Child is fascinated by my camera and watched me as I was working at the Hôpital Baptiste Biblique in Tsiko, Togo, West Africa. [NIKON Z 6, 24.0-105.0 mm f/4.0, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 1400, 1/200, ƒ/4, (35mm = 105)]

“You’ll never look at other people in quite the same way again. Emotions Revealed is a tour de force.”

– Malcolm Gladwell

Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is an American psychologist who is a pioneer in studying emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He has created an “atlas of emotions” with more than ten thousand facial expressions and has gained a reputation as “the best human lie detector in the world”.

If you are a professional communicator and haven’t studied body language, I believe Emotions Revealed is a great place to learn about it. Specifically, Ekman explores the facial expressions of people around the world.

Even in the book’s preface, Ekman warns that keen observation alone needs to be verified.

“… carefully using the information you acquire about how others are feeling. Sometimes that means asking the person about the emotion you have spotted, acknowledging how they are feeling, or re-calibrating your reactions in light of what you have recognized.”

– Paul Ekman

If you are a professional communicator and haven’t read Ekman’s work, you are missing out on what all research points to about human communication.

Dr. Mehrabian, in the 1960s, devised a formula to describe what the mind determines to mean. He concluded that the interpretation of a message is 7 percent verbal, 38 percent vocal, and 55 percent visual. The conclusion was that 93 percent of communication is “nonverbal” in nature.

It would be almost 40 years before his research on Ekman helped us to understand some of that Visual Communication.

One of the best parts of the book is the photographic examples he uses throughout the book.

One of the examples is Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. The photo is in the book. He uses a few photojournalism moments in history to teach us about-face expressions.

Ekman is trying to teach us a new kind of awareness that he calls attentiveness. I believe if you can master the skills of recognizing expressions, you can learn to anticipate them.

If you can anticipate these expressions, you can capture them with a camera and use them to tell the story.

If you react with your camera, very rarely will you capture the tell-tale signs of the visual?

The work of Ekman was used in the TV Series Lie To Me.

Ocean Isle Peer on early morning walk on the beach in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. [NIKON Z 6, VR Zoom 24-105mm f/4G IF-ED, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 360, 1/250, ƒ/16, (35mm = 24)]

If you were to look at the EXIF data on all your photos, would most of them be wide open or closed down aperture?

There is a perfect chance you fall into one of two camps.

BOKEH

If this word is part of your vocabulary and what you talk about when it comes to photography, you most likely own some pretty expensive lenses with an aperture of ƒ/1.4.

You may be just like me when I love to isolate the subject and simplify the composition.

Group ƒ/64

There was a group of photographers that shot mainly in large format and would close down the aperture to get everything they could sharp as possible.

In 1930 Willard Van Dyke and, Ansel Adams & Edward Weston formed the Group ƒ/64. They shared a standard photographic style characterized by sharp, focused, and carefully framed images seen from a mainly Western (U.S.) viewpoint. In part, they formed in opposition to the pictorialist photographic style that had dominated much of the early 20th century. Still, they wanted to promote a new modernist aesthetic based on precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects.

If you were part of the ƒ/64 style, you had to pay attention to everything in the frame, which if you are familiar with Ansel Adams and Edward Weston’s work, you know they paid incredible attention to detail.

Form or Function?

Form follows function is a principle associated with late 19th and early 20th-century architecture and industrial design in general, meaning the shape of a building or object should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose.

Here are some ideas where Form is more important than Function:

1. Wood Floors in Bathrooms
2. Carpet in Bathrooms
3. Door-less Shower Enclosure

Sometimes, like anything in life, one side will win a bit more over the other. When you’re faced with any situation, I recommend you do what I do: do your best to see both sides of the story and then chart the best path forward for whatever situation you’re in. 

By the way, here is a sampling of images in Lightroom and their aperture for me.

ƒ/1.4	10653
ƒ/2.8	23389
ƒ/5.6	94475
ƒ/8	32147
ƒ/16	3346

When I started shooting photos for a newspaper in 1982, I often shot wide open to try to shoot available light with Black & White Kodak Tri-X film shot at ISO 1600. That was the high ISO available for most of my first twenty years of shooting film. They did make a new film that went to 3200. So, you shot wide open to get a photo.

