The importance of the pause

The most important tool I use when I read is the pause. We even talk about books as being a quick read or not. The writers that say a lot with few words cause us to pause to take in what we just read.

Poets are the masters of the pause. They use this tool more than just about any other technique. It is quite common for a poem to take a long time to write, sometimes years for a poem to be finished. The reason is the poet is looking for the right word or phrase to communicate something worthy of the pause.

World Read Aloud Day

There is even a day each year where we celebrate the reading aloud of the written word. There are the masters of this art that make us all want to just listen to the reading aloud of writings.

Who hasn’t heard a reader take off as if it is a race to the end of the passage only to leave listeners all confused due to the lack of pauses?

That pause is a tool that when used properly allows the silence to give deeper meaning to the word or phrase just preceding the pause.

Paul Harvey the master of the pause

The New York Times said that Paul Harvey’s “trademarks: a hypnotic timbre, extended pauses for effect, heart-warming tales of average Americans and folksy observations that evoked the heartland, family values and the old-fashioned plain talk one heard around the dinner table on Sunday.”

Paul Harvey understood the power of the pause.

The visual pause

The still image has come to be known as the visual pause. For the audience can savor a moment rather than being bombarded by a constant moving image of life as we experience it in real time.

Even in video and film the still image is used to help the audience absorb the content. Ken Burnes is an American director and producer of documentary films, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs. He has mastered the use of the still image. The audience is not bored by the still image, but rather mesmerized and able to digest the content.

The photograph has helped influence our world and change it.

Robert Capa’s photograph of Omaha Beach, Normandy, France in 1944 put the viewer on the front line of the war.

Dorothea Lange’s 1936 picture of the Migrant Mother put a face on the Great Depression.

Eddie Adams 1968 photograph of the murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief helped to end the Vietnam War.

The photos are like poems. They allow the audience to pause and take in the deeper meanings of the images.

Now just compare the video below of the famous moment of the murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief.  I think this helps us understand how important the [PAUSE] is for something so emotionally impactful.

This is an interview with Eddie Adams years later talking about this experience. It happened so quick for Eddie that he didn't even think about it having any impact at all even after he shot it.  It is only when he was able to [PAUSE] did he understand what he shot.

Video and cinema use the still

Even in the movies directors use the still image to help the audience pause to absorb the moment. Sometimes they will slow down the movement to give a similar affect.

While video is about movement if it duplicates reality of life too much then the pause is lost.

Great producers understand the storyline and use the images as well as the sound to help tell the story. The more emotional the storyline becomes the more the movie will slow down.

Combining poetry and the photograph

If you could combine the reading of poetry at it’s best with the strongest still images of the subject you could have an incredible impact.

In the fourth quarter of this year’s Super Bowl Dodge RAM ran a 2 minute package combining the best of the spoken pause of Paul Harvey with some of the great photojournalist for a package that was voted the #1 Super Bowl ad this year by AdWeek.


Which medium?

Each medium we use for messaging has it's strengths. My largest concern today is that too many people are defaulting to video for everything.

I have some recommendations for those who want the most impact with their message.

If your message is vital to your organization then you need to pull out all the stops. This is where you put a team of communicators working together on the project.

You need strong text, strong still images and compelling video that is presented in a way that compels the audience to become engaged with the topic.

This is where you do what Jimmy Bonner, of the Richards Group, the brainchild of the "God Made the Farmer" ad did. The instructions were very simple and freedom was given to those photographers. He gave each photographer Paul Harvey's speech and asked them to spend time with the farmers and ranchers. Just shoot what you feel is appropriate.

Andy Anderson, one of the photographers blogged on the project. He said:

10 photographers capturing on there own terms the life of a farmer and rancher. All of us searching for meaningful images. Not any one photo rising above any others, but collectively voicing a message for folks and a vocation we have all really taken for granted. The last truly archetypical American worker. And who better else to match the images with than Paul Harvey…America’s grandfather.

Do you want impact like this ad had on the world? Maybe then you need to consider the power of the pause--the visual pause of the photograph.

Visuals verses text: The Eureka Effect

The Aha! effect refers to the common human experience of suddenly understanding a previously incomprehensible problem or concept. -- Wikipedia

Text is the core communications medium for most organizations. Due to this over reliance on text these organizations share a common mistake of writing a visual story without watching the visuals in front of them as they write.  Too often, a video or slide show story is not connected to the text. A good story is hooked to the visuals and audio.

A rule of cinema is to "show, don’t tell." Maybe this can be revised to "Show what you can, and tell what you can't."

Roswell Presbyterian Church's Middle School Youth with SonServants  and Widows Harvest to help do projects like: building wheelchair ramps and landings, scraping and painting houses, putting new roofs on homes, or landscaping and yard work.

