Which camera to buy

I get asked this question all the time…"What kind of camera should I buy?"  My answer: One you know how to use.

I don’t say that to evade the question. A good photographer can get great photos with a simple camera, but a rookie won’t be helped much with a fancier camera.

What’s more important is to know the elements of a good photograph and how a camera works. To learn, take a class, or teach yourself by doing an online search for “photography tips” or study books at the library. A great one to start is the “National Geographic Photography Field Guide.”

Another way I answer the question of which camera to buy is to tell the story of National Geographic photographer Sam Abell. Many of the world’s top photographers have lots of cameras and lenses for different situations. Sam Abell used a simple camera with a 28 mm prime lens. No zoom. When he teaches workshops, he hardly mentions equipment. He instead talks about light, or emotions and anticipation. Check out his great book, “Stay This Moment.”

OK, having said all that, if you want a recommendation, a great little camera is the Nikon CoolPix S9300 or the Canon Powershot SX260. Both are small-point-and-shoot cameras, but they have a decent size lens.

If you have a larger budget and want a single lens reflex camera, try the Nikon d90 or the Canon 60d.

Even nicer cameras are the Nikon d7000 or the Canon 7d.

Big budget? The Nikon d800 with f/2.8 lenses. But don't buy this if you don't understand what "full frame" or "aperture" is. You're not ready, and I don't want you to overspend.

Then again, you might already have a good enough camera in your pocket: your smartphone. Some of my published photos were shot with a smartphone.

Remember, the talent you develop matters more than the type of camera you have. 

I wish you great success behind the lens.  Happy shooting.

On photography: understand and pinpoint the news first; then show the issue, not the meeting

This is posting is similar to the first real posting on this blog, back on August 30. Be sure to read that post.

In the same manner, photography should highlight the news, not the meeting. Focus on the issue, not the gathering of people.

Instead of photographing a wide shot of a full Yankee Stadium, show a close-up shot of David Ortiz smacking the 9^th-inning home run that won the game for the Red Sox. That’s the news – that the Red Sox beat the Yankees. The news isn’t that the two teams played.

In the August 30 post I pointed out how many rookies cover a meeting and think that’s news. Sure, news can be found at a meeting, but the meeting itself usually isn’t news. You need to answer the question of WHY the meeting was held.

I was served a great lesson about this as a young reporter. I once worked for a small newspaper that was in a suburb of a larger city with a good daily paper. I went to a press conference that was highlighting how the interstate was going to be widened to accommodate all the traffic in the growing suburb. The larger newspaper's story on the same event was better than mine, and I'll tell you why.

I had a decent story that began with the first speaker of the press conference, then the second speaker of the press conference and then finished with the third speaker at the conference. All in all, it was a decent use of the inverted pyramid. But looking back it was a rookie story. 

The picture I ran was a shot of the first speaker of the conference – a decent news conference shot.

But the major market daily served me a lesson the next day.

After the press conference the major market newspaper sent their photographer, Carl Costas, on the interstate overpass in the evening to get a shot of all the headlights bunched together coming out the city at dusk.

The maddening daily traffic jam was the real issue. Not the press conference.

In fact, the story in the major daily hardly even mentioned the press conference.  They focused on:

- the issue
- what was going to be done about it
- what leaders said about it

There was only one brief mention of the press conference – to mention where a city officials made their comments (and it didn't appear until the fifth paragraph).

Keep this concept in mind whenever you write news or take a news photo – the most important part of journalism isn’t writing or photography, it’s first understanding what the news (issue) is. Once you identify the issue, then you can report the story and show pictures illustrating actual news beyond the event.
 

So instead of showing a wide shot of a boring meeting, get a close-up shot of the speaker who said the most newsworthy thing, made an announcement or called out somebody else.

Or even better, show a file photo of the issue that’s being voted. If the board voted to build a new school, show a picture of the property where it will be built.

If you’re at a boring meeting, don’t make readers have to suffer through it, too. Think really hard: “What’s the real issue here?”

