Bill Bangham and James Dockery review Jennifer Nelson’s story during our Storytellers Abroad Workshop in Chile. [NIKON Z 6, 24.0-105.0 mm f/4.0, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 3200, 1/100, ƒ/5.6, (35mm = 28)]

When and if you ever get the opportunity to have your work reviewed by people you respect–Do It!

How you got into this profession will determine how you might proceed. Also, you need to be aware of the perspective of the person doing the critique.

If you are talking to a journalist, they tend to see themselves as the arbiters of truth. They will want you to answer the questions about the story.

These are tips for you to be ready for a review. Let the person who is doing the review do all the talking. They will ask you questions and keep the answers short and to the point. These are some topics that I think will help you be prepared.

Journalism

• Who is it about?
• What happened?
• When did it take place?
• Where did it take place?
• Why did it happen?

Some authors add a sixth question, “how,” to the list, though “how” can also be covered by “what,” “where,” or “when.”

Public Relations & Marketing

I have found that many with a journalism background seem to struggle with the concept of starting with the Audience and not the Subject.

The other aspect of PR & Advertising is a “Call to Action.” Journalists are informing the public, whereas, in PR & Advertising, you are trying to get people to take a specific action. Often it is just to buy this to solve your problem.

First, I think the best place to start is, “Who is your audience?” If you work for a newspaper, you must expand on this and describe your average reader.

If you are working for a non-profit to raise funds, then say this is for our supporters and potential supporters.

Second, can you tell me why the audience should care about this subject?

Third, give me the Five W’s and the H. Tell me the story of the subject as briefly as you can.

Fourth, tell me your call to action for the audience. Now that they have heard this story, what are they supposed to do?

What everyone wants to have to happen with any work in communications is for it to do its job––Communicate. That means when a reader is turning the newspaper or magazine pages, they don’t have you next to them filling them in. The work must do it without your comments.

Listening in on a critique is also a great way to learn if they let you. We all have similar habits that can be corrected.

Another thing to remember is you may disagree with the critique. This is where if you are smart, you will get others to review the work. If others say similar things in their feedback, you need to change, which wasn’t a bad review.

The purpose of getting a critique is to make you a better communicator. Remember, “Iron Sharpens Iron.”

There is a famous group that called themselves the Inklings.

From Wikipedia on the Inklings

The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy. The best-known, apart from Lewis, were J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams, and (although a Londoner) Owen Barfield.

“Properly speaking,” wrote Warren Lewis, “the Inklings was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections.”

Readings and discussions of the members’ unfinished works were the principal purposes of meetings. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, and Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve were among the novels first read to the Inklings. Tolkien’s fictional Notion Club was based on the Inklings. Meetings were not all serious; the Inklings amused themselves by having competitions to see who could read the notoriously bad prose of Amanda McKittrick Ros for the longest without laughing.

I have a small group doing the same thing with communication projects today. We are FOCUS—Fellowship Of Communicators Uniting Socially.

Today many people fear having their pictures made. While this is a real phobia, most people have difficulty just being themselves when they know the camera is on them.

Even world-famous singer Adele has this phobia and is reported to have undergone ‘photo-healing therapy’ with a Californian hypnotherapist!

As for the reasons for fear of having your picture was taken (Scopophobia), they can run the gamut from what others may think about the photo to the fear that some part of your soul or spiritual essence will be captured and imprisoned in the camera or picture.

Many things can trigger anxiety. I understand having a little concern about having your picture made with all things that shouldn’t upset us. I think it is normal.

When photographing people, I like to get to know a person. There are many reasons to do this. First, when people start telling me about themselves, they slowly reveal facial expressions that give a peek into their personalities.

If you pay attention, you will see those moments when a person comes alive. I look for those moments and then capture them later while photographing because I paid attention to them being themselves.

New research shows the brain can be tricked into feeling pain relief. It is called neuroplasticity. This is the idea that the brain can change in response to experience.

I find that just having a person concentrate on the answers to my questions makes it harder for them to focus on being photographed. This is me using neuroplasticity to help relax a person.

I was photographing a counselor today, and when we finished, she said, “You Disarmed Me.” She didn’t have a phobia, but the comment let me know she was a tad bit anxious, but we took care of that together. We got some great photos of her.

So, someone or something disarming makes people feel as if they don’t need to use their weapons or powers because they think less hostile, less suspicious, friendlier, and more trusting. In other words, disarming people and things are soothing, charming, or putting people at ease.

I got her mind off of being photographed and just being herself and having a pleasant conversation.

