Photo Above: Women are taught how to prepare food from what they already have at home more nutritiously to improve their family’s health at the Baptist Medical Centre in Nalerigu, Ghana. [NIKON D2X, Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 EX DC, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 400, 1/20, ƒ/2.8, (35mm = 75)]

I spent a good chunk of my life releasing myself from the anxiety monster.

But lately, a creepy little monster called ‘Am I Making a Difference’ has surfaced.

The beast most often haunts me at night when I am about to fall asleep. I put my head down on my pillow and spent the day wondering: Am I making a difference? Is anything I’m doing helping anyone?

When I took photos of news events, I knew I relayed what happened that day to the audience from my front-row seat.

Most of my career has been documenting first-world issues. However, throughout my career, especially the last ten years, I have spent more time in the Third World writing their problems. I use the term “Third World” as shorthand for poor or developing nations.

My first trip to Africa was in 2005. For the first time, I saw how used liquor bottles were repurposed for many things. One was selling Petro by the side of the road. There were few gas stations, so business people would fill bottles and then resell them on the side of the road.

I saw firsthand how people survived with no electricity and no cupboard total of food like we have here at my home in Georgia.

I could go to the hospital to see the care provided by just two doctors.

I later went to the Chiapas region of Mexico to write a story about coffee farmers. Due to roasters underpaying them for their coffee for years, many came to the States to work in our communities to support their families back home. Telling their story, we were helping them return home and be prosperous by selling their coffee at fair prices because they could form a cooperative and, through a nonprofit’s help, buy a roaster that made them competitive. I aimed to spread the story so more farmers could join the cooperative.

I was privileged to tell their supporters the success story of Honduras Outreach Inc. We put together a video that was played when the President of Honduras came to Atlanta to present them with an award for all they had done to help the Agalta Valley in Honduras.

Here is the video I did for that event back in 2014.

Last year, I was privileged to go to Togo, West Africa, to help tell the story of a hospital built in the 1980s that has not been improved since then and is in significant need of upgrades and expansion to meet the needs of that community.

Here is the video I did for that project:

I don’t know how much money my work has raised over the years or how many people’s lives I have touched, but I feel a call to help others because of the stories I have helped to tell.

One of the biggest stories I am documenting, which almost everyone is doing, is that of my family story.

I would say that the most crucial story I am capturing is one of my own family’s milestones.

We all go to each other’s events to celebrate with them. They become part of all of our lives.

I am always asking, “Did I make a difference today?”

I hope so, but we don’t always know our impact on people. So, getting a note from someone telling you how you are making a difference is enormous.

During the Pandemic, I started an online Zoom meeting for communicators. I call the group FOCUS [Fellowship of Communicators Uniting Socially].

I got a note from one participant saying, “First off, I would like to thank you for this great fellowship group. I am enjoying it a lot. I feel like I am being watered like a plant and not drying up like I would if I were completely alone. Such a good group of people with great talent.”

So, I do think I am helping someone.

Earlier, I got this note from another group member: “Thank you for hosting a great discussion again today. I am humbled to be involved and grateful for the substantive topics and questions you and others raise. I find it personally stimulating to hear the depth of the dialogue. This has been missing from my career for a long time.”

We are wired to serve one another, but I also believe we need affirmation, which helps us know if we need to modify our efforts to make a difference in this world.

“Wherever you are in your life, show up. Generous, confident, engaged.”

Stanley

When did you realize that you grew up with different experiences than those around you?

You may recognize that you have had some unique experiences as I did with going in a hot air balloon with my wife, Dorie. I also realized not everyone breaks their bones as I have throughout my life.

One year my parents treated my sisters and our families on a cruise. I would have never afforded this, and this was a wonderful experience to put into our memory banks.

The moment that became my awakening was when our family moved from Eastern North Carolina to Englishtown, New Jersey. Every day for a long time, I saw new things and took in a world so different from where I came from.

The cross-cultural experience is what this was for our family. It influenced our views, our values, our humor, our hopes, our loyalties, and our worries and fears. So when you are working with people and building relationships with them, it helps to have some perspective and understanding of their cultures.

To understand your culture, the best thing you can do is to leave it and experience another culture.

You begin to ask yourself questions you would never have done had you stayed within your bubble. Just experiencing food worldwide and how they prepare it can be eye-opening.

