So you want to be a photographer

On a regular basis I am asked advice on how to become a photographer. I average doing this about three to four times a month.  I decided I needed to write a blog to help people with some of the advice that I provide everyone. Much of my comments come from my Christian perspective.

First I think I need to try and talk you out of being a photographer, but I wrote on this earlier HERE. Be sure and read it as well.

What do you like to photograph?

I am surprised how often when I ask this question people are pausing and having to think about this question. If you are unsure this is a great indication you love the process of photography and really have no clue that photography is about a subject, not the gear.

Subjects people like to photograph [there are more than here]
• People
• Animals
• Still life
• Nature
• Sports

Who buys these kinds of photographs?

Again I am surprised that many folks do not know who buys photos. Photography is a business and it provides a service to some market. How will your photographs help this market place? Why do people need your photos?

What kind of lifestyle do you want?

You would be surprised as to how many people want to be a war photographer and also have a family. I think of my friend Tom Kennedy, former director of photography for National Geographic, who was constantly talking with his photographers as they went through divorces.

Even the Apostle Paul talked about lifestyle choices.

1 Corinthians 7:8 (NIV)
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.

Match your subject to your lifestyle choice

Take the time to explore all the kinds of photography you could do and then look for ways this can dovetail with your lifestyle desires. It is easier to have narrowed this to something realistic than to continue to dream without some reality.

Not always logical

2 Corinthians 12:10 (NIV) That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

One would be surprised to hear that I suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome.  Asperger’s is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication. I bring this up because spending a lifetime struggling with Asperger’s syndrome has sensitized me and made me a better communicator. I had to really think about situations and try and understand them more than most just to communicate what I needed.

This weakness became my strength. People with Asperger syndrome often display intense interests like I have in photography.

I played to my strengths to help overcome many of my weaknesses. I learned quickly that I did something better than many others because of the way I am wired.

I believe every person has strengths and weaknesses. How this applies to your profession like photography is to really look at what it takes to be successful in that profession.

If you are like most folks you will notice you have some weaknesses that are required to be successful. You will also discover you have some natural talents that help you excel.  Learn to play to your strengths. Don’t ignore your weaknesses, rather acknowledge them and find people to help you.

Maybe you will outsource marketing to someone so you can concentrate on what you do best. To be successful, you still must market yourself. You just don’t have to do all this all yourself.  That is the key to success. Know your weaknesses and strengths. Know what you need to do in your chosen field to be successful and be sure you excel, even if that means getting some help.

How Photography Helped Me: Part 2

Don Rutledge, pictured here, is the person who helped me to see and understand body language in ways that Social Work didn't teach me. [photo by Bill Bangham]

What I was learning with Photojournalism:

While a freshman in college I got my first SLR camera and began shooting for the school paper and yearbook. I would take my work to my uncle, who was a professional photographer and who worked as a photojournalist to review.

Going through my contact sheets he started to teach me how to improve my images. While I was somewhat learning about body language in Social Work, it was with my uncle and later with Don Rutledge that I would be schooled in the finer points of body language.

Instead of me looking at a movie of me during the day and analyzing my social awkwardness, I was learning by observation of others with my camera.

While many think that those with Asperger's Syndrome lack sensitivity to others and lack empathy, I believe just the opposite. While their outward social skills are lacking they are aware of many things people do not see.

I believe their desire to avoid social situations is they often feel things about others and do not have the innate ability to process and articulate spontaneously these feelings. My experience is that I feel too much and it often can cloud my social skills and make it difficult to respond in a moment. It is much easier for me to avoid situations than to embrace them and learn from them.

Knolan Benfield with an environmental portrait of the pastors of leading congregations in Hickory, North Carolina in 1985.

Knolan Benfield

In 1985, my uncle, Knolan Benfield, was excited to show one of his series of photos of ministers. His excitement and telling me all he had to do to make these photos captured my attention. I had never been interested in what other people do like this before.

