so now I don't want to forget any of this. I've also got wedding workflows. know the guys? So Studio Ninja, you would have heard of. Yeah. So wedding workflows is an Australian photographer who set up.

Nick Church (33:37)
Bye bye.

Steve Vaughan (33:37)
wow. Yeah.

Nick Church (33:43)
That's not an everyday carry in the UK. I'll tell you that.

Steve Vaughan (33:43)
Yeah. It will be in Australia though, because

you have creepy crawlies in Australia, which we don't have. Yeah.

Yeah.

No, she didn't, did you? Yeah, yeah.

Luke Simon (34:02)
workflows where you can basically inject that into your pick time and Studio Ninja and it's got all the template emails and stuff that you can just modify and and build out with your own voice and your own brand and stuff. So, so those guys are involved as well.

Steve Vaughan (34:07)
Cool.

Nick Church (34:09)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (34:18)
Chris

was from your part of the world, studio in India, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love.

Luke Simon (34:21)
Yeah, Chris and

Rick Liston is the fellow from Wedding Workflows. Yeah, I haven't quite made that leap yet. I'm still with Tave, which was kind of, yeah, who have now been...

Steve Vaughan (34:24)
Sure. Yeah, massive fan studio, you? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And Nick's light blue,

think. That's Studio Ninja. I think we started it the day, pretty much the day it started. I'm not exaggerating to say that it's made us a lot of money over the years, Studio Ninja, because everything is so automated. The inquiry, you get a standard inquiry response because that very quickly, all the invoicing. My biggest fear, and I've never done it in 15 years, my biggest fear was double booking myself.

Nick Church (34:37)
What do use Steve? What's your? You're a ninja as well, yeah.

Luke Simon (34:41)
Yeah.

Nick Church (34:47)
Yeah.

Luke Simon (34:52)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mmm, same.

Steve Vaughan (35:00)
or double booking

us. And, and just, you don't need to just make sure we don't do that. It just, I've what it costs, you know, ⁓ just think it's amazing software.

Luke Simon (35:06)
Hmm.

Nick Church (35:08)
I'm, I'm, light blue software is the platform that I've always used. ⁓ UK company, yeah, really great, great products and great support as well. But that was as a result of, what I thought was double booking. So during my, a presentation in my proper, my old job in the software industry, giving a presentation and felt my phone buzzing. is for Luke's benefit. Cause Steve's heard this story, heard my phone buzzing, ignored it. And then what came up on my laptop was just a text message saying,

Steve Vaughan (35:12)
It's especially very good as well. Yeah.

Nick Church (35:33)
Hi Nick, we're at the venue. Hope you're on your So, um, yeah. So I thought, right. I'm going to need a CRM system. Cause my Google, my Google spreadsheet isn't cutting it. Well, I, I, I initially focused on just going very green and white, um, and feeling a bit sick and then, and then I'd excuse myself.

Luke Simon (35:41)
Damn!

Steve Vaughan (35:44)
Yeah, biggest,

Luke Simon (35:44)
What did you do? What

did you do?

Steve Vaughan (35:52)
Ha ha ha!

Nick Church (35:57)
I didn't know who it was from. just had the phone number, so I couldn't even tell who the hell it was from. No, I went through, I managed to search my email with the phone number, found who it was, and then found that it was a venue visit. We'd agreed to go to their farm to look around. Still not great. I saw that their two kids have since got married. This was way back when I started. They've since got married. ⁓

Luke Simon (36:01)
which wasn't even a prank.

Mmm.

⁓

Steve Vaughan (36:13)
⁓ wow, I forgot that.

Luke Simon (36:21)
Right, and you were not the photographer.

Nick Church (36:24)
So, and so that would have been their last, their

Steve Vaughan (36:24)
Hahaha

Luke Simon (36:24)
No. Crickets.

Nick Church (36:26)
lasting impression is what an absolute waste of space this guy is. So, but I didn't miss the wedding, but you know, it did make me, it made me realize, all right, I'm have to decide whether I stay in this job and do full-time wedding photography. So that, that was the, that was the crunch point. Also, I thought I needed a decent CRM system that's going to manage all of this stuff. Yeah. Life's over.

Luke Simon (36:29)
Damn.

Absolutely, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (36:44)
Yep. Yep.

Luke Simon (36:47)
I've got a question back to you guys as well. What about when it comes to accounting software? Do you use only the accounting software within your CRM or do you have a separate accounting software? Same,

Steve Vaughan (36:47)
Yeah, go for it,

zero.