I believe one of the most significant problems we face today is that so many people have lived in a bubble for way too long. They look at how people do something different than they do as inferior rather than just different.

I think many are like children who will not eat only one thing. I had a cousin that only ate hot dogs for a long time.

I was brought up to eat whatever someone put in front of me. We had to be members of the “Clean Plate Club.” We even had children’s plates with this on them.

I’m sorry, but many of you live in a bubble.

It’s a bubble made up not only of your work but also your friends, the books you read, and your day-to-day routine.

It’s a bubble built from the meals you make each week.

It’s your Monday/Wednesday/Friday gym schedule.

It’s the route you take to work or the favorite coffee shop you write in on Sundays.

Yes, all those things are your bubble.

Your bubble is the safety net you surround yourself with every single day. The routines and schedules make your life stay stable and on track.

And yes, your bubble is also the building blocks of happiness, meaning, and creativity. But it’s also a wall that separates mediocrity and greatness and gets harder and harder to cross the higher you build it.

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

Haruki Murakami

I believe less is more when it comes to lenses. This means that when I am shooting, I usually have just two lenses on me.

I love wide-angle lenses. They force you to get close to fill the frame. They give the context of what is around the subject, and they bring the audience into the scene.

By giving context, you can see how a lens choice helps you tell the story.

I love the wide lens to capture the subject’s surroundings.

While some love to use it to show a flower in a field with a mountain in the background using this lens, I do the same by putting company signs near the lens and other information in the background.

I love shooting most of my people’s photography in the 24-105mm range. While shooting people is maybe better between 35mm and 105mm getting those group photos, I prefer a wider lens.

When running around overseas for a client, I love using this lens.

I can show people in their context wide with the lens and then get a lovely portrait just seconds later from standing in the same place as another person.

I like the Sigma 24-105mm lens, the 24mm. But what I dislike is that it stops at 105mm. The other lens in conjunction with the 14-24mm covering events is the Nikon 28-300mm.

When I travel, there are times, like in Hawaii, when I have the opportunity to shoot a rodeo, you need a reasonably long lens to get close to the action.

Taking photos for a school to use in their recruiting materials, I can use this to get the normal lens range here and then close up in the music room.

Now when I want those silky smooth BOKEH shots, I plan for those. I have two lenses I go to most of the time.

This fast 35mm ƒ/1.4 is maybe my favorite lens, but to shoot everything with it isn’t practical. But I love the distance I work with when using this and the results when shot wide open at ƒ/1.4.

With today’s cameras, you can get that razor-sharp image even with such a small depth-of-field because the camera can quickly lock in on the focus point.

It is excellent to use in low light, and it helps you isolate the subject and emphasize them, especially the eyes.

I have shot a lot inside of Chick-fil-A kitchens. I try to use the 35mm ƒ/1.4 lens the most because I cannot show everything in the back. However, please focus on their people as I do here.

I also love getting tight and just showing people more than always giving context.

Due to the new Nikon Z6, which lets you see what you are getting before you click the shutter, I have been getting even tighter shots.

As you can see, the 85mm, ƒ/1.8 does a great job isolating the subject when shooting wide open at ƒ/1.8.

Now when it comes to being far away and needing a longer lens I use the Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 DG OS HSM Sports Lens with the 1.4x or 2x converter made for the lens.

Now while sports and wildlife are where I use this often, occasionally, to get a different look with portraits, I use the lens.

This is where I wanted to compress the background of fall colors with the subject. Ask yourself some questions. Why are you shooting this? What do you want the audience to think? What do you want the audience to feel?

Always consider what you want the image to say before you decide how to say it. Then pick the best lens for the moment. You may compromise, as I often do with my zoom lenses.

Remember always to think conceptually and not just aesthetically.

Here are links to a couple past blog posts on specific lenses:

• The Psychology of the Wide-Angle Lens
• The Psychology of the Telephoto Lens

Stanley doesn’t believe in “cookie cutter” graduation photos or senior portraits. That’s why each graduation photo session is all about the grad. Our photos will reflect your style, highlight your interests, and let your personality shine through!