Knolan had combined photojournalism with portrait photography using lighting for the first time in his career. He took environmental photos of senior pastors in their church buildings. With each pastor he worked hard to find those architectural settings that made each congregation different.

One of the things he was most excited about was the composition. He had learned from Don Rutledge how to pull the audience into a photo by creating layers. These layers pulled you from front to the back of the photograph.

This is an example of where there are layers from front to back in a photograph helping to create more interest.

One of the things that are quite different in Knolan's portraits from his days as a photojournalist was the use of lights. He almost never used lights in his photos when shooting for magazines.

Knolan combined the existing light with the strobes to help create depth and interest. To do this in 1985 he would get the light settings using a handheld meter and then add a flash to just be a little brighter than the rest of the scene, maybe 1/2 to a full stop difference.

Knolan bought a special film back for his Hasselblad system that would let him shoot a Polaroid to do a test shot. This was revolutionary for him and quite new at the time.

It was early in my career and I was not able to take all this and do it myself until some eight years later in my career.

In the meantime I would leave my first job at a newspaper, where I was perfecting my understanding of how to make a photograph and tell stories, to go and work with Don Rutledge and Joanna Pinneo.

While I was learning how to see social situations using my camera, it would take years of shooting before it started to sink into my personal life.

Sensory Perception

I was naive in my early jobs that when higher up people asked me for my input that I spoke directly and with such candidness that it would hurt me.

Those with Asperger's tend to not see the point of superficial social contact, niceties, or passing time with others, unless there is a clear discussion point/debate or activity. Their allegiance is to truth, not people's feelings.

While those with Asperger's are not good at explaining why he or she did something that appeared to contravene the social codes; but, equally, typical people are not good explaining the exceptions to the codes and reasoning for their social behavior.

Today there is a remarkable DVD that is an encyclopedia of emotions, entitled Mind Reading: The interactive Guide to Emotions. Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues at the university of Cambridge identified 412 human emotions (excluding synonyms). They examined the age at which children understand the meaning of each emotion, and developed a taxonomy that assigned all the distinct emotions into one of 24 different groups. A multimedia company then developed interactive software that was designed for children and adults to learn what someone may be thinking or feeling.

On the DVD, actors (including Daniel Ratcliffe) demonstrate facial expressions, body language and speech qualities associated with specific emotions.

In essence the DVD does some of what I had to learn on my own through Social Work and Photography.

Problems with Non-Verbal Communication

Adults with Asperger's syndrome may have problems with non-verbal communication, according to the National Institute of Neurobiological Disorders and Stroke. They display awkward body gestures, inappropriate facial expressions and/or an odd stiff gaze. They rarely look people in the eye and do not display any form of joy such as smiling, winking or hugging.

This may sound harsh, but when you have a camera around your neck your odd behavior may look a little more normal. Maybe the way you appear is that you are looking for a photograph. This may be true, but it allows me to study the situation without being as harshly judged.

When I was young I ran around almost all the time in an army uniform playing to be G. I. Joe. The other attachment I had was to this tractor, which I rode everywhere for a few years.

Intense Specialized Interests

According to the Better Health Channel, adults with Asperger's syndrome tend to have very intense time-consuming specialized interests. These individuals usually become experts in one or two areas and excel in their chosen careers because they choose jobs that best fit their interests. They are often referred to as eccentric, which sometimes causes social isolation. An example of an intense specialized interest would be someone who spends long amounts of time studying science and statistics, but has little interest in anything else.

I have an intense interest in photography and specifically using photojournalism to help causes. I tend to read a great deal and study nuances to help me be a better storyteller.

Many people are surprised as to how much I get done. Asperger's has helped me stay on task to do tedious business and marketing tasks. It has helped me to spend time problem solving computer issues related to my photography.

People with Asperger's syndrome are often perfectionists, tend to be exceptionally good at noticing mistakes, and have a conspicuous fear of failure. I have been able to channel this to help me perfect my photography and the fear of failure has kept me busy with marketing. These are some examples of how Asperger's has helped me with my photography business.

