Tip One: Consolidating Files

If you create a new package using Final Cut Pro X, you can have your files all over the place. I have done this more than once due to being under a deadline to get the work out the door.

Here is a little tip that can help you find the files in one place later.

In the Project Library view mode, just put your mouse over the project you want to consolidate. Then, right-click, and you will get a similar screen that I have up above.

Select “Consolidate Project Media” as your choice.

If they are already in the same place, you will not be able to go further. Still, it is possible to have your media imported into another events folder and your project in a different project folder.

The advantage of consolidating is saving the file for you to return later and make edits.

Tip Two: Organization of Files

Go and buy Event Manager X.

Final Cut Pro X will run better when one project and event are open simultaneously. The event Manager will give you the best speed and performance out of the program.

Event Manager X will see all the events and projects you have in the file folders of Final Cut Pro X. By checking and unchecking your “Events” and “Projects” within Event Manager X, it will then move all those files unchecked into “Hidden Folders” that you can see easily through the program.

All you do is check on the “Events” and “Projects” that you want to open and then click on “Move Events and Projects,” and it will move everything for you. For example, I keep the “Re-open Final Cut Pro X” always checked so that when I click, it opens Final Cut Pro X, with just what I need open.

Bonus Tip

Keep all your Events and Projects on an external hard drive. Your computer needs extra space on the hard drive to run Final Cut Pro X. Keep at least 20% free space on your system drive.

Those tips save me loads of time and help keep my projects all organized.

Gregory Heisler is a professional photographer known for his portraits. Long before 2007, when David Hobby started his blog “The Strobist,” Heisler was already doing some incredible work with strobes.

Heisler is most known for his 50 Time Magazine covers.

Today many photographers will quickly pull out their large softboxes for portraits. While even Greg Heisler will use this on occasion, he prefers to light things so that they look natural.

I recommend buying Gregory Heisler: 50 Portraits: Stories and Techniques from a Photographer, where you see his photos and hear the stories behind those photos.

Heisler introduced a new lighting term used in theater and movie sets lacking in still photography.

Heisler heard while on a movie set the director said, “Motivate the Practical.” Of course, the practical is the light fixtures within the frame.

Heisler pointed out to those in attendance that when you go onto a movie set, you rarely see a giant softbox. The reason you don’t is the same reason when you go outside. You do not see light boxes all around us. So while the lightbox is wonderful light that looks like an ample window light, it isn’t the norm for most places we see people.

Heisler prefers light scenes to look like they would in a natural setting. He even goes so far as to make his studio at night look like a poolside photo during the day for a picture he did of Julia Roberts.

I was pleased to not only hear Greg Heisler speak I also was able to get him to sign a book for me.

This photo is an example of where I worked to create what would appear to be window light from the sun coming in the window. I put a strobe outside the window to generate sunlight on this rainy day.

I would have taken off the umbrella if I wanted a more complex light.

While in theater and movies, they would call this “motivating the practical.” I am creating a light that looks natural rather than just making great light.

I, too, prefer using “Motivating the Practical” over most any other type of light. It looks the most natural, and the more realistic the morning, the better the chance of it helping to create a “real moment.”

“What could be so bad as to try crossing the border?” was asked over and over by our group. We only spent three hours walking some of the paths that illegal immigrants use, and we were doing this in daylight, yet we were tired.

In the top photo, you can see some of the terrains our group had to help each other over in sunlight, and many who cross will do so at night. Many will break ankles just on the landscape alone.

The fence slows down someone for about fifteen seconds if they make it. Sometimes many fall and break legs and arms trying to go over it.

Imagine fathers and mothers often will leave their children behind and families to take this horrible trip that will most likely be around six days in the desert. Then the rest of their time in the US, they will constantly be navigating ways not to get caught and sent back.

Agua Prieta, Mexico, and Douglas, Arizona, are towns divided by a fence. Agua Prieta is the most crossed area of the Mexican border.

Drug cartels hire young people who are US citizens but of Mexican heritage to carry drugs over illegally and then just come back through the checkpoint to do this over and over.

People come on this trip to understand the root causes of this problem. We listed to learn about how NAFTA had its flaws. For example, the Mexican government stopped subsidizing crops, yet the US continues to support major corporate farms.

What took our country a hundred years to change from an agricultural society to an industrial one, Mexico did in less than ten years. The farmers could not compete and had to leave what they knew to do something else, which they had no skills in.

We are seeing one small success through a cooperative formed of coffee growers in Mexico. The nonprofit Frontera de Cristo helped raise the money for a roaster. 100% of the money is staying in Mexico with the farmers.

Those families are no longer looking north and are now helping save their communities.

Here we are touring the roasting facilities in Agua Prieta, Mexico. Later we will fly to the Chiapas area of Southern Mexico to visit the farmers and their families. We will see coffee being grown and how this transforms their lives and communities.

Here is Robusto Coffee which is higher in caffeine.

The lower photo is Arabica coffee which is common in caffeine and smooth to drink. However, how you roast it can change the levels and taste.

