This was well received last time I did it in issue 31 and as I don’t have much valuable to say this week, I thought I’d roll out another load of old award entries for you, and critique them myself! These are all from Fearless Collection 14 way back in early 2013.

I took a week off writing last week. A few things put me in the absolute mother of all bad moods and I just decided to keep quiet. But I’m back this week, and I saw this print on the wall while eating Manchester’s nicest sausage and egg barm (or roll, or bap, or cob, or butty or whatever you call it)… “Work hard and be nice to people.”

I’ve been thinking loads lately about why our job can be so exhausting. I know we work hard, and I know we work lots of hours and I know we put all of ourselves into our work and our businesses, but I mean more about why it can be so mentally exhausting, especially at this stage of the season. For me, my season is almost over. Two left and that’s it. I don’t have a single winter wedding this year. I know the party line is to say ‘I’ve taken on less work by choice’ but I’d be fibbing if I said that. I just haven’t received any winter bookings. Shame because I love a winter wedding.

I had a tough wedding on Tuesday. I’ve just written about 10 versions of this newsletter and they were all either ranting, waffling or being negative so hopefully this is the final version and is none of the above. I’ve sat and thought a lot as I usually do. Why was Tuesday so tough? And it’s because honestly it felt like I was ‘just a vendor’, the most annoying one, and nobody cared about the photos.

Maybe I’m drained. I don’t know. It is the time of year for it. This seems like a bit of an oxymoronic (or maybe just moronic) subject for a newsletter that’s really supposed to inspire and motivate, but I’m a bit sick of how much motivational bullsh is fired at me constantly on social media. And after two conversations about it this week I thought I’d chisel my thoughts into a newsletter. You know the stuff… You can be more. You can do more. You can travel more. You can earn more. You can have a better house. You can be a better parent. YOU SHOULD WANT MORE.

I’m shooting my last destination wedding for the foreseeable future today. I’ll tell you why that is another time. Recently I’ve been feeling very thoughtful and quite introspective. I don’t know why but this week I was thinking about a time I was in Norway in late 2018. I remember it so vividly, the feeling.

I was going to take a break from this mini-series about struggling for bookings but I changed my mind and I’m going to see it through. This is the penultimate issue… pricing!

I thought I’d better begin with a bit of a caveat here. I once studied the IDM Diploma in Direct and Interactive Marketing. It was a very in-depth course with lots of books and whitepapers and case studies, most of which I never read which resulted in me failing the exam and not achieving that qualification. I got 43% in the exam which annoyed me, not because I failed but because I’ve always loved the number 42 (Hitchhikers Guide fans will know).

LOADS of food for thought since last week’s issue about the seemingly industry-wide problem of bookings being down. I’ve spoken to people with a quarter of their usual bookings, and I’ve spoken to people with twice the usual number of bookings and flying. So whatever we all think, it’s not necessarily an industry problem. This week I want to talk about the hardest thing to talk about and that’s this question: Is your work good enough?

“Things are slow” is a phrase I hear a lot at the moment.Along with “enquiries are tumbleweed”, “bookings are down”, “I’m worried”.And let me tell you – I am not immune to this! I’ve heard people say before that it’s alright for people like me who are established and stuff. And I can categorically say that’s not the case.So I thought I’d give my thoughts and opinions on all of this, and I’ll spread it over a little mini-superchARJ-series because I think I need to split my thoughts across a few key areas.This week… the MARKET.

The fog of mid-season is a thick old foe.I had a mad June. Of my 21 weddings this year, 8 of them ended up being in June for some reason. And they were all over the country as far north as Inverness and as far south as London.I know my numbers are much lower than most, and if you’re able to shoot that many in a month and feel fine, I’m jealous.

Evening. This is a long one. Apologies. I guess it’s like when you’ve not seen a friend for a long time so they just fully download their brain onto you?If you can’t be bothered reading all this then scroll down to almost the end where I say “thing number three” because that’s where I get profound.You’re still up here? Ok. First of all, what’s with all the sagas? I know this can be a dramatic industry but why?!

