More Than An Awards Show: The Importance of the Siena Awards
Amazing Aerial and some of its photographers are headed to the 2024 Siena Awards. In preparation, they reflect on the significance of the Siena Awards and how it fills an elusive need for modern-day creatives—that for offline community spaces.
Sep 23, 2024
By Rebecca Duras
Amazing Aerial founder and CEO Paul Prescott, several core team members, and a few photographers are heading to the 2024 Siena Drone Awards taking place in Siena, Italy from September 27th to September 30th. One of Amazing Aerial’s photographers, Fran Arnau, earned an honorable mention in the “Short Documentary Film” category for his film, “The Elements in Iceland.”
The other Amazing Aerial team members are visiting Siena even though they are not receiving awards. Why are they willing to spend time and money to go to Siena, besides getting to take in Tuscany’s amazing landscapes and food? The answer is that the Siena Awards are a rare thing in 2024—an offline place for creatives to gather and exchange ideas.
Over the 10 years that the awards have been in existence, they have evolved beyond just an awards ceremony to a community gathering space. Their popularity also has wider implications for the photography industry, as more and more creatives are realizing the importance of community, including offline communities in this very digital world.
A Community Space From the Beginning
The Siena Awards were founded in 2014 by Luca Venturi in Siena, Italy. In the decade since, the awards have certainly succeeded in one of their original goals, which was to turn Venturi’s hometown of Siena into an international center for photography.
The Siena Awards contain several different awards—the Siena International Photo Awards (SIPA), the Siena Drone Awards, and the Creative Photo Awards, which contain several sub-categories. According to Paul Prescott, who was a jury member for the Siena Drone Awards in 2022, this is part of what makes the Siena experience so memorable. “This is what makes it so special is that it’s not specific to one style of photography,” he says, recalling previous experiences in Siena. “I met war photographers, Pulitzer Prize photographers, art photographers, and then of course drone photographers.”
Besides the awards ceremony, Siena includes other events during the run of the awards that turn it into more of a festival such as photo exhibitions. This helps create a festive atmosphere that celebrates creative work and makes it easier for photographers to mingle and connect.
For Luca Venturi, photographers were always at the center of his vision. “I wanted to create something different, not just limited to celebrating photography, but above all aimed at giving prominence to the authors and photographers and creating moments of connection and relationship between photographers,” he shared in an interview with Amazing Aerial’s podcast. “So from the beginning, our intention and our will was to create opportunities for meeting and not just to award and deliver a prize.”
The festival has a legendary status even among creatives that have never been to the Siena Awards. Amazing Aerial’s Creative Director Carlo Alleva, who is attending this year, says, “This is my first time at the Siena Drone Awards, but I’ve heard great things. The focus is on connecting with people and that’s exactly why we’re going.”
A Chance for Career Advancement
An aerial view of Litli-Hrutur volcano erupting in the Falgradalsfjall volcano area in Iceland. Fran Arnau’s video documentary from Iceland earned him an honorable mention at this year’s Siena Awards. © Amazing Aerial Agency / Fran Arnau
Events such as the Siena Awards are key to advancing creative careers in ways that just focusing on editing techniques and social media follower counts cannot.
Amazing Aerial photographer Sabine Gerold is attending the Siena Drone Awards to finally meet members of the team in person, but she is also hoping to get inspiration from the photo exhibits in the town that can help her improve her craft. “I’d love to see what the jury thinks is the best photography so I can get some ideas for my personal work,” she says. “It will contribute to my personal growth and I know that this atmosphere will inspire me to go out and shoot even more.”
For some creatives, visiting an event such as the Siena Awards can help them break out of a creative rut and find new techniques to try. Creative industries such as photography also thrive on healthy competition, where peers push each other to get better.
The opportunities at the Siena Awards don’t just come from the work on display, but also from the sheer number of people involved in the photography industry packed into one small town. For creatives, the opportunity to network not just with other photographers but with photo buyers, magazine staff, nonprofit officers, and more is a valuable professional opportunity. Paul Prescott fondly remembers the many networking opportunities he has experienced at past Siena Drone Awards. “There are many photographers sitting down, having coffee, having lunch, connecting with one another,” he says.
Nunzio La Rocca, Amazing Aerial’s Photo & Video Editor who is joining the team at this year’s awards says, “It’s an opportunity to gain inspiration from others, and foster relationships within the global drone community.”
Of course, for photographers who are commended at the Siena Awards, the career benefits are even greater. Fran Arnau, who also received an honorable mention at the Siena Awards two years ago, explains that the awards matter because “it’s a public recognition of your work. It’s always a satisfaction to see that your work is liked and encourages you to continue.”
