I really love covering events. Why? You have to constantly problem solve.

The first problem was ensuring the faces in a group shot were visible. I used two Alienbees B1600 strobes powered by the Paul Buff Vagabond batteries. Now to fire them, I was using the Pocketwizard Plus II Transceivers.

The problem to be solved was the group was under a large carport with a background sun lit trees.

I took photos of the individual graduate with the founders of the school and the administrators. The diploma had to be in every shot; if I were not careful, it would have been not legible. The solution is the same setup as for the group photo. By using the two Alienbees B1600 lights at a 45º angle to each other, I was getting an excellent, consistent morning for each person.

To make my post editing go quickly, I also did a custom white balance using the ExpoDisc.

By the way, can you make some headshots while you are here? Yes, I can. Again the same setup, but I just moved closer to the trees and shot some headshots of the founders.

One part of the assignment was to get the first group shot to them before the 5 pm ending time of the event. So I had to carve out a few minutes to get those group photos for posting on social media.

To get all these photos promptly, I chose to work with the Nikon Z6 and the Sigma 24-105mm ƒ/4 Art lens. While I shot the group photo at 32mm, I could go wider. I loved shooting the headshots at 105mm.

Grandparents, parents, siblings, and friends came to celebrate the GAP Year program graduates in Pine Mountain, GA.

I used Bluetooth technology to help sync my camera with my phone using Snap Bridge. I was being sure the time was correct and set the GPS Coordinates.

When I ingested the photos into PhotoMechanic, it took those GPS Coordinates and turned them into a street address.

I click on the world, and then it will look for the GPS coordinates, and as long as I have an internet connection, it will search for the street address.

Now, since I was also shooting with my Nikon D5, which doesn’t have Bluetooth technology, I just selected all the images and applied those GPS coordinates to those images.

The students dressed up in all types of fashion statements. I love this guy’s tie.

This family is from Ecuador. I love his Panama hat.

As soon as I took this photo, they asked me in Spanish if they could get copies. Yes, they can.

I provide the client with an online gallery where they can download the images using a password.

I was getting candid photos as well as occasionally finding families altogether. I would take these as well. I just had to watch the light on the faces. Way too many of the guests were posing people with the windows behind them. I put the large glass windows to their side or on my back. Again it is about Lights, Cameras, and Action!

The room was quite large, and the best place to stand to get photos of the stage was in the back of the room. This way, I wasn’t upfront blocking the guest’s view.

I brought my Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 Sports lens and a 1.4X and 2X converters. I started with the 1.4X converter; this is the view it gave me and made the lens a 420mm ƒ/4.

I quickly changed the converter to the 2X, which gave me this view with the now 600mm ƒ/5.6. Once again, I am problem-solving. This time, the camera and lens combination allows me to get photos that no cell phone will get.

As you can see, this is what the guest was getting with their phone.

I moved around the room with the long lens and looked for different perspectives. I thought the microphone was too much with some speakers in front of their faces from the back of the room.

I didn’t need to move to get a different angle with every speaker.

I was shooting with three cameras and various lenses. My wife also shot some photos with a camera.

• 2 Nikon D5 cameras
• Nikon Z6
• Sigma 24-105mm ƒ/4 Art
• Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 Art
• Sigma 70-200mm ƒ/2.8
• Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 | Sport
• Fuji X-E3
• Fuji 18-55mm ƒ/2.8-3.5
• Fuji 10-24mm

The lenses I used for different reasons. First of all, I am not shooting one specific style. I do not shoot all prime lenses wide open, which many people do. I love the shallow depth-of-field shots.

I also realized when shooting that large group shot that I needed to be at a more significant depth of field. This is why I shot those photos at ƒ/8. The front row and back row are all in focus.

I love to isolate moments using the shallow depth-of-field and know that sometimes you need more.

Technical & Aesthetic

Just yesterday, on a forum, a photographer asked if the new camera would make you a better photographer. The old argument was that it wasn’t the camera but the operator. However, I wasn’t going to take this clickbait as it was set up.

“It will make you technically better–Aesthetically the same.”

Stanley Leary

These new cameras today let me take photos that were not possible without a flash just years ago.

So I pride myself on knowing my gear and how it can help me get photos I couldn’t do before. So, I try and keep my bag updated. I also know that you can have a technically perfect picture with no aesthetic qualities.

Social Work Training – Capturing Action!

All my training in reading body language and studying for a master’s in photojournalism has helped me concentrate my efforts to capture moments. I was trained in social work to read people. I was evaluated repeatedly on how well I listened with my eyes and not just my ears.

Adequate photographers are more technicians. They get the photos in focus and well exposed.

Great photographers are doing more than being a technician. They are using the camera to capture moments that help tell a story.