The Porfolio

Funny thing that is important in photography more than other professions, is the portfolio. Your work must be at a certain level before you get an interview. This works to the advantage of a person with Asperger's. In general we do not do well in job interviews where you need to sell your abilities to an employer. My work is the first foot in the door, which my personality alone might not make it through.


Resource

Because of the way I am wired, I am very good with picking up anything to do with the computer and photography. Also because of the way I had to teach myself to understand things, I have discovered I make a good teacher. This is due to the way I have had to break things down into parts to then put them back together to construct the whole.

Today I spend a great deal of time problem solving the teaching of technical concepts. I have also discovered over time there are so many ways to approach a problem, because I often approach things different than other do and because of this I know there needs to be more tolerance of others.

I remember crying as a young boy because the model motorcycle I was trying to put together was missing a few steps in the instructions. My mother made me wait to ask my dad if he could help. What happened was no one could figure it out. I spent hours until I found a way to solve the problem.

This emotional feeling of not being able to figure something out and no one could help me was depressing. I keep this in mind when I teach today. I encourage students and let them know I believe in them. I give them space and will come along side them so we together can process the problem.

I realize that if they can figure it out with someone encouraging them that they will feel better about solving it than if someone just gave them the answer. I know that because of how proud I was of that motorcycle when I finished it.

Where I am today on this journey

I love to take on a problem that hasn't been done before. One of my favorite jobs was photographing research projects of engineers and scientists. In those situations you are photographing usually a one of a kind that hasn't been photographed before. You have to figure it out. It is not a cookie cutter solution.

Adults with Asperger's syndrome can be renowned for being honest, having a strong sense of social justice and keeping to the rules. This has been what keeps me focused on storytelling on social justice issues.

Asperger's Sydrome people can acquire The Ability of the Mind abilities using intelligence and experience rather than intuition, which can eventually lead to an alternative form of self-consciousness as they reflect on his or her own mental state and the mental state of others. this is a highly reflective and explicit self-consciousness as similar to that of philosophers.

I have learned to use this awareness to help me be a storyteller of other people's stories.

How Photography Helped Me: Part 1

Stanley on school bus in Kinston, NC

While I have always wanted to be in control for a very long time I wasn't in control.

Asperger's Syndrome

It would not be until my adult years that I understood that I had Asperger's Syndrome. Early on I went for psychological testing because of my behavior in the classroom. They suspected I had Autism, but at that time they didn't want to label me.

You see it was not until 1994 that the American Psychiatric Association recognized Asperger’s syndrome. While I had majored in Social Work in early 1980 it was never talked about. It was when my sister was doing her masters in Social Work that she came across it.

She recognized the symptoms in me.

There were a few things that made her aware I might have it. I didn't talk until I was three years old. I was also socially awkward.

However, on the plus side of the characteristics:

• Persistent
• A perfectionist
• Easily able to identify errors
• Technical ability
• In possession of a sense of social justice and integrity
• Likely to question protocols
• Accurate
• Attentive to detail
• Logical
• Conscientious
• Knowledgeable
• Original in problem solving
• Honest
• Likely to thrive on routine and clear explanations

Once you get to know you

I have heard this phrase a lot through my life. The reason is those with Asperger's Syndrome frequently say things without considering the emotional impact on the listener [faux pas].  Also, I tended to include too much detail when speaking on topics.

Those who have chosen to move past these social flaws soon learn to love me because of the many positive attributes that I do have. However, like everyone, I have some rough edges of a personality that don't help me. It would be Social Work and my Photography training that would help me do a better job with my social skills.

Social Work & Photography

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. [1 Corinthians 1:27 NIV]

I find it quite strange that today I work as a professional communicator. You see my greatest weakness is communication.

While I know I was called to do what I am doing I am reminded of the scripture following 1 Cor 1:27.

... so that no one may boast before him. [1 Corinthians 1:29 NIV]

It was my pursuing the call that I would be led down a path that has me working today as a professional photojournalist.

