Photographer Public Speaking Tips

Next month I am speaking at Grandfather Mountain’s Camera Clinic. As I was preparing for this, I realized each time I speak I am trying to improve over the time before.

Many years ago Dennis Fahringer asked me to be a guest instructor in the Youth With A Mission Photography School. The very first time I spoke to the group I felt like I was not connecting with the class. By the end of the week teaching I was connecting. If you would like to attend that school Dennis Fahringer created a web page for all your questions here.

What I learned during that first time teaching in Kona, Hawaii were a few things. If you find yourself asked to do public speaking to groups here are some tips that I found have worked for me.

Break your talk up into segments. Think of beginning, middle and end or like chapters of a book.

Example of your work

I believe the very first thing people need to hear and see from me is what I do. This is why I am often asked to speak.


Create a visual elevator speech. I’m sure you are familiar with the concept of the “elevator speech.” The idea is that — if you are asked what you do for a living or what your company does — you should be able to give a complete, compelling answer in the time it takes to ride an elevator to your destination.

I have many small multimedia presentations and one of those is a 2-minute elevator speech. I like to start with this and then quickly show one of my most recent multimedia presentations to warm up the audience.

This approach helps establish my credentials and why I am speaking to the group on a topic.



Your Story

While people are interested in what you do, they are equally interested in your story on how you came to this career.

If you were in the audience you will have noticed that I first had you look at a screen for about 7 minutes showing my work with just a brief setup for the multimedia shows. You will now notice that I have gone to a black screen and now visually shifted your attention from the screen to me talking.

Rather than just telling my story I engage the audience with my story. Since I am usually talking to adults, I tell the group how I didn’t talk at all until I was three years old and this was a major concern for my parents. I ask them what this often means about a child.  Usually someone in the audience knows the answer—I most likely am autistic.

Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and verbal and non-verbal communication, and by restricted, repetitive or stereotyped behavior. The diagnostic criteria require that symptoms become apparent before a child is three years old.
—Wikipedia

I then share how ironic it is that someone with autism is a professional communicator.  After a few comments on how I still have some quirks in my personality due to autism I find the audience is much more sympathetic and appreciative that I have been so open.

This takes about seven minutes to share.

My topic

I try my best to keep my core presentation to 18 minutes. Why? Well I think the TED talks format seems to resonate right now with most audiences.

TED curator Chris Anderson says:

It’s long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention. It turns out that this length also works incredibly well online. It’s the length of a coffee break. So, you watch a great talk, and forward the link to two or three people. It can go viral, very easily.

The 18-minute length also works much like the way Twitter forces people to be disciplined in what they write. By forcing speakers who are used to going on for 45 minutes to bring it down to 18, you get them to really think about what they want to say. What is the key point they want to communicate? It has a clarifying effect. It brings discipline.

Often this is when I go back to the projector and setup the topic with establishing first there is a problem.

Then I follow it with a solution.

Next step is I establish another problem.

Then I follow it with a solution.

This method is great for moving people through the subject to me showing my problem solving techniques and solutions I have come up with for the problems I see in the industry.

I learned this technique from Nancy Duarte who uncovered the structure of great storytelling.

Questions

I try to allow for about 10 minutes of questions at the end of my talks. If no one is asking questions, I go into my Socratic method to get them thinking and ask questions to the audience on the topic.

I hope this helps you when you prepare to give your next speech.

Need a speaker?

Give me a call if you need a speaker for your next event.

Speaker Tips for Photographers

David Burnett co-founded Contact Press Images in 1976, one of the last independent photojournalistic agencies, and continues to work on both journalistic endeavors and for commercial clients. Burnett is speaking to the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar.

I just finished two days of presentations by photographers. There were some really good presentations, but there were some poor presentations.

For the past twenty years I have helped to put on photo conferences. When our team evaluates a conference we decide who we will invite back. Some of the team was at this event and we critiqued the presentations. Why, because we might want to invite some of the speakers to our conference to speak.

Tom Kennedy, Greg Thompson, Vivian & Gary Chapman, Stan Kaady, Bill Bangham and Ken Touchton eat lunch after Tom Kennedy did a workshop at the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar on "Understanding the Changing Media Landscape." We took some of this time to give Tom some feedback. We were all impressed with his presentation.

Over the years there are some common things we have noticed. There are things that good speakers do that make us want to hear them. There are things that turn us off.

Here are some tips I would give to speakers of things we often raise:

• Prepare your presentation. Put aside time and work on your thoughts and what you want to share. I have watched in the older days of slide trays photographers showing up with slides not even in slide trays and speakers literally putting it together minutes before speaking. Today those same type of speakers have just thrown images into a folder and not organized them and edited them for the presentation.
• Have a goal. What one thing should your audience know that you feel passionate about? If you don't know then your audience will not know what you tried to tell them.
• Refine the goal to something you can share in the time you have. Once of the biggest mistakes is some people want to tell people all about themselves and even what they are planning on doing. 
• Maybe share one story you did and what you learned from this experience.
• Maybe you have discovered you have a cheat sheet you work from for all your stories and you can share those.
• Sometimes you discover something later in your career that you noticed most other people know, but you wish someone told you earlier about this.
  
