 Welcome everyone to Storymakers 4 Using Photos to Tell Your Organization's Story. Thanks so much for joining us today. Before we get started with the webinar, I want to make sure everyone is comfortable using ReadyTalk, our webinar tool. You can chat in with us at any time through the webinar to let us know if you need any help, have questions for our presenters, or just want to say hi. You will use the little box on the lower left side of your screen with which to do that. We will keep all lines muted through the webinar to get a clear recording that you can refer to later and share with your friends and colleagues. Most of you are hearing the audio play through your computer speakers, so if you are hearing an echo right now, it may mean that you are logged in more than once and will need to close any instances of ReadyTalk. If you have any issues with the screen and the slides keeping up with the audio, if they get out of sync, you can dial into an alternate number that Susan has chatted out into the chat box, or if you have any issues with the audio throughout the webinar, feel free to use that line. If you lose your Internet connection at any time, go ahead and click on the link in the confirmation or reminder email that you would have received. You should have gotten the reminder email an hour ago. You will get a follow-up email within the next few days that includes the full slide deck and all of the other resources available today. You can also then find it on our website at TechSoup.org slash community slash events dash webinars. That's where you can find a full list of our archived webinars including the prior StoryMakers events from this season as well as upcoming events. You can also find them on our TechSoup video channel. Like I mentioned, you will get this email with the full recording and links to what we discussed today. You can tweet along with us if you'd like to at TechSoup or using the hashtags TS webinars or StoryMakers 2016 which is our hashtag for the StoryMakers contest this year. My name is Becky Wiegand and I'm the Webinar Program Manager here at TechSoup and I'm really happy to be your host for today. We will be joined by two really amazing photographers in their free lives and their professional lives. So I'm really happy to have both of them joining us. The first person you'll hear from today is Crystalene Randazzo and she's a professional photographer who works primarily with nonprofits and international organizations sharing their stories through photography and multimedia narratives. She's also the co-editor of NGO Storytelling which inspires and informs humanitarian storytellers from around the world. Her work focuses on women's empowerment, agriculture, education, and she creates vibrant, honest, emotional imagery that resonates with any audience. And she is currently joining us from Kathmandu, Nepal. So we're hoping that her line will stay nice and clear for us throughout the webinar so you can hear from her expertise where it's almost midnight there. So we're really glad that she's joining us as a late night guest her time to share her expertise. Our second presenter today is Nanette Wong who's joining us as the resident photographer at Pixar, a mobile photo editor based here in San Francisco. She is the content creator, photographer, and social media strategist based in their San Francisco office. And her work has been on popular sites such as Food52, Brit & Company, DesignMilk & House. She's also been an Instagram Suggested user to follow and has been featured on Mode Media, Food52, and Roo Daily. So we're really happy to have her talking to us. And she'll talk a little bit more in particular about how to use your mobile phone to really tell stories as well. So if you don't have that top-of-the-line photo equipment, you can use the little camera in your pocket. So watch for more coming from them in just a few minutes. You'll see on the back end Susan Hope Bard from TechSoup. And you may also see Ali Basdikian joining us from TechSoup. They'll be on hand to answer your questions and help with any technical issues. A quick look at our objectives today. I will talk for just a moment after I do some introductions about the StoryMakers 2016 Digital Story Lesson Plan and Contest. So for those of you who are joining us for the first time, we are in the middle of our StoryMakers campaign this year. And for those of you who have been with us on our prior webinars, you know that this is the fourth webinar in our series of StoryMakers live events. But we also have a full lesson plan where you can access step-by-step instructions and short videos and quizzes to help you learn how to tell your digital story. Then we'll talk about how and why images matter so much for effective storytelling, why they resonate so much, and how much more effective your social outreach will be, and how much more captivating it will be when you're using images to help convey those stories. We'll get a formula of which shops to capture to create a strong narrative. Then we'll see some examples of great nonprofit image-centered storytellers. So you'll have some great examples to look to when you leave. Then we'll talk about how to learn how to use your mobile phone as a storytelling tool if you don't have a camera, or maybe you have a professional camera but you'd also like to supplement with your cell phone. We can talk about how to do that. You'll gain some practical tips on improving your photo quality from storyboarding, composition, and editing. Then I'll talk briefly about a couple of discounted and donated editing tools that are available for you through TechSoup and we'll have time for questions as well. So chat them in at any time. TechSoup is a nonprofit dedicated to helping other organizations, nonprofits, charities, foundations around the world, churches, and libraries access technology resources and learn how to use them. We are based here in San Francisco so feel free to chat in where you're joining us from today. And while you do that, here's a quick look at this map of the world and everything that's blue on here has a presence with TechSoup. So if you're joining us from outside the United States, feel free to also visit our TechSoup.global website where you can select your country from this drop-down list and find what local donations may be available to you and what local meetups and resources you can access. Quickly just jumping into the Storymakers Contest, I just want to mention where to find more info about our Storymakers Competition. This is a contest for you, any of you on the line right now. There's about 150 some people joining us at the