Here Adrian Gonzalez, manager of customer relations, talks to us about how they not only sell whole beans but also grind the coffee by request of some customers.

They put the farmer’s names on the bags of coffee, helping to create a relationship between the customer and the farmer.

Stay tuned for photos of the growing process in Salvador Urbina and El Aguila, located in the Chiapas region of Mexico.

People go to convenience stores like this one and buy a cup of coffee every day. However, this coffee here is “More Than Just Coffee.”

Raul is the owner of this convenience store in Douglas, AZ. This town is the largest area on the Mexican border, where illegal immigration is a problem with drugs and people. Raul is pleased that this local coffee company Just Coffee is helping address some of the concerns, and everyone like the taste better than we had before.

This week I am following a group of Americans from all over the country as they explore, from the Mexico-USA border to the Guatemala-Mexico border, the immigration issues. They are walking along the wall from the people’s fence to see the vehicle fence.

The tour group is diverse in age, political, and ethnic backgrounds. They are here to see firsthand the issues around immigration.

They are also here to see how one solution is helping restore a coffee-growing community in Chiapas and Agua Prieta, where they roast the coffee. Like many others, just Coffee is a coffee cooperative because 100% of the profits stay in Mexico.

From a little over ten years ago till now, the families are no longer looking to the North to solve their economic problems; they found it through building a cooperative.

Stay tuned for more images and stories.

I love living in Roswell, GA. While we are in one of the most extensive metro communities in the United States, Roswell has a slight-town feel. We have events like the Alive After five during the summer months where the community comes together to experience each other, music, arts, and food.

Here is Seth Gamba, orchestra teacher at Elkins Pointe Middle school, playing the drums with the orchestra. The group plays on electric string instruments and even plays some rock tunes during the Alive After five event. My daughter plays in the group on viola. Proud dad, as you can see.

The community loves to do positive things together. Today people are seeking out experiences. Walt Disney understood this when he built Disney Land and Disney World.

Here is my wife with the Paranoia Haunted House crash at Alive After 5 to promote their business.

My wife loves to post photos like this to her Facebook account, and from the number of likes and comments, I know the rest of her friends also love this.

Role of the Journalist

Webster’s Dictionary states, “Journalism is the activity or job of collecting, writing, and editing news stories.” In addition, Wikipedia says journalism “serves the purpose of playing the role of a public service machinery in the dissemination and analysis of news and information.”

In the broader sense, the media’s role is to help communities connect. So I see journalists as assisting people in plugging into their community network, and the connection is being made through the media.

The pie has many slices when you look at all the content a local media outlet should cover in their community. One of the slices journalism serves in a democracy is to inform the community to better play a role in their government.

Wikipedia says, “In a democratic society, however, access to free information plays a central role in creating a system of checks and balance, and in distributing power equally between governments, businesses, individuals, and other social entities. Moreover, access to verifiable information gathered by independent media sources, which adhere to journalistic standards, can also serve ordinary citizens by empowering them with the tools they need to participate in the political process.”

I fear too many journalists only serve their audience a slice of the pie. They want more than just the things in their community going wrong. If you were to graph out the story coverage of many media outlets, I think you would find that there is a lopsided coverage on the squeaky wheel.

Could you take media coverage of their community, and would it reflect the exact percentages of categories of stories taking place daily, or would it be slanted?

What about work communities?

Most communication offices within corporations serve as the media for their community. I find my role within a nonprofit was very similar to my position at the newspaper. My part working for a large corporation is also very similar.

The breaking news story in the nonprofit and business world are the stories that management needs to tell. While we do not have investigative journalists looking into leadership and reporting this to the community, we have companies realizing that transparency is the best way to build customer affinity. As a result, you are finding more PR professionals communicating where their company has made a mistake and how they are acting to correct it.

Mistakes Storytellers Make

All you need to do is look at those four words above: 1) Audience, 2) Medium, 3) Storyteller, and 4) Subject. If anyone diminishes these in importance, then the connections are not made. The result of this, over time, is a community that lacks cohesiveness.

I believe many professional communicators misdirect their thoughts to either the medium or the subject. They buy the latest gear and try fantastic shots and forget the story. Sometimes they get so attached emotionally to the topic that they lose their objectivity to know the story.

I believe the audience is the most overlooked part of the puzzle, more often than the medium or subject.

I believe Steve Jobs was one of the best business people who understood the audience. When he rolled out new products, they were not what people wanted or needed. No one talked about a computer with a graphical interface before he helped to introduce the Mac. No one knew what a tablet device was before he introduced the iPad.

What Steve Jobs did know was how to help improve the lives of his audience. He saw how they lived and how he could improve their lives. Great storytellers need to know their audience just as well. This way, when we tell them stories of subjects in their community, they will line up just like people do when Apple releases a new product. They know it will be a great story because yesterday they gave me a great experience.

The secret about your audience

When you immerse yourself into the community you are covering; you find your subjects for the story.

