See the Big Picture

This is a clip of Carrie Underwood playing the youth minister to Bethany Hamilton in the movie Soul Surfer.

Our family just saw the movie. in another scene Carrie Underwood showed a close-up photo of an insect’s eye to the youth group asking the kids to identify what they were seeing. She then would zoom out and show the bigger perspective. 

Throughout the movie we see the theme of there are bigger perspectives that we need sometimes. Carrie quotes the scripture Jeremiah 29:11:

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Early in my career I covered a similar story.  I got to be with the Newberry family, as they had to deal with their two year old son Philip’s loss of hands and feet due to spiral meningitis. Here is that story.

Often we can get too focused on a project and not see how it fits into the “bigger picture.”

One of the ways I try to help my clients is to see the photos I am shooting for their project can be used for other projects. What I encourage now more than ever is to get a big perspective early.

If the project you are working on maybe part of something bigger for the company for example, you may want to consider pulling the stops out to make an more upfront investment that over the course of the company initiative will be used over and over which brings down the cost per use over time.

One thing is that if you think something is really big and decide it should be a video and don’t assign a writer you then will have to have someone go back and spend more time backtracking to get text to use for other parts of the project through the year. Another downside of video alone is that it doesn’t work in print very well.

I think when you have big stories to cover you should consider always using text and think of still images next. The stills can be used in slide show with audio, used on website, used in print and have shelf life to be used later in PowerPoint, poster, display booth, billboards and more.

Sometimes video alone is sufficient because the story will not have many facets.

Think big picture right away. Ask this question: Will this be part of a larger initiative? If the answer is yes take a little more time involving a team to be sure you have explored the possibilities.

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.

-- Alan Lakein