Competition is stiff for even honorable mention status at the Siena Awards. Many creatives such as Sabine submit year after year. Even those who wind up winning or receiving honorable mentions, such as Fran, have to go through several rounds and wait months to find out if they won anything, which can be a nerve-wracking process. However, a win can lead to concrete career benefits such as higher social media follower counts and access to more prestigious agencies and clients. That is why many submit photos each year, to receive a commendation.
From the perspective of an agency, visiting the Siena Awards is also a valuable opportunity for professional advancement. Michele Rinaldi, community manager at Amazing Aerial, says, “it’s an opportunity to connect with top-tier photographers and invite them to join the community.”
Paul has already put these networking opportunities to good use at previous Siena Awards. In 2022, he met Armand Sarlangue, who won Photographer of the Year at the Siena Drone Awards that year. The personal connection he forged with Armand at that year’s Awards not only inspired Armand to join Amazing Aerial as a team member, but also led to a published interview with Armand and Amazing Aerial in Photographie magazine.
Building Off-Line Spaces in an Online World
An aerial view of Fatih Sultan Mehmed bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, which connects europe and Asia. Photographer Ali Kabas has experience judging other awards and shares that award shows are important for a sense of community. © Amazing Aerial Agency / Ali Kabas
However, the significance of the Siena Awards go beyond any career milestones. They offer valuable community to a profession whose members often work alone.
Creating community spaces helps bring photographers together and makes them feel excited and motivated about their work. This is a boon for many creatives whose self-worth can diminish after working for low rates, trying to break into a higher level, or feeling stuck creatively.
Ali Kabas, an Amazing Aerial photographer also attending the awards this year, has noticed this feeling of community at other awards where he has been a jury member. “The awards are always inspirational and exciting for the attendees and I believe seeing many great photographs and their creators helped play a role in me being a better photographer.” This feeling is even greater at the Siena Awards, whose mission has been to foster community from the beginning.
For Paul and the other Amazing Aerial team members, attending the Siena Awards is a way of taking an online community into the real world as many team members have never met in real life. “I want to meet the team, to talk about Amazing Aerial, to just kind of connect,” Paul says. In-person conversations are easier to navigate than asynchronous texting or faulty Zoom connections, making it easier to plan for the future. Especially as Amazing Aerial plans some major new steps, from an online community platform to a series of off-line meet-ups, meeting up face-to-face is important for planning.
Sabine, who has been a member of Amazing Aerial since 2018 but has not met Paul in person yet, echoes the importance of face-to-face meetings. “I’ve been in touch with Paul ever since [I joined] and we’ve had some personal calls and we text a lot and he became a friend of mine, so it is high time that I finally meet him in person and can give him a big hug and thank him for all the support.” Extensive online relationships are often enhanced by the chance to meet up in real life and add a new layer of connection.
Nunzio agrees that in-person meet-ups fill a loneliness gap that online communities struggle to fill. “The lack of face-to-face interaction and the virtual environment may not always provide the deep personal connections that in-person interactions can offer,” he says. “While online communities are invaluable, they work best when complemented by the opportunity of real-world connections and experiences.”
The Siena Awards are more than an awards ceremony, they provide a space where such connections can happen. They can be both spontaneous, as people meet on the street and decide to form a relationship, or planned, as creatives who have admired each other’s work from afar can agree to meet up.
Seeing the excitement that creatives from around the world experience when Siena Awards season rolls around, it’s clear that there is a need for more of these spaces. Amazing Aerial is working to create similar experiences on a smaller scale with localized team meet-ups around the world, such as meet-ups planned by Amazing Aerial Nigeria. This is starting to bring online communities into the real world. “I think that if even one person meets another one in their hometown, for example when Moses Palermo met up with Craig Denis in Miami, or when Francois Detaille met Merr Watson and Sandrine Hecq in Perth during his Western Australia trip. So if at least a few photographers meet here and there, it can be a great opportunity to connect,” Paul says. While gathering hundreds of photographers in one spot is no mean feat, small localized meet-ups can encourage creatives to form communities in the real world and support each other.
Carlo appreciates the importance and warmth of in-person meet-ups but doesn’t want us to discount the importance of online spaces, especially in a field where so many creatives are scattered around the world. “Without an online community, managing [a team in over 75 countries] would be difficult, so I don’t see significant limits here,” he says. Carlo is hard at work launching Amazing Aerial’s community platform, which will bring creatives from around the world together, even if it will be mostly virtual for now.
Paul Prescott’s collaborations with Luca Venturi and inspiration from the Siena Awards has been one of the inspirations for Amazing Aerial’s shift to becoming a lifestyle community. The popularity of the awards has shown how creatives are hungry for community and for opportunities to be around like-minded people. The Siena Awards have filled a need many people did not even realize at first was missing.
The best way to sum up the Siena Awards, as Paul says, is that “they manage to bring people into the real world.” Uniting a global community is a fitting achievement for an organization whose main award is called the Pangea.
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