I find people who smile all the time creepy. I also find people who are in the same mood all the time just as disturbing. When I say I have a real friend, I see all the sides of my emotions with them. They smile, frown, tear up and even get mad in our relationship.

Take a moment and look at your communications, especially your photos. Is everyone only smiling in all your photos? Are they all sad? Do people ever have puzzled looks on their faces?

Maybe your company is slipping because your communication style is creepy and disturbing on some level.

I have been working with higher education for years and even have my master’s in communication through the education department of a seminary. I see my role as an educator as much as a communicator and storyteller.

I want to chase a rabbit here, so you might see where this thought came from.

Lev Vygotsky believed children’s thinking is affected by their knowledge of the social community. As a result, one of the things he helped to develop was the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is the distance between a student’s ability to perform a task under adult guidance and peer collaboration and the student’s ability to solve the problem independently.

The concept also applies to adult learning. When you look at what you can do right now with no one’s help and compare this to what you could do with someone who is an expert on the subject, you see the gap between the two. Vygotsky believed the teacher’s role is to be the scaffolding to help the student reach things alone they would not be able to do in the present moment.

I look to others who are experts to help me process the material I want to understand. I love going on tours of places and having tour guides give me the information I wouldn’t have gotten without them. It enriches the experience.

Many organizations I see have a gap between their present communications and what they could be doing. One of these areas is the overuse of the smile in photos.

Sometimes I walk into a classroom with a person from the school organizing the photo shoot, and they will tell everyone why we are there and please look natural. Then after a couple of minutes of shooting, they stop everything and ask everyone to smile and look like they are having a good time. They may be dissecting a frog in a biology lab, but they must smile.

This example is when I am reminded I see the bigger picture, and they are just starting the journey of using images to communicate.

Now I want to contrast this with a recent photo shoot. The client gave me the class schedule, and I was to walk around and get photos of the classes. But instead, they told everyone I was there and to go on as usual.

They even said you know what you are doing, and I trust you. The client wanted what I produced for other clients and let me have the freedom to gather the content for them.

I went from classroom to classroom with my photo assistant. Everyone was natural, and occasionally I had to use some flashes to get photos, which I knew were disturbing the class a little, but everyone was great.

The school was a seminary, and this was where people were stretching their comfort zone. The students come with perceptions and thoughts guided as much by pop culture as by their scripture. The seminary will challenge their faith system and help them construct one built on scripture, not pop culture. The students are often not smiling or perplexed, and I show this.

Since my wife and I both went to seminary, and in my family, we have more than 30+ who went through seminary, I consider myself more of an expert on how people pick a seminary.

I want to look for an academic school that presents me with information that challenges me. I want to go to a school where I can relate to the professors and the students. Finally, I want to go somewhere where the student population seems to be a family and enjoy one another.

People looking for a seminary tend to be much more profound in their thoughts than the general population. They are choosing to go to school, and when they graduate with this master’s will, most likely mean, their salary will go down and not up. To determine this path, one must feel called.

I wanted the photos at the end of the day to communicate some of these emotions, thoughts, and content that I had felt while there. So I think the pictures look like more than all smiles and the people look real to me.

Why is this so important to me? If I were to capture only the smiles, I would have made the seminary look more like a school for a cult than a seminary for those who will be leaders of the Christian faith.

As professional communicators, we need to understand the “big picture,” which is often beyond the reach of the present audience. We are to help them by providing those step stools to get them to reach their goals. We have to help to inspire them to look up as well.

I have been using the Nikon NPS pocket calendars since 1983. The calendars might be more telling of my camera preference than anything else.

My mentor Ken Touchton called to tell me that I needed to show what I might do during a week of my life. He knew that what we do as freelancers, if you are successful, takes more time than a 9 to 5 job with occasional evening events.

I decided to start with a busy shooting week for you and then contrast it with a slower week. I want you to see how some weeks you have no time to yourself. I am not doing this every week, but you must be willing to take on weeks like this to be successful as a freelancer. It is feast or famine in this line of work.