BOKEH wasn’t even talked about in my circles until we started shooting digital, and the ISO 12800 or faster was a reality.

ƒ/64 Group wasn’t photographing people most of the time so that they could shoot long exposures on tripods.

When ISO 12800 was possible for me on my Nikon D3, I, for the first time, realized I could close down the aperture inside for the first time shooting with available light. This changed the possibilities.

You Stuck In A Rut?

Most likely, in photography, you are stuck in a rut. Most of my friends are due to how you learn to shoot. One of my friends teaches people to look for the moment. To do this, he tells people just put the aperture on ƒ/2.8 and look for moments.

When I started, I shot wide open because I didn’t have much choice, but after twenty years of programming, I found it hard to shoot other than wide empty inside.

Now when I am outside, I might shoot at ƒ/5.6 to be sure things are focused. This is true when I shoot sports. I don’t want the ball and the face out of focus.

If you started with Digital

Now, if you started shooting with digital, there is a perfect chance that Form was more critical than Function. You read all those articles about BOKEH and fell in love with the look. That is where Form is more vital than Function.

The sad thing is that even Photojournalists and Communication photographers who should be more about Form following Function will find that they want a strong image more than just a storytelling image.

Often I will shoot what I call a beauty shot, and while it is usually a strong visual, the story isn’t being told with the photo. I am using it to hook you to make you read the caption that will pull you into the picture.

These examples of my work are just about how cool something looks.

Compare that to where I want to include everything I can in the frame to help tell the story. This is where Form follows Function.

If you haven’t thought about it, you are most likely stuck in a rut.

Maybe you remember “The Kodak Carousel” and how you would take 35mm Slide Transparencies and project these onto a screen.

Since I can remember, until around 2002, all the photography workshops used these, and sometimes many of them synced together with a soundtrack to tell stories.

I remember arriving early to see so often the photographer in the back of the room for the event with a stack of slides, just putting them on the carousel for later projects. Every time I saw this, I knew the presentation would be lacking. They hadn’t put any time into their preparation.

Many photographers could still impress with their images, but they didn’t have a well-thought-out presentation.

One of the best-prepared speakers I have heard in the past year was Darrell Goemaat at the FOCUS Zoom meetings I hold weekly with a group of communicators from all over the world.

The key to the success of his presentation was putting in the time to come up with points that all worked to communicate a purpose for his presentation.

For years I have been to meeting after meeting like this one for the Atlanta ASMP chapter, and the main topic is usually business practices.

I have written extensively on the subject and realize that all this talk is to help the artist and not the public. The public doesn’t care anymore about how much it costs you to take photos or a video than they do about how the sausage is made. If the quality is excellent and the service then they buy it. They even become repeat customers.

Almost everything I see on justifying pricing has more to do with educating a skilled artisan but no business sense.

There is always someone cheaper

However, one thing in business that many misses is that some intentionally price their products as high as possible.

The goal is to create the perception that the products must have a higher value than competing products because the prices are higher.

You may think that is wrong, yet on the flip side, when you price low, you diminish the value of your work just as much.

I am a strong proponent of premium pricing for service-based business owners. I think it is better for you as the business owner, and I know it allows you to provide the best possible service to your clients.

You need to understand not just your spreadsheets of costs and time but the psychology of buying.

No matter what you are selling, buying is an emotional decision.

As the service provider, you will make a much better living doing your best for your customer and giving them the best service and product.

When you do this, you must learn to name your products correctly to communicate their value. Just as a writer of good fiction picks the names of their characters, you should spend as much time with the name of your product.

Business is more than knowing the “Cost of Doing Business.” It is the art and psychology of selling.

Now the most significant flaw to this plan is if your work is the same as others, then you will appear to be a commodity, and then it is a race to the bottom for pricing.

Learn to be a craftsman of your trade. Learn to be a “service provider” who thinks of everything for your customer.

Go the extra mile

If your product looks the same and your attitude is the same as others, you will struggle for the rest of your life.

Not being able to travel during COVID-19 can get you down. So look down and pick up some of those leaves.

“And the sun took a step back, the leaves lulled themselves to sleep, and autumn was awakened.”