I went to college to major in Social Work, thinking I was going to be a pastor one day. Here I took these types of courses, which basically helped me to intellectually understand people and social situations. Even with all this training I still was not wired to intuitively grasp the social moments. So I can only say I have been blessed with opportunities that I alone did not merit.

Here are some of the course work required for Social Workers:

Stanley making a monkey face during his college years.

Human Behavior Course—This first or second year course explores the interaction of various factors in human behavior, including biological, social, cultural, environmental and psychological. Discussions focus greatly on individual behavior in a larger social framework. Attention is also given to diverse populations, including minorities, children and the poor, as well as the impact of discrimination and oppression.

Social Work Research Methods Course—Social workers must be able to effectively research both new and existing social data. This course provides the techniques to do both, including performing qualitative and quantitative studies. Students learn to critically interpret, organize and use research findings in everyday practice. This is typically a second year course.

Generalist Social Work Practice Course—Students in this course learn the process of intervention in the social work context. They acquire the skills to evaluate, engage and intervene in social problems. This involves a study of the principles and values of generalist practice through multiple social perspectives. These perspectives include multicultural, groups, families and individuals. Social work roles, professional relationships and service delivery models are also examined.

Social Work Policy Course—Social workers must be familiar with the major administrative, legislative and judicial policies that affect their work. They must also understand how to advocate for policy changes to improve social conditions and empower at-risk groups. Students gain this understanding by exploring the history, organization and philosophies of social policies and their effect on diverse populations. This course is generally taken towards the middle or end of a social work program.

Field Practice Instruction Course—In this course, students apply knowledge gained in the classroom to practical situations that model real-world problems. Students develop skills in oral and written communication, effective supervision and critical assessment. This course may include placement with a social work agency and an additional seminar. It is generally taken towards the end of a social work program.

Photojournalists with Social Work or Psychology degrees

Later in my career I would discover that many of my favorite photographers would have majored in Social Work or Psychology. Don Rutledge and Joanna Pinneo who I worked with in my early years both were psychology majors. Eugene Richards was a social work major and even worked as one for years before becoming a photojournalist.

There will be more about how photography would help me more than Social Work in Part 2

My response to all those who ask how to do "Missions Photography"

Young photographers and old, but all those fairly new to missions, want to know how to start photographing missions. Their attitude and communication says they are ready and should be doing this now. This is my opportunity to empty out all those emotions that are running through my head and articulating what I'm feeling, without risking saying something to someone that I’ll regret. So here is that letter I often write to get it off my chest and never send. By the way this could also apply to doing NGO work as well.

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Dear ___________________:

I get contacted almost weekly from someone wanting to do missions work.  Your request to know how to get into the field is similar to all those other contacts. You reference seeing others going on mission trips or even a short term trip yourself. Your desire seems to be to do this full-time using your photography to capture missions.

Let's just be honest with one another—traveling the world and taking pictures just sounds fun. It has to be better than what I am doing here every day.

I believe there are four phases to becoming a missions photographer: 1) The call; 2) The Preparation; 3) The Affirmation & 4) The Corporate Sending.

The Call

You hear the call from God that this is what he wants you to do. How you hear that call is different for every person. One of the most famous calls is of Isaiah in the Bible.

Isaiah 6:8

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

The Preparation

If you were called to be a ditch digger, a doctor, a pastor or a communications person each of these would require you to become more proficient and develop that talent.

For the most part this would entail some formal training and some on the job training. Doctors go to college, then medical school and then they do a residency. My recommendation for most photographers wanting to cover missions abroad is to get some formal classroom training, work with some pros and then do a residency type of position for a year or two, just like the medical doctors do.

The Affirmation

You need others to affirm this call. Before a person is accepted into a Seminary to further their biblical studies they must have a letter of affirmation from a sending church. So to a photographer should have this same type of an affirmation where people are confirming not just that you know photography but are using it now to further the gospel.