I like moments like this one. The students show how much respect they have for this teacher from this year. No words are necessary to communicate their care. You need words to know why they are giving him this type of respect.

Do you want to learn how to cover meeting better? Do you need me to cover your event? Give me a call, and let’s talk. I teach one-on-one sessions and love to use my gifts to help you capture those critical moments in life that happen only once.

While doing a story on coffee growers in Salvador Urbina, Chiapas, Mexico, the farmers taught me how they produce the Arabica Bean Coffee.

I learned that arabica coffee does best with shade. The tree requires some but not too much direct sunlight; two hours a day seems ideal. The lacy leaves of the upper levels of the rainforest initially shaded the coffee tree.

When they prune the banana trees, you can see the trunks, which look like corrugated cardboard to me. Those channels help the water get to the leaves and bananas.

Salvador Urbina, Chiapas, Mexico is in a rain forrest. Salvador Urbina has significant rainfall most months, with a short dry season. 

What can we learn from these coffee growers?

The production of coffee is a time and labor-intensive process. From the plantation of the first coffee seeds, it can take three to four years before a newly planted coffee tree will begin bearing fruits.

10 Steps from Seed to Cup

• Planting
• Harvesting the Cherries
• Processing the Cherries
• Drying the Beans
• Milling the Beans
• Exporting the Beans
• Tasting the Coffee
• Roasting the Coffee
• Grinding the Coffee
• Brewing the Coffee

Fairtrade

Fairtrade was started in response to the dire struggles of Mexican coffee farmers following the collapse of world coffee prices in the late 1980s.

Fairtrade coffee is certified as having been produced by fair trade standards. Fair trade organizations create trading partnerships based on dialogue, transparency, and respect that seek more significant equity in international trade. … Fairtrade practices prohibit child or forced labor.

Café Justo was the coffee cooperative I partnered with to help tell their story back in 2010. I had been producing videos for a short time, which was a turning point for me. We focused on telling the story focusing on the crisis the farmers were suffering and the difference the cooperative made in their families and communities.

Listen to what I captured back in 2010:

Maybe you are like those coffee farmers who had to leave their farms to find work to feed their families. By just learning to come together and tell their story, the consumer didn’t pay more for coffee. They changed where they bought their coffee. You can support these coffee growers by buying them here at Just Coffee.

While forming a cooperative and selling directly to the customer helped the coffee growers to prosper, it wasn’t the cooperative, the roaster, or their willingness to come together that made them successful.

It was when they told their stories that customers rallied behind them. People are waking up to the fundamental unfairness of world trade and demanding a better deal for the people who do our dirty work. Are you getting a bargain or exploiting people when you always shop for price alone.

Are you telling your story? Remember, what made a difference in the Fairtrade movement was the telling of the stories of people being exploited.

Once you have your customers, don’t stop telling stories. Now tell a different story. How about how bananas help produce great-tasting arabica coffee?

We all know that if you want to get someone’s attention, tell a story. We also know that not all stories are engaging.

I believe many companies are picking stories like people fish–toss a line in the water and see what bites.

Finding a good story in your organization is like looking for a great quote. That person’s story you tell will be handy because their story is a brief distillation of the larger pool of people you serve.

A good story also affirms what we already know about ourselves. The report helps you to reaffirm your beliefs and helps to define the category of the brand you are.

This past weekend I saw my daughter’s Spring Dance Concert. I photographed the event for the school to use for their recruiting and promotion.

While editing some 2,600 images, I was reminded that distilling the event down to a few photos was communicating what they hoped to become and what they were doing. They only have a dance minor at the time and are in the process of creating a dance major.

Biggest Mistake

One of the most prominent mistakes organizations make when picking a story to tell is to pick one based on politics rather than the story’s strength.

I have been consulting for many years with organizations, and over and over, the people they want to feature are often someone who has been around a long time or is very popular.

Here are the critical elements in a story that help you identify the best story for your organization to tell.

• There is a before state and an after radically different state. This is before your organization made a difference in their life and after they encountered the organization.
• This was a crisis of sorts. They had a real problem, and the organization helped to solve it. The key here is when comparing their crisis to other possible people for your story that their crisis was the worst.
• Their story represents your target audience’s crisis that you will problem solve as an organization.

Too Close

One of the problems for most companies and organizations is they are just like the dancers–they are too close. They cannot see what they look like from the audience’s perspective.

Even the directors of broadway go into the audience seats and give feedback to those on the stage; they lack the ability often to truly separate themselves from the production and see it with fresh eyes.

I was given a story to execute when I started as a photographer. My mentor Don Rutledge encouraged me to go and find stories and do them to get better. I did this for many years and syndicated those stories through Black Star and Camera Press.

If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.

Jim Richardson

I learned very quickly the story you picked had more influence on the outcome than execution alone.

