Photographing your Passion

Your dream assignment often will be a self generated one. This is my conclusion after pitching ideas to National Geographic Magazine and other publications for the past 25 years.

The first step to the dream assignment is defining your passion. What gets you excited and willing to champion a cause?

Early in my career I got that dream job as a photographer for The Commission Magazine. This magazine covered Christian missionaries all over the world. The magazine was competing with National Geographic Magazine for the best use of pictures in the Picture of the Year contest put on by the National Press Photographers and Missouri School of Journalism.

This was my second job after a newspaper job. Since I was the new guy, my job wasn’t as glamorous as the other photographers who on a regular basis traveled the world. I was making portraits and passports for all the missionaries and their families as well as teaching them how to tell their story using slides.

Occasionally I got to do a story, and it was always in the states showing how local churches were supporting their missionaries.

I did get to hangout with Don Rutledge, Joanna Pinneo and Warren Johnson when they were not globe trotting the world. While I would say my favorite thing is shooting a story I am passionate about, my second favorite thing is listening to other photographers tell their stories that they are their passionate about. This is why I regularly invite photographers to my home and let them share their photos from around the globe.

Just this past month we had 20 photographers at our house sharing stories about Pakistan, Alaska, Japan, Haiti, Mexico and other spots. This is equivalent to having the photographers of National Geographic Magazine sit beside you as you turn the pages and give you the behind the scene look of the story. It is even better because they show you even more photos than they were able to publish.

My passion is showing the love of God for his people. Sometimes I show the joys, and sometimes I show the pain.

Just this past October I was privileged to tell a story with a twist on what I thought was a traditional missions story. I traveled to Mexico to get a close-up view of why Mexicans have risked their lives to travel north to find jobs. Why would people spend $2,000 to $3,000 to pay a coyote to help them navigate the desert for 3 – 5 days and nights? Since 1994, 5,000 Mexicans have perished in their attempts to cross the border.

I discovered one solution to the illegal immigration for coffee farmers. About ten years ago while sipping a $5 cup of coffee, Mark Adams was talking to a former coffee grower who told him how coffee growers’ income dropped over 70 percent in just a short period of time in the late 90’s. This was just about the time that illegal immigration was getting worse.

Mark was working for Frontera de Cristo. It is one of the six Presbyterian Border Ministries of the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. The group was doing micro loans to help families start small businesses to support their families. The coffee issue was bigger than they had addressed.

They then formed a Just Trade Center to help address the issue of the coffee growers. They, along with the help of others like Catholic Charities, gave a loan to the coffee growers for $20,000 that was enough to buy a roaster. It was such a huge success that they hope to find other industries where they can help a community like they have done with Café Justo.

Take a look at a package I created to help introduce people to their concept. I believe once you learn about their story you will start to explore other ways you can become an informed consumer helping to address the issues facing immigration.

As you can tell I got a little side tracked and this is what happens when you find a passion. Even if you have to donate your time to do a story you feel passionate about do it. Then you have something to share with folks about what you want to do for them.

As you can tell from my project, I had to get some friends involved to help me with the voice over, help in picking the best folks to tell the story and many eyes and ears to help refine the story. So when you get ready to tell others about your passion and need help—give me a call.

Are all your eggs in one basket?

To "put all your eggs in one basket" is to risk losing everything all at one time. For me this applies to two aspects of my business.

First, if you have a niche’ market it is good to develop a second niche’. Kodak saw the writing on the wall years ago and diversified beyond making film products only. If they hadn’t they would no longer be around. For me I have my interests directing my photography. I love sports and this is really where I first started in photography. In college shooting all the college sports was exciting. I didn’t out grow this interest, but added other areas.

My faith has always been what drives much of my passion. I have worked for Christian denomination’s mission organization covering missions around the world and continue to do so today. I really enjoy things that challenge my heart the way my faith does for me.

I also love technology. This challenges my mind. I love to figure how things work and how to fix things. This has driven my interest in research and technology photography through the years. All three of these loves exist in higher education. This is why I have helped many schools, colleges and universities through the years with their recruiting and public relations photography.

There are times when each of these has peaks and valleys through the year. By diversifying a little and yet still being niche driven and not all over in my work I have been able to keep my eggs in separate baskets with my work.

The second area where I have divided up my eggs is in marketing of my services. One of my best marketing is done through networking. This is getting me involved in my communities. By joining a photography association I learn from others and plug into friends who occasionally get over booked and refer to others they know in the industry. I have joined the Atlanta Press Club because many of those who are members go to the social events and meetings that I would not meet anywhere else. I have been able to meet people who not only might hire me, but become good friends.

I have gone to the library and found every list of people in the markets I am interested in working with to build a database. This database of 3,500+ names is categorized. I have categories for family, clients, prospects, and broken into almost every imaginable group I can think of. I have phone numbers, mailing addresses and emails. Each of these is a different way to contact the people. I call them, I send postcards and I send out an e.newsletter as well as individual emails.

When someone writes me back to unsubscribe to my e.newsletter I don’t delete their name—I add them to my no newsletter category. They still get postcards and occasional phone calls.

Lately I signed up for a new cell plan that lets me make unlimited phone calls as long as I am using the Wi-Fi feature of the phone. This lets me make lots of phone calls. I am learning how to have meaningful short conversations with many people. They are meaningful because I really do care about each person. If you don’t feel genuinely interested in people you have to be one incredible actor (which I am not) to pull this off. This is why I work hard to find as many new people I can to add to my list. If you are not genuinely interested in a person, it is important to have someone else to talk to if they don’t exist.

One of the gifts I have which I have learned to use more each day is my memory. For some reason once I learn something (really learn it) I usually don’t forget. This has helped me in ways I am now only beginning to realize. When I meet someone I haven’t talked to in a long time I can remember so much about them I can almost remember our last conversation. So, I tend to ask how they are doing and how something we talked about last time is going. I know others who call a lot for business need to write down something about a person when they talk to them to remind them to do this later when they call them again. I started to do this to help me and just by writing it down once I remembered it, so when I met them again in a grocery store and not planning on contacting them, I remember to ask about how they are doing with what we talked about last. This isn’t asking like I am doing therapy and they have a problem. It usually is asking about something exciting that has been going on in their life.

When you think you have done all you know how to do in a particular niche’ in your field try to apply those principles to a new niche’. When you are trying to find a new client or knowing how to keep your present ones, remember dating. Be persistent and try many different approaches.

What’s the biggest room in the world? Room for improvement.

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