Forget the meeting. Show us the news.

Sit at Tom Hallman Jr.'s feet

Tom Hallman writes a column on narrative writing for Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. Read them all. Seriously. He doesn't often have standout pieces because they're ALL standout.

Hallman's column this month was over-the-top great. It highlights at least two rookie mistakes I was saving for a future post but I'll say now:

    1. Just because it's a feature doesn't mean it's OK to ramble. Tight, clear storytelling is needed in
        both news and news features.

    2. Telling a feature chronologically doesn't make the story more thorough, just more boring for
        readers.

Read his excellent column here: https://www.spj.org/quill_issue.asp?ref=1873

book recommendations

"The difference between where you are today and where you'll be five years from now will be found in the quality of books you've read."   --Jim Rohn

The Personal MBA book list has been updated for 2012: http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/

This is one of the all-time best reading lists for success.  Even though I would rather have an MBA, I like his point -- you don't necessarily need a degree, you need the knowledge. You can get much of that through just the reading material.

I'm glad to see some of the popular but lame books aren't included on the list -- Rich Dad Poor Dad, Lee Iaccoca, etc.

Someday I may compile a Personal J-School book list.  But with journalism you still need good mentors/editors looking over your stuff to help you improve your storytelling craft.  Still, I'll think about it.  Let me know if you think it would be useful.

For now, check out the Personal MBA book list.  It's great.

The obituary photo

Show a picture of the person in their prime. That’s who they were and what their life represented.

Don’t show a picture of the person as they appeared a few days before their death. That’s not who they were.

It's fine when a family sends you a headshot picture of their loved one, but be sure to ask for some pictures of them in their prime doing what they loved and were known for. Ask for several, then you'll have more to choose from.

Remember, an obituary focuses on their life, not their death.

Great examples:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/gary-carter-hall-of-fame-baseball-catcher-dies-at-57/2012/01/25/gIQAJFpTIR_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/betty-skelton-fastest-woman-on-earth-dies-at-85/2011/09/03/gIQAyv83zJ_story.html

http://news.adventist.org/en/archive/articles/2012/02/14/remembrance-persuasive-bookseller-ramirez-93-was-first-hispanic-gc-director

For more on the subject of obits, see my three postings from September.

Organizations need to commit to content creation as much as delivery systems

It was a brilliant moment in the 2011 documentary Page One. A new-media proponent was taking the New York Times to task about how old and irrelevant they are. Times media columnist David Carr holds up a poster of that man’s news-aggregate site and demonstrates that all but just a few of his numerous postings merely shared traditional news stories.

Like I said in a previous post, you can pass around all the content through social media you want to, but someone created that content (story), and you’ll stand out if you can create good stuff.

People 80 years ago said newspapers were dying with the growing popularity of radio. Yet there is still a need for great content to go through the radio, or television, or, now, the Web. What has changed is simply the delivery systems.

Unfortunately, too often organizations make content an afterthought after a delivery system has been set up.

Like former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said (and I quoted in a previous post), there are lots of people who are good at technology and can set up information architecture, but the content creators are even more rare.  We need people who can write good, engaging stories. Eisner said we need to focus on people who can write a good narrative that keeps people’s attention, not just creating the delivery system.

People with social media and video cameras only have tools. They still need to be good story-tellers.

It doesn’t matter if you’re publishing or broadcasting on a social network, a blog, a radio station, a TV network, writing on a piece of paper, or chiseling on a clay tablet, it’s the message that is key.

The content creators who write engaging stories and keep a reader's/viewer's attention need support as much as the talented people who set up and maintain delivery systems.

Organizations need qualified people in public relations positions

The work has often suffered much by putting persons forward to do that which they were not capable of doing.

—Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White

3SP 265

Suppose you need life-saving surgery and you’re rushed to a hospital. But instead of the hospital hiring one of the many qualified surgeons in the world, you are now in the operating room with someone holding a scalpel who is not a doctor, has never been to medical school or even taken a college biology class. “Don’t worry,” you’re told. “We’re giving him on-the-job training.”