Senior portraits can be taken at a location of your choosing, including anywhere in or around Metro Atlanta. If you’re looking for some awesome and unique photoshoot locations, we’d be happy to suggest some of our favorites, such as Roswell Mill, Roswell Parks, or Canton Street. Looking for more of a traditional background? No problem! We would be thrilled to take some portraits of you in my home studio, located in Roswell, GA. Whatever you choose to do, know that we want you to feel like your amazing, authentic self. That’s why we permit as many outfit changes and the use of props in your photos, to ensure that each photo is truly a reflection of you and your interests. We just create the unique package for you.

Graduation marks a new chapter in your life, and you must preserve these precious memories while you can. Get amazing and affordable graduation photography and senior portraits by Stanley. He will work with you to ensure that you are comfortable during the photoshoot and completely satisfied with the results. Let him help you create keepsakes that you will treasure forever!

Contact Stanley today by calling (404) 786-4914 or emailing at [email protected].

One of the best things to do during this pandemic is to learn a new skill.

How would you like to learn how to make pictures like these here?

While these photos were made in Hawaii, you can learn to do this wherever you live.

I love teaching and would love to help you learn any skills you like with photography, video, or storytelling.

Here I was teaching how to use lights to improve a sunset photo.

We can get some models and work together. I can show you the steps to improving your photos.

Here are some of the topics that I have taught through the years:

• How to use Strobes (Studio and Location Lighting)
• How to shoot and edit a story on a person using video (Storytelling, How to Capture Video & Sound, Editing with Adobe Premiere Pro)
• Digital Asset Management (How to create a catalog of all your photos so you can find them and even share this online)
• How to start of photo business (Teaching you what you need to know to become a successful freelancer)
• Blogging
• How to create a website with your own domain name

Give me a call or email. Look in the Contact at the top of the page for that information.

During the pandemic we can do this with face masks, social distancing and keeping it one-on-one or small group.

The above picture is the earliest version of my website that I could find. I used the “Wayback Machine” to find this from my first website which was hosted by Compuserve. This webpage is from January 16, 2000.

On November 12, 1999, the Institute for Public Relations at Georgia Tech had the entire team take a class on how to create web pages from Jay Bolter.

He was a professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture and the author of Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing. “

Today we know hypertext as a link.

I had photographed Jay for articles a few times. I was excited to learn how to design web pages from him and his team.

It would take me a lot of time trying to create a webpage using HTML code.

I thought that I would create links to my portfolio that looked like slides.

I would talk to my friend and Art Director Tony Messano designed all my logos in the summer of 2000. He created that first logo you see that I would finally incorporate into the website that falls of 2000.

I created a 2 frame website. I wanted to be sure everyone could navigate easily by using the left side of the website and the content would pop up on the right side. This is 7 years before the iPhone introduction in 2007.

I kept this basic design for years and would update the navigation on the left side.

In 2009 Tony said I needed to update that logo to something bold because he thought I was a stronger person and wanted the logo to show that.

I was always trying to evolve the website to reflect my new skills at the time and reflect what I could do for my clients.

I would work at this over and over using the latest web design to help people know how to work with me. My problem was every year I was adding new skills.

Today

Now I have this as my website design that rotates the main page. Here are those pages which you can also see at https://stanleyleary.com/

Each of those pages has three main elements. 1) State the problem, 2) State the solution, & 3) Action Item on how to contact me

1. Video Storyteller – Audiences want to be moved, inspired, or amused. There’s no better way to do this than with video.
2. Corporate Storyteller – Engaging your audience beyond facts by humanizing your brand with storytelling.
3. Headshots – A headshot is a modern portrait in which the focus is on the person.
4. Humanitarian Storyteller – A humanitarian’s goal is to save lives, relieve suffering, and maintain human dignity.

Today I offer more than photography. I offer more than video services. Web design is also one more skill. Even blogging is another skill, but still, it alone is not my best value to customers. My biggest contribution is the years of experience that helps me to see the “Big Picture.”

The best storytellers are not just aware of their subject and craft of storytelling but know to start with the audience.

My greatest skill is not there either. It is the combination of all this that I bring to the table. I know when we think of doing something that implementing it can have some issues. I know how difficult writing computer code can be for something that may not exist.

I know how all this comes together because I have done all these skills not just for my clients, but for my website and blog.

Be an early adopter so that you can know how it all works as we continue to evolve.

I am still learning and working on acquiring new skills.

What are you learning new today?

– Stanley Leary

If you have been invited to a Zoom Meeting there are some things that will help you and the other meeting participants enjoy your time together.

