Photographers need calibration

Bill Bangham, Gary & Vivian Chapman and Ken Touchton sit on the front row of the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar in Atlanta on Saturday, December 1, 2012.

Industry Workshops and Seminars

Why do pros who have twenty, thirty, forty or more years of experience continue to go to workshops? You would think they know all there is to know about photography. Well for the most part they do know most everything to do for what they are currently doing. Sure they could use a tidbit here or there, but most photographers are not going to learn a tidbit at these workshops.

Michael S. Williamson is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who joined The Washington Post in 1993 after working for the Sacramento Bee from 1975-1991. He taught at Western Kentucky University (1991-93). 

Review

Michael Williamson titled his talk to us "It Ain't The Tool. It's The Fool." He was helping us to understand it isn't about all the gear it is the what you do with it. While teaching at Western Kentucky University Williamson had two things he required the photographers put on the back of their cameras.

1. What am I photographing?
2. What am I trying to say with the photograph?

The seminar audience was "photojournalists" whose purpose is to tell stories with their cameras.  He even joked about not being an artist. "It must be art because I don't get it," is how he was trying to distinguish the difference between a picture just created for no reason and the other of having a message, which is the journalists' job.

Limits

Michael would joke about he was shooting a silouhet because he wasn't over his limit for that today. His joke was to remind us to look for different ways to engage our audience. "Photos that work are not good verses bad, they are interesting verses boring," commented Williamson.

Michael Schwarz captures some of the event with his DSLR as video and is helping to put together a package on what the conference is all about.

Your gifts and talents

Vincet Laroret told us to know your role and those around you. He was helping photographers understand as they take on bigger projects some of the roles they play will change when they must collaborate with others.

Laforet used movies to help us know the role of those making them. You have your visionary Director, the director of photography,  ADs, Gaffers, talent and more working on a movie set to create the movie. He was emphasizing the need to be clear in your communication and why each person had roles that all needed to be flexible.

What I was learning from his discussion was that as the lone guy producing a package you must juggle all these roles. I reminisced that had I not spent time in different roles through my life I couldn't do this all by myself today at times. I also started to see how I was mentored to learn how to come up with an idea--the vision. 

Early in my career I was just executing many other creatives visions. I was like a first camera guy on a movie set. There was a senior photographer (Director of Photography) and they helped to guide me.

Today I bring on other pros to help me on projects as the budget allows.  

My take away to pass along:

1. Learn how to work your camera
2. Learn how to be a storyteller
3. Learn how to create a vision (How to find a story)
4. Continue to learn all you can about tools that will help you tell the story more effectively
5. Learn to collaborate

David Gilkey is a staff photographer and video editor for NPR, covering both national and international news. He has produced award-winning photo essays, videos and multimedia presentations for NPR.org, as well as radio reports for NPR.

National Public Radio

Dave Gilkey talked about at NPR for the staff means "No Planning Required."  He has had to jump on planes at the last second to cover major stories around the world. 

Gilkey commented on coming to NPR that he learned from the best how to do audio. He knew he had to master it or face the wrath of his counterparts and is bosses. Before coming to NPR Gilkey knew how to shoot a photo story, but now he had to produce them with sound and at the quality of NPR.

Today he works on every story with basically two lists working simultaneously in his head. 1) Shot list like he had always done, plus more shots were needed and 2) Natural sound list.

He also was working many times with the NPR reporters and discovered the two of them were trying to get the same thing often. He needed a shot of the door opening and closing sometimes and so did the reporter need to capture that sound. So the lens and microphone were often needed to be close to get those clean shots and sound.

The Calibration

I was learning over these days of the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar what was being produced today in the industry. This helps me know more than my little world. Without this time to come and see what others are doing I could easily become irrelevant to my clients.

Storytelling for the most part hasn't changed since before the invention of the camera. Writers were writing visual stories before we could capture them for the audience. 

Todays movies are using the latest technology to help communicate the storyline more effectively than before. The movie Avatar let us into a world that prior to computers could only be told with words.

I was learning some new twists on the storytelling to help me be the best I can be for my customers.

My question to you is have you calibrated to the industry yourself? Are you loosing jobs to other photographers and not knowing why?  

Going to a workshop will not stop you from loosing every job, but it will help you be more relevant in today's marketplace.

Besides calibrating myself, I was able to get my camera checked out and cleaned by Nikon. Hey there are many things to calibrate if you are a digital visual storyteller today.