Photography is more than just knowing how to work a camera and lights. When it comes to photographing people, you have to know about them. I guess my social work degree is still being used today. I am using some of those skills to put people at ease in front of the camera.

Stanley taught in Lisbon, Portugal, during the first Storytellers Abroad Missions Multimedia Workshop with ABWE. [photo by: Jeff Raymond]

The learning-by-teaching effect has been demonstrated in many studies. Students who spend time teaching what they’ve learned show better understanding and knowledge retention than those who spend the same time re-studying.

Teaching helps bring to mind what we’ve previously studied, leading to the more profound and longer-lasting acquisition of that information than more time spent passively re-studying.

Researchers

Researchers say that the benefits of the learning-by-teaching strategy are attributable to retrieval practice; that is, the mighty learning-by-teaching strategy works but only when the teaching involves retrieving the taught materials. You need to internalize the to-be-presented material before communicating it to an audience, rather than rely on study notes during the presentation.

In past blog posts, I have talked about the stages of learning. This illustration of the stages would put teaching even above the evaluation step.

Good Teachers Know Their Students

In an interview, Duke Men’s Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski talked about the importance of knowing his players.

Coach K: If an athlete knows you believe in them, then when that kid goes through dark moments, they will know they are not alone. We all have those moments, and knowing that others are with you is essential. Our guys know they are never alone because we develop relationships and let them know we believe in them. “I believe in you.” You can say that with just those words, or you can say it in a huddle when you tell a guy, “We are going with you on this next play.” He might say, “I just missed one.” Then I might say, “This next shot is my shot or our shot. Maybe one of the reasons you are missing is because you are taking your shots. You are taking our shot this time, and don’t worry about it. I’m not worried about it.” You put that belief in their minds, so they don’t fear losing.

Individualization

Great teachers know there is no perfect way to teach a subject to everyone, but there is a better way to teach each student.

I first love showing students how I would shoot something like I am doing here in Hawaii.

I quickly have them get hands-on experience working with the lights in the studio and learning how: to turn the lights on, make them sync with the camera, and then create different lighting schemes.

Time to absorb

However, the best learning happens when I leave the students alone in the studio to work on their assignments. They often work in teams. They need a model and a photographer and often use each other, creating the perfect setup for them to teach each other what they learned earlier. Someone doesn’t get a concept and asks their fellow student.

The first few times you teach someone, you explain the process and how you understand it. As you experience, your communication didn’t get through to the person; if you are smart, you will realize you were the problem, not the person. As my coach would say about a pass in basketball, it is usually the passer’s fault if the pass is missed.

I love listening to other professionals in my field, leading workshops, and teaching seminars. At this point in my career, I am more interested in how they teach a subject than the subject itself. I already know how to do lighting and may pick up a tip or two, but I am learning more about how someone else teaches the subject.

Epiphany Moment with

File Storage vs Catalog

I have been working on creating photography databases for more than 25 years. I have to give presentations all the time, and recently, while I was still struggling with a better way to explain how to embed photos with text to make them searchable, I had an epiphany. Realizing there was an example I could use from our experiences that could help people visualize what is happening inside a computer catalog.

I thought of how we were taught to use a library. Now when you walk into a library, that is very similar to how you store your photos. You put them in folders and sometimes even subfolders. Then these folders of images are placed on hard drives.

Each photo is like a book on a shelf. If you are familiar with the library, you can go to the science section, fiction, or whatever you are interested in. The problem is when you don’t know where something would be in the library.

You could go to the card catalog in the library and look up a book by 1) Author, 2) Title, or 3) Subject and find books.

Most people store their images just like we put books on shelves. You need a catalog system if you don’t know where something is located.

Today with digital, you can find any photograph “IF” you have put text into the metadata. Suppose you have a book on the shelf with no pages and just a cover photo and no text. That is what you have in your files today without the text. Just put a title on that book. You can find that book or photo with just the title.

Metadata

But today, you can search a book’s text if you have it the same way with a photo. You have unlimited text space to bury inside a photo’s metadata.

This metaphor works excellent with those who were taught the library catalog system. They can now visualize that the catalog is separate from the books on the shelf.

So having all your photos on your computer doesn’t make them searchable. You not only need to put text into them, but ideally, you need a catalog software system not just to search but narrow those searches by helping you filter a result. Find all the sunset photos. Then you may check that for all the Summer time photos. You could narrow it to those just from the 1960s.

This analogy helped with my latest client.

“Thank you for your time today! It was extremely beneficial and you did such a great job explaining everything.”