First of all the point of Zoom or other Video conferencing software is a tool used by two parties to communicate via video and audio using an Internet connection. It enables the parties to initiate and conduct live conferences and remote meetings by transmitting audio, video, and text.

The main purpose of video conferencing is to enable face-to-face communication.

Before joining a real meeting, take the time to practice first. For Zoom go here and download the app for your device https://zoom.us/support/download.

When you open the app you will see something like this above. Click on the “New Meeting”. This will open up the window like you saw above of me. You will see what you look like on the screen for others. No one else is in the meeting but you.

This lets you practice.

A couple of things I recommend with the video. Put a light source in front of you.

Sit so you are facing a window like this Bay Window here. DON’T HAVE THE WINDOW BEHIND YOU! If it is night time or you don’t have a window that works put a light in front of you. You can buy one if you don’t have one for this.

For $49.95 you can get this small LED light by Lume Cube to use.

Stage your video area. Watch your background. You can use a plain wall and then decorate it to show your personality. You can also buy a background for very little money. Search Google for “Vinyl Photography Backdrops”. I recommend getting a 7’x5′ size background. You can tape this to a wall or they do sell the background stands with them if you like. I have two I am showing you in this blog post. The Wood Panel look and the Bookcase Look. Even Walmart has them. They run about $11 to $25 for most anything you can think of for a background. They fold up like a small sheet.

Now that you look good with the light and background, put your device at eye level.

Put some books on the table and raise your device to eye level. Also pay attention to framing. Be careful not to cut off your head and watch the background.

Try to look into the camera.

If you’re presenting or speaking to a group, looking into the camera will give the appearance of eye contact with whoever you’re talking to. It’s also definitely better than being forced to stare at your own face and realizing how badly you need a haircut.

How you sound to everyone is very important. As long as you are close to the device most phones, tablets and computers microphones work pretty well.

In the lower left you find this microphone and a little arrow pointing up. Click on the arrow and select “Audio Settings”. This will pop up.

You can now test the default microphone your device uses. If you want to change it click on the pull-down menu to the right of “Test Mic” and you can select a different microphone. You might want to select a bluetooth device like I have done here. Click on test microphone and talk. Then a Play Back option will appear. Click on this to hear how you sound. Also if you choose to listen with headphones or some other device you can change that in the speaker pull down menu. You can adjust the recording volume on your microphone and the volume output for your speakers here.

Whenever you are on a Zoom Call you should “Mute” your microphone when not talking. This way noises in the room of your device don’t become part of the meeting. Just click on the Mute to unmute or if you have a keyboard just hold the “Space Bar” and it will unmute you. When you stop holding the “Space Bar” it will go back to Mute.

Don’t eat during the meeting.

It can be a little gross to watch other people eat sometimes. Or listen to them chewing, for that matter. Hold off if you can, or if not, maybe turn off the video and audio.

Don’t do other private things while on a meeting.

Speaking of gross: have you heard any horror stories about people being caught picking their nose or using the bathroom while on a video conference, thinking they were muted or had their video off? Don’t become a statistic. It can be easy to forget that people can hear or see you if you’re in a group of 30 coworkers, so don’t risk it!

Consider muting your video (also on the lower left of the screen) if you are eating, scratching, talking with someone else in the room, or anything else that might be distracting to others. Try to be present most of the time. You were invited to be seen.

When you are speaking, let others know that you are finished by saying one of these sign-offs: “That’s all.” “I’m done.” “Thank you.” So that everyone knows you have finished your comments.

You can ask questions and make comments silently if desired using the “Chat” feature (also on the bottom and center of your screen).

Appearance Tip

Wear solid colors. Avoid white since this can affect the exposure and make it look washed out or make you look too dark. Just try and present yourself like you would do if you were getting a professional portrait done.

Couple of Device Tips

Turn off all other applications on your device. These will affect the video quality and the audio quality.

Don’t use the “Virtual Background” unless you have a very powerful computer processor. This takes a lot of computer power. It will become distracting when you or parts of you disappear due to the slow computer processor you have.

