Shooting sports was where I always compared what I got to other photographers at the same event.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I want to modify it a little and say, “Comparison can be the thief of joy.”

I have never met a photographer who is not looking at the competition and comparing themselves at some time or another.

Comparisons can be Beneficial

Suppose you compare yourself to others to measure your personal development or motivate yourself to improve and, in the process, develop a more positive self-image. In that case, this is a good thing.

David Sutton posted his survey responses to the question, “How many photographers does it take to change a lightbulb?”

• What is it’s colour temperature? What operating system is it running on?
• This whole question is just another ego trip.
• The real problem is that the lightbulb reacts badly to criticism.
• It’s the tone of the lightbulb I don’t like.
• Nothing personal, but what do you know about lightbulbs?
• My mother’s aunt had a lightbulb just like it, and it didn’t need changing.
• It’s NOT the bulb you utter and complete idiot, it’s the person switching it on.
• None, anyone can fix it in Photoshop.

I am sure you have your list to add to this. If you need to procrastinate, then Google this for your amusement.

The problem with comparison is when it is no longer used to improve oneself but to tear down another person.

If you want to get better and have a good healthy attitude about your work, you can look at others’ work and not just learn from them but admire them.

Looking to others for inspiration (without comparison) is admiration. When we admire someone, we respect, appreciate, and feel inspired by their accomplishments. We are filled with encouragement and hope.

Prioritizing approval over feedback, learning, and growth will keep you stuck. You have to understand that each person has their path. What I have learned about this is that everyone has unique opportunities afforded them by things outside of their control. Face it, how you look had more to do with your parent’s genes than something you did. You do have control over how you take care of that body.

It took a while before learning to celebrate other photographers’ work. Unless the person was right next to me, we could not honestly compare our work.

One of the first places I started to understand why the comparison wasn’t possible was when another photographer was on the opposite side of the field, and the play was in front of them with no obstruction. I didn’t have a chance to get that same photo. However, just a moment later, I may get something they couldn’t call for the same reason.

Over time I started to learn how to look at others’ work and not just learn from it but admire it.

During the pandemic, I thought it would be great to use Zoom for FOCUS [Fellowship Of Communicators Uniting Socially]. Above is a compilation of all but the first few meetings.

I don’t think this would have been as successful if I had done this early in my career. I had to learn through the years that EVERYONE had something to share that I should listen to and learn from.

This has been an excellent year for me because of this group. I made it a point that anyone participating would be asked to be a presenter.

After the meetings, I often get emails and phone calls from people on the ZOOM call, and what is most interesting is they are talking about people’s work that didn’t have a reputation before the call. We have been blown away by people no one knew that well.

We have had many shares who have been guest speakers at national photography conferences, and even they surprised us.

Joanna Pinneo & Robin Rayne both shared about the struggles they encountered in doing stories. WOW! Usually, people with this type of experience show how successful they are with their work. Both of them shared how hard it was and how often they felt they were in over their heads with the assignments.

Here are three stories from the Bible to remind us how comparing to others only leads to real problems if we don’t exercise some humility.

• Jacob and Esau
• Joseph and His Brothers
• Cain and Abel

As Esau said to Jacob, “Let us start on our journey [together]” (Genesis 33:12), and may it lead us to trust, hope and peace.

Joseph, the most beloved of Jacob’s sons, is hated by his envious brothers. Angry and jealous of Jacob’s gift to Joseph, a splendid “coat of many colors,” the brothers seize him and sell him into slavery. However, Joseph had also learned about forgiveness. At the death of their father, his brothers feared that Joseph had been treating them kindly out of respect for Jacob. So they sent a message to Joseph saying that Jacob wanted him to forgive his brothers. Joseph wept, and the brothers fell before him, offering to be his slaves.

Friendly competition is highly effective in pushing people. Proverbs 27:17 “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

Here are some questions that I ask myself when looking at another colleague’s work.

• Why is their work so effective?
• What did they do to make this happen?
• What circumstances allowed them to do this that I don’t have?
• What should I take away from their work that could improve my work?

If someone’s work moved me and made me take notice, did I tell them? Take the time to encourage others. We all need it.

While asking if a person has advantages that I do not, I am using this question to set up one for myself. What can I do that others don’t have the same opportunity?

If you are a professional communicator or want to become one, all this self-improvement can be excellent, but one last thing must be central for you to grow.

Everything you are doing is actually so that you disappear. To be the very best communicator is when people are so moved by the work emotions take them over. They are connecting with the story of the subject.

The best question to be asking yourself is, “How can I do a better job of telling the subjects story more effectively.”

Tweet

Many people fall into positional bias, comparing “up” more often than “down” relative to their standing.

My goal with the FOCUS group has been to lift others and not to lift myself. “Paying it forward” requires us to realize how blessed we are with all the gifts that God has given us and celebrate those gifts in others.

… “A person can receive only what is given them from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.’ The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.”

John 3: 27 – 30

Shooting a headshot in a hotel room is about having a compact system. Over Christmas, we were in Phenix, Alabama, and my daughter needed a new headshot. Her hair color had changed, so I brought this small kit to get her some up-to-date photos.

I had two Flashpoint XPlor 600 HSS TTL lights that I controlled from my camera using the GODOX X1-N transmitter.

The main light is used as a butterfly light using a beauty dish. I am using the Godox Beauty Dish Reflector (White, 16.5″), which has a Bowens mount that works on the Flashpoint 600 lights.