Ridiculous, huh?

Unfortunately that’s the way some organizations approach corporate communication in much of the world.

People who can’t write news copy well enough for even a small-market daily are put into jobs where they have no idea what to do. Granted, journalism and PR aren’t brain surgery, but it still takes time to learn how to do them well.

Not hiring qualified professionals may not kill patients, but that organization loses opportunities to put its message and mission into the news media (which one organization's co-founders, James and Ellen White, called for) and connect membership with each other worldwide. Continuing to behave this way means that the organization ignores members and loses the battle for public attention.

Fortunately there is a solution. In each of an organization’s world divisions, there are members who work in the news media and in public relations.

Hire these people.

They won’t need much on-the-job training and they’ll know what to do – create effective messages and images.

Bringing on qualified people will improve sagging subscription rates of magazines, land more copy on PR newswires and inspire members to replicate ministries they have seen in well-written news and feature stories.

At the Society of Adventist Communicators meeting in 2010, Hollywood producer and theologian Phil Cooke was asked what the church needed to do with its communication. He essentially said to stop the “safe” hiring and instead hiring the professionals – the artists, the writers, etc.  They’ll know what to do.

At General Conference Session in 2010, Paul Kim (the excellent producer of the president’s film) contacted me saying: “Ansel, who is this Edwin Garcia guy??!! Every one of his stories was STAND-OUT.”

Thanks Paul. Indeed, Edwin is a veteran journalist, having written for the Chicago Tribune, the Portland Oregonian, and 17 years for the San Jose Mercury News. I used to read his front-page features when I was in grad school (and probably the only student who still got a paper delivered to his front door each day). I still can’t believe he agreed to give up vacation time to come volunteer at Session. We also had Arin Gencer, of the Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun fame, who wrote great features for us. I even had a friend from long ago contact me and say she enjoyed the photography from Session.

See, good content stands out.

Ruben Gelhorn, public relations director at River Platte University in Argentina, once told me that the church should produce communication graduates that understand communication and public relations theory. Technology and delivery systems can be learned later. “Running a television camera isn’t communication,” he said.

This is similar to what former Disney CEO Michael Eisner told The Wall Street Journal Magazine in a 2010 interview. Eisner said, “The creation of content has never been more important.” He went on to say, “A lot of people can learn to write computer code and understand the inner workings of the technological revolution we’re going through, but if you’re going to be in content, I would rather you understand what makes a good narrative. To find people who can make you laugh or cry or smile or get upset or learn something about yourself. Those people are rare. They are rarer, frankly, than the others.”

With an organization’s many delivery systems – publications in print, online, TV and radio – I wish as much thought was put into the content and hiring people who create that content.

Still, in many parts of the world the challenge is getting people to understand the basics of the industry. It’s also a challenge to help executives learn that corporate communication isn’t something you can just put an unqualified person into and expect good results. One person in a communication department somewhere in the world once made it clear that they didn’t know it wasn’t OK to take a story from the local daily paper and pass it off as their own. Slap your forehead, right? And last week, my buddy Stals Kinborg received an email from the Communication director in his region. That person was essentially absolving himself from having to do anything, saying that all local communication departments should send their content directly to headquarters. How sad. People in that need to be connected and inspired with their own news service, too.

I asked Stals to email him back saying: “It’s not other people’s job to do your job.” We’ll see what the response is.

This is a song I’ve been singing for almost five years. Having more people hear it will help if it makes a change. I’ve had people offer all kinds of great suggestions of how to get around it, but those all fail. It simply comes down to whether an organization’s executives want to commit to doing communication well or not. Jamaican PR guru Nigel Coke said, “Communication either needs to be loved or it needs to be dropped.”

Hiring qualified people who are both passionate and talented in public relations would fill the void left silent by organizations not communicating. If executives commit to it, they’re less likely to keep losing opportunities and the trust of their members.