You Can Learn A Lot For Your Field of Expertise By Looking At Other Professions
9 Great tips I learned from Photographers that you can apply when you want people to react to your work or efforts
Hello out there - in a rushed world,
Here comes your weekly permission to Un-rush and Stress Less.
Timeless insights and impulses on how the power of slow helps you grow - in a rushing world crushing your life
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IMPULSE
You Can Learn A Lot For Your Field of Expertise By Looking At Other Professions and Disciplines
9 Tips you can apply when you want people to react to your work or efforts
The way photographers work and think has a lot to offer for how to work and think in any other profession.
Being surrounded for one week by amazing photographers and photography stories at the international photography festival Xposure in Sharjah, Dubai, gave me a lot of input for work, in fact, for any discipline you are working in. If you are an artist, a writer, a business owner, an entrepreneur, an activist, or a scientist - any profession or activity can take a leaf out of the photographers' book.
Excellent photographers are great storytellers and thinkers through their pictures. They observe, evaluate, capture, communicate, criticize, and empathize.
Photographs have the power to inspire justice, welcome peace, explore diversity, embrace the future, reconcile the past, celebrate humanity and mankind, empower the forgotten, deny exploitation, go beyond boundaries, expose the untouched truth, realize the imaginary and demand change.
I am fascinated by the broad knowledge, insights, and skills international working photographers have.
Here are 9 tips I summarized for you from the many things we can learn from photographers that you can apply when you want people to react to your work, your business, your activities, or your efforts.
1. Tell Stories
Storytelling is such an important element in any kind of discipline. Most photographers at the event who presented their work on stage started with a story. And throughout their talk, they repeatedly included little stories they experienced while on assignment or on the road for their photography project. On one side, you have the images that contain stories in and of themselves. That is their purpose. And they give every viewer the freedom to interpret the scene for themselves. On the other hand, you have the photographer's accompanying stories that really draw you into the action or scenery and give you a much better sense of the circumstances, of the why, how, when, where, what and who.
Stories are the most persuasive technology anyone can integrate into their work, no matter if you are an artist, an activist, an entrepreneur, a scientist or an educator.
Take away:
Pull your audience or clients into your topic, product, writing or service by starting with a story that is related to what you do.
Be curious about the world, whether it is in your immediate vicinity or out and about in the world because it provides you with an endless number of stories and input.
Being open to unexpected experiences, or talking to people you have never met before, offers so much input for anything you do. Then you can weave those stories into your message you want to convey.
2. Zoom In and Zoom Out
Photographers are excellent at choosing, changing and challenging their lenses to see and capture life from different perspectives. They zoom in on the details and zoom out to see the bigger picture. You can just spray and pray, but it’s the little details that make all the difference. Photographers are great observers, who see stories within stories and who are able to see the bigger picture and connect the dots.
Take away:
To be good in what you do, you need both, the details and the bigger picture.
Zooming into details means caring, depth, surprise, wonder, gems, engagement.
Zooming out means understanding, contexts, connections, overview, clarity, bird’s-eye view, perspective.
You need to understand where you and your topic are standing in relation to the rest of the subject and the world. We easily get tunnel vision, emotionally locked in and lose clarity of thought.
You want to capture the essence and pull your customer, client, audience, followers into your world by connecting with them through details.
3. Induce Emotion
The British renowned National Geographic photographer and journalist Charlie Hamilton James was wondering how to bring out empathy through the lens. One technique while he was photographing various endangered wildlife is that he wanted to get the viewer, the audience to feel immersed in the world of the subject matter, so people care, listen, and look. At the same time, he includes layers of storytelling in a single image. With the example of a vulture he showed a picture where he brings the viewer inside the carcass of an animal eaten out by a vulture to give the viewer the perspective of the vulture.
Take away:
Think about how you can engage your clients or audience, so they stop and pause and think.
Find the lowest common denominator with which everybody can connect with emotionally.