moment and you individuals can go ahead and submit a short video story or a compilation of photos to our Storymakers Contest at TechSoup.org slash Storymakers from now through the end of May and we'll be announcing winners in mid-June with up to $7,000 in cash prizes and a new camera. So these are great opportunities to earn some cash for your organization as well as some recognition across the sector because we'll be promoting the heck out of the people that win. And you can also learn more about digital storytelling with our educational curriculum that's primarily focused on video production but today's webinar is focused on the photo side. So join us for those things and I want to go ahead and get us started with the meat of today's content. So I want to bring on Crystalene Randazo who's going to talk to us about capturing your audience with visual stories and she's going to share her own stories, photo stories, and photo creations and give us that formula for what really helps convey a compelling narrative with images. Welcome to the program Crystalene. We're really glad to have you. Crystalene Randazo Thanks so much. Can you hear me? Crystalene Randazo If you're coming through loud and clear. Crystalene Randazo Okay, great. Hey everyone, I am so excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me. There's nothing more exciting to me than being with a group of storytellers, particularly when it comes to visuals. So I'm really excited to be here. Today I want to jump right into visual storytelling. We just have a little bit of time so I want to share as much functional information with you as I possibly can. But before I do, I really want to emphasize why images are important in the first place. I'm going to ask you how many of you know this image? And I know that I can't see you and I didn't want to do a poll here, but I expect that many of you recognize this image. And if you don't, this image is Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, and it immediately arrests viewers' attention and it makes them want to know more. This is what photographers and media professionals call the hook or the opener. And the purpose of the hook or the opener is to make people care. Like many of you, Dorothea Lange cared passionately about her cause, the treatment of migrant workers. And she took hundreds of photos of the migrant population. But this image is so powerful that many of us recognize it and what it represents 30 years later. And that's a pretty incredible hook image. I don't want to scare you by throwing down the photo gauntlet of Dorothea Lange. Even professional photographers can't rank in on that at certain times. But before we get into building the story, I really want to emphasize how difficult it is to get people to care. Today we live in this world that has constant visual information. We're bombarded by Facebook feeds, tweets, newsletters, our phones are probably pinging right now, and everyone has a cause. So it's really hard for nonprofits to cut through that and grab people's attention. So you really have to use images to compel people to care about your cause. So Buffer Apps recently created a great image. Sorry, I'm clicking too fast, I'm sick. A great article based on various studies about the impact of images in social media. And I just wanted to share a couple of those with you to emphasize the importance of photos and what they can do for your organization. I'm hoping I can convince nonprofits that it's not enough to slap a photo on an article or on a Facebook post as an afterthought. The image is actually the most important part of the post. So 63% of social media is images, and content with relevant images get 94% more views than those without. Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets, and the brain processes visual 60,000 times faster than it does text. Images are the number one most important factor in social media content. Images are valuable, and yet I'm willing to bet that we spend twice as much time on the content of a post on the words than we do on the photos. Most organizations are using the same 20 images over and over. They are not focusing on images as a part of overall content. Instead they are really just put on as an afterthought. That's why I'm really excited you guys are here, and I'm hoping that I can show you how you can start using images in a more impactful way. So what you need to do for your organization is to find your own migrant mother photo, an image that has just enough details and emotional connection to make people care enough to dig deeper. This image can be about education, maternal health, nutrition. Your cause is important. Find a photo that makes people care. So before we get into the secret formula, I want to know where are you guys using your images? Are you selecting from a small batch of photos that are used over and over? Are you using stock images? Are you using personal images taken on your smart phone? Are you using an archive of professional images? Now we want you to actually answer this question on this little poll where you can click on the screen. We let the slide there because the limitation to the tool doesn't let us put the full sentences in there. So we abbreviated here, but go ahead and click on this, and we want to give a few seconds so everyone has the opportunity to select any of these that apply to their organization. And if there is another, feel free to let us know if you are selecting images from some other sources that we didn't mention. Go ahead and chat those out in the chat box. We have one person mentioning that they have an in-house photographer which is pretty sweaty. We had that here at TechSoup. We don't have that either. We have to hire people externally, and we only do it for special things which I imagine is the case for a lot of our participants. But feel free to click on the links that apply to you and chat in if there is anything that applies differently to you. Carol comments, we know you can't see the comments here, but we are going to read off some of them that are relevant. We asked folks to post photos to our Facebook page. Somebody mentioned that they use their own photos. Vanessa mentioned that they have officers not professionals taking their photos, so people who maybe work there or have a role. Somebody mentioned we used to have an in-house photographer. That's a sad loss. Another person mentioned volunteer photographers for all of their programs and events. So a lot of great chat coming in. This is really helpful. We won't read all of them, but I want to go ahead and show the results on screen. So we can see the great majority are taking