[Nikon D5, Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4, Godox V860IIN, ISO 100, ƒ/5.6, 1/640]

I was contracted to cover a golf tournament at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the guys told me we needed to turn everyone around and have them face the sun to get the photo.

The executive director, taking me by golf cart around the course, stepped in to explain that I was the professional they hired.

The guy was thinking about what he had to do with his iPhone. You cannot get the photo I took above with your iPhone.

One of the main reasons people wear hats is to create shadows on their faces. This is how they make the shade for their eyes. Well, good for them and bad for photos.

Now using Adobe Lightroom, I could open up the shadows a little more on the photo, with the guy with a baseball cap, than you can typically do with your iPhone.

By having the group face opposite the sun, they are all backlit. I then used my flash on the camera to fill in the shadows. This is one of the rare moments I will use a flash on camera.

I didn’t have an assistant, and I had to move quickly.

Using the Godox V860IIN flash on i-TTL I could shoot at any ƒ-stop because the flash works with High Speed Sync. So the picture above I was shooting at 1/640 shutter speed.

While the golfers were warming up on the practice putting green, I used the same flash setup to fill in under those hats. With the golfer looking to the ground towards the ball, their faces are more often in the shadow.

While this is a vast improvement over no flash, had I been shooting this for a company to use in their advertising, I would have gotten that flash off the camera.

The two photos below demonstrate how getting the flash off the camera gives a better-looking light.

Just know that if you need professional quality photos of golfers, you will have them squinting with your iPhone, or you can use flash and have them face away from the sun.

[NIKON D4, 120.0-300.0 mm f/2.8, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 12800, 1/1250, ƒ/5.6, (35mm = 270)

Meet recording artist Sydney Rhame. She was a contestant on The Voice a couple of years ago. Here she is singing “Photograph.” By the time Sydney had gotten on the voice, she had already been performing for many years. She started singing at age six and performing at age eight.

Recording artists are practicing all the time. They work hard for years for their “break.”

I spent some time setting up for Sydney. I had not only set up the studio like this for her to make some headshots, but I had also scouted around to get colors to match her clothing.

I found some fall foliage that I could use in the background to compliment her hair.

To get to the big games like the Chick-fil-A Kickoff these players put in many practice days and games spanning years of preparation.

Most Folks

I am finding that more people procrastinate in their work than anticipators. People wait until they are near a deadline to start working on a project.

In school, teachers have projects they tell us about long before they are due, but most of us wait until the night before. After we have done a few of these and found out that doesn’t leave us enough time, we may start it a little sooner–like a day or two earlier.

Word vs Photograph

There has been a healthy tension between writers and photographers throughout my career. You will hear photographers saying to writers that I can’t call the subject and change the ƒ-stop.

A writer can more easily make changes in their part of a project at the last second, whereas a photographer has to reshoot to make a change.

When I started, I would pick up a small camera bag and run out the door for the newspaper. Today I realize that the more I plan and prepare for a photo shoot, the better the results.

Today I ask a lot more questions when I get a project. Why do you need these photos or videos? What are you looking for from the project? What is it that the audience to do once they have seen the project?

The questions go on more than just these few questions. Once I am comfortable with their direction and style, I can plan what gear I need for the shoot. Sometimes this requires me to rent equipment.

For most of my projects today, travel is involved. I must book flights, hotels, rental cars, assistants, and more.

Advantage of Anticipating

When you anticipate what I must do for assignments, there is a lot of dialogue with a client. Much of this is in written form between the client and me. The great thing about this process is that I have a paper trail showing how I was proactive and got their approval before executing anything.

When you talk through a treatment with a client in as much detail as possible when the assignment is given, you give yourself and the client the advantage of keeping the costs down and pushing the quality up.

Since I am working in an artistic field for a career, the one thing that keeps you receiving a paycheck is being in demand. Believe it or not but the busiest photographers I know are the ones who are Anticipators and not Procrastinators.

Some things you can do that are disciplines of an Anticipator:

• Going to clients with project ideas
• Responding quickly to phone calls, emails, and texts
• Asking questions when a client gives you a project–Immediately and not closer to the deadline
• Delivering the photos quickly–Photos processed for the client without quality suffering
• Creating estimates and invoices quickly
• Raising concerns and issues before the client realizes a problem–While there are some things you cannot anticipate, you are always trying to take ownership as if the success or failure of this project can make the client be super successful or put them out of business

They say if you want something done, ask a busy person, even though this idea is somewhat paradoxical. 

The reason is that people with hectic schedules have, by necessity, gotten good at realistically estimating how long things take. The interesting thing is once you know someone like this, you are prone to go to them to help you. The one thing you hope never happens is that they say no. They will say no because they know if they can deliver your request or not.

If you find yourself busy and having to turn down people occasionally, it is a good sign that you are most likely an Anticipator. However, if you are desperately trying to find work, you might be a Procrastinator.

How to turn yourself from a Procrastinator to an Anticipator

One of the best things I learned at Georgia Tech working on the communications staff was from our art directors. They had reversed engineered the timeline for producing print projects like view books and magazines.