Nick Church (36:57)
QuickBooks. So yeah, it's

equivalent thing. I think it's probably the case in most of these CRM, the studio management tools that the accounting software is good, but it's not certainly is not up to the level that you need in the UK because you have to have this online direct connection to our government tax system. And I think it, just don't, I don't think they could invest enough resource into creating all that functionality in there. So it's fine to track expensive, expenses, invoices.

Steve Vaughan (37:00)
They all do the same thing.

Luke Simon (37:05)
Hmm.

Hmm. ⁓

Russ.

Steve Vaughan (37:18)
No.

Luke Simon (37:20)
Hmm.

Nick Church (37:24)
or give you an idea of your projected income, all that sort of stuff. But in terms of actually doing tax and stuff,

Luke Simon (37:25)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (37:28)
And Studio

Ninja has got a direct interface with Xero, so everything gets pulled into Xero, all the invoicing and everything. And our accountant actually is a former wedding customer as well, so which is great when I want to buy a new lens. We've digressed a little

Luke Simon (37:32)
Yes, yeah, brilliant.

Nick Church (37:32)
Yeah, same, yeah.

Luke Simon (37:38)
Excellent.

Nick Church (37:40)
You

Luke Simon (37:42)
good. And

did she say you can't buy another lens? I'm trying to help you here, save you some money.

Steve Vaughan (37:46)
Now he normally just says,

now what you bought Steve. He's normally what he says. We digressed a lot from the awards industry. I've got one final question, think, from which I'd like to ask. And then of course, Nick, anything you want. But where, you know, the world is changing rapidly. We talked about AI, you know, who knows what technologies are in the corner. Where do you see awards in five years time? You where do you still see wedding awards being as strong?

Nick Church (37:50)
Yeah.

Luke Simon (37:52)
We did, sorry, yeah, yeah, sorry.

Nick Church (37:53)
Yeah.

Luke Simon (38:11)
Ooooo

Steve Vaughan (38:15)
to see growing, see any challenges on the horizon. If you had a time machine and go forward five years now, where do you think the International Wedding Photography of the Year, Photography of the Year Awards would be?

Luke Simon (38:25)
I would like to think that it has grown exponentially, ideally, because then I wouldn't be pumping my own capital into it, ideally. Sometimes I'm shooting jobs to pay for the awards to be running in the background, but that's okay. I do it because I love it and I do it because I got a lot out of awards and in terms of, I suppose there is, we were just talking about awards earlier. I sort of circle back to that briefly, just that.

Nick Church (38:34)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (38:41)
Yeah, that's obvious. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke Simon (38:54)
It certainly is for me, it was always great from a client perspective for them to be able to see. It was a marketing tool in a way, because it was for me to be able to say, you know, I've been recognized for creating exceptional work. And I think sometimes people like that to the point of being able to tell their friends that, we've got an award winning photographer. But yeah, five years time, I would like to think that it is still stronger than ever.

Steve Vaughan (39:03)
Of course.

Nick Church (39:16)
Yeah.

Luke Simon (39:22)
I think there's a lot of, it seems to be quite a lot of awards platforms popping up all over the show of various photography types, not just weddings, but I think as long as we stay true to our cause and to our ethos of excellence and keeping our systems and processes in place to ensure that we're

Steve Vaughan (39:23)
Why not?

Luke Simon (39:51)
we're awarding excellence that is real photography, that is not generated by AI, but I mean, who knows, maybe there'll be a category for that one day where you can submit whatever you like.

Nick Church (39:56)
Mm.

Well, think that's why,

I think that's why that distinction you've got is a really good one of something that you could arguably have done in a dark room. Those, those sorts of techniques are fine. Things like AI and stuff, currently not. to, to know, certainly in some of the categories. And I think that as, what, what probably is happening is that those rules that, that the kind of image needs to have been the image that you were looking at.

Luke Simon (40:15)
Yeah.

Nick Church (40:26)
is also what I think most wedding couples want. don't want to be placed somewhere random because it's a memory. It's not because it's, yeah. Well, then that's a good example because that happened 15 years ago, 20 years ago. People were having dinosaurs chasing groomsmen and there wasn't any big panic about, this is going to take a, you know, take a wedding photography. Hopefully that vision of a couple want to be remembered for that moment and the emotion and the weather and the light and all that stuff all came together for that shot.

Luke Simon (40:29)
Hmm, with dinosaurs chasing them all. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (40:33)
Yeah, I think I'll ask for that once actually.