After shooting and writing many poor choice stories through the years, I slowly realized I was pitching more and more stories to editors. When I did those stories, they got much better engagement than those I was given.

The better I got to know my clients and what they were doing to help their customers I was pitching no longer just exciting stories but now strategic stories.

Another Mistake

Don’t pursue those stories that only entertain and do not move people to the “Call To Action” for your organization.

Be sure the stories you pick a point to what you do best and how you can help the audience with similar problems.

If you are a profit-oriented company, you solve problems for the audience. If you are a nonprofit, you ask the audience to join you in helping solve a problem. 

Secret

The key to your company’s success is picking the right story to tell. Once you have done this, your next step will be identifying another story. Your success is directly related to communicating what you do to solve a problem for a person. Then it would help if you consistently executed doing this for those who respond and ask you to fix their problem.

Tell people what you do through a story. Do what you tell people you do. Continue to improve in the execution of your service and repeat this process.

The purpose of doing an alignment for your car is to reduce tire wear and to ensure that vehicle travel is straight and true (without “pulling” to one side). Alignment angles can also be altered beyond the maker’s specifications to obtain a specific handling characteristic. Motorsport and off-road applications may call for angles to be adjusted well beyond “normal” for various reasons.

Being out of alignment with your car shows up as uneven tire wear.

Being out of alignment in your work causes your organization and you to not get the best performance. Like tires that get worn unevenly, you will become worn out prematurely.

When the tire isn’t aligned, it creates resistance, and that is what causes the uneven tire wear.

People are more excellent when you are in alignment at work. Like all the wheels on a car, when aligned to the vehicle, it goes straight and true. The key is at work; you should be aligned to the purpose of that organization. If you don’t like the organization’s purpose, find a different job.

Everything lines up for you when you’re in alignment, and everything seems effortless because you’ve already done “the work” energetically. You feel like your team has your back because you’ve surrendered. You are not pushing your agenda. You are finding ways to serve the mission statement.

When you align, you don’t have a strong sense of ‘need’ around what you want to manifest. You are open to your desire manifesting in different ways and are not attached to ‘how’ it has to happen.

For me, my faith has helped a great deal. I feel that God has got it under control. Now I have to remind myself of this every once in a while. When I do, it releases tension.

Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths.

Psalms 25:4

Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans. The LORD works out everything to its proper end — even the wicked for a day of disaster.

Proverbs 16:3-4

If you report to anyone, ask questions that will help you align with the organization.

• What does success look like a year from now for the organization?
• What can I do to help this be achieved?
• Is there anything I am doing that I need to stop doing?
• Are there any books, workshops, or seminars I need to improve that you suggest?

In baseball, the batter must respond to what is pitched to them. They do not control the pitch. They only control their response to that pitch.

The best hitters are those who keep their eye on the ball and have spent a lot of time in a batting cage working on their swing.

Get in alignment to experience a life of less resistance. Learn to ‘Go With The Flow‘ – be relaxed and accept a situation, rather than trying to alter or control it.

We displayed the fruits of our labor at the county fair. What have you accomplished? Where is the fruit of your labors?

Anonymous

Like most, you also measure your self-worth from what you do. When you do this, comparing what you produce to others is the next most likely thing done.

How good is your game? That seems to be what drives many photographers. They compare their work to other photographers.

Once I started to do freelance full-time, I shifted my focus to observing successful photographers. I began to watch those busy and not basing that decision on how their photos looked.

About eleven years ago, I started to hire photographers for my clients. That is when I got to see really why certain photographers were busy.

Photo Skills

First, for a person to get hired to shoot for a client, their work must meet some bare minimums for that client. Let me explain that the skill level is much lower than many photographers think it should be, but that is reality.

To be considered, the photographer must produce photos that are well exposed and in focus. Now the fascinating thing about hiring photographers was all the other stuff that made me either want to hire them again or never use them again.

Negotiating Skills

When I would call, photographers asked them to do some work on how they handled that first phone call; negotiating our contract determined the rest of the relationship.

I need to know the price, the terms and when I will get the photos. It was a two-way street on this. The photographer also needed to know this from their perspective.

If a photographer wanted to negotiate more after we agreed on everything, this was a clear indication of someone who would take too much of my time. I need the photographer to shoot and deliver with as little problem as possible.

People Skills

I was shocked that many photographers can get some great photos of people’s expressions but have poor people skills.

However, I must say that those photographers with good expressions in their photos of people tended to have better people skills than most.

Most of my clients are concerned with how the photographer did with the people when they were shooting more than just how their photos were. You see, the photographers are representing them when they show up. This is why many clients will put a staff person on set to go between the photographers and the subjects because they don’t want problems later.