Listen, sometimes I can be impulsive and hasty.I told you in March with absolute definite certainty that my last superchARJ email was my last one.But I’ve missed it. I’ve missed writing down my thoughts and I’ve missed the little conversations that result in my email inbox.So this is me just quietly reappearing in your inbox. This is my u-turn. Can we talk again?

Well I’m here to tell you this is the final episode of superchARJ.I’ve ended every superchARJ email (I think) with ‘thanks for reading’ because I’ve absolutely loved writing every single one of these emails and hardly anyone unsubscribed ever which I’ll take as a win. Lots of you bought me multiple coffees when I had that link up, and lots of you also replied to many of my newsletters and said nice things which always absolutely made my day.

Well, that was a year hey. Blink and you missed it. Crumbs, it went by so quick didn’t it?But the relentlessness never stops as focus for some people moves onto selecting and publishing a ‘best of 2023’ on our blogs.Normally I’d have mine done nice and early. I always had a goal to be one of the first to have it published because I used to think that by now everyone’s a bit sick of seeing other people’s annual highlights.Or maybe that’s just me!But I don’t think anyone should feel pressure to post a ‘best of’ by any false deadline or for any reason other than the three P’s – pride, psychology and portfolio.Let me explain…

It’s easy in football for your head to drop when you fall a goal behind. Then you might concede another and feel like it’s becoming pointless to give it your full effort and attention any more because the game is getting beyond you.“Still nil-nil” comes the cry from the coach.

I got an email this morning from TED: “How every child can thrive by five”.Seconds earlier I saw an “inspirational” post simply saying “It’s never too late.”Well. It’s too bloody late for me to help my kids “thrive by five”. 10 and 6 years too late to be exact!But this is the pressure we’re under nowadays, and the kind of unspoken pressure we’re need to somehow deal with, especially as social media obsessed small creative business owners.

It’s been sunny lately. Not sure you noticed.That means hard, harsh, extremely bright light.In general I love bright hard light, but I don’t love trying to shoot wedding portraits in hard light.And I’ve had chats with a few people lately lamenting the fact that they’ve had to shoot portraits in the middle of the day.Well.You don’t HAVE to.You have a choice.

You may or may not have seen that @mosseri posted a long video this week about how Instagram works. He talks a lot about how it works in terms of what’s shown to us, but also he talks a little about it in terms of when and why our content might be shown to others.I watched and listened and I’ve deciphered it for you.

Can we talk about AI again?I last talked about it back in issue 045 when I called AI a magic trick minus the magic. So if you read that you’ll know I’m basically a photography purist who thinks AI should keep its grubby little fingers out of music and art.But since then Adobe decided to let AI stick its grubby little fingers into photography through the latest Photoshop Beta release and something called “Generative Fill”.

There’s a life hack known as habit stacking.If you’ve never heard of habit stacking it’s a technique you can use when you’re trying to create a new habit in your life.What you do is you ‘stack’ the new habit on top of an existing habit you’ve got.So… say you want to get in the habit of doing some exercise every morning… you could try and remember to do your exercise OR you could do your exercise immediately after an existing habit like brushing your teeth. So you’d brush your teeth and then instantly do your exercise.The new habit becomes easier to remember and do because it’s attached to something that’s already a habit.Make sense? Ok good.

Some of my best friendships in this industry came from being involved in industry community groups.There was some confusion after my last issue in some of the replies I received that I was saying community is a bad thing because it creates echo chambers and I flippantly said at the end “when you hear the echo, find a way out”.So I thought today, for my FIFTIETH issue of superchARJ I’d back track a little on that slightly negative undertone, and talk about why community is so vital to a thriving industry and why in the past I’ve even been part of setting up communities within the industry.