Luke Simon (40:38)
Yeah.

Nick Church (40:55)
That will always stay being the most important thing, I hope. We'll see.

Steve Vaughan (40:57)
Absolutely.

Luke Simon (40:58)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (41:00)
Luke's been great chatting with you and finding out more about yourself obviously and your own photography, but also about the awards. I'm going to get my so-and-so into gear and see if there's anything I could enter. Very much what would be in the single capture, I think, because that's genre, but great to catch up with you and find out more. Nick and I normally have a 10 and 15 minute chat generally about other things we've been up to. Feel free to stay with us and chip in as...

Luke Simon (41:12)
Good, good.

Steve Vaughan (41:26)
as you wish as well. But thanks again for spending your time today. Really appreciate it.

Luke Simon (41:27)
Thanks.

thank you guys. Thanks for the invitation and cheers.

Nick Church (41:31)
Thanks, Luke.

Steve Vaughan (41:33)
So what else

have been up to Nick, apart from working heavily on the academy? Have you been shooting many weddings in the last couple of weeks?

Nick Church (41:39)
I've

had a few years, it's a bit of a perfect storm in terms of workload at the moment. I've done a few weddings, excuse me, a couple of wedding films as well that we've shot and that's how I've been producing those. I think that's why my Mac's overheating because I've got Final Cut running, I've got Premiere running and I've got Lightroom and Photoshop and my Mac's really struggling as a result. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, luckily we're quite close to Hinkley Point here, the nuclear.

Steve Vaughan (41:58)
I can see the lights of Bristol dimming with the power consumption in your office.

Nick Church (42:07)
power station. So I go

Steve Vaughan (42:09)
Got your own personal feed. Yeah.

Nick Church (42:10)
straight into that. Yeah. So it is crazy at the moment. The online courses are because I want them to be the best courses in the world. You know, that was my mission. And that means I've got to spend a long time and they've got to be absolutely right. They've got to go in depth in a way that people with experience are going to get benefit from, but not straight away. So the people that are beginning, that they're on the earlier in their journey aren't completely flummoxed by. So

Steve Vaughan (42:19)
course.

Yeah.

Nick Church (42:35)
getting that just right a second off a lot of times. So. ⁓

Steve Vaughan (42:35)
Hmm.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah. So think we've had four weddings since we last did a pod. We've got another one coming up this weekend. good bit of video we're doing as well. So, but just because we were looking for punishment, Sam and I went on a photo walk yesterday as well with Sigma UK. So I saw it pop up on there on the website. So we got up really early, got our train into London and we did a three hour walk around the city of London. So the square mile, which is not part of London, I know.

Nick Church (42:52)
well, okay.

Steve Vaughan (43:04)
really well actually. So, Yeah, well, it's just the sort of, you know, around Blackfriars, around that part, around St. Paul's, you know, where with the bits that all burnt down really. was a guy called Ed Spencer, big shout out to Ed, who works with Sigma, he organized it. I think it was about 10 of us really. And yeah, it was a lot of fun actually. Even though was such a bright and harsh and sunny day, because all those streets are so tightly interwoven and, you know, weird.

Nick Church (43:05)
Okay, well Westminster. Westminster.

Okay. Yeah.

Mm-mm.

Steve Vaughan (43:34)
alleyways, there was some amazing light. So yeah, so great just to sort of have a stroll around. And I made a decision. I've just put my Ricoh GR3X for, well, I've actually just sold it to MPB because I decided to buy another lens. I'm going to buy the Sigma, Sigma I've got a 90 millimeter F 2.8 and it's only about that big, about two and a half inches long. And it's a great little street lens because as you know, I like the street stuff.

Nick Church (43:36)
Yeah, I saw iPhones when I was there.

Okay.

Alright.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (44:03)
With that and the 40 millimeter I'm talking to you on right now, think it'd be quite a nice little combo. So the Ricoh is going subtly to pay for it. So nice bit of kit.

Nick Church (44:07)
Cool.

And did you, did

you beat my record of not dropping a camera? ⁓

Steve Vaughan (44:15)
I didn't drop a camera. No, I was very good. Yeah, I didn't drop a lens, didn't drop a camera.

No, no, for once I was very good. Yeah. ⁓

Nick Church (44:21)
You can go off people.