As you can see, I am also using one more Flashpoint light behind the subject. I forgot my 30º Grid, so I improvised and put a box around the 7″ reflector to act as barn doors. This kept the light off the background and created a lens flair with my lens.

I use the Lastolite Triflector MKII Frame + Silver/White Panels under the model’s face and on the sides to kick light back into her face.

For the background, I always carry a Savage Collapsible Stand Kit (60 x 72″, Black/White).

I prefer to shoot with the flashes in manual mode. I started with the main light at 1/128th power. And the same with the backlight. This had me shooting on the Nikon Z6 with the 85.0 mm f/1.8, at ISO 100, 1/800, ƒ/1.8.

I got this reading using my ExpoDisc. I hold this over the 85mm lens while facing the light with the beauty dish. I am holding the camera right where the model’s face will be. I take exposures and adjust the exposure using the histogram until I have a spike in the middle of the histogram.

Then I use the same ExpoDisc and do a custom white balance.

After shooting, I changed the depth-of-field to a little more depth. So I went from ƒ/1.8 to ƒ/4. I then just raised the power of the flashes by approximately two stops. So, now the main light is 1/32 power and did the same for the background.

I shot a few shots using this setup.

There is no light but the fall off from the main light hitting the white background. This gives you a grey look. If you want it black, turn around the background and use the black side.

If you want it white, light the white side with at least the same amount of light hitting the subject. However, I always recommend getting a pure white; give it one stop more.

Write me if you want to know anything about this setup that I didn’t answer in the blog.

Maybe you have swabbed your cheek and gotten your DNA profile revealing your ancestors as I have. My wife and I did the FamilyTreeDNA.

You can see the family trees of those who have chosen to share that are related. Ancestory.com promotes its product using photos like this ad here:

I have worked out a great workflow that works for me and my clients when I do photo shoots. However, when the photos are older and need to be cataloged, well that is what I am writing about today.

Workflow for Older or Existing Photos

First, you need to digitize all these images. Earlier, I wrote about copying images with my Nikon Z6 on my blog. To digitize slides, I wrote about that process here.

I want to pick up those photos that are digitized. I have been doing a few archiving projects and now have a pretty good process.

The first thing I am doing is ingesting all the images into Adobe Lightroom Classic. Once ingested, I use the shortcut in the Library Module “O.”

Lightroom will now look for people’s faces. All of them will be unnamed, and then you assign a name. Just click below the photo and write the name in.

You can then right-click and ask it to find similar faces. I select all those that are the same person and type the name in. Hold the Command key ⌘, click on all the photos, and then only have to do this once.

How many photos you imported and how many faces are in those photos will impact how long it takes to find all the pictures. I have been importing about 3,000 images at a time, and it takes a good hour or so to see all the faces.

Artificial Intelligence is great for a few reasons. First, if someone is looking for a photo of someone, most likely they want a photo where you can see them. AI helps you by only finding recognizable faces. Second, it is fast.

When you finish you can export all the images, putting their names in keywords and the people field. You can also write the metadata to the image. I do this since I am working primarily with JPEGs since they are older photos rather than RAW images. Go to >Metadata>Save Metadata To File, or you can use the shortcut ⌘S.

When Face Recognition was first introduced with Lightroom 6, I wrote a blog on it here.

Second I leave Lightroom and go to Photo Mechanic Plus.

Here I have a few shortcuts to help with speeding up Metadata.

Using the “Variables,” I put those into the caption field. So what I am doing is moving the names created in Lightroom from the “Keyword” field to the “Description/Caption” field. I also carry the location information.

With one client I also use {filenamebase} and {folderpath} variables. They had already tried to help in finding their photos by creating a folder system and filenames that helped with finding photos.

Their system worked like walking into a library, walking to a specific section, and pulling a book because you know how the system was set up. However, if you are as old as I am, you may remember going to the library and teaching you how to use the card catalog system.

I am taking that filing system and embedding it into each photo. This way, if you search for a topic that was a folder, it will find all those photos. You can then narrow the search with more words.

Third I will now add keywords to every photo. I use a “Structured Keyword List.”

If you create a taxonomy of keywords using the form of this outline about without the numbering, this can be used in what Photo Mechanic refers to as a “Structured Keyword.” It will look like this below, minus the bullet points.

• North America
  • United States
    • Alabama
  • Mexico
  • Canada

You can use Microsoft Excel and create your list as well. A column and indent would be the B column and so on. If you save it as a TXT, it can be used as a Structured Keyword list.

Click on the drop-down menu on the right of keywords in the IPTC screen. Pick the Structured Keywords.

This is the default that comes with Photo Mechanic. I have written my own for different clients.

This lets you quickly add keywords to a photo.

When you have done this just once, the keywords will be under the Structured Keywords, so you don’t have to recreate it if you want to use the same or another one you created. It keeps those as another shortcut.

My last tip is that you can simultaneously apply any of these to multiple images.

Select all the images or select CMD+I to bring up the IPTC. You change anything in this and then tell it to apply to your selection.

You can do the same thing by selecting images and CMD+M to rename all the photos you have chosen.

On average going one image at a time, it can take about 5 minutes for an idea to write a caption telling us the Who, What, Where, When & How, as well as adding Keywords. But using code replacement, structured keywords, and applying those to multiples when you can–will save you an incredible amount of time.

The last tip. Do this enough, and your speed will increase over time.

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?