Latest Client Testimonial

Labor Day pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers and is traditionally observed on the first Monday in September. I am reflecting today on my privilege to travel the world and see how people work in different countries.

Six years ago, Jeff Raymond, James Dockery, and I taught our very first Storytellers Abroad Multimedia Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal.

As much as we taught, we also were learning. We learned from the students what they needed to prepare for the workshop. We knew we had assumed some basics and quickly realized we needed to spell out everything we could in writing.

Before the workshop, participants leave the US to go to an overseas location; their computers are checked out to be sure Adobe Premiere Pro will work on their laptops. We check to be sure there is enough free space on the hard drive to handle the work for the week ahead of the workshop.

For almost every participant, this is their first story where they are responsible for the entire process—doing research, interviewing the subject, editing the video, finding music, and once it is completed, also helping to market it to their audience.

The instructors have years of experience doing this for businesses and nonprofits. We walk alongside them step-by-step to help them in each step. We are coaching them. It is similar to a coach in sports. We are there on the sidelines, helping them and letting them play the sport.

We have created a spreadsheet we put up in the classroom so that everyone can see where they are in the process and each other. We learned that to keep people from falling through the cracks; we would have to be very intentional.

Here are three instructors with a workshop participant helping them with the storyline. Some problems happened in the process, and all of us were trying to help salvage a story.

Most participants think we are teaching them how to use the software, their cameras, audio, and other tools of the trade. We are teaching all this, but the one thing that is the priority over everything is the storyline and their understanding of how to tell this to the audience. Why should they care?

Each time we picked a new location, so many of the former workshop participants would sign up for another workshop.

In that first workshop for a person, it wasn’t uncommon for them to be in tears. The learning curve was so tricky, they thought. What was happening for most of them was a mixture of things happening all at once.

The cross-cultural experience had so many frustrated. It wasn’t just the language but the different World Views that these people in the foreign country had on any topic.

While working on my story, I will never forget each farmer I asked what this Coffee Cooperative did for them. They all said they now had more money.

After a while, I realized I had to ask one more question, which opened my eyes and my audience to what more money meant to them. What can you buy that you couldn’t do before? Edmundo Ballinas Santiago told me on one of my trips to Salvador Urbina, in Chiapas, Mexico, that had it not been for the cooperative, when his wife got cancer, he would have had to choose between selling the farm to save his wife or keep the farm and lose his wife.

Here are a few lessons I have learned since teaching others how to do storytelling. First, you will meet people who will open up your worldview and help you to broaden your horizons.

One of the best things I love is being invited into other people’s kitchens. I wanted to be sure the students saw a typical kitchen in Nicaragua in this village. They needed to see if there was no pantry of food. There was not a spice rack. They didn’t have a refrigerator with things to prepare.

I have encountered many material things without some of the happiest people.

The best thing about traveling and doing storytelling is that the world helps open your eyes, heart and mind up to people who are different and make you look at your own life with fresh eyes.

Suppose you are interested in Storytelling and want a coach to work with you as you learn the craft. Contact me. Maybe you can join our next Storytellers Abroad workshop. Perhaps we can do something here in the states. Give me a call, and we can find a way that works for you.

_{This is Francesca, helping with the Community Garden in the Agalta Valley region of Honduras. I was covering the work of Honduras Outreach, Inc., a nonprofit based in Atlanta, Georgia. [NIKON D4, 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 450, 1/250, ƒ/14, (35mm = 22)]}

Light is one tool most photographers have and don’t always use well.

Now in the best of situations, this just will not work without some help. Dodging the face just doesn’t work as well as just adding light to her face with an off-camera flash.

Here is another example that might not be as drastic, but notice the color and dynamic range in the skin tones of the face without flash.

Now I want those clouds and rich colors, and if I open it up, it will wash out the background.

Just adding a little flash-off to the side makes a huge difference.

Here is the boy on horseback with no light on his face except the sun behind him. If we let the sunlight him, then he will squint.

Now, in my opinion, this is a lot better if you are trying to tell the story of him riding to school on horseback.

This is the setup I like to use. I have a radio transmitter on the camera and a small flash off to the side on a light stand. This is small and travels well when I need to fly through airports.

I love to also use the Flashpoint XPLOR 600 HSS TTL Battery-Powered Monolight with Built-in R2 2.4GHz Radio Remote System – Bowens Mount. These are more powerful and need less time to recharge in sunlight.