“Virtual Background”

PC Computer requirements:

• Zoom Desktop Client for PC, version 4.6.4 (17383.0119)or higher
• Windows 7, 8, or 10 (64-bit)
• Supported processors (720p video)
  • Intel i5, i7, i9 – 2 cores or higher, gen 6 or higher, except atom and y series
    • Processor must have Intel GPU – except HD620 with driver version 23 or higher
    • OS must be Windows 10, 64-bit
• Supported processors (1080p video)
  • Intel i5 – 4 cores or higher, gen 6 or higher, expect u-series
  • Intel i7, i9, Xeon – 4 cores or higher, gen 4 or higher
  • Intel CPU with HD620 graphics (OS must be Windows 10, 64-bit)
    • i7 2 cores; or
    • i5 2 cores with major version 26 or higher and minor version 7323 or higher
  • Other Intel processors – 6 cores or higher, gen 4 or higher, except atom and y series
  • Non-Intel processors – 8 cores or higher and frequency 3.0GHz; or 12 cores or higher
  • AMD – Ryzen 5/7/9 or higher

MacOS Computer Requirements:

• Zoom Desktop Client for Mac, version 4.6.4 (17383.0119) or higher
• macOS 10.9 or later
• Supported processors (720p video)
  • Intel i5, i7, i9, Xeon – 4 cores or higher
  • Intel i7, i9, Xeon – 2 cores, gen 4 or higher
  • Intel i5 – 2 cores, gen 6 or higher, and macOS 10.14 or higher
  • Other Intel processors – 6 cores or higher, except atom and y series
  • Non-Intel processors – 8 cores or higher
• Supported processors (1080p video)
  • Intel i5 
    • 4 cores or higher, gen 5 or higher; or
    • 2 cores with gen 7 or higher and 2.0Ghz frequency or higher
  • Intel i7 – 4 cores or higher, gen 2 or higher
  • Intel i9, Xeon – 4 cores or higher
  • Other Intel processors – 6 cores or higher, except atom and y series
  • Non-Intel processors – 8 cores or higher

If you have a fast computer and want to try the “Virtual Background” then here is how to do that.

Go back to the preferences and click on “Virtual Background”

You can pick anyone of those backgrounds that came with the software or you can create your own.

Photo by Don Rutledge

Every time I hear someone teaching photography say you need to “Clean Up Your Background” I know they haven’t met Don Rutledge.

There are so few photographers that know how to make the background work.

Today I think many photographers use the smooth BOKEH as an excuse for not knowing how to make sense of a location and use the background to help give context to a story.

Don spent a lot of time studying situations he was in and was not looking for ways to take things out of photos–he was trying to see how to include more.

Some people do talk about layering for composition, but often are talking about just creating a 3-D look to an image. Don saw layering as a way to tell you more about the story and the people.

The three ladies in the background help show the fashion of old Poland in the now moment.

Some people would get low and help isolate this guy with the flag. Don would go just enough above the person to see the crowd in the back and give you an idea of how large the crowd is and this guy is in the midst of this.

I remember sitting with Don in his office and me asking him to walk me through his editing process with contact sheets and slides. We spent hours doing this. Don would show a few of the frames before this one where the framing wasn’t as good. He would talk about including the women on either side in the background. Many would shoot this and concentrate on the three men and cut the women out.

What you learn from Don is how important background and things around people give context.

Back in 1956, Don Rutledge partnered with John Howard Griffin on the book Black Like Me. Don wanted to show the context of Griffin becoming black and how people treated him solely based on his skin color. To do this Don used the background to show the White Man looking at him judgmentally.

One of the photos I love the most of Don’s was from the time he went and lived with Bailey King for a month to capture Poverty in America. Again you can see Don is making sense by not cleaning up the background but allowing it to add more information about Bailey King.

Don saw the kids in the doorway and the window. Many photographers only would see that n the porch. This is my favorite photo of Don’s because it embodied this skill that he had developed better than anyone else I knew. He would become invisible and the audience would be transported to see everything and not just a selective focus that most would give you.

Don’t try and just clean up your backgrounds. Take the time to pay attention to the background. Move until you can frame your main subject and help tell more about their story by using the background, foreground, and everything around them.

Take the time to make the background work for you and not against you. When you do your photos will be more informative and for the photojournalists that is your ultimate goal–to inform the public.

This is the side-by-side view in Adobe Lightroom of a photo I took on September 6, 2003.

Auburn (No. 19 ESPN/USA Today, No. 17 AP) has quickly established itself as the nation’s most disappointing team, losing its second in a row Saturday when Georgia Tech pulled off a 17-3 upset behind freshman quarterback Reggie Ball and a ferocious defense.