Introduce a hero figure that is connected to your subject matter with whom the reader, buyer, listener, client can identify with.
Give a different perspective to open up the hearts and minds.
4. Find a Hero
Photographers often have a hero in a picture that helps the viewer to stop, to get pulled in, and to identify with. The hero can be the one tall still standing tree admits a wildfire, or it can be the one bull standing at the edge of the valley above a large herd of bulls covered in dust. It can be the one person sticking out of the crowds in NY with their wild outfit or not carrying an umbrella like everyone else. You name it. Find your hero in the picture and make her stand out.
Take away:
You can define, create, build, identify a hero for your message, or product, or service, or writing so your clients or audience have a hook, something they can identify with.
Heroes are vehicles to create connections.
A hero is rooted in our universal human experience, and a hero resonates across cultures and ages.
5. Focus
Photographers focus with their camera and focus on a subject matter, a message they want to convey. Some photographers are known for their focus on one topic. But the focus for a while on one topic helped them to craft their skills and expand their knowledge which they, or many of them, would then transfer to other areas. From the core piece you created, you can later branch out and diversify.
Take away:
It’s the focus that helps you to be efficient, hone your skills, and build substance.
From your skill set, knowledge and experience you gain from focusing, you can branch out.
6. Perspective and Creativity
Looking at other photographers works gives you a different perspective on a topic or on different ideas you have not thought of before.
The great thing about being a photographer is that you get to explore your own curiosity, explained the outstanding photographer Andy Katz. This is a great thing to learn from photographers, to always be curious and open to new endeavors.
Take away:
Watch the world, study shifts and culture.
Get away from your screen or work in front of you and go to museums, look at art, read books about totally different topics than you are used to, travel – there are so many things out there in the world that help you gain different perspectives.
7. Timeless versus Current
Pete Souza, the White House photographer for Barack Obama, documented and captured the current events with the Obama administration which were important and of high relevance at the time. But the images also have a timeless aspect because what was documented is history and can be referred to no matter when.
Take away:
With current images, stories, media, products, and services you gain traction very fast.
With timeless materials, you need time to be seen and recognized. But then you have a long-term presence and standing.
8. Crafting
Craft is everything. There are people who take pictures and there are people who take photographs. And there are people who stop, and they look, and they think, and they consider, and they build and build and build. They are crafting instead of just walking in and spraying and praying. It’s the little details that make all the difference.
Take away:
Crafting gets easily connected with the art world, craftsmen, working and refining something with your hands. But crafting can be working on, and refining, and improving just about anything.
Crafting your words. Crafting the way you lead, consult, or present. Crafting your product, your service, your cooking.
It comes down to your research, your script, your edit, your fine-tuning, your collaboration, your heart and mind you put into whatever you do.
9. Finding Your Style
Darren Heath, known for his unique way of photographing Formula One cars and races, explains that to succeed in photography, it’s important to create a unique style that sets you apart. Don’t just copy what other people do. Try to soak up what photographers within your genre are doing but also what other photographers from the past (it is important to have an appreciation for what was before) and the now do, and also look at photographic trends. Try to get inspiration from photographers who have nothing to do with your area of expertise and bring in some of their creativity what they do in their world into your own world.
Take away:
Take in all the input, information, and advice from others and the surrounding industry. Evaluate, appreciate, see what fits for you.
Follow your own path, one that comes from within, shaped by a mix of what comes from outside and your own inner north star.
Hi there, a brief reminder of where you are:
I’m Claudia, encouraging and inspiring you to shift down a gear on that hamster wheel everybody wants us to push faster and faster. Let’s embrace the power of slow, a healthier way to live and work. My life has taken place on three continents, with work in marketing, and project organization, currently spending my time writing, creating photography events and growing two communities. When I am surrounded by nature, books, my husband, and friends, I am one happy camper.
You can also find out more about what the publication Un-Rush is all about and who is behind it, here:
https://claudiabrose.substack.com/p/hello-there-in-a-rushed-world-start