One Week of Shooting

August 29th, Monday

• 6:00 a.m. Getting up, shower, eat and pack the van
  • Check emails
• 7:00 a.m. Leave the house with Photo Assistant
• 8:30 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. photoshoot
  • During the day, the CEO asks to get photos for a PowerPoint slide the next day. ( I contacted the person who would be getting the images that night to process the next day to meet me at the meeting and start processing all the photos early.  By the way, this person was going to watch my daughter while my wife is out of town)
• 9:30 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. editing and creating PowerPoint slides from all the day’s images to email to the CEO for him to have three choices to pick from. Put batteries on chargers. Reformat cards and clean cameras.
  • Check emails 

August 30th, Tuesday

• 6:00 a.m.
  • Getting up, Shower, eat and pack the van.
  • Help be sure your daughter is up and ready for the school bus.
  • Check emails
• 7:30 a.m. leave house with Photo Assistant
• 9:30 a.m – 5:30 p.m. cover meeting again.
• 6:30 p.m. arrive home, cook dinner, and hand over all images to photographer/assistant to process.  She will process all the RAW images from the last two days.  Edit out bad moments and make JPEGs.  These will be burned to DVDs and put in a FedEx package (which I have already prepared) to drop off to be overnighted to the client on Thursday morning.
• 8:00 – 10:00 p.m.
  • Unpack van and charge batteries, and then pack for the trip tomorrow
  • Check emails – Create an Invoice and send the PDF to the client with a W-9 form 

August 31st, Wednesday

• 6:30 a.m. Up and getting daughter off to School.  My photo assistant stayed over to get the daughter off to School and be there to meet her later in the day when she came home. (wife is still on the trip)
  • Check emails
• 9:00 a.m. leave for the airport
• 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 Sit at the airport checking emails and corresponding about today’s trip. Also, send thank you notes to the clients on Monday and Tuesday.  Check with a Friend/Assistant watching my daughter. 
• 12 – 3 fly across the country
• 3:30 get to Rental Car location 45 minutes after putting in an address to GPS on the road for 2 hours to place.
• 5:30 p.m., drop by the site. I will be shooting the next day, meeting the people, and talking for an hour to get an idea of the place. 
• 6:30 – 8:30 go to each with the writer on the project
• 8:30 – 10 check hotel, unpack and set up a computer as a workstation, check emails, and respond. 

September 1st, Thursday

• 6:30 am up ate and checked emails.  (Still planning a photo shoot of the Chick-fil-A Kickoff in a couple of days)
• 8:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. Shooting stills and Video interviews of story
• 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. go eat
• 8:00 – 11:00 p.m. editing of images and video 

September 2nd, Friday

• 3:00 a.m., get up and  drive 2 hours to catch a 6:00 a.m. flight back to Atlanta
• Noon – touch down in Atlanta
  • Get bags and go to the parking service to pick up the van and drive home
• 1:30 p.m., finally home
• 2:00 – 9:00 p.m. Edit video and still images into a 2:30 minute package and send to client for changes and approvals.
  • Checking emails and phone calls about the next day. Scan all receipts, create an expense report, and email this to the client for the trip.

September 3rd, Saturday

• 9:00 a.m. Slept in and am exhausted
• 11 a.m. Wife, Daughter, and I eat lunch
• Noon drops daughter off at friends, and my wife and I drive to the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game.  Dorie, my wife, has been volunteering in the press box for 18 years, and for a much shorter time, I have covered the games for clients like the teams, wire services, and corporate clients.
• 1:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. cover the pre-game events and the game and then leave 

September 4th, Sunday

• 8:00 a.m. – noon, edit all my images from the day before
• 1:00 – 4:00 download images from two other photographers, putting together sights and sounds in a 2-minute slide show with audio.  Send this to the client to have published on Monday morning. 

During that week of shooting, I was still checking my voicemail because I couldn’t take calls while shooting, but the moment I had a break, I would listen and see if I needed to respond. It would help if you reacted quickly to offers or clients moving on to someone else.