ESPN

Here is the photo as I delivered it to my client in 2003:

I was still pretty new, not even one year shooting digital when I took this photo. I would shoot only JPEGs and treat the process just like I had been shooting transparencies in the past.

Had I shot RAW I could have improved the photo even more. Here is what I ended up with after some editing in Adobe Lightroom.

Frankly, I was surprised by how nice the image was with my Nikon D100, which was a CCD sensor camera. Today my Nikon D5 and Nikon Z6 cameras both have CMOS sensors. While the ISO range was 200 – 1600, almost no one would shoot much above ISO 1600.

Here I zoomed in a little for you. Not bad for technical quality. Since this was one of my first games with the NIKON D100, I started shooting at a shutter speed of 1/500. I quickly realized I needed to be higher and in this photo shoot at 1/1250.

Today I am shooting football games inside at ISO 25600 with shutter speeds of 1/4000. There have been major improvements from my first Nikon D100 to my Nikon D5 and my Nikon Z6.

Here is that photo a little closer.

Here is another before and after image.

This is how I turned this photo in back in 2003.

Here the photo has been run through Adobe Lightroom and due to a few improvements in the software since 2003 I can give a client a better image with the same camera.

Summary

1. SOFTWARE – If you have photos from many years ago, with today’s software like Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Lightroom you can most likely get much better images than you did way back when you first shot it by just editing it with the newer software.
2. RAW vs JPEG – I cannot recommend enough that shooting RAW will give you more flexibility in editing. The biggest difference I know that I see is in the color. In RAW you can still change the color temperature after you shot the image with everything that the camera sensor was seeing. With JPEG a lot of that color information is lost.
3. CAMERA – upgrading more often than every two years seems extreme to me. I mean, these are not cheap $100 P+S models here; we are talking about $2,000+ cameras. We may be professionals, but even for someone making their living from photography, that is a lot of money to be spending every other year.

When to upgrade your camera

1. If you have a 16+ megapixel camera the only reason to upgrade beyond this is if you like to crop a great deal or you are going to make HUGE prints bigger than 30″.
2. ISO – This has been one of my biggest reasons in the past to upgrade. Going from my Nikon D2Xs to Nikon D3 was huge. I went from ISO 100 – 800 to ISO 200 – 6400. That was the single biggest jump in significant game changer in my career with a camera. I had never shot any useable color images above ISO 800. I was getting awesome images at ISO 6400.
3. Motor Drive – With fast-moving things like sports a 11 fps can make a big difference in getting that image.
4. Shutter Lag – Early on with digital pushing the shutter didn’t give you instantaneous results. Cameras in the last few years are incredible.
5. Auto Focus – Through the years this has been a major jump.

There are other new functions you might consider. Video settings are vastly better today. You can always order a camera and test it for 30 days and send it back. You pay a stocking fee, but you get to test it to see if it is worth the upgrade.

Defense attorney Robert McGlasson, left, talks with his client Brian Nichols during a pretrial hearing Thursday, March 6, 2008 in Atlanta. Nichols is accused of killing a judge, a deputy sheriff and two other after escaping from the Fulton County Courthouse in 2005.

In 2005, Pastor Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life made national headlines when a man named Brian Nichols escaped an Atlanta courthouse and, after murdering four people, including a judge, forced his way into single mother Ashley Smith’s home and held her hostage for seven hours.

Ashley asked Nichols if he wanted her to read to him the book she was reading? That was Rick Warren’s book.

Years ago Rick Warren wrote the book “The Purpose Driven Life”. The question that he was asking was, “What on earth am I here for?”

Self-help books often suggest that you try to discover the meaning and purpose of your life by looking within yourself, but Rick Warren says that is the wrong place to start. You must begin with God, your Creator, and his reasons for creating you.

Journalists are trained to ask 5 w’s:

• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why

These are questions whose answers are considered basic in information gathering or problem-solving. These are the very tactical questions that are great in guiding the journalist to uncover the truth.

I have written many times here about how important the WHY is for giving direction.

While thinking about his idea of purpose I started to think of ways to explain this to the audience and you. One of the coolest apps on my phone is Waze. Waze is a GPS navigation software app owned by Google. It works on smartphones and tablet computers that have GPS support.