The Corporate Sending

You need a client who is willing to pay for the content you are creating. Some missions agencies of different denominations have positions for journalists and photojournalists. You must go through an interview process just like you would if you were to be a church planter. They want to see examples of you doing now what they will send you to do somewhere else.

---

Where are you on these steps?

From your correspondence with me it appears you think you are ready now, but I have some hard questions for you.

What are you doing in missions right where you are?  Would God call someone to do missions photography in your neighborhood?

God hasn't put you in Africa or somewhere else—he has you here. You are in a mission field. Do you think it is all that different just because you are in a different town, state or country?

You are like so many others who live right here with me in Georgia.  Right near me in Clarkston, GA are refugees from all over the world. There is even a book on one of these groups "The Lost Boys of Sudan." Here is a link to that book http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Boys-Sudan-American-Experience/dp/0820328839.  Missions of the cross-cultural experience it is right there.

I am sure there are opportunities in your community for a cross cultural experience if that is where you need to serve.

Here is a NGO that works with the refugees http://friendsofrefugees.com in Georgia.

 

How will it be any different for you to shoot in some city in Africa than right where you live? Too many "Christians" think that missions are like a worship service. Missions is so far removed from a worship experience. Missions agencies send their missionaries to those places of highest need. Those places are where there is less than 2% of Christians in the population. This is like going to solitary confinement as compared to going to a place where the people are like you.

If you don't like working in the secular world now, then you are not ready for the mission field.

Now up to this point I have only addressed your willingness to do mission work. Now I want to address another concern I have for missionary work.

Do you think God deserves our very best effort? Based on the assumption he would want us to do everything we could to be prepared, how well prepared are you for the call? Have you taken the talents you have been given and refined these?

Christ selected 12 disciples and then spent three years training them before they were sent out completely on their own for good. He did an internship program with them where they went out and then reported back to him.

Lets just say you have really prepared as best you can. You went to a photography school and got your training. Now you are working somewhere to get your apprenticeship time in. Just like a medical doctor must do a residency, so too you must work somewhere with supervison.

Now comes another perspective. Who will send you? If you think agencies or churches will be the supportive body to help pay for the expenses of you traveling the world to tell the story of missions why would they send you?

Another way to think of this, think of it like National Geographic Magazine. Should they send you to cover a story or someone like a William Allard, Joe McNally, Steve McCurry, Joanna Pinneo or some of their many proven professionals?  I would think they would send the person who has a strong portfolio and track record of delivering content.

So too the church and agencies should send the person best because it is good stewardship of what God has entrusted them. Sending someone because they are willing is a good way to burn relationships on the mission field.

I hope you see mission coverage can be where you are now. You should be producing content of the stories in your neighborhood. If you are able to produce solid content right where you are now—which is the mission field, then those groups that can send you to foreign mission fields will see you as a good stewardship choice for them.

Remember the Apostle Paul was not readily affirmed by the disciples. Church history shows us there is a time from his calling until the time he was sent out as missionary from the church. Paul's Damascus road experience was when he was about age 34 [Acts 9:1-9]. Paul was not sent by the church until he was age 47 with Barnabas [Acts 13:2-3]. He preached in the synagogues in between, but sent out was not for years. He first worked in his neighborhood. If it was good enough for Paul, why not you?

This may sound harsh, but I feel you need to hear this from someone and it might as well be me.

Maybe the thing you need to do is pray for God's guidance and let him lead you. You might be surprised at all the doors that open through him verses by our own hands.

Sorry I am so pushy with this, but I am really sad to see so many people wanting to go overseas when the largest mission field in the world is here. More missionaries come here of all types of faiths to proselytize than any other country of the world. Who should God send to your neighborhood or city to do mission work? Could it be that he has already called someone--YOU?

Your backyard is your first mission field. This is where you will refine your craft and get the affirmation of others. It is here that your friends will then recognize your calling and send you.

Your call doesn't always mean now, but you now knowing your path. Keep the faith and fight the good fight.

Stanley

Stanley Leary
Storyteller
Roswell, Georgia
404-786-4914
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