Being creative and original is very important to me personally.I like to think I’m striving for some kind of originality in my work, always.I also like to think I’m an open minded person too, and hopefully only becoming more open minded as my age increases.I think ever-evolving creativity and open mindedness go a hand in hand.But can you be creative and original in an echo chamber? I’m not so sure.

I fully think the hardest thing of all to master in photography is composition.Light is easy as it’s fairly textbook and it’s maths and science and stuff.Moment is fairly easy because we have 20fps shutters and mahoosive memory cards and, well, cool stuff happens at weddings. Point your machine gun camera at it and brrrrrrrapppp.Composition though. That’s the enigma. That’s the bull that is hardest to tame.

If you’ve read any of my early issues of superchARJ you’ll know my own personal mental struggle with the world of awards.I announced in true over-dramatic style that my time entering awards was over. And it was. And it was good for me.But for some reason at the end of last year I decided I wanted to give it another go. So I thought I’d tell you why and how that’s going.

I don’t think marketing has ever been as difficult for wedding photographers as it is right now.Everyone has a really nice website and it’s pretty easy to do at least the basics of SEO.Social media is a level playing field, visually speaking. And we’ve got online schedulers to post our content.We’ve got apps that make cool reels and now AI that can write our words for us.Being award winning has become meaningless because we simply have too many awards bodies giving out too many awards.And at the same time with camera phones being so good, society is beginning to place less and less value on the concept of ‘photography’.The time when we could do the basics and wait for the work to roll in are possibly over.

AI is like a magic trick.But without the magic.So just a trick.I was scrolling Instagram today and one of the accounts I follow posted an amazing photo. They credited the photographer so I clicked through and followed and liked a few of their posts.Then I reached the photo which had been shared on the other account. The one that brought me here. And I read the caption.“AI photography series”And I felt tricked. Duped. Somehow deeply misled. Annoyed and a little disgusted.

1. Photographers are not the most important people at weddings.2. We are making photos for someone else, not ourselves.Those are really two mantras I live by at my weddings. There have been times in my career that my ego has caused me to forget one or both, but I’m doing my best work (experience and results) when I remember these two things.

Last weekend I went out to visit a friend in Switzerland and I only took one lens with me – a manual focus lens.I’m a massive advocate of shooting manual everything… iso, aperture, shutter speed and white balance. When I moved to shooting full manual, it transformed the way I see and shoot. Giving the camera as little to do as possible and taking over all creative decisions opened up my mind in a way I didn’t expect.

As I creep closer to my first wedding of 2023 my head has turned towards planning for the year, artistically.It’s something I used to do every year, but haven’t done since 2019 for various reasons. So I’m going to let you in on my little artistic planning process.

Why do we need to make reels? Or tiktoks?Because Instagram doesn’t show our posts? Because Instagram is dead? Because video is the future? Because… the algorithm? All of the above and more?

I can’t tell you who said this, I saw it on a reel and now I can’t find it again but it was a clip from some kind of conference style q&a and went like this:Audience member: “Is jazz music for the player or the listener?”Speaker: “Music is always for the listener. But the first listener is always the player.”

About two years into my career I started settling into ‘shooting for the album’.It’s not a phrase you hear all that much any more, but it basically means just shooting the images you know will work in an album.It means finding a formula and shooting to that formula. And honestly it’s a comfortable way to shoot. Not unenjoyable. Potentially more lucrative.

I don’t want to do video.I tried it, I bought all the gear… gimbal, microphones, the full shebang.It just wasn’t me. And the editing. Oh my word the editing.

I think there’s this concept in our industry and maybe in creative industry in general that you’re either a complete free spirit who’s in it for the art, or your a business-head who just thinks wedding photography is a great little earner. I’m neither, but I see myself more as a photographer than a business owner.

My Nan had a phrase. Not very cryptic… she was a brutally honest, no filter, Welsh lady. She’d never swear, but if she thought you were telling a ‘fib’ she’d just come out and say it.“Bullsh.”Doesn’t take a genius to know what bullsh is short for, I know. But that was her thing. The Nan who called bullsh. Often.

