Speaker Tips for Photographers

I just finished two days of presentations by photographers. There were some excellent presentations, but there were some poor presentations.

For the past twenty years, I have helped to put on photo conferences. When our team evaluates a meeting, we decide who we will invite back. Some of the group was at this event and critiqued the presentations. Why? Because we might want to ask some of the speakers to our conference to speak.

Over the years, there are some everyday things we have noticed. There are things that good speakers do that make us want to hear them. But, conversely, some things turn us off.

Here are some tips I would give to speakers on things we often raise:

Prepare your presentation. Put aside time and work on your thoughts and what you want to share. I have watched in the older days of slide trays, photographers are showing up with slides, not even in slide trays, and speakers are putting them together minutes before speaking. Today those same speakers have just thrown images into a folder and not organized them and edited them for the presentation.
Have a goal. What one thing should your audience know that you feel passionate about? If you don’t know, your audience will not know what you tried to tell them.
Refine the goal to something you can share in the time you have. One of the biggest mistakes is that some people want to tell people all about themselves and even what they plan on doing.
- Maybe share one story you did and what you learned from this experience.
- Maybe you have discovered you have a cheat sheet you work from for all your stories, and you can share those.
- Sometimes you discover something later in your career that most other people know about, but you wish someone had told you earlier about this.
Leave the audience wanting more rather than wishing you had stopped speaking a lot sooner.
- I have seen how someone took this to an extreme once in my career. We paid to fly a person out to speak, and they got up, read from their notes, and sat down in just 10 minutes.
- If you can point people to your website or blog to get more on your topic, then do that.
Got a secret? Why are you speaking if what you share isn’t like a secret and they already have seen your coverage? So instead, share something they couldn’t have gotten from your website.
- If you have a story on your website that you are proud of and even won a Pulitzer, don’t just show this package. Instead, share something that they wouldn’t know by seeing the story alone.
- Maybe you were arrested and detained by the police while covering the subject. Why did the police stop you?
- Maybe there are stories about how you found the story.
Something new. The Chris Matthews show on NBC Sunday Mornings has a segment called “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know,” The four panelists report to Matthews new information they gleaned from their reporting. It is successful for a reason–it works. Remember, asking you to speak was because they saw your work and are familiar with it. So don’t tell them something they already know; tell them something they don’t know.
- A lens that helped you
- A camera that you used for this project
- New App that you used to help make the project more successful
Use multimedia. You are a photographer whose imagery is consumed by an audience. Your clients and publications put your photos into a presentable form. Don’t give your audience the uncut or unedited version. Package your images.
- Put a slide show with audio together. Maybe you narrate the package over music. Then, please put together the visual story so that you can play this 2 – 5 minute package, and the audience will get what you did.
- Maybe you show 2 or 3 small packages and then either before or afterward explain some things about the package.
  - Why did you do the project?
  - How you and the editors worked together?
  - Did your project get reimbursed by the publication that you work for on staff?
- Maybe you do another multimedia piece by interviewing the subjects, and they tell the results of what happened after the story ran.
Don’t Rely On An Internet Connection. For example, if you are at a hotel trying to stream a video, you might make your audience wait. This happened this weekend.
- Put all your material on your computer.
Know your time limit. The conference planners have other speakers planned. Going over your time needs to be at the group’s invitation, not by you. We have a timekeeper who stands up off to the side of the room at 5 minutes to go. They come onto the stage when your time is up. If you still haven’t stopped, they take the microphone from you and will stop you. [Side note to those running the conference: It is perfectly OK to cut off a speaker going long, even if they are famous–everyone in the audience wants you to do so. You will not embarrass yourself by doing this, but might get a cheer as a hero from the audience.]
- We have other speakers: the audience, the speakers; everyone wants to hear rather than you drone on and on.
- If you cannot meet the time frame, you will only demonstrate how unprofessional you are and damage your brand.
- Demonstrate to everyone you know how to communicate effectively in your time allotment and allow for questions to clarify some of your points.
Plan for 5 minutes for questions.
- People may need to clarify something you said.
- You may have helped people think of something new and want to see if they are on the right track since you have been down that road.
Backup Copy. Has the entire presentation backed up on one of these in case your computer crashes? If this is your primary way of presenting, have a 2nd copy ready–digital Grimlins seem to appear right as you are presenting.
- Jump Drive
- External Hard-drive
- DVD/CD

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