Reading Time: 4 minutes

Most organizations think that all their professional communicators are not only literate but are effective communicators.

Does your organization have managers putting out fires? I hear this a lot with managers. The root cause of these problems always seems to be poor communication.

So if all your staff has college degrees in English or journalism, why are there so many fires in the organization requiring managers to put out fires?

I believe that most people are visual learners; a recent study by the U.S. Federal Government suggested that up to 83% of human learning occurs visually. The study also indicated that visual information is retained up to six times greater than spoken word alone.

All research points out that we should communicate visually to be the most effective. Psychologist Jerome Bruner of New York University has studied the art of communication, and his studies have shown that:

• People remember 10% of what they hear;
• 20% of what they read; and
• 80% of what they see and do.

I spoke to students in a school camera club where the school’s professional communicators were also in the room. Both of the professionals who attended said they learned a lot. My topic was How Composition Communicates: Visual placement of subject communicates—do you know what you’ve been saying?

Creating a camera club helps with the school yearbook and newsletters and for the professional staff to have photos to use for the school website and publications. So they asked me to come in and set the bar and help educate the students on what makes a good photograph.

If you enjoy my newsletters and blogs, maybe your organization could use a workshop and have me come in and help everyone understand how to create and manipulate visuals more effectively. Every organization that hires professional videographers and photographers also does its work. Those organizations that help educate their people on how to create better visuals for their everyday needs will stand out from their competition.

“A common mistake I see many journalists make is that they write a visual story without watching the visuals in front of them as they write. Too often, a video or slideshow story is not connected to the visuals. A good story is hooked to the visuals and audio. In broadcast, disconnected shots are referred to as wallpaper video, meaning that the story could be told without the visuals.”

–Serena Carpenter, professor Arizona State University

I commonly see writers cover events and never watch the video they will use on the website or the still photographs before and while writing their story.

While working on my master’s of communication in the education department, they taught me how people learn. Surprisingly all my journalism classes spent most of their time communicating but nothing about how people know. All my education classes taught me how people learn, but very little about how to communicate. I used to laugh about this.

In organizations, for the most part, you need people who are not just knowledgeable, as shown in the Stages of Learning chart (see above drawing).

1. Knowledge: memorizing or recalling
2. Comprehension: Translating (changing) into new forms, explaining
3. Application: Applying learning to a unique situation
4. Analysis: Breaking communication down into its parts
5. Synthesis: creating something new by putting the pieces together
6. Evaluation: Judging based on standards

I would say most writers can do all six stages regarding text, but few move past stage one regarding visual literacy.

A suitable workshop will help your staff to learn how to use visuals with text to improve the retention of the information for your organization.

Stanley’s Visual Training Workshops.

I provide one-on-one tutoring in digital photography, photo editing, and visual communication. The one-day tutorial covers camera skills and Lightroom; 2-4 day tutorials add instruction in photographic expression & field shoots as well as matching visuals with text.

Costs: $495/1 day to $1,980/4 days.

Please call me for rates if you want me to help train your staff.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

You need something bigger than a crane for this perspective of the roads around Lake Lanier in Georgia. (Nikon D3s 28-300mm, ISO 400, f/8, 1/30)

A new high-quality lens usually costs between $500 and $15,000. Sports photographers use many long telephoto lenses on the sidelines, and nature photographers use 300mm f/2.8, 400mm f/2.8, or longer. Many folks would be better served to take a trip to Africa or Asia with their present gear than to buy another lens. Two people can take a balloon or airplane ride for about $300. You can take a helicopter ride for about $400 to $600. For about $3000 to $5,000, you can travel overseas to exotic places and see something different. The different perspective is what some folks need to improve their photos. You have seen earlier posts about getting a worm’s eye view and a bird’s eye view. I found you had to fly like a bird for all these photos to get these bird’s-eye images. One of the things my wife had on her bucket list was a hot-air balloon ride. We may have to do this one again. We both had a lot of fun, even though we got up before dawn to drive to a parking lot near Lake Lanier, Georgia, to get on board a balloon designed for up to eight people, plus the pilot. 

Two things made this a great way to make photographs you would want to frame and put on the wall. 1) a different perspective than walking around with a camera. 2) Early morning light looks fantastic. You can immediately get up before the crack of dawn and, having previously scouted a good location, wait for the sun to rise. You will be surprised at how different the area looks compared to midday.

My friend Bill Fortney, who published two books photographing America from 500 Feet (Book 1 and Book 2), jokes that you have more problems than photography if you have focusing issues. Most lenses are in focus at 153 feet or greater, so if you have the lens focused on infinity and it isn’t sharp, you are too close to the ground.

Another interesting phenomenon is that the angle of the light source hitting a subject relative to the camera position can affect the exposure.  You get some of the light bouncing and creating flair, exposing the photo.  You could make it a little darker by underexposing or using a Polarizing filter to help cut down on the glare. 