— Raquel Franco

I just went into my yard and picked up some leaves and took them inside to my copy stand setup. I put my light table on the base and just put the leaves on them backlighted by the light table.

“A fallen leaf is nothing more than a summer’s wave goodbye.”

Then I just clicked away.

Sometimes you don’t have to go that far to find things that can bring you joy.

Like snowflakes are all different, so too are the leaves each fall.

I have been mulching them each week, but today I just hit the pause button, picked them up, and enjoyed them.

“Autumn leaves shower like gold, like rainbows, as the winds of change begin to blow, signaling the later days of autumn.”

— Dan Millman

“I am asking for a friend. How can I fix thousands of photos with an error in the caption/keywords? Is there a way to do a ‘Search & Replace’ as you can do with Microsoft Word or other word processing software, but with all my photos?”

If you had used Photo Mechanic before the Plus version came out, as long as you had a folder opened and selected all the photos, you could easily search and replace to fix a caption.

There’s no search and replace anywhere in Lightroom, not even in the caption or titles where a word processor (or Notepad) – style feature can make lots of sense.

Now let’s say your friend has made an error over time. There are folders of images on multiple hard drives that all have the same error.

For Example:

In all your photos on the hard drives of “President George W. Bush,” you had him identified as “President George H. Bush.”

Another more common issue is that you had been using “John Smith” and found out later it should be “John Smith Jr.” You need to correct these images.

Now with Photo Mechanic Plus, it is a much simpler task. First, all the images must be included in the Photo Mechanic Plus catalog. If they are all there, you go to the database part of the program and search for how you put it in the photos in the catalog.

A little tip here is to be sure you use quotation marks [ “ ” ] around multiple words. This way, it will look for the phrase. Without the quotation marks [ “ ” ], each word is looked for and not as a combination.

Search the database for “President George H. Bush.”

Then select all the images. I use the shortcut ⌘+A to select all the photos.

Then Edit>Find & Replace.

Type in the words you need to be changed for the search field and the correction in the replace field.

You can have it search all the fields, or if you know it is in just one or two fields, you can narrow the selection. That can speed it up and keep you from accidentally replacing it in a field you don’t want to change.

In the case of a photo where you had both President George H. Bush and his son George W. Bush, you can narrow the search to not include one in the database search.

Now you can tell your “friend” how to fix all those errors in the photo’s metadata.

Research shows that our brains like choices. Read on to learn how pricing can help you sell more.

Before Pricing

One of the most important things to build trust is people feeling empowered. People like to feel in control of their decisions.

Without choices, we would be puppets. Even in faith, there is the concept of “Free Will,” which means you get to choose and have options.

Once a person loses these options, they feel imprisoned.

A binary decision is a choice between two alternatives, for instance, taking a specific action or not taking it.

Three choices enable us to avoid the ones that are too hot and too cold, too big and too small and select the one that is just right. 

I am sure you remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There is one choice that is “Just Right.”

Binary gives choices, but once you go to three options, people’s brains believe they have all the choices. Just like Goldilocks, they feel like choosing between the three leads them to the perfect choice. They think this is all the variables, even when it is not.

Pricing

Now that you know the brain is wired to feel like three choices are all the choices try your very best when working on proposals and pricing that you create three options.

Now my uncle, Knolan Benfield, is the first person to talk to me about pricing. He was talking about his pricing list for his photography studio “The Benfield Touch” in Hickory, North Carolina.

He had been to many Professional Photographers of America workshops. One of them taught him about the “Whoop-De-Do” option. It is offering the 4th choice.

This is the over-the-top option. When he returned from the workshop, he tried this, and it worked.

How often did you have the bride’s father who would occasionally say I only want the best for my daughter? Not that often, but when he does, he will be the one who picks the 4th “Whoop-De-Do” option.

The workshop leader said once this happens, you should drop your lowest price, making your 2nd option the 1st lowest priced option. Then you add a new “Whoop-De-Do” option. This is how you can increase your prices over time.

Just look on Amazon or, for me, B&H or Roberts Camera; almost every product gives you options. Usually three choices or more. Look at how they are pricing the newest M1 Chip Macbook Pro.

