Girl worker in Carolina Cotton Mill, 1908 photo by Lewis Hine

Lewis Hine’s photographs of children working as slave laborers in plants were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States.

The subject is paramount for Hine. At the time of the publication, the standards just were not good. So you don’t read about Lewis Hine complaining about the work’s reproduction. The reason is simple; he was more concerned about the subject matter getting seen and letting it impact the audience.

Hine understood that photography was a tool that helped him convey a passion for a subject. However, photography was not to be the result for Hine. Instead, he wanted the country to see the conditions children were being asked to work in for a slave labor role.

The photo I took while working at The Hickory Daily Record.

My first full-time job as a photographer was working for the Hickory Daily Record. One of my daily ongoing assignments was the featured photograph. I was to make a photograph of the community that would engage the audience.

It didn’t take long before I realized I had very few ideas. I then took a picture of my family of ministers. They often preached on themes.

I started thinking of what city workers did each day for us. I then thought about some of the most challenging jobs on a hot day.

What I was doing was searching for a subject. Over time I learned how to do a better job of finding issues.

1. Get a notebook and carry it with you. Make a list of things that interest you. Start with something that you know a lot about. The best place is to start with your hobbies and interests.
2. Find three or four topics that interest you. The first mistake many of us make is picking just one subject to start with. However, selecting more than one subject from the start is essential. Go to the library or an Internet-connected computer at home and conduct a preliminary search of each topic.
3. Determine which project idea can work with plenty of published material. This way, you can select an exciting and feasible final topic.
4. It must be visual. When you first do this, you will most likely scratch off things that you would put back later in your career. For example, at first, figuring out how to photograph abstract thoughts like philosophy will not make the cut, but later as you get better, you will discover a new way to capture those thoughts.
5. It must be ongoing. It would help if you had a subject that you could revisit over and over to explore all the possibilities thoroughly. A good topic will be thought-provoking. As you edit your photos and think about what you are trying to say about the subject, you find better ways to communicate.
6. Of interest to an audience. You cannot be self-centered, or your audience is one. You become like the paparazzi who track celebrities due to the audience being willing to pay a lot for access to the subject. In the book On Being a Photographer, David Hurn says, “So there is an excellent line between pandering to popular appeal and a respectful consideration of viewers’/listeners’ attention-span or interest in the content.”

This photo is of a group of illegal immigrants across the border from New Mexico in Mexico as they prepare to cross with the help of a coyote.

One of my subjects is missions. One of the subjects within missions is helping people. Lately, I have become more aware of the problems with illegal immigration. What are the causes for this to be happening to people?

While I know the problem is super complex, one of the root causes is the lack of opportunity where someone lives, and they look for a place to sustain them.

A few years ago, I covered one part of this by digging deep into the coffee growers in Mexico that were crossing the border illegally. Hard to understand when global coffee consumption is second to crude oil. The number 2 commodity in the world, yet as I drink my $5 cup of coffee, we had illegal coffee farmers here because they could not support themselves or their families.

I am returning to do a follow-up story this fall. Here is the first package I produced to help this cooperative spread its message. It has helped all the communal farmers to remain in Mexico and not just get by but thrive.

In Mexico, the peak time to pick coffee is November through March.

Like Lewis Hine, who had to plan his coverages, I, too, have made plans to cover the coffee. , However, first, I needed to pick the best time of year to see the operation. By planning my trip between November and March in Mexico, I will have the best opportunity to see the coffee on the plant and capture the entire process.

I am going in early November because the weather is the best travel time.

Access to the process requires me to work with the coffee growers and work with a translator since I do not speak Spanish.

There are two main stories I want to capture on this trip in various ways. First, I want to show how this is high-end coffee and tell the story of the coffee itself. Also, I think the story of how coffee impacts the coffee growers’ families.

Why these two threads? I have discovered this from reading books by Seth Godin and others.

Seth Godin says to create a story that shows how you’re different, which helps to earn you the right to sell to people. Then the second thing he stresses is to sell the story rather than the product. Too many make the mistake of thinking buyers base their decisions on logic. For example, people pay up to $5 a quart for bottled water because (so the story goes) it’s “healthier” than tap water.