One of the coolest things about the Waze App is real-time traffic and police reminders. You put in your destination and it gives you turn-by-turn directions and redirects you around accidents, construction, and heavy traffic. I have discovered parts of Metro Atlanta I have never seen before and using the app saved hours of my time.

Not only does it tell you to turn by turn it tells you the approximate time you will arrive. How does it do it? Well as more and more people use it the app can gather all this information on driving patterns and calculate the fastest routes.

Now in life, there is not a Waze app for your life. You see the Waze app is based on roads that exist. In life, you need more of a compass. Unlike the “Wizard of Oz,” there is no yellow brick road.

You do need to ask where you want to end up.

One of the best things about education is you get to learn from others. When we are young we learn to not do something usually from doing it and getting hurt. You only touch something hot on the stove once before you learn that lesson.

While in school you learn about those 5 w’s when you study communication. That was my master’s degree and so of course I learned about that method and many others. What was cool about where I got my degree was a seminary. I had to take three tracks which made my time twice as long as the average master’s degree.

I had to take a theological track that helped a great deal with those big questions like Rick Warren ask in his book. By the way, he went to the same seminary as I did and we had him speak in one of my communication classes. That was my main track–communications. This was in the school of education and that was the third track.

All three disciplines taught you that your best answers to everything are rooted in the best questions.

In education, they teach you lesson planning. One of my professors changed how I saw almost everything when it came to not just teaching but communications as well. She taught me to start at the end of the lesson plan. What did you want your students to know at the end of the lesson?

Up until I had her as a teacher I had always worked on preparing my bullet list of points and being sure they were all covered. You know the teacher then plows through everything. She taught me that once you know where you are going and know the content well, then when a student asks a question or just contributes you know how to keep that interaction going which entail engaging the entire class to ask more questions and get excited about learning.

Before I would want to cut off these comments that I thought were taking me down a rabbit hole. If you know where you are going you are like the Waze app and can redirect back to your purpose for the lesson.

Bigger than the “WHY?” is the question of “PURPOSE?”.

In theology, I learned what is taught in Ephesians 2:10 that “… we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

In education, I learned to ask myself what is the takeaway from the lesson.

In communications, I learned that you start with the audience and ask what are you trying to tell them and why should they care.

Be sure to ask yourself today, “What is my purpose?” Once you have that your answers to the 5 w’s will be better and your “Why?” is much clearer.

Representative John Lewis with Chick-fil-A Founder S. Truett Cathy during the coin toss for the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in 2009. [NIKON D3, Nikon 24-120mm ƒ/3.5-5.6, Mode = Manual, ISO 6400, 1/500, ƒ/5.6, (35mm = 90)]

I have been looking through my work using Photo Mechanic Plus trying to find some images for proposals and other things when I came across this image of John Lewis and S. Truett Cathy.

Here is a video I did on using the software for cataloging your photos:

One thing that almost everyone makes a mistake about is metadata with your photos. While I found the images, they were not tagged with John Lewis or S. Truett Cathy’s names in the captions or keywords.

Most of the time I put a general caption with a project when I am ingesting them into my computer using Photo Mechanic Plus.

When ingesting I fill out the metadata fields here in Photo Mechanic Plus.

For this event, I had “Chick-fil-A Bowl Game Day” in the caption field. Not so helpful in finding images.

I probably shot 3,500+ images for that day. I kept 1338. Then I went through and rated the photos from 0 to 5 stars. I only rate 226 photos with 1 ★ or more.

This software lets me keep track of images and even if I don’t put all the information in the metadata I can later add that as I did here with these photos.

What I love about digital photography is I am going through over 395,000 images that I have put into the database. There are many more than are not in the database that is also on my hard drives. Those would be all the RAW files before I did any editing.

I take lots of photos when working. Sometimes I enjoy just taking photos of our family.

Finding these photos of the family is even more rewarding to me.

Digital photography lets me store so many images in such a small space. I remember when photographer Jay Maisel came to town and had his first digital camera. I was talking to him and he pulled out of his pocket a memory card case and was thrilled all this is what he needed rather than a few cases of the film when he traveled.

Going through images by looking through prints, slides and negatives take infinitely more time than today we can do with software like Photo Mechanic Plus.

Two things I am talking about here. 1) the Quality of the image sure does make a difference & 2) the narrative makes it rememberable.