Did you see this

week that the Tamron are there's on the Sony rumors Tamron releasing a 200 mil F2 F2 prime? Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (44:33)
I did see that. ⁓

Is it Tamon or is it Sigma? I think it might be Sigma actually, but yeah. Looks laughing at us now. Nothing like preparation and this is nothing like preparation. I think it might've been Sigma. Yeah. But it's a nice sounding lens anyway. there's quite a, I'm interested in what do you shoot with liquid? We never asked that question actually. It is Sigma. good. Woo hoo.

Nick Church (44:38)
can't remember. better check that now. Come on. might have.

Luke Simon (44:45)
Yeah.

Nick Church (44:45)
Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

Yeah, it's it's stigma is sigma to apologize.

Luke Simon (44:57)
I'm a Sony shooter as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (45:00)
So what's your weapons of choice?

Luke Simon (45:00)
So I just, I'm just using A7 IVs. Yeah, they're versatile. I shoot a little bit of video as well. I probably over, what's the word? I was spinning one too many plates. I bought a wedding films business or I started it with a friend and ⁓ then I bought his portion and so I had wedding films going as well.

Steve Vaughan (45:04)
Yeah, bueno.

Nick Church (45:06)
Thank you.

Steve Vaughan (45:17)
wow.

Luke Simon (45:22)
So that's why the signing was so good. But then I got to a point where it's like, can't, I still do a few wedding films. So I have a team, but not the whole heap, but I still use it for commercial stuff as well. It's good to have that ability to shoot some stuff as well.

Steve Vaughan (45:23)
Yeah.

Nick Church (45:24)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (45:33)
So I think every photographer needs

Nick Church (45:34)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (45:36)
to be able to use that little red button on the camera from time time now to be, you know.

Luke Simon (45:39)
Yeah, yeah, something

I've been using it for lately is time lapses. I've never spent time doing little time lapses and it's so much fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, real good.

Steve Vaughan (45:47)
Interesting. Never done that.

Nick Church (45:48)
No, I haven't either.

Steve Vaughan (45:51)
Yeah, cool.

Yeah. And what about glass? What glass do you take?

Luke Simon (45:54)
I generally shoot primes at weddings, for event corporate work it's more 24-70, 70-200. But yeah, I think my two main go-to lenses would generally be 85, 35, and then 50 as well. And then my main three, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (45:56)
Yeah, me too.

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much the same as this. Yeah.

Nick Church (46:14)
Yeah,

I was interested in that in that 200 that Sigma I should I should correct myself to the segment f point f two. Because that is just my perfect focal length. I followed my 70 to 200. Even you know, even though I've got 85 1.4 I do I do love that compression you get the longer ends on those lenses and I could justify it.

Steve Vaughan (46:14)
⁓ interesting.

Luke Simon (46:32)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (46:33)
So you'd see yourself using that at

a wedding, thanks. I thought that was more aimed more at sports or wildlife, but you see yourself using that as a wedding.

Nick Church (46:39)
I think I

think probably I mean, it's 135 is all is portrait, you know, that very kind of shadow depth of the portrait, I think, quite possibly could be a really good good shot for maybe couple shoots where you've got what way it's not reversed on is it a wedding wedding is one of the is bit more brush, broader brushstrokes for versatility and 200 mil, you're not going to be able to use it anywhere else anywhere inside for start probably. But but it would be a beautiful lens to capture portraits and things outside.

Steve Vaughan (46:43)
Yeah.

Luke Simon (46:44)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (46:58)
Hmm.

Luke Simon (47:03)
Hmm... No.

Steve Vaughan (47:07)
I know for sure.

Yeah. Do you have the 135?

Nick Church (47:10)
I haven't, no, it's in that category of lenses that I would really love to have and I can't justify it right now.

Steve Vaughan (47:14)
So it goes, we have one, it goes to

every wedding that we do and it tends to stay in the bag and not come out. Cause it's just a lump of glass really. Yeah. Plus I've scratched the front of it slightly as well, which irritates me though. Probably doesn't make any difference, but yeah, it's a, the GM. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (47:19)
Yeah, I can imagine doing the same. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke Simon (47:20)
Hmm, it's big heavy things.

Nick Church (47:27)
Is that the GM? 1.8? Yeah, nice, yeah.

Luke Simon (47:33)
Do you guys ever punch in on your lenses? As in, like, turn it.

Steve Vaughan (47:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (47:37)
Don't tend to, but then,

no, but then I'm usually shooting 7200, so I don't tend to need to, if I was using my 85 more, I think I probably would do more of that.