I hired many photographers once that I would not hire again because the word came back that they were challenging to work with. Then other photographers make the client look better than if they were there.

Final Product – The Photos

I am surprised how many photographers take way too long to get the photos to the client. When hiring photographers, I need them to rename the images with a particular file naming nomenclature so that the photos will work with the database they are put into for the client.

In addition to the file naming, I need the metadata filled out. This is all part of the negotiating I have done with the photographer when first hiring them for the job.

You would be surprised as to how many do not follow through. So, I get the photos numbered the way they came from the camera with no metadata. This creates a problem because I have to contact the photographer and ask them to fix the images and upload them again. This delays now the client from seeing the photos.

I have had a few photographers get the photos to me after the deadline, and we couldn’t use them for the initial purpose.

Final tips to increase the fruits of your labor

• Negotiating – Keep it simple. Don’t use industry jargon unless necessary. Be realistic and do not over-promise.
• People Skills – Listen, communicate & relate on a personal/professional level. Good people skills include problem-solving abilities, empathy for others, and a willingness to work together toward the common good. Reply to your emails promptly. Value your client’s point of view.
• Photos – Deliver to the client photos in the way you negotiated. WOW, clients by underpromising and over-delivering.
• Be clear and transparent –Customer loyalty increases based on how mistakes are handled. Studies show that up to 70 percent of unhappy customers transform into loyal customers if the error has been fixed, exceeding their expectations.

Jeff Justice is a standup comedian that in 1990, noticed many beginners in comedy could use some help. He gave a few tips for rewriting their material to improve the jokes. He also gave some tips on timing in the delivery of those lines.

Surprised that some of them listened and even more surprised with a group of them asked him to do a workshop.

Here is a quick overview I did for Jeff back in 2012.

My wife took both of Jeff’s classes. Now the hard part is after your graduation standup routine at the Punchline, the next step is no longer a class but a live and unforgiving audience.

Mark Evans took Jeff’s class back in 1993, which changed his life. He is a successful comedian today. His latest tour Southern Not Stupid is where you can see him perform.

He remembers that graduation night was such a fun event and wanted to recapture that time when the audience was a little more forgiving than jumping straight into the hecklers that can be in a typical audience.

Sunday night, April 29, 2019, was the first Jeff Justice Comedy Workshoppe Alumni show organized by Mark Evans at The Basement Theatre in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, Georgia.

While helping the students write better jokes is central to Jeff’s workshops, he is also helping them with timing. Delivery is everything. Jeff often says, “‘I’m a wild and crazy guy isn’t funny. But Steve Martin delivering it as he did was hilarious.”

I think Mark Evans knows that the one thing that everyone needs to get better is practice. It is only by doing this enough times that you help manage those butterflies so you can get that Comedic Timing down for delivering a joke that gets laughs.

While you put yourself out there by performing once, you don’t improve until you do it consistently.

No matter what you want to learn to do, taking a class is just the first step. It would help if you worked on your craft. Put yourself out there consistently, and you have a better chance of making it.

For photographers, you need to shoot lots of photos and share them. Then it would help if you embraced the honest critiques of your work. That is how you grow.

You have most likely heard the mantra, “The easiest way to make better photos: photograph your subjects against a clean background.”

They may even say, “99% of photos fail because the background is messy.”

I am here to tell you they are right and wrong. For the beginning photographer, it is much easier to simplify a background than to take a complex and cluttered background and make it work.

What my mentor Don Rutledge taught me was that backgrounds give context.

A clean background makes the subject pop out, but where are they? What are they doing?

Don taught me that it is a matter of composing to make sense of a scene and waiting for the “moment.”

Depth-of-field—is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Most photographers use a shallow depth-of-field to clean up their background.

The closer you get to something and the wider the aperture, the shallower the depth-of-field. Also, you are removing context.

You see, it is seeing all those people’s faces behind this man that helps give more context to this photo.

Seeing all the people in the background and their expressions helps photos many times.

Don had the patience and ability to see everything inside the frame. He taught many photographers how to see the edges and everything in between.

I think the background helps make many of Don’s photos. Had he followed the advice you hear about simplifying the background, he would have never been the communicator he was.

The background and everything around a subject can give context to a moment.

Without the woman in the background with the nurse’s hat on, you might not get from the photo that this photo has something to do with healthcare.

Don’t go out and shoot everything to include background. Clean backgrounds have their place.

I am writing this because I see the demise of ASMP and NPPA. While they may survive, I do think they have lost their luster.

These are just some of my observations on why associations struggle today. I think a timetable of events in the past 20 years has eroded the benefits of belonging to a professional photography association, especially when those memberships start at $150 to $335 per year.

Photojournalism History

The purpose of a professional association is to further a particular profession, those that work in the job, and the public interests.