What exactly does the word “photography” mean? For those who might be curious, it means “Writing with Light.” Yes, that is accurate. The term “Photo” stands for “light,” and its suffix “graphy” stands for “writing.” 

So if you are a photographer, you are supposed to be writing with light, so learn how to write with light rather than just pushing the button and capturing light.

I was recently asked to photograph modern artist Kate Saville painting a mural in the break room for Chick-fil-A Supply.

The painting she was commissioned to paint wasn’t one of her originals, but she took on the project and brought it to life.

This is the original painting above the prayer couch Truett Cathy would use daily to start his day.

This is the painting above the couch. 

A couple of years ago, Dan Cathy used this painting given to Truett by his daughter Trudy. Chick-fil-A was growing at unheard-of numbers. You think they would be celebrating. 

When talking about the painting, Dan connected his dad’s earlier struggles to what all the operators of the restaurants are facing today.

The year was 2014 when Dan talked to the operators, and today, they have doubled that sales volume.

No goal is too high

If we climb with care

and confidence

The new Chick-fil-A Supply Distribution Center’s leadership team wanted the employees to understand the culture started by S. Truett Cathy.

What better way to help them know the company’s heart than to have an artist paint this mural in their break room? They meet every day for lunches and breaks in this room.

Modern artist Kate Saville is taking a break while letting the paint dry on the wall.

This is a time-lapse of the week it took Kate to paint the mural. 

Listen to Kate Saville talking about her involvement in the project.

https://vimeo.com/452896224

Kate signed her work at the end of the project.

⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:8-9

If you want your team to grow, you must cast a vision and make it prominent and visible. I can help you do this. Let me help you tell your eye and record it so that your team sees it daily so that they, too, will know what they are supposed to be doing and why they are doing it.

President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology and former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution says that maintaining a photo library “speaks to the integrity of the institution.”

In his book, “Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a Digital Age,” G. Wayne Clough, the Smithsonian’s 12th Secretary, surveys the efforts of many world-class institutions, including his own, to use technology to open their collections and programs to the world.

Secretary Clough’s thoughtful perspective as a museum leader, educator, and enthusiast provides invaluable insight into how digital technologies will radically alter our existing institutions, make access to their embedded knowledge widely available, and enable learning and research anytime, anywhere.

Today I led an online Zoom meeting for FOCUS on archiving. I led the group and talked about my experiences and how I had worked on digitizing photo libraries since about 1994. Here is that video if you want to watch it:

Bathroom Analogy

For the last 12 years, I have been helping Chick-fil-A. One thing I learned that they know all too well is that if your bathrooms are not clean, customers will walk out on you. It speaks to the cleanliness of the rest of the place. If the toilet looks this bad, do you want to take your chances with the food?

Creating visual content for an organization is expensive. If you can repurpose that content, you are spreading those costs over many projects.

Imagine a college that doesn’t have a photo library of its history. How can you even offer degrees where people must do research, and you don’t even have a digital photo library of your history. That speaks volumes about how that institution portrays its integrity to the world.

How to Ruin a Perfect Photograph

The easiest way to hurt your sales on any photograph is not to hide text in the picture. This is called embedding searchable text in the metadata.

There are two fields that most people get confused about when adding metadata to your images. Metadata is the hidden text that computers see that helps them find content. Even documents, spreadsheets, pdfs, photographs, graphics, and videos can all have text inside. Computers look for hidden fields unless you have software to see them.

Description/Caption: Remember this field contains all the information for why you initially take the photo.

Keywords: These are all the words to describe how they could be used in the future.

You need the digital photos in 3 places. This is so that something can go wrong while backing up from an A to B drive. If you don’t have C, you just lost all those images.

For organizations, I recommend you put the images online. If you have done an excellent job placing text that tells us the Who, What, Where, When, How & Why, and keywords for descriptors, those photos are now searchable.

Your online services like PhotoShelter that I use help people find your photos. This is great for an organization to have.

Security

These companies work just like your bank for those worried about security. They are all online, but only you can get your money. You can share your information so your mortgage company gets paid, and your employer or clients can deposit money.

You can even use your phone to deposit a check.

A photo library online for an organization helps the organization grow.

Where do “Good Ideas” come from?

It is when content that already exists is accessible and able to percolate and if you want your organization to grow, be sure the people know the history. That often gives them new ideas.

Protect your integrity with others, get your photos in order, and share them.

A photo finish occurs in a sporting race when multiple competitors cross the finish line nearly simultaneously. As the naked eye may not be able to determine which of the competitors crossed the line first, a photo or video was taken at the finish line may be used for a more accurate check.

