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Nick Church from Nick Church photography joins us today. Nick is a wedding photographer who didn’t pick up a camera until 2014 and fast forward to today, is a running a full time, thriving business.
In Nick’s own words:
“Probably the weirdest thing about me is that while I’ve always been artistic, I did not pick up a camera until 2014!
I studied Civil Engineering and later Software engineering at university and have had a good career in the software and broadcast industry. When I started playing with cameras as my most recent creative outlet (after music and art) I had progress well and was CTO of a software company. It was a very busy role, with a lot of travelling and management of large teams of developers. With a family of four boys, it was not an ideal time to start getting involved in a hobby that is very, very time consuming!
But I have never shied away from hard work, and with a supportive partner that (to this day) took on more than her fair share of housework, I started to shoot, shoot and then shoot some more. I started taking landscape shots in and around my home city of Bristol and pretty soon I was exhibiting these and selling a good number. A couple of people asked me if I would shoot their wedding, and that was that, I was a wedding photographer! All I had to do was work out 1) how to be a wedding photographer and 2) work out how to find time to do it alongside my job.
All my career I have been skilled at project management, strategy and time management. I decided I needed to apply all of these skills to photography, and before too long I knew that this was what I wanted to do for a career and that I knew if done carefully I could make a career from this creativity that I had come to love. Over the next 2 years, with increasing numbers of weddings, and some very clearly intentional marketing and strategy, the plan started to take shape. So that is how it came to be that after 3 years of picking up a camera, late in 2017, I left the bored-room (sic) for a career in photography, which due to the planning, projects and marketing I’d done, I knew would not put the family or our house at risk. It’s been an amazing first year as a full time pro and I am so excited for the future.”
In this interview, we tackle the following topics:
- How Nick got started as a photographer
- Lessons in time management
- Getting to know your clients prior to the wedding
- The importance of visiting the wedding venue beforehand
- The role of Facebook advertising and referrals
- How Nick streamlines his social media actions
- The role customer service plays
- The importance of being prepared