For those of you who have always priced estimates with one price and wondered why you didn’t get some jobs, this might be one of the reasons. Give them three options from now on.

My personal experience is when given three options; they pick the middle one most of the time.

This is the speed test I ran using my ethernet. As you can see, that is pretty fast.

Why am I telling you this? Some will read this and say that it is obvious. From my time teaching at the University of Georgia and doing workshops worldwide, the students have one thing in common.

Understanding computers is not innate to humans. Many people I have taught have had to learn that they must empty their trash on their computers. They honestly didn’t know. Some of the students in the workshops had never done this, and for some, when we did it, they freed up some 300 GB of space on their hard drives.

So this is why I wrote this piece, not for you, that already know all there is to know about computers, but for the rest of the world that doesn’t know unless someone tells them.

Now on to the tip of how to speed up your internet connection.

To hook this up to my Macbook Pro, I used this Hub-Connector by J5create.

Now, when you have a home office, it is worth running an Ethernet cable from your router.

This is now using the WiFi Netgear RAX20 with the latest generation WiFi 6 technology.

No matter your router, you will get better speed with ethernet, and my test shows more than a 4X increase in rate. This varies depending on the ethernet connection and WiFi connection you might have.

Now for those photographers and especially those working with video, you want that speed uploading your files.

I just recently switched from Cable internet to ATT Fiber Optic. I went from 200 MB down and 7 MB up to what you see above, and I am saving about $20 a month.

If you have a home office, consider going wired.

Stanley, Dorie, Lucy, and Don Rutledge in front of their home in Midlothian, Va. [Chelle Leary took photo]

A few people helped me get my bearings in the world of photography. Don Rutledge had an incredible impact on my life. I think it has more to do with how much I admired his work and what he had done for missions.

Another photographer that made an impact was Ken Touchton. He was covering the same annual Ramblin’ Wreck parade before the Georgia vs. Georgia Tech game that I covered for more than 15 years.

Ken had started in photojournalism but also would expand into corporate and advertising. When I went freelance from being on staff in 2002, Ken was the guy who called me weekly. We talked about my goals and ambitions. Then each week, he screamed as my accountability partner.

My foundation started with my uncle, Knolan Benfield, Jr. He worked with Don Rutledge long before me at the Home Mission Board in Atlanta from the late 60s to the late 70s. He also worked with Ken Touchton.

Knolan taught me how the mechanics of the camera worked and how to use studio strobes and pose people. You could never be around Knolan when he ran the Benfield Touch studios in Hickory, North Carolina, and not hear him talking about business practices. He was proud of being a small business owner and was quite successful.

Each of these and many others I would meet through the years helped me develop my inner character. They taught me a worldview based on Christian principles of right and wrong and, most importantly, the importance of searching for Truth.

I learned that treating people with honor, dignity, and respect was the only way to be successful. Each one taught me how to listen with more than just my ears. Don and Knolan primarily taught me the importance of body language.

They helped me realize my social work degree was a real asset in the world of communications.

Late in my career of freelancing, I met Greg Thompson. He brought me on to work with his corporate communications team at Chick-fil-A. We helped each other grow in so many ways.

I was always going to Greg with ideas that I thought would help Chick-fil-A. Greg taught me more than anyone else that you start with the audience in communications. Why do they need to hear this story? How is it going to help them live more productive lives? At Chick-fil-A, the question was, “How is this going to help them sell more Chicken?”

Here is a quick list of topics they taught me

• How to make a well-exposed photo
  • Knolan Benfield
• Understanding lighting, composition, and communicating with a photograph
  • Knolan Benfield
  • Don Rutledge
• Your role as a photojournalist
  • Don Rutledge
  • Knolan Benfield
  • Ken Touchton
  • Greg Thompson
• Business practices
  • Knolan Benfield
  • Ken Touchton

Who are your teachers? Who is coaching you?

• What is the difference between:
  • Journalism
  • Documentary
  • Public Relations
  • Corporate Communications
  • Advertising
  • Advocacy Journalism

So many in the communications profession didn’t come through a communications degree program. Many are self-taught and never really had someone give them a good understanding of the different roles in professional communications.

When a reporter for the national news shows up when a tornado has hit a community, this is news coverage. It is journalism.

