[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.

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. 

In any sport, winning requires recruiting and getting the best people. You then need to practice together and have a game plan against your competition, which you have scouted and prepared to play against.

Executing your plan flawlessly will most often give you then win, and mistakes will most likely cost you the game.

Nikon D750, Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 DG Art, ISO 110, ƒ/1.4, 1/80

Many of my friends in communications are losing their jobs. When talking with many of these professionals, I have discovered a lack of understanding of business. Many professionals are coming out of a fog and waking up in the middle of a game. They find themselves in the middle of a contest for which they do not know the game’s rules or goals.

By 2020, 40% of the U.S. workforce will be independent workers. Today, 53 million Americans (34% of the workforce) fall into this category. That number is growing based on several factors. Some employers see this as a better choice, and many employees want more control over their lives.

Being a communications professional will become increasingly difficult if you do not understand business. But, unfortunately, this is the game you are now playing. As a result, there will be fewer staff jobs where other people take care of the business while you are just a writer, photographer, or some different role in the industry.

Business Insights for my Communication colleagues are just learning about business skills.

The first thing you need to know about every business is to have good people skills because everything about business is about people.

Your audience for communicators is people. Your clients are people. Your stories are about people.

If you do not understand how to work with all these groups, then you will not be successful.

Second, in any business is your expertise with your product. Expertise in subject matter is where many of my colleagues are also getting tripped up. They think it is photography, for example. I believe the earliest caveman communicators didn’t have cameras and used other ways to communicate using visuals. I also believe that the storytellers around the campfires during the caveman times were the communicators of their time.

Today you need to be an excellent communicator. You may be more potent as a writer than a photographer or some other skills, but today you still need to be a person who can sit around the campfire of your community and tell those stories.

Due to today’s budgets, many professionals will be responsible for more parts of the storytelling process than when they were part of large staffs where specialization was possible.

A third thing you must master to survive in business today is having worked on your processes. You must be excellent at executing your job as well. Execution means not just that you know how to research a story, but you can take care of all the travel plans and budgets so that you can create an estimate that makes it profitable to do the work. Then you must also know how to bill and pay those taxes on your business.

These are just some processes you must execute to run a successful business at the highest standards. You need to master these before you do the last step.

The last thing you must master to get business is having clarity in communicating your business to customers.

Nikon D750, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art Lens, ISO 1140, ƒ/1.8, 1/1000

How it works to get those clients

Your potential clients have communication problems they cannot solve independently. Many of these potential clients don’t even know they have the problem. For example, most of the world didn’t think they had a problem that the smartphone would help solve until Steve Jobs gave his presentation on what the iPhone could do.

It would help if you positioned yourself to fix the problems you are an expert on.

If someone asks you what you do, talk about the problems you solve for people and how you might be able to solve their problems. For example, if they see your marketing materials, is it crystal clear what you will do to help them?

Be sure your marketing articulates the problems that you are solving for your potential clients.