I would be part of the meetings with the clients going over new projects. The art director then took a few minutes and walked through the deadlines, starting backward.

When do you need this project? Then they would start with that date and say, ” Well, the printer needs two weeks from when they have it to turn it around without any rush fees. Before this, the graphic artist will need two weeks to lay out the piece and then have you sign off on it. This includes two reviews. By the way, your review time puts the project on hold. So if you take 24 hours to approve or make changes, that is how much the project is delayed. If you take a week to support it, we need to move up the date for you to get materials to us.

Before the graphic artist can start work, the writer and photographers must create their content. The good news is often that photography and writing can be done simultaneously.  They both need two to three weeks. For them to stay on schedule, the subjects they need to work with must be available, or that also impacts the program.

Based on this, we need six to eight weeks to produce your project. When working with most new clients, we were often only three to four weeks from their deadlines. Most of the time, we had to move their deadlines out to make things go faster usually meant rush fees from printers and hiring more writers, photographers, and graphic designers to tag team.

The question you must know the answer to for any project is how long do you need to produce your very best portfolio quality of work?

Anticipators are people who are gifted at time management, know how to get the best quality of work, and understand the time they need to make it happen. They are also good at executing their plans and producing quality work, which creates a demand that creates an even higher order because they are known for being busy.

Nikon D750, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art, ISO 2200, ƒ/4, 1/80

When you go and experience the Theatre, you see the story’s sequencing into moments. Within each scene, there is build to a crescendo, and then all of these different scenes build to a showstopper most of the time.

A showstopper is a performance or segment of a theatrical production that induces a positive audience reaction strong enough to pause the show.

Now, comparing the two photos above, the main difference is that one is a theatre production, and the other is real life in real-time.

For a scene to be a real showstopper, the actors must portray what would be in a real-life situation through their body language, expressions, and tone of voice.

Now what the theatre has in common with still photography is that real life is more like video and moving constantly and with theatre and the still image, the pause of the action allows the audience to absorb the moment.

In life, we have moments where we ponder and think. If a writer is describing this brief moment, it may take four or five pages to tell all that weighs on the character and their thoughts and dreams. In real life, you cannot hear or read people’s thoughts. However, in real life, the person’s expressions often communicate some of this, which a writer only has text to convey.

Actors must convey those four to five pages of text from a book into the play version of that book. The playwright may have notes to the side of the script to help the actor know what they are trying to communicate, but still, what it boils down to is capturing in a moment the expression, body language, and tone to speak to the audience the character’s thoughts.

Photojournalists/photographers are not actors in a play. If they are a photographer and are shooting a scene that will be used in advertising to sell something or doing public relations for a corporation, they often will assume the director role. They will place the actors and create the scene to communicate all they need to capture to move the audience to action.

If they are photojournalists, they cannot take on the director role. They take on different parts. The best way to describe that role has been to be the fly on the wall. The photojournalists can fly around the room looking for a better perspective to see what is going on. Then they capture moments as they happen to later communicate to their audience what happened.

What do the novelist, playwright, director, actor, and photographer all have in common, regardless of their role? Each is aware of what they are communicating and why. To move the audience, you must know what you are trying to capture as a photographer.

If you are a photographer, you are capturing moments for which you hope they make others pause. As a photojournalist, I have learned to do my research before I show up. Listen a great deal with my ears and eyes. I clarify through questions to understand the situation, so I am doing all I can to be true to the moment and not preconceived thoughts. I look for those moments that will capture and hopefully be the showstopper that makes you pause and absorb the moment.

I want my pictures to be worth the price of admission my clients pay to see them. 

I do not promote myself as a wedding photographer. I have shot many weddings in my career, but today I have been just doing weddings for close friends and family. There was a time I turned down any requests.

I am not as fond of shooting weddings because of the number of people posing. I can do an excellent job of capturing great moments in posed shots, but my favorite thing to do in all of the photography is capture those not posed moments.

I love a moment like this where the groom’s mother dances with her son, and the groom’s friends and family are all caught up in the moment.

I love the moments where the Bride and Groom are in a moment where you see their love for each other, and you can see why they are getting married.

Sometimes the moments are subtle, or they are bold as here.

I love capturing people’s expressions where you can see their emotions on their faces. The other thing I notice is at weddings; the guests are just as happy as the couple.

The hard part about shooting weddings is you do so many photography styles throughout the day. So you have to do studio lighting fashion shoots and then turn right around and do more event photography and get those moments.

Capturing the moments is what I work on the most in my photography. I believe the expressions are the most powerful thing in a photograph. Therefore, I spend a great deal of time trying to be sure the technical parts of photography: Lighting, Composition, Depth-of-field, and more, are ready for when the moment happens.

Sometimes those moments are posed, but you wait for the moment when they are into it rather than stiff and just posing.

Nikon D5, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art Lens, ISO 100, ƒ/5, 1/320

I am working on a story that requires me to go to a few states and capture some of the cultures in those communities.