When I took this photo of a hymnal with it opened to the song “I Feel the Need of a Mother’s Prayer,” I didn’t put the book there and turned to a particular page. I took it as I found it. That is critical in journalism. Journal journalism must report the facts and don’t editorialize or create something or add to it.

When we were doing a Public Relations package for missionaries in Trinidad, they didn’t just find the people where they were and capture them. They interviewed them and even staged parts of their coverage. This was what their “Public Relations/Advertising/Marketing” package did.

Here the purpose is different. In PR/Marketing, you want a clear message and to get rid of any distractions. You even help the characters phrase their words to tell their stories. In journalism, you ask questions and edit the key phrases they say to tell their story. In PR/Marketing, you realize that how someone words something often is ineffective. You clarify with them if the way you are saying something is accurate, and if it is, you ask them to tell it this way instead.

If you go with a communications team to do a story, what is your role with the team?

One thing that many team members don’t realize – everyone on that team is responsible for the whole story. If you don’t understand the entire story, you will not be effective in your role.

You also know that you must talk with and communicate with the other team members when you are on a team. It would help if you had open and honest communication.

The teams that produce the award-winning content usually have the best communication amongst the team members throughout the process.

During a stock shoot I did for Chick-fil-A, I didn’t set up the photos, but I did use strobes to make the lighting look better. A purist would say I am manipulating the situation.

For years I never used flashes all that much, but when I was in the darkroom, I was burning and dodging. That means I was trying to do what I could have been doing with lights. I made the subject brighter and the stuff I wanted darker by not putting light on it.

Often I do photos where the food is stylized. This isn’t just as you would find the sandwich. It was never wrapped to not squish the bun.

This is where the scene is manipulated. We do this all the time in PR/Marketing. In journalism, you might have to blur inappropriate language that might be on a person’s T-Shirt due to FCC rules and live TV. In PR/Marketing we just switch out the shirt.

If you are a one-man-band communications professional, what does that mean?

It means you are responsible for everything. I believe this is the one thing many who start their career as part of staff often never learn what it means to tell the story. They are just doing one piece and not seeing how it fits together.

What are the advantages of working with a team of communicators?

It is great to have others to bounce your ideas off. Working with writers, designers, editors, photographers, and videographers has a different perspective. Sometimes they see and hear things you are not wired to catch.

What are the advantages of the one-man-team for communication?

The best thing someone can do for a part of their career is a one-band shop. You will learn much more by knowing the audience relies on you as much as the subject to connect them.

WHY is this the topic???????

So many have said they are self-taught. Many have never been coached or mentored before in their career. I believe one of the best things I feel could benefit from this is to give people a chance to get a taste of what mentoring\coaching can be.

Find a mentor/coach to help you grow and become a better communicator. Learn how to work within the ethics of the type of communication you are doing.

How do photographers add more value to their work so that clients love them?

Lightroom Classic CC 7.3 (April 2018 release) has been optimized for more accurate detection of faces in your catalog photos. This means it will search all the images in the filmstrip of a folder or what you have ingested.

After it has found the faces, it puts them in an “Unnamed People” section. Just click on the “?” and fill in the correct name.

This information is written to the Keywords and a field called the “Persons Shown” area, which I worked with later in Photo Mechanic Plus.

Here, that field is just below the Keywords in Photo Mechanic Plus.

Here is my “Digital Workflow” before the changes I say I need to make to add value to your already awesome photos.

Post Processing

Here is my “Digital Workflow” before the changes I say I need to make to add value to your already awesome photos.

Post Processing

1. Ingest to PhotoMechanic
2. IPTC information is filled out and part of the ingesting process
3. Select the keepers
4. Delete all untagged images
5. Import into Lightroom because I am shooting RAW
6. Using metadata, I select all the photos with the same lens.
7. Select all with the same lens
8. Go to Develop Module “D” shortcut.
9. On the far right, go to lens correction.
10. Go back to Library, pick another lens, and do the same until all photos have been lens corrected.
11. Click on profile and enable profile for Adobe Color or select another more appropriate profile by using browsing in the menu.
12. Tip for selecting multiple images shot in the same scene and do a correction to all at once
13. Go to settings and then tell it to Match Exposure on all those selected.
14. ⌘D unselect
15. Go one by one and check those correctly. Repeat this step for different scenes
16. Correct for blown-out highlights
17. Pull in blacks if necessary.
18. I am often using the Dehaze and Texture sliders.
19. For sharpening, I use this technique.
20. Export all images to sRGB JPEGs Quality 80
21. Open PhotoMechanic
22. Upload to my PhotoShelter account for the client

After step 21, where I open the processed JPEGs, I now work on the IPTC metadata.