Steve Vaughan (47:45)
So I do, cause I've got an R4, which is 61 meg and my standard go-to is 2450 rather than 3585. Just depends, cause a lot of the we shoot at, I'm actually quite close. Like the barn we were at on Saturday, I'm probably six feet from the couple if that really. So 35 is a bit tight, but just occasionally I'll go to the church say with 25 and 50 and then realise I'm quite a way back.

Nick Church (48:06)
Yeah.

You

Steve Vaughan (48:12)
So

being able to pinch in on the R with the 50 to make it effectively an 85 or a 70 or 75 perhaps is quite useful. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm quite a fan of using high resolution cameras at weddings.

Luke Simon (48:12)
Yeah.

Do you guys mainly, I was just gonna ask you that. Yeah, I'm on the, I just use the Sigma Art. Sigma Art series, yeah, so that's a 1.4. Really nice, really nice piece of glass. Like I'm really happy with the Sigma lenses, because I just couldn't afford the Sony GMs at the time. I've just been looking recently at the Sony, the 2024 to 50. Is it a picture?

Nick Church (48:27)
What 85G is Luke?

Okay.

Steve Vaughan (48:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Luke Simon (48:55)
a PZ 1000 entity.

Steve Vaughan (48:57)
24-50

I think is just a straight 2.8 but I see a lot of street photographers on YouTube using that because I think it zooms the opposite way.

Luke Simon (49:03)
Hmm.

Ah, doesn't it? Okay, yeah, no.

Steve Vaughan (49:09)
Yeah, which they quite like.

So it's shortest and it's longest focal length, if that makes sense. But yeah, looks nice lens.

Luke Simon (49:17)
I think the PZ has got internal zoom so it doesn't change at any point which is why the video guys seem to like it because you don't lose the balance if it's on a gimbal for example.

Steve Vaughan (49:22)
Right. Right.

Nick Church (49:26)
Unstabilize

it,

Steve Vaughan (49:27)
Yeah, it's a 16 35 power zoom as well, which is a good gimbal lens as well. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a gear, I'm a gear freak, as you can probably tell. It's an F4. Yeah. Yeah. for video, it's not a problem, is it? yeah. Hmm. Interesting stuff. I do have a second delivery pending. So I do have some more gear arriving today as well. I have to admit. Nothing exciting. It's Spider.

Luke Simon (49:32)
That's the one I was thinking of. Sorry. Yeah.

Right that's an F4 though isn't it? F4? Yeah.

Nick Church (49:51)
What have you ordered?

Steve Vaughan (49:55)
holster belt. Yeah, so I have the little plastic clips at the moment that go on my normal belt. But two problems, one, they're starting to fall apart and two, because I'm getting a bit podgy now, they pull me trousers down. And nobody wants to see that at a wedding. So this has got more metal clips, proper metal clips and a proper like Batman utility belt.

Nick Church (49:57)
Okay.

Luke Simon (49:57)
Yeah

Hmm.

Nick Church (50:14)
Okay.

Luke Simon (50:15)
Russ.

Nick Church (50:15)
I find that most systems pull my trousers down apart from the whole fast, which is why I use that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Couldn't be that. In fact, I was going to a wedding a few weeks ago. That was about an hour and a bit away, hour and a half away. Um, and I suddenly, I'd done a shoot with a couple of pre-wedding shoot with a couple of the day before. And I thought, Oh crap. If I put that, is that whole fast in the boot? I know I remember it wasn't, it wasn't my case.

Steve Vaughan (50:19)
I can't use Holfast, I hate them. Yeah, I hate them.

Luke Simon (50:20)
Is that what you're using? Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ yeah.

Nick Church (50:42)
I was really panicking. had to pull over because I thought I was trying to work out could I manage with two cameras without a holdfast? And I thought I couldn't do a 12 hour day. There's no way. So I thought I'd have to pull over because if I haven't got time to go back and get it, but I could get my steps under, drive it over. I'd have to give him some money, but it was, it was in the boot and it was the most relief. So we talk about, know, I think that's the only bit of kit. Every other lens, I could forget a lens. I'd make do with something else. You know, but I thought I can't manage without my holdfast.

Luke Simon (50:51)
Yep.

Hmm.

Yeah.

manage.

I've done that once before and I ended up using shoelaces because I had a spare pair of shoes in shoelace straps and just talking, yeah. And talking about your pants falling down, Matt from, no, no, no, but Matt from Holdfast Gear sent me some stuff recently and I think I'm actually wearing it. I don't know whether you can see it, but that's a Holdfast belt and they don't, it doesn't have buttons so I can get fat.