This week I am in Hyannis, Massachusetts. I cannot think of Hyannis without thinking about the Kennedy family. It is also a beach town and this is the closest I could find to bring me to what I think about when I think of this community.

I tried to capture the beach in a way that said Cape Cod. Some of the lighthouses in this area are in private communities guarded by gates. I didn’t want to go all over the coast when the size I needed to concentrate on was Hyannis.

Just turning around is the ocean, but this could have been anywhere on the east coast. I was missing something that made me think of Hyannis in Cape Cod.

I am capturing not just moments but symbolism, and I needed a building that was classic to the architecture of Cape Cod.

This is a typical home in Hyannis. What I mean are the color of the house and the cedar siding.

I went to Main Street and captured some shops along the street. While this isn’t the peak of the summer when the place would be packed, I think I was catching some of the community.

While in Lansing, Michigan, I went to the local GM plant and shot this through the chain link fence on a bridge. I used my cell phone because my camera lenses were too big and captured the border. The lens on the Samsung 7S Edge was small enough to fit in the fence’s opening.

Some photos are not as dramatic but help establish what a community is about. Many people are employed here from the district.

The other thing about Lansing is it is the state capital of Michigan. I worked at getting a decent photo of the state capital to help talk about the community.

Sometimes detailed shots like this lamp around the capital can be beneficial in a package to tell a story.

All of these stills are part of a larger story where I will use motion and interviews to put the story together. My goal with the photos is to have some b-roll that I can use just like Ken Burns does in his films. I often find panning across a still image is much smoother than video sometimes can be, and I can get many more shots in than the time it takes to get a 20-second motion clip.

Here are some travel tips that I am using for each of my trips.

• Google the City and look under images for your search
  • Make a list of possible locations
  • Research was to take some of those photos may be 
• Schedule my interview early with the subject so I have time to go out and capture some of the images of the things the issue talks about in their comments.
• Talk to people from the area
• Talk to the front desk people at the hotel for their input. Sometimes they can give you unique insights.

Now many times the city skyline is quite famous. This is a photo you need if the community is known for its unique skyline. Here is a post I did about the St. Louis Skyline.

Sometimes like with the famous skyline of Seattle, you get what I call a WOW photo. The key is to try and find a way to surprise your audience.

Sometimes it just gets close to an icon like the Auburn War Eagle.

I hope that if you read my blog regularly, I may get you excited about having more time with me in a workshop where you can ask questions and have me clarify even more than you get through this blog.

I am getting excited about teaching storytelling workshops over the next few months.

I am flying to Nicaragua in a couple of weeks to help teach a storytellers workshop abroad with my friends James Dockery and Jeff Raymond. Right after that workshop, I will be in Kona, Hawaii, with my good friend Dennis Fahringer, teaching the same skills to his students who will go to Brazil to cover stories about the Olympics.

While seeing sites like the sunset above in Kona is part of the trip, we spend a lot of time as James does with student Jon Franz. We enjoy working with people and watching stories come together over a week.

Unfortunately, the Nicaragua and Hawaii classes are full, but you can join Gary S. Chapman and me in Honduras this fall.

Come with us to the remote area of Agalta Valley in Central Honduras. We will be staying at Rancho el Paraiso, a 1,400-acre working ranch. You can learn to milk a cow if you like and watch the herd of cattle being taken out to the fields daily and brought in for milking.

When the founders started Honduras Outreach 25 years ago, they bought the ranch and created dorms and a cafeteria to house the volunteers who come year-round to do projects in the valley. Their 60 local Honduran staff members work year-round with communities in healthcare, agriculture, education, faith-building, and commerce.

Honduras Outreach has had the president of Honduras visit the ranch and come to the US to give them an award for such outstanding work.

Enjoy your days taking pictures in the beautiful Agalta Valley and showing your work to world-traveling seasoned professional photographers [Gary Chapman and Stanley Leary] for daily feedback.

We will also be teaching how to capture a story for a nonprofit. Finally, we will give you tips you can use in future travels.

Go here to learn more about the workshop.

“The reason I do workshops is so I can learn, and I am fortunate that I’ve probably gained more from the whole teaching experience than any participant has. It is all about asking.” – John Sexton.

 There are a couple of things that the workshops I am teaching all have in common. See if this appeals to you.

1. ACCESS – One of the most challenging things about having great images and stories is access to interesting people. All the workshops I am working with have already lined up stories for the workshop participants.
2. MORE THAN – This is a deeper dive than that as a tourist. You get to meet someone, hang out with them, and learn more about them. Meeting people where they live is what tourists seldom get to do on vacation.
3. SEASONED PROS – Getting feedback each day from professionals whose lives have been traveling the world and telling stories about people from every walk of life. Have them review your work and give you tips each day.
4. LOGISTICS – All the logistics of the traveling have been taken care of for you. You must pack and get to the first location, and we will plan the rest for you.
5. TRAINING – We will teach you how to use software, get a story, and assemble it in a package.

The lure of travel is seeing new things and places.