I feel like Lucy from Peanuts is writing this blog. Just like Lucy, I am sharing what works for me.

Everyone knows about the holiday blues. Creative professionals can feel them because we are trained to tap into our emotions to create.

Since you are always trying to communicate to audiences on emotional levels, you might find yourself feeling a little bipolar. I know I go through this a great deal.

Here are some things that can trigger these blues:

• Pressure to feel merry – People invite you to parties, and decorations are going up around you. You can get confused when the disparity between what you think others expect you to feel and how you feel. This can be like throwing gasoline on a fire.
• Missing loved ones – This is the time of year we remember our family and friends who are no longer with us. The holidays’ decorations, sounds, and smells are potent triggers for our brains. But, unfortunately, this feeling of loss can spoil even the most extraordinary event.
• Loneliness – If you don’t have a significant other, this can be a challenging time of year.
• Financial Hardship – This is the season of giving, and when you don’t have the finances to give, this can bring depression. You might feel like you are on the outside looking in on the holidays.
• Lack of sunlight – Some people are affected by the lack of daylight. This is a seasonal affective disorder.
• Not much is booked on the calendar – This kind of goes with the financial hardship, but I find this affects me the most.

First, you need to realize you are not the only one who goes through this. Many of us do. Here are some ways I deal with the holidays’ blues and the rest of the year. I can go into a funk and feel depressed.

Jeremy Cowart’s project

• Acknowledge you feel depressed – Sometimes, it is perfectly OK to be bummed out. This is why we appreciate those good times. However, we know life has its ebbs and flows.
• Sunshine helps – Get outside in the sun for about 20 minutes a day. It will release endorphins that can help fight depression.
• Pay it forward – Volunteer in some way to help others. For example, Jeremy Cowart came up with the “Help Portrait Project,” which gives back to those who cannot afford a photograph. I think one of the big reasons it has spread like wildfire is so many photographers seek a way to use their talents, and this helps the photographers as much as those who have a professional photo made.
• Fill your calendar – Put some fun events on your chosen calendar. But, unfortunately, too much time alone will bring you to that familiar depressing spot.

Fill your calendar with fun stuff to do

These are tips you will see many different places. However, the one thing that has helped the most in my life is keeping a journal. Sure my journal has recordings of depressing times in my life, but it also has many good times for me to remember.

Count your Blessings – Even if you don’t have a journal of things to help jog your memory, there are always things to see as positives, no matter how bad it is.

I remember going through the following:

• a divorce;
• being laid off;
• being fired;
• losing family and friends

I also am so very thankful for the following:

• my wife;
• my step-sons and my daughter;
• a lovely home;
• friends;
• my parents;
• my sisters and their families;
• I have jobs and fun on my calendar.

I can honestly tell you that all those blessings have not been enough sometimes for me. The one thing that has sustained me more than anything else has been my God. It is faith that has gotten me through the toughest of times. 

“Hope is the Assurance we have of victory in the future, Based on evidence from the past, the first Easter, which gives us confidence and strength in the present.”

– Dr. Lane Alderman, pastor of Roswell Presbyterian Church

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

David Burnett co-founded Contact Press Images in 1976, one of the last independent photojournalistic agencies, and continues to work on both journalistic endeavors and commercial clients. Burnett is speaking at the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar.

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.

Tom Kennedy, Greg Thompson, Vivian & Gary Chapman, Stan Kaady, Bill Bangham, and Ken Touchton eat lunch after Tom Kennedy did a workshop at the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar on “Understanding the Changing Media Landscape.” We took some of this time to give Tom some feedback. We were all impressed with his presentation.

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

Tom Kilpatrick and Ken Touchton catch up over dinner. Seminars and workshops are not just about the presenters. The people in attendance often get as much from others in attendance as from the official program.

Gil Williams, Tom Kilpatrick, Ken Touchton, Bill Bangham, and I all enjoyed catching up at Shane’s Ribshack after the conference.