Steve Vaughan (51:17)
No way.

Nick Church (51:19)
god, it's like a cheese wire going to shoulders.

Steve Vaughan (51:25)
Well, it's not a routine occurrence at weddings, I would have put that clear if go any further.

Nick Church (51:27)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (51:35)
Look at that. wow. Look at that.

Nick Church (51:37)
Cool nice. Yeah

Luke Simon (51:42)
because it's like a buckle system. there you go. And I'll show you something else he sent me.

Nick Church (51:42)
Yeah. right, just grips. cool. There we go.

Steve Vaughan (51:44)
You're ripped compared to me. Yeah. I'm not going to show you my belt. Yeah. Cause I'm

not wearing a lot.

Luke Simon (51:50)
He also sent me this one, which is bloody lovely. I don't know whether you use anything like this, Nick, but... Oh, yeah. It's a little...

Steve Vaughan (51:57)
So for our audio listeners, Luke's just gone to fetch something.

Nick Church (51:59)
Oh, yeah. I am finding that,

Steve Vaughan (52:02)
It's a brown bag,

leather bag.

Nick Church (52:03)
yeah, I would like to get, I would like to get that. I do find I've got the same problem with Steve that 35 for most of the day is fine, but sometimes it's a little bit wide. Sorry, a little bit tight. So I do always have my 24, but it's normally just in a, in the bag it came in. So I would like something that's a bit more, yeah, a bit more convenient just to able to get in and out.

Steve Vaughan (52:18)
Yeah.

Luke Simon (52:19)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (52:21)
I can't get on with Holfast. I've tried them and I just feel everything swinging around and I nearly took out like a five year old kid with a Sony camera. Yeah. So.

Luke Simon (52:26)
Hmm. I do that regularly. Yeah. The hot shoe

Nick Church (52:29)
Yeah, I do as well. It's part of the fun.

Luke Simon (52:32)
just.

Nick Church (52:33)
Yeah, exactly. Part of the fun of a wedding is climbing in a hot shoe into a toddler. So I feel terrible every time. And I don't think Holdfast are as kind to your kit as other systems in terms of, especially if you're quite wide like I am, you know, it does scratch his body. I don't do clatter against door frames, oh, absolutely. And that's the main thing. That's what it's all about, you know, and I,

Steve Vaughan (52:44)
No.

Luke Simon (52:45)
Nah, they do scratch around a little bit.

Steve Vaughan (52:51)
If you've been hit on the head by Nick at a wedding, you can dial this number.

Luke Simon (52:51)
But you look shit hot.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (52:59)
tried other systems, you know, so I just accept the fact that I just need to be bit more careful with with scratching and you can put, you know, neoprene things on your cameras if you're that fussed about it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Luke Simon (53:05)
Hmm.

Meh. It's a tool at the end of the day, right? It's a tool.

Steve Vaughan (53:09)
Yeah, it is a tool. It is a tool.

Yeah, it is a tool. Guys, I think we should wrap things up. We're nearly done. And now again, fantastic to catch up with you, Luke, find out more about what do. If you are ever over on this side of the world, Buckingham should just down the road from here. So great to have a beer and ⁓ meet you. yeah, Oxford is a great place for a photo walk as was London, course. As I say.

Luke Simon (53:19)
It's been great.

It'd be bloody awesome. Go for a bit of a photo walk ourselves. That'd be great.

Nick Church (53:32)
Yeah, give me a shout

because I'm only 45 minutes away if I put my foot down.

Steve Vaughan (53:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, it'd great. to do it. if you have enjoyed today's episode, dear listener, thank you for taking the time to listen to us. Don't forget to give us a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, ideally a five-star review. Just help us in lots of weird and wonderful ways. Don't forget to check out also Nick's Academy for learning far more about photography than I could ever possibly discuss in this short exit now. So Nick, where do people find out more?

Luke Simon (53:38)
Excellent.

Nick Church (54:05)
Sure, then just head to www.nichurchcreativeacademy.com.

Steve Vaughan (54:10)
And also if you've got any feedback for us regarding the show, we'd love to hear from you. can contact us through our personal socials or there is also a Facebook group now for the podcast called, surprisingly, the photography pod. We'll put lots of links in the show to all the great images that we've talked about today, obviously to the International Wedding Photographer of the Year Awards as well. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks time. Until then, happy shooting out there and we'll talk you soon.