Non-Shooting Week

September 19, Monday
·      6:30 a.m. Shower, breakfast
·      8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. drive to Visual Consulting client’s Corporate Offices
·      9 – 10 a.m. checking emails and talking to folks in the office by seeing how they are doing.  Building relationships
·      10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. two meetings back to back.  I listen in on editorial meetings.  I am listening to see what they have planned for visuals on projects.  Occasionally I ask about what they have planned.  Many times I have a list of ideas that I am ready to offer as suggestions.  But most of the time I am trying to think more strategically and offering observations when appropriate in the meetings on workflow and procedures.
·      11:30 – 1:00 p.m. eat in the corporate dining room.  This is actually another long meeting. I try and sit with new folks when I can or sit with some of the team that I work with to get to know them better.  I find out what they are working on and see how they are doing.
·      1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. more one-on-one meetings with different people in departments around the company trying to be sure they are all aware of how we are there to serve them.
·      3:30 – 5 commute home
o   Making and taking phone calls along the way. Often following up on a conversation earlier in the day.
·      5 – 6 p.m Checking on emails and working on connecting with clients

September 20, Tuesday
·      6:30 a.m. Shower, breakfast
·      8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. drive to Visual Consulting client’s Corporate Offices
·      9 – 10 a.m. checking emails and talking to folks in the office by seeing how they are doing.  Building relationships
·      10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. meetings
·      11:30 – 1:00 p.m. eat in the corporate dining room.
·      1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. more one-on-one meetings
·      3:30 – 5 commute home
o   Making and taking phone calls along the way. Often following up on a conversation earlier in the day.
·      5 – 6 p.m Checking on emails and working on connecting with clients
·      evening sometime – write this blog and post it.

September 21, Wednesday
·      6:30 a.m. Shower, breakfast
·      8:00 a.m. – 11: 30 a.m.
o   Often posting blog or working on the next one.
o   Going through my database of 5,000+ contacts and seeing who I have not contacted. Often this then prompts me to categorize those and write an email that I can then blast out to a group that appears to be very personal, but is often to similar audience.  An example might be a letter to all those who are at magazines, working for education or maybe church organizations.
o   Check my analytics on my blog and website
·      11:30 – 1:00 try and get lunch with my wife who works from home as well
·      1: 00 – 5:00 p.m.
o   Similar to the morning, but now checking to see how many emails bounced, what links they clicked on if any.
o   Responding to the responses from the emails.  Sometimes they have something else in mind and my email just prompted a call.
o   Removing people from my database that have lost their job or moved on.  Creating a new contact for these companies. This requires some investigation through their website often or a phone call to see who is the best new contact for me.
·      5:30 – 7:30 Wednesday evening meal and bible study at our church
o   Side note. Because of my profession and working in the past on the staff of church organization, I have been asked to help curate missions photography exhibits, teach classes on how to take photos on mission trips and asked to teach Sunday School. While I could teach without a seminary degree, my seminary training helps me pull on resources I have for these classes. I often will use examples of stories I have covered to make points.  This is part of my BRANDING.

September 22, Thursday
·      6:30 a.m. Shower, breakfast
·      8:00 a.m. – 11: 30 a.m.
o   Checking emails and correspondence.
o   Combing website to look for new contacts, which then I put in database and send them an email right away.  I have created some quick form letters that I customize for the recipient.
o   Review my presentation for UGA photojournalism students
·      11:30 – 1:00 drive to Athens, GA for presentation to UGA
o   Phone calls while in car to clients and potential clients.
·      1:00 p.m. Eat quick lunch
·      1:30 p.m. show up at Professors office to catch up and prepare for class
·      2 – 4 p.m. teach class
·      4 – 4: 30 p.m. answer some questions from students
·      4:30 – 6 p.m. drive home
o   Phone calls while in car to clients and potential clients.
·      Evening – check some emails and call it a day.

September 23, Friday
·      6:30 a.m. Shower, breakfast
·      8:00 a.m. – 11: 30 a.m.
o   Often posting blog or working on the next one.
o   Going through my database of 5,000+ contacts and seeing who I have not contacted. Often this then prompts me to categorize those and write an email that I can then blast out to a group that appears to be very personal, but is often to similar audience.  An example might be a letter to all those who are at magazines, working for education or maybe church organizations.
o   Check my analytics on my blog and website
·      11:30 – 1:00 try and get lunch with my wife who works from home as well
·      1: 00 – 5:00 p.m.
o   Similar to the morning, but now checking to see how many emails bounced, what links they clicked on if any.
o   Responding to the responses from the emails.  Sometimes they have something else in mind and my email just prompted a call.
o   Removing people from my database that have lost their job or moved on.  Creating a new contact for these companies. This requires some investigation through their website often or a phone call to see who is the best new contact for me.