Before I was a photographer I was a programmer. It was a cushy job and I was very good at it. It was completely stress free, it was black and white, it was fixed hours, fixed location, fixed salary. Predictable.My boss was a tool but my grandad always says you measure a job by three things: the work you do, the boss you have and the money you make. If you’re happy with two out of the three, don’t change it.

Where have you been, I hear you ask? Very thoughtful of you, thanks for asking, I’ve been probably in the same places as you – at a wedding, in my car in a motorway traffic jam, or in front of my screen editing.

I went to The Photography Show in Birmingham on Tuesday. I wasn’t really in the mood to look around the actual stands and there weren’t any talks I wanted to listen to, but I caught up with some friends and it was lovely to socialise briefly. I can be quite a socially anxious recluse but it was a nice day out and a welcome break from the editing!I don’t know about you but I’m finding as the season enters the home straight I’m needing more and more time to rest and recover mentally between weddings, and each week my productivity seems slower and slower.

My Nan LOVED The Queen.I remember one constant in an otherwise turbulent childhood was our annual trip to London with my Nan to watch The Lord Mayor’s Parade, then we’d go to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard.For me, growing up, London meant The Queen.

I couldn’t think what to speak about this week… I almost wrote about how I was miffed not to be in the Pro Photo Mag Top 50 but I’ll keep that to myself.But I was doing a bit of digital spring cleaning and came across a folder of all my award entries ever, and thought I’d show you what I entered for my first ever set of entries into Fearless collection 11 waaaaay back in August 2012.Just so happens to be almost exactly 10 years to the day since I entered them. So here they are!

A couple of years into my wedding photography career I was hanging out with a friend. He had a Mamiya RB67 medium format film camera that he wouldn’t shut up about.I told him I was a digital guy, I didn’t understand why people still shot film, and humoured him as he waxed lyrical about film stock, film cameras and kept berating me about the fact I just didn’t ‘get it’.

Tiktok is better than Instagram and this will only become more true as Instagram tries to be more like Tiktok with it’s full throttle push towards being a ‘reels only’ platform.I think if you want to keep up with what works on social media and maybe try and stay one step then it’s probably time to get yourself on Tiktok if you’ve been avoiding it.

My emails are usually based on “I’ve been thinking about this thing lately so maybe you have been too” and so this week I’ve been thinking a lot about pricing, and chatting about it to some of my photographer mates. It’s often a subject that crops up a lot at this time of year.

When I started out photographing weddings I bought a course on DVD called “The Wedding Photography Blueprint”… It taught me all the rules. All the necessary shots, everything that a photographer has to do at a wedding. Right from how to pose a pair of shoes on a chair through to how to place the couple’s hands for the perfect cake cutting photo.

Welcome to issue 26 of superchARJ! That means I’ve been writing to you for 6 months, every single week. If you’ve been with me since issue 1 thanks very much, but whatever issue you joined me I’m glad to have you here reading my hopefully-helpful-ramblings!Someone described me as “oddly motivational” the other day. I’m happy with that title!

I never learned to love my own work without the external recognition of other photographers and awards.Rewind.When I started shooting in 2010 there was no awards merry-go-round, there was no workshop industry, there wasn’t a conference speaker circuit, and destination weddings weren’t much of a thing.

I was watching a TikTok this morning. I like TikTok as a viewer… It was a guy who was shaving off his beard. He had a good beard… went to the barber… still had more of a beard than I’m capable of growing even after ‘shaving off’ his beard. Life isn’t fair.

Well I bloody forgot to send you an email yesterday didn’t I? Managed it 22 Thursdays in a row, but yesterday I forgot. I realised I’d forgotten in the morning, but I was on the way to a wedding, so I knew I wouldn’t get it written and sent yesterday!

