AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Glamorous wedding portraits that mix posing with a natural feel; eight WPPI International Wedding Album of the Year awards
- Works in
- Color and black and white; film in his early years, then digital
- Camera
- Nikon (a Nikon Ambassador); earlier a Mamiya RB67 and a Nikon FM2
- Also
- Teacher since 2000; designer of the Ice Light and the Omega Reflector; co-founder of the charity The Soul Society
- Links
Jerry Ghionis (born 1973) is an Australian wedding and portrait photographer based in Las Vegas. He is known for glamorous wedding portraits that have the finesse of a pose and the feel of a candid moment. He has won WPPI’s International Wedding Album of the Year eight times, and he has taught photographers since 2000.
The story
His older brother Nick had a darkroom behind his house. There, Jerry Ghionis watched a picture slowly appear in the chemicals. “I was just in awe of that image coming up through the chemicals,” he remembers. When he was 15, Nick gave him his first camera.
The family was Greek Australian and ran food shops, among them a fish and chip shop and a charcoal chicken shop. Jerry was the one who did not join the food business. After high school, in 1990, he sold cameras in camera stores and started a four-year photography course. One year was enough. For him it was too much theory and too little craft.
So in 1994 he walked into a well-known studio on Lygon Street in Melbourne with a simple offer. “Want to carry your bags? I don’t want any money.” For about a year and a half he worked there on weekends for free. Then the studio made him its manager and main photographer. Years later he said: “At the very first wedding that I assisted, I probably learned more than in all of the time I spent in school.”
In 1997 he started his own business. His brother’s charcoal chicken shop in Fairfield had a storeroom, and he built a small studio inside it. That first year he shot 25 weddings. Within ten years the business had more than 15 staff and shot over 300 weddings a year. Then he sold it, and in 2009 he opened a smaller studio under his own name in Melbourne’s Docklands.
One teenage dream was still waiting. His hero was Herb Ritts, and he wanted to work in the bright California sun like him. In 2011 he married Melissa, and the couple opened a rooftop studio in Beverly Hills. In 2017 they moved again, to Las Vegas.
In Nick’s darkroom, the picture came up by itself. On a wedding day, Ghionis does not wait for that. “One of my mantras is, if the magic is there, I capture it; if it’s not there, I create it,” he says.
The work
- 1973Born
- 1990Finishes high school; later quits a photography course after one year
- 1994Starts working unpaid at a well-known studio on Lygon Street, Melbourne
- 1997Opens his own wedding business in Fairfield, Melbourne
- 2000Begins teaching photographers
- 2009Opens a boutique studio under his own name in Docklands, Melbourne
- 2011Marries Melissa; opens a rooftop studio in Beverly Hills; AIPP Australian Wedding Photographer of the Year
- 2017Moves to Las Vegas; becomes a Grand Master of the AIPP
- 2021Tests the Nikon Z 9 for Nikon
Lessons
Learn by assisting. He carried bags for free for about a year and a half. He says his first assisted wedding taught him more than school.
Take away the context. For a portrait of a groom in silhouette, he removed the trees behind him from the frame. Less context, he says, means more mystery.
Book time for your own work. In 2016, tired and burned out, he took no bookings in July and August and made personal fashion and portrait work instead.
Try this: block one day in your calendar for your own photographs and treat it like a paid booking. Photograph one person. Before each frame, look for one thing you can remove from the background.
Gear
Ghionis has talked about his cameras in a long podcast interview (The Camera Life, 2026), in Shutterbug, and for Nikon.
Mamiya RB67: the camera he calls his first. A big medium-format film camera that takes 10 shots per roll.
Nikon FM2: his first Nikon, a 35mm film camera. He still owns it.
Ricoh GR1: a pocket film camera he used for quick black-and-white candids.
Kodak DCS 760: his first digital camera, built on a Nikon body. He says he paid about $22,000 for it.
Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens: in a Shutterbug interview from his Nikon D4 and D3S years, he called it his favorite lens and said he used it for over 90% of the wedding day.
Nikon Z 9: in 2021 he tested it for Nikon with NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8 S, 50mm f/1.2 S and MC 105mm f/2.8 lenses.
Ice Light: a portable LED light he designed himself. Westcott makes it.