September 24, Saturday
·      Spend an hour checking emails

September 25, Sunday
·      Spend an hour checking emails
·      Spend an hour to couple hours writing blog

Some Tips

Keep a Journal

I try and journal as often as I can. Writing down the things on my mind is a way to help me process them. I then looked back through this to remind me of a few things. First, I see that I survived what seemed like a significant deal. Second, it keeps me humbled and thankful for all my blessings.

I can now look back and see that I worked very hard to make things happen, but also, because I am reviewing these journals see that often the jobs I have gotten were not because of something I did. ISo many often get jobs for reasons I cannot explain, and a great deal of work I did may have helped, but I can see only God could have opened some of those doors for me.

Could you write it down?

Sometimes I will have an idea, and I would forget about those great ideas in the past. So now I write them down in something similar to my journal. While I now see that some of these “Great Ideas” wouldn’t work, they have helped keep my creative juices flowing. Now I often turn these “Great Ideas” into blogs, or they become a newsletter. Sometimes they have inspired me to write emails to clients that did lead to jobs.

Summary

Have a system that keeps you connecting with your and potential clients regularly. Think often about your clients and what they are dealing with, and see if there is any way you can help lighten their load.

Remember, don’t wait for clients to call you with a project–you call them with tasks they would want to do.

Most organizations think that all their professional communicators are not only literate but are effective communicators.

Does your organization have managers putting out fires? I hear this a lot with managers. The root cause of these problems always seems to be poor communication.

So if all your staff has college degrees in English or journalism, why are there so many fires in the organization requiring managers to put out fires?

I believe that most people are visual learners; a recent study by the U.S. Federal Government suggested that up to 83% of human learning occurs visually. The study also indicated that visual information is retained up to six times greater than spoken word alone.

All research points out that we should communicate visually to be the most effective. Psychologist Jerome Bruner of New York University has studied the art of communication, and his studies have shown that:

• People remember 10% of what they hear;
• 20% of what they read; and
• 80% of what they see and do.

I spoke to students in a school camera club where the school’s professional communicators were also in the room. Both of the professionals who attended said they learned a lot. My topic was How Composition Communicates: Visual placement of subject communicates—do you know what you’ve been saying?

Creating a camera club helps with the school yearbook and newsletters and for the professional staff to have photos to use for the school website and publications. So they asked me to come in and set the bar and help educate the students on what makes a good photograph.

If you enjoy my newsletters and blogs, maybe your organization could use a workshop and have me come in and help everyone understand how to create and manipulate visuals more effectively. Every organization that hires professional videographers and photographers also does its work. Those organizations that help educate their people on how to create better visuals for their everyday needs will stand out from their competition.

“A common mistake I see many journalists make is that they write a visual story without watching the visuals in front of them as they write. Too often, a video or slideshow story is not connected to the visuals. A good story is hooked to the visuals and audio. In broadcast, disconnected shots are referred to as wallpaper video, meaning that the story could be told without the visuals.”

–Serena Carpenter, professor Arizona State University

I commonly see writers cover events and never watch the video they will use on the website or the still photographs before and while writing their story.

While working on my master’s of communication in the education department, they taught me how people learn. Surprisingly all my journalism classes spent most of their time communicating but nothing about how people know. All my education classes taught me how people learn, but very little about how to communicate. I used to laugh about this.

In organizations, for the most part, you need people who are not just knowledgeable, as shown in the Stages of Learning chart (see above drawing).

1. Knowledge: memorizing or recalling
2. Comprehension: Translating (changing) into new forms, explaining
3. Application: Applying learning to a unique situation
4. Analysis: Breaking communication down into its parts
5. Synthesis: creating something new by putting the pieces together
6. Evaluation: Judging based on standards

I would say most writers can do all six stages regarding text, but few move past stage one regarding visual literacy.

A suitable workshop will help your staff to learn how to use visuals with text to improve the retention of the information for your organization.

Stanley’s Visual Training Workshops.

I provide one-on-one tutoring in digital photography, photo editing, and visual communication. The one-day tutorial covers camera skills and Lightroom; 2-4 day tutorials add instruction in photographic expression & field shoots as well as matching visuals with text.

Costs: $495/1 day to $1,980/4 days.

Please call me for rates if you want me to help train your staff.