Knock knock. Who’s there? How do you stay sane mid-season? You don’t.But you can, so I want to share some tips with you that I use to try and keep at least a fingertip grip on my sanity mid-season. Because I’ll be honest with you that’s all it ever is at this time of year.

I vividly remember leaving a wedding in 2014 feeling like I’d absolutely crushed it.I vividly remember it because it’s genuinely the only time I’ve ever left a wedding feeling like I’d crushed it. Nailed it. Smashed it. Whatever you want to say.That wedding turned out to be one of the only weddings in my entire career of 500+ weddings where I received a complaint about the photos.True story.

Dance floors are a bit like a gladiatorial arena. The only way to win is to fight. You can’t fight from the sidelines and you can’t win without a sword.I see flash as my sword of choice for dance floors.

I guess if you’ve read many of my newsletters or listened to any of my podcast episodes, you’ll know how I place a high value on positivity. There are loads of personal reasons for this… I have to work hard to keep myself in a positive mental state. Or I have to work hard to get myself out of my regular low moods. Positivity is a conscious choice for me. But I’m not going to talk about that today, I’m going to talk about why I believe positivity (or at least a lack of negativity) is so so important in business and marketing.

Every week I’m gifted a moment where I know exactly what to write about.That moment was just now, while stood in the Eurostar departure lounge at St Pancras heading for Paris where I’ll get another train to this weekend’s wedding.Jet set glamour.Or not.

I saw two signs this week.The first one said ‘CATS EYES REMOVED’ and I thought that’s an odd thing to advertise in public.The second one said ‘Success is not Happiness’ and I thought of course it is, and happiness is success. But the issue with society is that no amount of success is enough success. Whenever you have some you want more, there’s no success summit. So we’re never happy.

I had a chat recently with a friend about consistency. Their concern was a lack of consistency with their editing, but it got me thinking about artistic consistency, and how important (or not) it really is.Over the years I’ve thought a lot about, and strived for a consistent look and feel to my work.

About 18 months ago, maybe more, a couple booked me for their wedding. They were rearranging cos of you-know-what but their original photographer couldn’t do the new date so they came to me, via him.They were borderline obsessed with my work. Possibly the most complimentary couple ever about what they saw in my portfolio. And I’m talking aesthetics and beyond. So nice.They then had to postpone again by a year.Then… around six months before their wedding I got a WhatsApp message, simply saying they wanted to book an additional, separate photographer to come to their wedding to take care of their portraits and detail photos. Why? Because they loved the editorial nature of this person’s work. They wanted to check I was ok with this before they booked this other photographer.Erm. What?

Last week I told you that someone told me that someone had told them that “reportage is the new spot colour” and I said I’d discuss it this week after we’d all ruminated on it. Objection! Hearsay! Calls for speculation! (anyone else obsessively watching the Depp vs Heard trial?!). Where do I begin to deconstruct that… Reportage is the new spot colour?! Let me tell you what I think they meant, and why it’s not as preposterous as it sounds. Even though it is utterly preposterous…

I had a few things to talk about this week, the first was that I’ve been told “reportage is the new spot colour” and that definitely needs some discussion… I don’t fully disagree but clearly that’s preposterous… or is it? Ruminate on that, and I’ll do the same. The second is the ever-present discussion around pricing and the “you’re too cheap” adage which, honestly, I hate. So both of these topics will be discussed at a later date! Myths will be busted.

Something like six years ago I started teaching people what I knew about photography. I wasn’t “teaching photography”, or even wedding photography, I was teaching what I knew and what I thought about how I personally do it. I stopped teaching because the more I sat and analysed my own work and how it was made, what the technicals were, where my lightroom sliders sat… the more I realised that it wasn’t about any of that stuff. Not really. And the more I made it about that stuff, because I was having to distil it into teaching materials, I realised the soul was gradually leaving my own work.