Photojournalism in America took off in what many would call the Golden age of Photojournalism with the invention of Leica 35mm camera in 1925 and the flash bulb in 1927. This era would be from about 1930s to the 1960s.

The size of this camera made it so easy to go just about anywhere and create pictures. The flash allowed you to take photos where there was no light.

Taking advantage of this new technology, magazines like Life, Sports Illustrated, and Paris Match published photos that, before this time, the public would have never seen.

It was during this time, specifically from 1940 to 1950, that the National Press Photographers Association and American Society of Media Photographers were formed.

NPPA was formed more around the advancement of photojournalism. So it was heavily focused on education and contests to help its members grow in their skills and raise the industry standards regarding the quality of photojournalism produced in newspapers. Most of the members were staff photographers.

ASMP was formed by a small group of New York City photographers working with magazines. They began to address their common issues: lack of credit lines, unauthorized reproduction of their images, and uncredited copying of photos by illustrators and artists. They also were hoping to raise the rates for pay. Most of the members were freelancers.

I joined NPPA in 1985 when I was working for the Hickory Daily Record as a staff photojournalist and am still a member. In 1987 I joined ASMP (American Society of Magazine Photographers) while working on The Commission Magazine.

Around 2005 NPPA realized that more and more members were freelancers and started doing more on business practices.

Internet & Social Media Impacts Associations

I remember getting my first Radio Shack computer in 1988. It would be the turning point of my skill set in the future.

I was becoming familiar with all the resources my computer brought me from all over the world. I joined CompuServe, the first primary commercial online service provider in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a significant influence through the mid-1990s. At its peak in the early 1990s, it was known for its online chat system & message forums. NPPA had one of those forums.

Mosaic is the web browser that popularized the World Wide Web and the Internet. It was introduced in 1993 and was the first browser to display images inline with text instead of in a separate window.

Microsoft licensing Mosaic to create Internet Explorer in 1995 was the real take-off point for websites.

Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California.

Facebook would be available to the public in 2006.

The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 was the turning point in the history of communications that now people could be connected 24/7 to the internet and changed the volume of internet users, websites, social media, and more connectivity to the world to a whole new level. People always had their phones no matter where they were, which would use them to connect and help organize their lives and work.

Instagram launched in October 2010 exclusively on Apple products. By 2016 it was available on all platforms.

The Perfect Storm

Before Mosaic, introduced in 1995, the only way for journalists to be published was through the traditional gatekeepers of printed publications. Now with minimal cost (internet access), one could publish content and reach not just readers of a printed magazine but the entire world. At least all who had access to the internet.

One such person in our industry to do this and become a rock star was David Hobby. He created The Strobist, where he shared tips for using flash. While it cost him almost nothing to publish, it also costs nothing to get his content.

Thousands would do the same on almost any topic you could imagine. Those who produced the best content were getting huge followers, and then the advertisers followed, helping to support those content providers with funds if they could advertise on their platforms.

Once someone had access to the internet, they could become a content creator or just a consumer of the content.

Right around the introduction of the iPhone, the number of users on the internet began to explode. As the numbers went up, so too were going down for many associations.

NPPA & ASMP core educational content offerings were no longer as valuable when all this content was being offered for free in other places on the internet.

Once Facebook helped people come together and create groups, websites like Classmates.com lost their base. Why pay to find your high school classmates when Facebook offers a way to find them for free and organize your class in a Facebook Group.

Now through social media, Facebook Groups were replacing the need for Associations. The best thing that NPPA & ASMP do is to create groups on the Social Media Platforms for their members. Facebook was offering a better solution for connecting than most associations.

What is left for Associations to offer

The one place NPPA has put all its eggs is in Advocacy. Most everything else they offer you can get online for free.

It was ASMP in 1973 that got the Copyright office to change that all images were copyrighted without being registered.

The purpose of copyright registration is to place on record a verifiable account of the date and content of the work in question, so that in the event of a legal claim, or case of infringement or plagiarism, the copyright owner can produce a copy of the work from an official government source. Registration remains a prerequisite to filing an infringement suit, and also because important remedies depend on prompt registration—such as attorney’s fees and statutory damages. [Wikipedia]

Now one of the worst things to happen to the profession of photography is the devaluation of photography, which occurred because new technologies [internet] made it possible for good photographs made by inexperienced professionals to flood the market. Get lots of photographers who don’t know about pricing producing work for clients who have lots more options from which to choose, and things go south fast. In other words, it’s a buyer’s market.

So, the problem we have now is that even if you can change how copyright works, the price you can get for a stock image is so devalued that few can benefit as compared to the investment costs to make those images and put them on a cloud system for people to buy.

When registering images today with the copyright office, I find that the costs of $55 for 750 photos are no longer economically feasible to warrant.