Life happens so quickly we often need to stop and assess.

While at East Carolina University, I fell in love with photography. One thing I did was take lots of photos of my friends.

As with all young men, I enjoyed dating and meeting new young ladies. Photography lets me photograph them and remember them.

A new study by the University of London’s Hannah Scott and colleagues (2018) is about the idea that people stare, because “faces, and in particular, the eyes, provide lots of useful non-verbal information about a person’s mental state.” The eyes contain “socially relevant information,” they explain, because when you see what people are looking at, you have some idea about what they might be thinking. However, as the example of the shoes illustrates, it’s not just the eyes that people stare at when they look at you.

In other words, the authors suggest that people read your body language to extract as much information as possible, and they will direct their gaze toward the part of your body providing that information.

I studied social work at East Carolina University, where I studied body language. Photography allowed me to freeze moments and analyze them later.

While I started by enjoying looking at pretty women, I slowly began to study expressions and body language.

“Our hands seem to play just as important a role in orienting people’s attention as our eyes do.” However, if the person looks directly at the viewer while performing a manual task, the viewer will respond in kind and look at the individual’s face. When someone’s gaze is directed at you, you tend to stare back in a “nonverbal acknowledgment.” Therefore, looking at someone who looks at you becomes essential to nonverbal communication.

Most of us love wedding photos because they help preserve one of the happiest days in a couple’s life. The couple’s vows often refer to the moment they first met. The first look, the first kiss, and those moments that helped to define their relationship are celebrated.

Sometimes moments are enhanced in a circumstance, like in this photo where I caught the photographer taking a picture of a daddy and daughter posing before going into Chick-fil-A for their date night. I saw his flash, which helped tell the story even better.

When Civil Rights icon John Lewis died, I found some photos of him. Again these are moments that become historical after they are made.

As a professional communicator, I aim to capture those moments that help tell a story. I was working at Clayton State University and shooting for their photo library. The purpose of the photo is to show the teaching and learning that takes place. The body language at the moment shows the desire of the student to remember the teacher’s point.

Another time I was shooting recruiting photos for a Catholic High School. My purpose was to show the school welcomed diversity and that this was where friendships took place.

In his presentation to the FOCUS group in a Zoom meeting, Michael Alexander talked about anticipating those moments. Michael said he spent a lot of time watching someone before taking photos. Since he often photographs priests at the pulpit, he realized long ago that they have a rhythm and pattern. Every once in a while, they make a gesture or expression. He would observe until he could predict those moments and then time his shutter to capture a moment.

While some gestures are big and held out to be sure others are seeing them, many of our expressions are microexpressions. These are the expressions we have just reacting to moments versus trying to communicate to another person. The TV show “Lie to Me” was based on the science of reading facial expressions. Here is a video helping you see how minuscule these moments are and how if you catch them, you will know how someone feels in the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu1uzG_EBGM

Great visual storytellers harness these microexpressions in the telling of the story.

I love it when I have captured one of these involuntary microexpressions. They show a genuineness that is often missing in other photos.

Learning to hit the pause button on life is much easier to do with a camera than with the mind alone.

The best thing that ever happened to me was discovering photography. It helped me to slow down and pay attention to details. I learned to become more like photojournalist Michael Alexander who watches people and then learns to anticipate those moments and compose them so that I can bring the audience to that moment where I hit the pause button on life for the moment to sink in truly.

By the way, I married one of those beautiful women.

During the pandemic, I discovered Zoom, which is for Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, and Webinars …..

I have had a group of Atlanta Professional Communicators group I started a few years ago. We call it FOCUS [Fellowship Of Communicators Uniting Socially].

While most of my friends are photographers, we also have a few writers in the group. We invite just about anyone to join.

This week, photojournalists Gibbs Frazer and Bill Bangham shared a collaborative effort they have worked on for several years, focusing on their craft’s foundational, creative elements.

I want to share the part they shared with us today from the Zoom Call. I recommend you listen with a pad of paper nearby to write your notes.

Creative Photographic Elements

1. Light
2. Moments
3. Layering
4. Dominant
5. Overall
6. Detail
7. Loose
8. Get Close
9. High Angle
10. Low Angle
11. Vertical
12. Horizontal
13. Artsy
14. Take Risks
15. Experiment

At the end of our lengthy discussion, Gibbs pointed out that all this falls under storytelling. Before you execute any of these tips, you need to know the story.

“Always consider what you want your image to say before you decide how to say it.”

Jamie Windsor

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