While in the basket under the balloon, I used three lenses: 1) 28-300mm Nikon, 2) 14-24mm Nikon, and 3) 16mm full frame fish eye Nikon lens. For 90% of the photos, I used the 28-300 mm lens to show the landscape.  I used primarily the 16mm fish eye for the pictures of us in the balloon.  

Can you think of something you can do to get a bird’s-eye view? We were unsatisfied with a balloon ride and took a biplane ride.

One of the best ways to improve your photography is to plan a trip and do something fun to photograph. Too many photographers spend more money on lenses when spending money on a fun location will give them better portfolio results than a new lens.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

At the last minute, a request came in to cover a meeting held at Cascade United Methodist Church here in Atlanta on jobs. Hilda L. Solis, the US Labor Secretary, will be the keynote speaker.

As with most of these last-minute meetings, you must be very flexible and understand why the client wants you to cover the conference.

My goal was to show that the church hosted the event where the US Labor Secretary was the keynote. I think the first photo helps capture that it was a newsworthy event and the UMC logo on the podium showed they were hosting the event. The pastor is in the background, helping tie the church into the event through the photo even more.

In my opinion, an extended caption with that photo tells the story.

After speaking, Madam Secretary Solis took questions and invited the Georgia Trade-Up group attending to the podium. They had just gone through training and now needed jobs.

Solis told her story of going to college on a Pell Grant and being the first in her family to graduate from college. However, while her story and the story of President Obama made it from very humble beginnings to the country’s highest offices, the education issue was not what was fixing the present unemployment situation.

Solis was here to promote President Obama’s plan before congress.

I am not writing this to talk about what she was speaking to the group about as much as to show how I covered the event. In addition, I wanted to deliver professional-looking people who are out of work and need jobs.

I needed to show this in addition to the podium shot because this is what she came to Georgia to help fix.

The panels included people from the faith community who had job clubs to help their members and those from the community find jobs. In addition, they have meetings where experts come in to give tips, that could be on how to use LinkedIn, and Facebook, how to write a resume, and even some give out gas cards to help them find work.

The idea is to share what they are doing in hopes that more faith communities start these groups because through networking, people learn to cope and find jobs.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

The client was looking for a “Gritty Look,” We decided to use a brick wall to look like you are backstage and toss in the lights with gels in the background to add to the effect.

“Our dance department needs some photos for a poster to promote the department,” was the request. After discussing the proposal and what they wanted in more detail, I realized we would wing this one.

I packed up in my van all my lights and backgrounds. Of course, I had most of my cameras and lenses with me.

They wanted gritty and edgy in one photo. Then the college wished to other traditional images for ballet.

Here are two from the photo shoot with the diagrams of how I used lights in the photos. In my next blog, I will also show a couple more pictures from the shoot.

Here is the lighting diagram for the photo above.

Do you have a favorite of these two? If so, why did you pick it over the other one? What would you change if you could on these photos? There is always a place to comment on these blogs below.

Here is the diagram for the Ballerina by herself.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Meet Chef Marc Wegman and his wife at Adele’s: Authentic Cajun Experience.

A successful restaurant and a successful photographer have a lot in common.

We were really sad to see one of our favorite restaurants in Roswell close.  It was “North of New Orleans.”  They had great food and we loved the staff.  They didn’t survive a year.

They had a very hard time finding good kitchen help that understood not just how to cook, but to meet the demands of lunch and dinner rushes.  This pressure in the kitchen caused conflicts.

The old adage if you can’t stand the heat then get out of the kitchen, isn’t referring to the physical heat.  Running a restaurant business creates a lot of psychological pressure in so many areas.

It takes a restaurant balancing all these areas to be successful.

Photographers go out of business every year for the same reasons restaurants fail.  It isn’t always their photography that causes the failure—it is sometimes business or people skills that can take them under.

I continue to struggle with my business.  Everyone does sooner or later.  Sometimes a camera fails and I have to deal with the complications this can cause to an assignment.  Sometimes I have to deal with unrealistic expectations of people.  How you handle these moment’s taxes ones people and business skills.

I think the only thing that fails more than restaurants are photo businesses.  Just as chefs can over focus their success on the food, so too photographers over focus on the photos.

We hope that Chef Wegman is successful with his restaurant Adele’s.  We love the food and hope he can do everything on the business side to stay around.

We were excited to see they did hire Craig who worked at NOLA.  this is Dorie, Craig and Chelle enjoying a small reunion.

Adele’s is conveniently located on the corner of Holcomb Bridge Road and Old Roswell Road in beautiful Roswell, Georgia.

Location / Contact Info:
690 Holcomb Bridge Road, 
Suite 260
Roswell, GA 30075
770-594-0655
info@adelescajun.com
http://www.adelescajun.com/