Now there are a few things that are very difficult to write that a photo can help communicate. Emotional connections are moments where a gesture can connect people that trying to describe this would take a few pages of text.

The Suzuki teacher connects with the child in a tender instructional moment that text would struggle to communicate as effectively. Also, in this photo you can see the proud mother of the student in the background pleased with the instruction her son is getting. 

A few photos of a story can help set the tone and help the writer get deeper into the content. Your audience will appreciate a story with more meat to it than one that glosses over the content.

A child is working on an art project during a Suzuki workshop. They provided this creativity time for those moments when the young students were not playing and needed to stay on campus while waiting their turn. 

I thought capturing a student working on a fun craft project showed that creativity is in these students and looking for ways to come out. While music is one way the workshop was helping these students, they also provided a moment away from the music to be creative as well.

Show what you can

Detain shot of the lab project for DNA testing procedure.

Now I wanted you to first see the closeup photo here of the materials the students will be extracting the DNA from in a biology class. Notice how the photo begs the question of what is this?

Here the student is getting a measured amount of the substance that will be tested.

Notice in the second photo here of the lady in the lab there is less of a question and more of a statement that happens.  Maybe the closeup photo is a better hook and once you are into the story you use the photo showing the taking a sample by the student.

Now imagine the story on teaching DNA extraction tests without any of these photos. Which one would you even begin to read?

Physics Lab 

The professor asked the students to gather around her as she walked them through the lab experiment they were doing that day. 

What is very interesting here is how this professor walked the students through each step. She even would pause to talk about how if you don't do one thing then your results will be affected.

The professor adds a little humor in the demonstrations. Now I am shooting fairly tight, but just loose enough to show the students trying to see what she is doing and their emotional connection in the moment.

Now just hang around any class where students are doing something for the first time and you will see this next moment. They come to the teacher and ask a question. The teacher then realizes there is some missing information the student is not giving them.

Even after the professor had showed them this step, there is still more show and tell needed to be sure the concept is understood.

Now if you are a writer experienced a similar teaching moment like this physics class, then you understand how images will help clarify a moment.

If you look closely in the last photo the girl in the purple is having a small "eureka moment."

Don't fall into the trap of just taking photos and using them. Be sure your visuals are communicating. The best thing you can do is to show a photo to someone who doesn't know anything about the story or the people and things in the photo. Ask them to tell you what they see when they look at the photo. Not the obvious things, but like in photo of the teacher laughing they may say I see a good teacher.

You might ask why and they would say she looks fun and the students are reacting to her positively.

 Remember to "Show what you can, and tell what you can't."

Have you ever gotten a grade for your photography?

This would get an F if I graded my photo

Gary Chapman, a fellow photographer, commented the other night that he enjoys having written something verses the act of writing.  I couldn’t help but laugh.

This got me to thinking and I like to do armchair sociology.  I came up with some thoughts about how we learn to read and write verses visual literacy.

While I have a master’s degree, which means I went through more than seventeen years of formal education, I still struggle with writing.

Testing revealed that I have some form of autism and I believe I most likely have Asperger’s syndrome.  I consider this a blessing.  I am wired differently and therefore this has given me a unique view of the world.  It has also explained why writing is difficult and why I excel at the visual.

There are different ways people see the world and learn.  I am a visual thinker and learner.  What I struggle with regularly is linear thinking that is required for writing.

How do you know if you are good at something?  With reading and writing you get affirmation through grading.  All through school you learn how to read and get tested on your retention.  Just because you can read doesn’t mean you can write. 

Contrast this extensive training we go through to learn how to read and write to visual literacy.  We are not trained on how to understand visual communication, unless you took an art appreciation class.  Learning how to appreciate good visual communication isn’t the same as then knowing how to create visual communication.

At the end of this summer when kids go back to school many of them will have a traditional assignment to write about their summer experiences.  This is how many teachers evaluate the writing skills and to see what they may have to teach to get the students up to grade level writing.

I believe if we had been required to hand in our photos from those summers many of us would have discovered our photos would have earned failing grades.  Failing grades because we were never taught even how to read visuals.  If you don’t know how visuals communicate then you cannot create visuals, which communicate a message.

There are many resources to help you learn about visual literacy, just not as many as we have for learning the read and write.  Here is one book The Power of the Gaze (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies) that you can get on Amazon.

Here is a description about the book:

The Power of the Gaze, a textbook on visual literacy, entices the reader to seek significant structures in everyday visual reality, which are called visual orders. Visual orders can be found in representations, visible surroundings, or in nonverbal interaction that relies on gaze. In order to understand what one looks at, one must first understand what it means to gaze and what it means to look. Visual literacy is defined as the critical understanding of the meanings of visual orders. The book is written for all readers interested in visual culture and its phenomena.

I recommend taking time and learning to read visually and then learn how to create visuals.  This is especially important if you work in the communications field.