The costs a few years ago were $35 for an unlimited number of images in a submission.

So, the copyright office has totally undermined all the legal advocacy work done in the past few years. It makes you wonder what you have been paying for when you are now worse off than ever in this profession regarding copyright protection.

Example of Advocacy that doesn’t benefit photojournalist

News outlets have greatly benefitted from cameras being allowed in the courtroom. Great examples are Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, OJ Simpson, and Casey Anthony, to name just a few.

NPPA advocacy often is to help get photojournalist access. However, NPPA members are never compensated more because they have paid out of their pockets to help those news outlets get the content that lines the pockets of those publishers.

In 1976 the National Labor Relations Board determined that ASMP was a group of independent contractors, not a union. Due to that decision, neither ASMP nor NPPA can help its members set industry prices.

Today both ASMP and NPPA have social media groups for their members and still produce educational resources, put on meetings for their members, and provide legal assistance.

How do they compete against the free offerings for groups on social media?

Membership requirements were the way that they distinguished themselves.

ASMP requirements for a Professional Membership are reserved for still and motion photographers of good moral character and reputation who have been actively and consistently engaged in professional practice for at least three years. There are other categories for membership.

NPPA requirements – working or aspiring towards working in visual journalism.

Those membership requirements have been lowered in how they verify your qualifications due to their desperate need for members to support the organizations.

My recommendations

If you are new to photojournalism and need to learn how to make better photos, then NPPA is excellent. Their contests and education programs are all about learning the craft.

If you are in business for yourself and not on staff, then you should join ASMP. This organization will do more to help you navigate how to make a living, and all their education and workshops do an excellent job of helping you run a successful business.

For those starting, you may need both.

My wish these past few years was that these two organizations could combine. They are different and yet also have so much in common. Sadly NPPA turned down ASMP’s offer to do just that.

I have never been to a wedding where something doesn’t go to plan. Because of the constant changing of schedules during a wedding, photographers must go with the flow on the wedding day.

It is almost impossible for a photographer to work alone for today’s weddings. If you are smart, you don’t look for anyone to help you. You find someone better than you in some way.

Laura Espeut is one of the best photographers I know; her personality is so wonderful. Her ability to help communicate her concepts to get the best possible photos with people is incredible. She also does an excellent job shooting creative images.

If you are looking for a photographer to shoot your wedding, you will likely have two photographers. If you ask them about the second shooter, see if they brag about them. I always brag about Laura.

Laura knows that photography is all about emotions on the wedding day. So she is coaching the bridal party to be sure those emotions are right on the surface for the photos.

She is also aware that if you are not capturing an expression, you need to make the light and composition create an emotion.

Having someone like Laura helps me relax as much as possible as a wedding shooter. I can problem solve the changing light scenarios throughout the day. If things are not going to plan, you often cannot count on natural light to stay constant for you during a wedding.

The one thing that is so difficult to deal with in photography is the natural light. Sometimes it is so incredible for a photo you have to capture it as it is. However, this photo of the groomsmen is when I was fighting with the light. I used an on-camera flash to help with the shadows. It just wasn’t working well.

I quickly realized that photo wasn’t so good with the harsh shadows. I moved the guys but the sun to their back and used the flash to ensure I was getting good light on their faces. Remember, remarkable wedding photos are first about capturing expressions.

During the wedding, I alternate between camera bodies and lenses. I shot a couple of ways in this photo of the groom saying his vows to the bride. The most significant difference is with and without flash. The first one is without flash.

I think the flash helped a lot in the second photo you see. The expression was better on the first one, but I hope you get my point of how a flash on a sunny day can help overcome the harsh shadows around the eyes from the sun overhead.

Carl House, the venue for the wedding, had a back porch perfect for natural light photos. I prefer overshooting with flashes and waiting for them to recycle between flashes. Expressions on faces don’t wait for flashes.

So the porch had beautiful light pouring in, and none was direct. This created a massive soft box effect for the posed photos.

While I would have preferred having the green background, I had already discovered how difficult it would be to do group photos in direct sunlight.

The best way to describe what light I look for outside for weddings is the shadow side of a building. This is where the sun isn’t shining directly on the subjects, but rather the big sky creates a giant softbox. It is often called an open shade.

When I have to shoot in the direct sunlight, as here with the wedding party all waiting for the bride, I use a flash to help open up those shadows.

I have been teaching some form of photography my entire career. Each time I teach, I discover one more thing that can be tweaked and improved. Often I come up with a new way to communicate a concept.

The longer I am in this profession, the more I am still learning. This blog post on Narrative Storytelling was prompted by my students taking Intro to Photojournalism at The Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communications, University of Georgia.

“If you want to be a better photographer stand in front of more interesting stuff”

– Jim Richardson

So how do you find more interesting stuff? How do you find exciting stories?

