More Than An Agency: Building Community on Amazing Aerial's New Platform

Amazing Aerial’s community platform, hosted on NAS.io, promises to change how creatives interact with each other, learn their craft, and even generate new revenue. © Amazing Aerial Agency

By Rebecca Duras

On October 29th, 2024, Amazing Aerial formally launched its community platform on NAS.io. In just a few short weeks, hundreds of photographers joined the platform, began attending events, and started exploring the agency’s first community challenge.

The platform will be a place for Amazing Aerial’s photographers to communicate with the agency, participate in challenges that help them build their portfolios, and level up their skills by attending training sessions and other events.“The idea in general is to create a new sense of community and create a space where people can really grow as photographers,” explains Carlo Alleva, Creative Director and Community Platform Manager at Amazing Aerial.

However, the ultimate goal of the platform is far loftier than just providing a fun place where photographers can virtually hang out with each other—it’s to create a community that will move both offline and online and help photographers navigate the business, in an industry where photographers are feeling increasingly shut out and isolated.

Meeting the Need for Community  

Although the community platform itself is a new development, Amazing Aerial has been working to create a spirit of community since the very beginning. “I was giving one on one feedback with the photographers, which was OK when we just started out with 5 people, or when we grew to 23 organically,” Paul Prescott, founder and CEO of Amazing Aerial says, recalling the early days of the agency.

However, as the agency grew to over 100 members, and then continued growing, providing one-on-one feedback and direct communication became more difficult. Paul and the rest of the Amazing Aerial team tried different ways to maintain this feeling of community and continue helping photographers develop their skills, such as hosting training sessions on the platform Kajabi and organizing community calls.

Despite their best efforts, this type of communication still fell short of creating a true spirit of community. “It was quite difficult at first because I was the bottleneck, and the whole idea of a community is to also let people connect with each other,” Paul says.“What I’ve also learnt over time is that when a message is misunderstood or the wrong message goes out it takes a long time to be able to rectify that.”

While the agency was working well, Paul knew that more efficient communication would also allow the agency to respond in real time to important events and requests for photos and videos, improving the collection.

Carlo was also becoming frustrated with the limits on existing methods of communication with the Amazing Aerial community. “We were spending too much time on social media but not really connecting with our audience,” he says. He realized that the core team and all of the photographers were craving a place where they could interact with each other, learn from each other, and hopefully connect offline.

Photographers such as Moses Palermo, a member of Amazing Aerial’s core team, were also excited about developing the community spirit that Amazing Aerial already possesses further. “It allows us to engage in a shared space,” Moses says about his hopes for the community platform.

In the meantime, the technology to host community platforms that Amazing Aerial wanted to build was developed and the team began researching. “We wanted to connect photographers into a community that they felt a belonging to, to give them training so they feel supported as a photographer, and to create a direction for their work,” Paul said. The lofty plan for the community platform was to create a space where photographers could develop not just their skills, but their network and even their confidence.

Getting to Work

Amazing Aerial’s growing Nigeria team met up in Lagos. Members Abdul and Kalada put in a lot of effort into coordinating meet-ups and organizing trainings to help their colleagues upgrade their skills. © Amazing Aerial Agency

Once the team realized the need for a community platform, everyone got to work. Carlo, as Community Platform Manager, and Michele Rinaldi and Nunzio La Rocca worked together to prepare the platform for launch. “We started with the research about different platforms, created the community, the graphics, and everything, plus programming that will be running every week until Christmas,” he says.

The team decided to work with Nas.io to build the community platform because of its accessibility and the many features it has, including options to host challenges and events. It is also free to join initially with options to add premium events later, which makes the platform accessible to all Amazing Aerial community members, even those that live in places where they may have less disposable income to spend on memberships. “We want to demonstrate to people that we are giving 1000% of our energy to them and then we can really grow together,” Carlo explains.

Other Amazing Aerial team members contributed to make the community platform something special. Moses Palermo put together an interactive map where photographers can see where other members of their global community are located. “I suggested creating a map to visualize where everyone is located, making it simpler for people to connect,” he says. He and Paul worked together to create a map that will hopefully be used to grow the community offline as well. “Recently, someone suggested marking members who go live on the map—a fantastic idea,” Moses adds.

After Amazing Aerial launched the community platform, Carlo kept the energy going by hosting an official launch event and kicking off the first community challenge, called “Explore Your Backyard.” Gamification is a popular way to encourage engagement and help people build their skills, but these planned challenges go beyond creating a fun experience for photographers. “We’re going to give creative direction,” Paul explains the thinking behind these challenges. “We can look at their work when they come back, give them advice and tips, and they can ask specific questions.” The goal of the challenges is to help photographers develop their skills, work within creative direction, and increase their collections, which in turn helps photographers and the agency build revenue.

Another goal of the community platform is to push photographers to meet up offline as well and bring the Amazing Aerial community into real life by connecting with nearby team members, hosting trainings or workshops, and working together to create good work. Moses has already started putting this energy into use by trialing meet-ups in his home state of Florida and in Mexico. “Meeting up with other photographers is always a great experience,” he says. “We exchanged tips and advice, and everyone left having learned something new. I’m hoping others will take the lead in getting together.” Bringing the analog back into digital photography can help photographers develop their skills—and make some valuable connections.

Changes That Go Beyond Amazing Aerial

While creating online communities in the photography world is nothing new, Paul hopes that Amazing Aerial can add something to the conversation by doing it differently. “What is special about Amazing Aerial is that we are bringing community, training, meet-ups, and being able to license your work all in one place,” he says. Besides having a fun experience, photographers will have all of the resources they need to ultimately build revenue at their disposal.

By providing photographers with a place where they can train up their skillset and receive creative direction, Paul hopes to provide photo buyers and partner agencies that already trust Amazing Aerial’s curated collections with even more quality photos and videos. “We’re keeping our team up to date with the latest trends, technology, equipment, and ultimately bringing back the most beautiful imagery in the world,” Paul says. The community platform will also make it easier for projects that require rapid turnaround, where Amazing Aerial can quickly find a photographer to go out and shoot a certain place or thing for a buyer that needs images and video urgently.

Emphasizing the community and the professional behind the still image adds more value to photography and videography, especially in a world where this craft is feeling more devalued. “It’s a little bit like food,” Paul explains. “Buyers will get to know the story behind the photo, who the producer is and where it comes from.”

The Amazing Aerial team is also hopeful that emphasizing community will add value to collaborations with other stakeholders in the photography industry. Technology platforms that operate in the industry will see how they can serve as hosts to beautiful portfolios, and how the community can be leveraged as a tool to build revenue for all parties involved.

Most importantly, building a community can hopefully change the way that photographers experience an industry that can sometimes feel impersonal. “The idea in general is to create a new sense for the community, providing help, providing guidance, and creating a place where people can really grow as a photographer, not just as a stock photographer,” Carlo says.

Moses agrees, and hopes that the community platform can go even further. “Paul has started a movement focused on real connections, and I believe that this platform can help us form a strong fellowship and support growth with one another.”