Bill Fortney, Nikon Rep, talks with Billy Grimes. Nikon offered a complimentary clean check for those attending the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar.

Jody Grober, Rep for Robert’s Imaging, is one of everyone’s favorite people. Jody is who I have been buying equipment from for many years.

People line up to have their Nikon cameras cleaned and checked by Nikon.

Bill Bangham talks with a student from Elon College. The breaks are an excellent time for students to interact with professionals to get tips and job leads.

Greg Foster is a long-time contributing photographer for Sports Illustrated; he has also worked for editorial clients such as Fortune, Golf Digest, ESPN the Magazine, The Sporting News, and The New York Times, as well as corporate clients including The Coca-Cola Company, Kodak, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, and Norfolk-Southern Railroads. His work has also appeared in various books and television documentaries for such clients as The NBA, ESPN, Fox Sports, and NFL Films. In addition, Greg taught a workshop on lighting.

Vivian & Gary Chapman, and Ken Touchton enjoy a meal with friends. When we go to these events, we love to go out and eat together in between the program events.

Bill Bangham is a photojournalist, writer, and editor from Richmond, Virginia. He serves as director of Media Production: Editorial, photography, and Video, for IMB (International Mission Board), where he is also editor of CommissionStories, and International Bureau Chief for Baptist Press news service. In the past, he has served as editor-in-chief theCommission, associate editor, MissionsUSA, and editor, of World Mission Journal. Bill loves to blog almost every day. Check out his blog here. He likes to post photos of those he meets every day, so I just wanted to be sure he gets the same treatment he gives to all of us.

The Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar

I have three friends I have talked with in the past couple of days who are driving into the seminar today. All of us combined have more than 100+ years of experience, so why go to something like this when you have so much experience?

This years faculty

Some of the workshops intrigued me. For example, I was interested in hearing from Deb Pang Davis on “Branding Strategies & Marketing Yourself.”

While I even teach regularly on this topic, I am interested in how others are seeing the industry and places for growth. With the economy so upside down and my industry taking a major hit these past years, many of the traditional avenues for income are not just down but gone. I hope to hear about how some photographers are remaking themselves and finding income.

I am not interested in copying their path, but how they discovered the new niche may give me insights into where some potential growth for my work could lie.

I find that everyone sees things much differently and that I grow and learn something new when I am open and listen. So I then try to see how to incorporate some of these perspectives into my life.

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Tom Kennedy

The other workshop, “Understanding the Changing Media Landscape,” led by Tom Kennedy, appealed to me.

Kennedy is on the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications faculty at Syracuse University as the endowed Alexia Foundation chair in the multimedia, photography, and design department.

I first met Kennedy when he was the director of photography at National Geographic. I remember showing him my work, and he commented that he didn’t see any surprises. My last blog can read more about this: “To break the rules, you must first know the rules.”

As co-president of the ASMP Atlanta Chapter, we invited Kennedy to speak. He packed so much in on this topic back then that I just about got carpal tunnel syndrome from that talk. So I am looking forward to hearing him.

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If you come to the seminar, you will see more than the four old guys sitting in the room listening to some of these young folks. You will see more of us because we understand that you stop learning and growing.

Keep yourself vibrant and growing by attending a seminar or workshop. Then, come to the workshop. For example, if you are in Atlanta on December 2nd and 3rd.

By the way, Simon Bruty:: Sports Illustrated speaks on Saturday at 9:25 a.m. This presentation is free and open to the public, courtesy of Canon’s Explorers of Light program.

If you are an amateur, you are welcome to attend as much as any professional or student.

While the speakers on the program are outstanding, I can tell you from my 30+ years of experience going to these events that those in attendance sometimes are on the same level and sometimes better known than the speakers.

Come and hang out with us. My daughter calls these events that Daddy goes to “Nerd Fests.”

There will be Nikon and Canon gear to see and other vendors.

Hope to see you there. If you are there, come and say hello to me.