I select all the images and then use the shortcut “⌘+I,” which gives me the IPTC Metadata Master Template. Now I click into the Caption field and hit a few returns. I select “Append” from the pull-down menu on the left. Then I click on “Variables” down on the bottom, find “persons,” and click on it. It puts {persons} in the Caption field.

If I have other changes that would be easy to apply to all the images at once, I often do that here. Let’s say the same basic caption or keywords could be used. I go ahead and make those changes as well. Then at the bottom, next to “Close Template,” I click on “Apply Template to Selected.”

This takes all those identified in Lightroom’s Face Recognition and puts them into the caption field, making them easily searchable with any computer.

While Lightroom does put their names in the Keywords, I wouldn’t say I like that. So I overwrite that with my new keywords that I go and apply one by one or by selecting multiple images using the master template that I clear and apply each time if doing this to various photos.

If you are using the same changes a lot of the time, go ahead and save this template, and then you can load it when needed.

New Digital Workflow for Post Processing

1. Ingest to Photo Mechanic Plus
2. IPTC information is filled out and part of the ingesting process
3. Select the keepers
4. Delete all untagged images
5. Import into Lightroom, because I am shooting RAW
6. Use Face-Recognition to help identify people
7. Using metadata I select all the photos with the same lens
8. Select all with the same lens
9. Go to Develop Module “D” shortcut
10. On far right go to lens correction
11. Go back to Library and pick another lens and do the same until all photos have been lens corrected
12. Click on profile and enable profile for Adobe Color or select another more appropriate profile by using browsing in the menu
13. Tip to select multiple images shot in the same scene and do correction to all at once
14. Go to settings and then tell it to Match Exposure on all those selected
15. ⌘D unselect
16. Go one by one and check those correct. Repeat this step for different scenes
17. Correct for blown out highlights
18. Pull in blacks if necessary
19. I am often using the Dehaze and Texture sliders
20. For sharpening I use this technique
21. Export all images to sRGB JPEGs Quality 80
22. Open Photo Mechanic Plus
23. Select all Images
24. Append caption to include {persons]
25. Go through all images being sure caption [“Caption” field contains the specifics about a photo]
26. Using structured keywords apply them to each photo. [“Keyword” field is limited to generic terms]
27. Upload to my PhotoShelter account for the client

Please send a note with your images telling the client how they can search their images on their Mac or PC.

How to search on a Mac computer?

1. On your Mac, click the Spotlight icon in the upper-right corner of the menu bar or press the Command-Space bar. …
2. In the search field, type what you’re looking for—results appear as you type.

How to search on a PC computer?

• Click the Start button to go to the Start screen,
• then start typing to search for a file.
• The search results will appear on the right side of the screen. Click a file or folder to open it.

Any text put into the IPTC Caption or keyword fields is searchable, and they can find those photos.

Do this often enough, and they will no longer be calling your competition for those jobs. Why? They can find your photos and not your competition’s. That is how you increase your value to your customers.

I love shooting senior photos for a few reasons. One of the best reasons is meeting young people ready to transition into adulthood.

Today I just enjoyed my time with Max Boggus. Last year at this time, I shot his older sister.

We enjoyed shooting these photos in the “Golden Hour of Light.” The next few weeks are prime time to do outside portraits in Atlanta.

We did take one photo with the mask to remember this year of COVID-19. No other generation has had this as the norm during their high school years since the “Spanish Flu.”

Do you have a senior? Do you have plans to get their senior photo?

I like to go to different locations that are important to a senior. Take some time and think of places that mean a lot to you. Here Max is in front of his school.

Be sure you take lots and lots of photos when you schedule your time. This is once in a lifetime photo shoot.

Give me a call, and let us plan this critical time in your family’s life.