• Leave the audience wanting more, rather than wishing you had stopped speaking a lot sooner.
• I have seen only once in my career how someone took this to an extreme. We paid to fly a person out to speak and they got up and read from their notes and sat down in just 10 minutes.  
• If you can point people to your website or blog to get more on your topic, then do that. 
• Got a secret? If what you share isn't like a secret and they already have seen your coverage then why are you speaking?  Share something they couldn't have gotten from your website. 
• If you have a story on your website that you are really proud of and even won a Pulitzer, don't just show this package. Share something that they wouldn't know by seeing the story alone. 
• Maybe you were arrested and detained by the police. While covering the subject. Why did they stop you? 
• Maybe there are stories about how you found the story.
• Something new. The Chris Matthews show on NBC Sunday Mornings has a segment called "Tell Me Something I Don't Know," where the four panelists report to Matthews new information they have gleaned from their reporting. It is successful for a reason--it works. Remember the reason you were asked to speak is they saw your work and are familiar with it. Don't tell the something they already know, tell them something they don't know.
• A lens that helped you
• A camera that you used for this project
• New App that you used to help make the project more successful
• Use multimedia. You are a photographer whose imagery is consumed by an audience. Your clients and publications put your photos into a presentable form. Don't give your audience the uncut or unedited version.  Package your images.  
• Put a slide show with audio together. Maybe you narrate the package over music. Please put together the visual story in such a way that you can play this 2 - 5 minute package and they get what you did.
• Maybe you show 2 or 3 small packages and then either before or afterwards explain some things about the package.  
• Why did you do the project?
• How you and the editors worked together?
• Did your personal project get reimbursed by your the publication that you work for on staff?
• Maybe you do another multimedia piece by interviewing the subjects and they tell the results of what happened after the story ran.  
• Don't Rely On An Internet Connection. If you are at a hotel and you are trying to stream a video you might make your audience wait. This happened this weekend.  
• Put all your material on your computer.
• Know your time limit. The conference planners have other speakers planned. Going over your time needs to be at the invitation of the group, not by you. We have a time keeper who stands up off to the side of the room at 5 minutes to go. They come onto the stage when your time is up. If you still haven't stopped they take the microphone from you and will stop you. [Side note to those running the conference: It is perfectly OK for you to cut off a speaker going long, even if they are famous--everyone in the audience wants you to do so. You will not embarrass yourself by doing this, but might get a cheer as a hero from the audience.]
• We have other speakers that the: audience; the speakers; and everyone wants to hear rather, than you drone on and on.
• If you cannot meet the time frame you will only demonstrate how unprofessional you are and do damage to your brand.
• Demonstrate to everyone you know how to communicate effectively in your time allotment and allowing for questions to clarify some of your points. 
• Plan for 5 minutes for questions. 
• People may need to clarify something you said.
• You may have helped people think of something new and want to see if they are on the right track since you have been down that road.
• Backup Copy. Have the entire presentation backed up on one of these ready in case your computer crashes. If this is your primary way of presenting have a 2nd copy ready--digital Grimlins seem to appear right when you are ready to present.
• Jump Drive
• External Hard-drive
• DVD/CD

Tom Kilpatrick and Ken Touchton catch up over dinner. Seminars and workshops are not just about the presenters. the people in attendance often get as much from others in attendance as from the official program.

Gil Williams, Tom Kilpatrick, Ken Touchton, Bill Bangham and myself all enjoyed catching up with each other at Shane's Ribshack after the conference.

Bill Fortney, Nikon Rep, talks with Billy Grimes. Nikon offered a free clean and check for those in attendance at the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar.

Jody Grober, Rep for Robert's Imaging, is one of everyone's favorite people. Jody is who I have been buying equipment from for many years.

People line up to have their Nikon cameras cleaned and checked by Nikon.

Bill Bangham talks with a student from Elon College. This is a great time for students to interact with professionals to get tips and job leads.

Greg Foster, is a long time contributing photographer for Sports Illustrated, he has also worked for editorial clients such as Fortune, Golf Digest, ESPN the Magazine, The Sporting News, and The New York Times, as well as corporate clients including The Coca-Cola Company, Kodak, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, and Norfolk-Southern Railroads. His work has also appeared in a variety of books and television documentaries for such clients as The NBA, ESPN, Fox Sports, and NFL Films. Greg taught a workshop on lighting.

Vivian & Gary Chapman and Ken Touchton enjoy a meal with friends. When we go to these events we love to go out and eat together in between the program events.

Bill Bangham is a photojournalist, writer and editor from Richmond, Virginia. He serves as director, Media Production: Editorial, photography and Video, for IMB (International Mission Board) where he is also editor of CommissionStories, and International Bureau Chief for Baptist Press news service. In the past he has served as editor-in-chief, theCommission, associate editor, MissionsUSA, and editor, World Mission Journal. Bill loves to blog almost everyday. Check out his blog here. He likes to post photos of those he meets everyday, so I just wanted to be sure he gets the same treatment he gives to all of us.