For some, positivity is a conscious choice.For others, it comes naturally.I think I sit somewhere between the two. I am an optimist in almost all situations but I can also be a bit moody/grumpy/volatile/temperamental. The last two weeks I’ve been mainly grumpy/irritable, and not been able to work out why. It happens to all of us I guess! I don’t know what’s caused it.

Back on the productivity tips train this week with the productivity equivalent of the “make your bed” speech given by Navy Seal William McRaven. If you’ve never seen it, give that link a little tickle, and watch it.He also has a book which is also funnily enough called “make your bed”. I’m led to believe it’s also good. I just listened to 5 mins of the audiobook and it’s not for me. But you might enjoy it.Anyway, in my analogy, your email inbox is your bed.

I ended up on a photographer’s website earlier. It was Igor Demba if you must know. Lovely man. Wonderful artist. If you’ve never seen Igor’s work before, please check it out. It’s great. He’s great.What I noticed while looking though, is that I wasn’t appreciating it for what it is. I was sitting there sipping my decaf oat milk latte, wondering why my work doesn’t look like that, because at that moment I felt like my brain decided to tell me that Igor’s work was nicer than mine.

I shot my first wedding of the year earlier this month in London. I was in town the day before so I headed over to the church rehearsal to win some client and vicar brownie points and settle my new venue nerves for the next day.I sat at the back of the rehearsal while the bishop went through the ceremony with the couple. He was really lovely with them. So nice, he really put the couple at ease. One of the nicest, most relaxed rehearsals I’ve seen.

I had someone call me ‘the workflow guy’ this week, or something along those lines. I am quite proud of the efficiency of my workflow, for sure, and one element of my workflow which is non-negotiable is that all weddings are culled within 48 hours of the wedding and I think this is pretty much how I stay backlog free.I’ve said workflow 4 times already. Dammit, 5 now. This is why I’m not a professional writer. Such a rule breaker.

I bought a new lens this week. It’s the first time I’ve bought any new camera equipment since early 2018 when I switched from Canon to Sony.I bought a 90mm Sony G Master Macro lens. I’ve been thinking for a while that I didn’t have a backup for my 85mm (Zeiss Batis if you’re wondering) so I kinda bought it as a backup for if something happens to my 85 but also because I didn’t have anything capable of close-ups. And, you know, retail therapy… I mean, tax bill approaching.

I half promised a video this week but I couldn’t think of anything that would’ve been better in video format, so I’m back with another newsletter. Video is going to be hard because I don’t want to over-influence you artistically. I believe strongly in everyone embracing their own inner artist, and that got me thinking about workshops, because it seems the pre-season workshop merry-go-round is in full swing at the moment.

I wake up – usually in a premier inn – and the nerves immediately kick in.Gulp… I have to shoot a wedding today.This used to happen in my first year and it still happens now in what will be my 13th year of shooting weddings.

I absolutely love this photo by the way. But let me tell you why it’s pointless.I don’t think anyone other than me will ever do anything with this photo. I don’t think the bride and groom will look at it much in time, let alone frame it or display it in any way – I bet they even scrolled past it pretty rapidly when viewing their photos for the first time.

Awards are bad… for me. And that’s why I stopped entering last year at some point. I’ll tell you why…. But first…I have to start by saying awards aren’t inherently bad — in fact I think the emergence of awards has done a lot for raising the standards of photography across the industry. I remember seeing Fearless awards for the first time and thinking the bar had just been raised so high, and was so far from what I was shooting at that time. It gave me something to aim for, and winning my first Fearless was a great feeling.

Tell me I’m not alone in spending the entirety of January and beyond thinking I need to change everything before the season kicks off. It doesn’t help that the messaging of every industry at this time of year is ‘new year, new you’ or something equally barf-inducing.At some point in January I decided I was switching to Nikon (from Sony), switching to Capture One (from Lightroom) and ditching my 35mm and 85mm lenses in favour of a new 50mm and 135mm pairing.