I have found there are two main ways I have seen stories. Often it is just by meeting someone and hearing their story. It could be someone behind the counter of a business I am visiting or someone who sits beside me on the plane.

The other way I have found stories is when I have an audience in mind. Often this is a client that I am working with on other projects. They tell you what they are working on and then my mind starts trying to solve their problem by finding stories to speak for them.

No matter how you discover some great stories, there is one place you must start–THE AUDIENCE.

To help you get your head around what I am talking about, just think of you going on the trip of your lifetime. You come home and want to tell your parents. You first get your mom by herself and tell her about your trip. Then later, you and dad have some time together, and you tell him about your trip.

Are they interested in the same things? Most people will tell a different story because they have other interests.

When I say know your audience, I am saying know their story. Now, newspapers and magazines I worked with often had a fictitious family they created based on their audience research.

My uncle Knolan Benfield, pictured above, told me one of the best stories that changed my photography and storytelling for the better.

Knolan had taken his wife’s [my aunt] grandmother to the beach in North Carolina. She was pretty old at the time, and he tells how he watched her walk into the ocean for the very first time in her life. She had never gone to the beach in the 80+ years of her life. She had never traveled much more than 50 miles from her home most of her life.

Knolan said that moment sealed into his memory what he was doing with his camera when working on stories. He was taking people to places they would often never see in their life. He was responsible for making those visuals as strong as possible to transport them through his lens to the site.

A good storyteller must always have their audience in mind. The biggest mistake many storytellers make is telling a story because it means a lot to them, and they never consider the audience. You might do pretty well with this method, and I have seen many make a career doing this, but seldom are they, great storytellers. Great storytellers move the heads and hearts of their audience and not just their own.

We visit the location during a pre-trip when we put together a Storytellers Abroad Missions Multimedia Workshop. During this time, we meet with the missionaries. We do a mini-workshop with them on storytelling and then ask them to help identify people for stories.

We talk to them about the audience; the other key thing is what they want to accomplish with the stories.

Typically, they need a building. Can you do a video helping promote our building need? This is where we always have to educate them that we have not to devise a solution for the audience but rather establish the need with them.

What can’t you do right now because you don’t have a building? After multiple questions and chasing tangents, we have them understand how telling the story of someone they impacted by sharing that story helps lay the foundation to show they need a facility to help more people like the person of the story.

When it comes to telling a story for an NGO, this is much different than photojournalism storytelling. We want the audience to take action and even build in a call to action at the end of the story.

In journalism, we inform them; sometimes, it is more entertainment in feature storytelling, and sometimes the stories are meant to tell before an election. The journalist isn’t trying to sway your vote but educate the public on the facts.

With nonprofit work, I am more of an advocate than a journalist.

Once you have identified a person as the story’s subject, you will need to interview them and spend enough time discovering their story. I recommend using the narrative story arch as something to help guide you.

Now in nonfiction, there should be a point to your story. In fiction, you don’t necessarily need to have some moral of the story for it to be effective.

As you work on your story, always remember what you plan to share and what parts of the diagram they play in the story.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Show, don’t tell.” While you might be thinking of me talking here about the visuals, I am talking about all of it. When someone tells their story by taking you to the day of the big event from which everything in the story revolves around, the more the person talks in a way to paint a picture, too does a much better job than just the facts.

“The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest.”

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Keep the Exposition short. When giving us the background, we need some, but that doesn’t mean we need to know every detail. What is the key takeaway from all your research that the audience needs to know to have some context for the “big event”? Then creatively tell what is necessary only to do that.

“Squirrel”

In the movie UP, there is one repeated humor of these dogs: no matter how focused they are on doing something, if they see a squirrel, they stop in their tracks and then go and chase it.

Too many storytellers do this in telling their stories. The character mentions something that isn’t necessary to the report but is so good they can’t let it go.

Once you have your parts of the story and a narrative, you are ALMOST ready to start. I am talking about those using audio/video to capture the person’s account.

Use Vivid Details, Not Lots of Facts

Ask the subject to take you to the moment when something happened. Get them to tell you how it felt at that moment. Remind them to help you understand how it felt then because now they may look back and know things would get better, but at the moment, they may have felt hopeless or overjoyed.

Once you have heard all the parts of the story that you know you will use, and they move your head and heart, you can sit down for the formal on-camera audio/video recording of their story.

You can ask questions to help them tell their story, but most of the time, you will just prompt them. You might say to them that the other day when we were talking, you shared this moment you experienced. Can you share that again?