Even businesses like Starbucks and Chick-fi-A train their employees to learn about their customers and to connect with them. For example, watch this video done by Chick-fil-A.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v0RhvZ3lvY]
I encourage storytellers to discover their communities. Find where they congregate and those who want and need to communicate with those groups. Then become an expert on the subjects that they cover for those audiences.

Deb Pang Davis, Assistant Professor, Syracuse University

In Deb Pang Davis’ comments to the National Press Photographers Association Business Blitz at the Grady School of Journalism, she encouraged photographers to be involved in social media. Social media is one of the best ways to join a community. People get to know you, and you get to know them and share content.

Marketing is connecting you to your audience.

God, the one and only— I’ll wait as long as he says. Everything I need comes from him, so why not? He’s solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul, An impregnable castle: I’m set for life.
—Psalm 62:1 MSG

One of the greatest blessings I have found in my life is anxiety. I have talked about this in many ways on this blog.

When editing my work, I become anxious because the photos don’t fully capture the event with the emotional impact I felt. When I awake in the morning, I am often stressed because I am unsure where my next project from a client will come from. Over the past few years, I have lost more clients because of their dwindling budgets.

Malcolm Gladwell is an author that I continue to follow and buy his books. His latest book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants, is about what happens when ordinary people confront giants.

There is an interview done with Malcolm Gladwell by the Religious News Service that you can read here.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey writes, “Gladwell said while researching the book, he began rediscovering his faith after having drifted away. Here, he speaks with RNS about his Mennonite family, how Jesus perfectly illustrates the point in his new book and how Gladwell’s return to faith changed how he wrote the book.”

The difficulty many without a faith perspective will struggle with is how this one review by J. Gomez put it, “I have a tough time buying the notion that people succeed because of their difficulties, “The second, more intriguing, possibility is that they succeeded, in part, because of their disorder–that they learned something in their struggle that proved to be of enormous advantage.” So I see it as overcoming challenges, making the best of what you have.”

Malcolm Gladwell gave a TED Talk recently on the classic story of David and Goliath. When revisiting the story, he discovers some hidden truths he missed growing up in the church hearing the story.

Making the best of what you have is total self-reliance and the belief that you completely control your circumstances.

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.
—Saint Augustine

I believe that those with a very close relationship with God have a healthy balance, as St. Augustine so eloquently put it. The tension is in the part that it is often a collaboration between man and God.

Many questions why a loving God would ever allow for evil in this world.

If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will―that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings―then we may take it it is worth paying.

― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

I have never been in a place where I was entirely at peace. But, unfortunately, in the tension of life, we can choose to see our glasses as half empty or half full.

Recently I wrote about how seasoned professional photographers look at their contact sheets and look for what they could do better. They are aware of the shortcomings of their images to what they felt and saw with their own eyes. Their struggle is an enormous advantage over the lousy photographer who looks only for a good idea.

As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another.
―Proverbs 27:17 MSG

I wrote earlier about one of my greatest struggles with Aspergers. Here are links to those two blog posts

Today you are facing many things which create anxiety. Don’t be the person who thinks you alone can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. To overcome the fear that pressure brings into our lives, you need to know you cannot do this alone.

I recommend reading this prayer today and every day. Make it your prayer, and you can overcome the anxiety of this world.

The Serenity Prayer

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

―Reinhold Niebuhr

One of the critical things I have been struggling with has been my identity and how I describe myself to others.

As a side note to this thought, you might not be aware that the Jewish people try not ever to say the name of God because by just saying it, we limit what God can be. Theologians call this putting God in a box.

If we were indeed created in God’s image as written in Genesis, then it would appear that we should be as careful about putting not just God in a box as we are. Is it possible that the reason for much of our anxiety is that we may define ourselves as photographers alone, and this has limited our abilities?

What would have happened if David had been older and allowed adult thoughts to limit his ability to kill Goliath? The key to the story of David and Goliath is that David acknowledged that all his victories were not his own but because of God. David said, “God, who delivered me from the teeth of the lion and the claws of the bear, will deliver me from this Philistine.”

David wasn’t thinking about being a shepherd or running to be king. Instead, David saw the anxiety of his people and believed the God who protected him while in the battle for his sheep would allow him to take on Goliath.

If you have lost your job as a staff photographer or are losing clients for various reasons, don’t limit yourself by defining yourself as just a photographer. That is how David’s brothers tried to explain and send him home. David was not a shepherd; David was a faithful follower of God and trusted God to deliver him every day as he watched his flock of sheep.

Why am I grateful for the stresses of this world that create anxiety in my life? Because without them, I wouldn’t need to get on my knees today and ask God to give me the wisdom to know what I should do today.

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
―Philippians 4:4-9 [NIV]

Packing for international travel has a lot of similarities to domestic, but the sizes are different.

Here is a quick video showing how I pack for carry-on when traveling internationally.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjegnyUWMxo]

The Think Tank Photo Airport TakeOff Camera Bag is my camera’s main bag while traveling through airports.