I have shared this photo in the past, but not like this one. I continue to do searches trying to find the best copy of this photo.

Caption for the photo above –– ON THE BEACH: On June 15, 1944, during the Pacific Campaign of World War II (1939-45), U.S. Marines stormed the beaches of the strategically significant Japanese island of Saipan, to gain a crucial air base from which the U.S. could launch its new long-range B-29 bombers directly at Japan’s home islands. The first wave of Marines takes cover behind the dunes on Saipan beach, during the World War II invasion of the Marianas Islands. The soldier kneeling in the sand at the far right is Carl Matthews of Texas; second from right is Wendal Nightingale of Skowhegan, Maine; standing is Lt. James Stanley Leary of North Carolina. Neither Nightingale nor Leary made it home from Saipan; both are still listed as missing in action. [Time Life photo by U.S. Marine Sgt. James Burns]

If you have a photo and want to see if it exists in other places on the web you can upload it to TinEye and find all the copies.

So I uploaded the copy of the photo I had of my Uncle Stanley Leary from WWII and found it was on the web some 142 times.

By the way, we are both named after my grandfather James Stanley Leary. He was always known at Stan Jr.

I was surprised to find this one that had been colorized.

I found this one many years ago and what looks like the copy of a print. I can also see the lab guy who printed it was pretty lazy and just exposed for the face and didn’t bring out the detail around the people.

The colorized photo came from this version I also found online.

When you zoomed in you could see the faces were not clear and there was a bad dodge done for the print.

Now I continued to search and finally found a few that were good, but none perfect. So I copied the people in one photo and merged them with another to give me a better overall photo.

So as you can see in this photo, you can see my uncle’s face.

The problem is I still don’t have a good scan of the original negative to work with, rather me just piecing these photos together to get something I think is the best for now.

My cousin recently was visiting the National Archives when he saw this photo for sale as a poster. I had more information about who was in the photo from my research. Carl Matthews who was in the photo would become close to my grandmother and tell the family the story.

The photo was actually on many of the front pages of the newspapers in the United States. It was for a while at USMC Quantico up on the wall in the foyer.

Why was this photo used over and over through the years and so many others from this time are not shared?

Maybe the rest of the story of Saipan will help you know why it was used so much:

Every day I am seeing some awesome photos on my social media feed. Beautiful photos of scenery, people, and so on.

When I would have my portfolio of photos reviewed it was amazing how often the editors would flip so fast through my work.

Think about just those people mentioned in the Bible and how few people are actually in the Bible as compared to those who lived during those times. Made-up people in Jesus’ parables cut whereas others who lived didn’t make it.

For photos to live on in the future, either they are truly iconic like Ansel Adams’s photo of Moonrise over Hernandez or they have a narrative.

I think one of the reasons for that photo becoming famous was the story of making it that he told.

Ansel Adams said, “I could not find my Weston exposure meter! The situation was desperate: the low sun was trailing the edge of clouds in the west, and shadow would soon dim the white crosses … I suddenly realized that I knew the luminance of the Moon – 250 cd/ft2. Using the Exposure Formula, I placed this value on Zone VII … Realizing as I released the shutter that I had an unusual photograph that deserved a duplicate negative, I quickly reversed the film holder, but as I pulled the darkslide, the sunlight passed from the white crosses; I was a few seconds too late! The lone negative suddenly became precious.”

“Humans of New York began as a photography project in 2010.  The initial goal was to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers on the street, and create an exhaustive catalog of the city’s inhabitants.”

Humans of NY photographer – Brandon Stanton

When he started photographing people on the streets of New York he was first drawn to those who visually stood out. That isn’t what made his photos viral. It was when he sat down with the people he was photographing and just listened to their stories is when Stanton’s epiphany happened. It was the narrative.

“Somewhere along the way, I began to interview my subjects in addition to photographing them. And alongside their portraits, I’d include quotes and short stories from their lives.”

Brandon Stanton

When photos are paired with text and more specifically their story the power of the image has the potential to become one for the ages. Without the narrative – well it is just a cool composition and even might be well done, but it doesn’t move the heart.

“We can’t dwell on the negative and get discouraged, but you can’t be around Philip very long and maintain that because he changes that. He lifts us up.”

Randy Newberry

The photo is much more powerful than the narrative, don’t you think?