One thing before I start, I tell them their story as I understand it. I ask whether I have your story correct and if it is OK with you. If something needs to be corrected for accuracy, this is when I do it. Once they agree on what I think the story is and how I told it, that is really what I am now trying to get them to say. I have summarized all those conversations I had to dig into and get the story. I have done some editing in my mind and distilled it to the parts that help tell the story. You will find the rest of this super easy if you do this in 90 to 120 seconds for most accounts.

Take Control

Because you have done the diagram and remember all the parts you want to capture, keep your subject on topic. Don’t let them expound, and now make your content longer.

I have had to ask them to repeat their answer and say your first response was 2 minutes; I am looking for a couple of sentences. You said this … and then when you started on this part, leave that out. That is just going into more detail than needed right now. You want to remind them of what we agreed were the key points we are sticking with for their story.

Call to Action

When I tell stories for organizations and not journalism, I have a call to action. Now that you have heard this story, you can learn more, get involved, or give money to support this organization as they help more people like the person you just heard about.

After the Interview

I will spend time talking with the subject about their schedule. What is happening with them so I can come along and capture video/stills to add to the story? The additions are to be shown while they are telling their story.

For this blog post, I will not go into visual storytelling.

The Hook

One thing you need for a video is the first 8 to 10 seconds need a teaser. The easiest way I have found is to find the most shocking thing subject says and use this. Be sure it doesn’t give away the story.

Hopefully, you have a better idea of how important it is to identify a story for an audience and how important it is for you to have done all the research and preinterview so that when you hit record, you are ready to capture the story and not discover it.

“The advanced level is the mastery of the basics.”

Ray Mancini

So often, we think that getting to the next level and doing that one more incredible thing will be what makes us more successful.

A Champion ensures they eliminate ALL sources of error or potential problems. The all-time greatest Basketball Coach John Wooden would teach ALL his recruits how to tie their shoelaces as part of their initiation because, in his words, “the last thing I want is to lose a point because your shoelaces come. Untied at the worst possible moment.”

I love teaching so much. I like to know I am helping someone else achieve their dreams. I also love teaching because it has made me better at my craft.

When you teach, you have to return to the basics, and when students hand in work that isn’t what it should be, you re-examine what you taught. It is this process that made me realize that it is just elementary concepts done well that are the things that make someone look outstanding.

My daughter found her passion in high school for theater. She loves all aspects of the theater. She enjoys working on sets, costumes, lighting, dancing, acting, and singing.

When you love doing something, you want to do more. My daughter has impressed those at the school because when she works on a play and finishes something, she asks the leadership, “What else can I do?”.

My daughter is learning that just doing what you are asked to do and doing it on time makes her a standout at Columbus State University.

“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many students I teach in Intro to Photojournalism are just taking this to check off a requirement for graduation.

The sad thing to me is those complaining the most about their grades often put in the least effort.

I have a News Event Package assignment where they must cover News Event and turn in three to five photos that captures the event with captions. Now in the software, I can see the time codes of the camera.

While reviewing the work, I noticed that many looked like minimal effort was being put into this assignment. It looked like one student had gone to a parade, stood still, took a few photos, and left.

I then pulled up the time code of the photos. The photos turned in were all taken in less than four minutes.

“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”

John Wooden

Covering a News Event usually takes about two to four hours. Once you have captured the event, it usually takes no more than an hour to edit the photos and turn them in.

One student had waited to cover an event that started at 6:00 pm, and the assignment was due at 8:00 pm. They didn’t have many action shots of the event because it didn’t start on time, and the student had to leave early to make the deadline.

They were upset when I said it was lazy to wait until the last minute. Now even the dictionary says lazy is “moving slowly.”

Do you want to get better? If so, the best thing you can do is revisit the basics of your job.

Here are some basics for every job that might help:

1. Never Be Late – Start on time and Close on time

“I have learned one thing. As Woody says, ‘Showing up is 80 percent of life.’ Sometimes it’s easier to hide home in bed. I’ve done both.”

Woody Allen

2. Seek knowledge, not results

“Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It’s about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life.”

Shakuntala Devi

3. Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence refers to understanding, utilizing, and reasoning with emotions. Emotionally intelligent people can understand not only their feelings but those of others.

4. Focus on Intrinsic Motivations

Intrinsic motivation refers to behavior that is driven by internal rewards. In other words, engaging in conduct arises from within the individual because it naturally satisfies you.

5. Don’t compare your own life to other peoples’ lives

Rather than comparing yourself with people who are “better off” than you, think about all of the people who are homeless, chronically ill, or living in poverty. This will help you appreciate what you have rather than feel sorry for yourself. Try engaging in volunteer work to help make this more apparent. 

6. Count your blessings

No matter how much you achieve in life, you will always feel unhappy if you constantly focus on what you don’t have. Instead, devote time every day to appreciating the things you do have. Think beyond material items; appreciate your loved ones and cherish happy memories.