photos and using them from their personal images that they are taking on their own cell phone or their smart phone. So that's a big chunk. And then we've got about almost half of our participants are taking from the same small batch used over and over which I know we are perennially guilty of using here at TechSoup as well as stock images which are kind of a challenge. So let's go ahead and keep moving forward. Thanks to all of you for chatting in and letting us know where you are sourcing your images currently. Cool. Thanks guys so much for that. It really helps me to know how to move forward here. So today I'm going to share the secret and not so secret formula after this webinar that photographers and media people have been using for years to share compelling narratives. And I believe that using photos and videos to tell stories is the best way for nonprofits to increase awareness about their projects and raise funds and campaigns and retain donors. And I think you must too. That's why you are here. So the formula I'm going to share you can use if you shoot most of your own imagery on your iPhone. You can use it if you are sorting through an old archive of images and you have a particular photo shoot from a site visit. Or if you are planning a shoot with a professional photographer, it's really helpful in helping create a shot list of shots that you actually need. It's pretty flexible. The only thing it really won't work for is if you are using stock images. The thing about visual stories is that they always have a beginning and a middle and an end. And in the case of stock images you are maybe pulling one image from a series and it becomes very hard to tell a story with stock images. In this portion of the presentation I'm going to create a photo story from a Profit Eye Photographer called Aspire. It's a women's cooperative in Rwanda. And it was started by a Rwandan woman who believed that Rwandan women weren't getting the kind of skills and support that they needed in order to be successful. Here we go. Okay, so I use 8 to 10 images to create my visual stories. And the first image is the hook which we've already talked about. This should be the strongest image in your edit. In this case the organization helps mothers so I really wanted to focus on mothers and their connection to their children and the whole reason why they want to be involved in the organization. The second image I like to use is the wide shot. This is establishing the scene. I want people to understand what's going on. And the best way to do that is to have a nice wide shot that shows exactly what's going on here. These women are being trained in hairdressing so that they can have a hard skill which they can use for income to generate income later. The third shot I use is called the medium shot. And that just goes in a little deeper into the scene. It makes it more personal. It makes you get up close to the details of what's happening. I love here you can see the concentration in the women as they learn how to do hairdressing. I think it's a great image. I'll always include a portrait. And the reason why I include portraits is because portraits offer personal connections to an individual. The personalized abstract ideas or actions that are happening in larger groups. And people generally connect better to a single person than they do to a group of people. It's just human nature. I'll also include a detail. I think a detail is an opportunity to present a little something that might have otherwise been missed. In this case the women are not only getting a skill in a trade for income, they're also being educated. So a lot of them this is the first time they've ever learned to read or write. And I think that's a really important service that the organization is providing. So I like to share that in detail. The next shot I like to use is the action shot. This is what's called the pivotal moment. You want viewers to feel like they're standing in your shoes. I mean here everyone is sort of crammed into this little building and everyone is getting their hair done. I mean you can almost feel the heat coming off the wands as they do it. And I think that's really exciting. That makes people be like, wow, this is something incredible that's going on. And you want to have that shot in there. The final set shot that I include in a visual photo story is what I call the closer. And this is the writing off into the sunset shot. It should show some finality. This case, this organization provides a better life for women and they're happy. And I think that's what we all want to show. We want to show the result. So you probably noticed that that's only 6 images and I told you I used 8 to 10 images in all of my visual story formula. That's because these are my standards. I'm always looking for these 6 shots. Anything else that I add from here has to either be emotionally compelling or add a significant detail that I don't want to be missed. So I've actually added 3 additional images to this story. The first is children who are too young to go to school are actually provided with childcare. I think that's an incredible service the organization is providing. And it also allows the women the time to get the training they need. I love this image because it shows that for mothers life just doesn't stop when you have to go to class. Sometimes the baby has to come along with you and this organization understands that and allows them to bring their child as well. The final image I added to this story is that the children actually get fed while they are in class. And that's really a huge financial benefit to the mothers. So I felt like it was important enough to add. And I think this image is really beautiful. So once I have my 8 to 10 photos, 2 things always stay the same. The opener and the closer are always at the front and the back. In between is flexible depending on where I'm putting the story. So I'm going to show you an example of how I use this piece. And it's actually a printed piece. And you can see I have my opener here. And I have written stories that include the images. Now not every single image that I laid out for you is here, but that's because the story changes depending on the media. So for Facebook I would do it slightly different. For our blog posts I would do it slightly different. But I always go back to the core images. It's just my starting place. And I make the images work with how the story works as well. I'm going to let you read this on your own time if you even want to read it. I just wanted to show you a sample of this, of how we can use stories. I'm going to briefly go over where we can use visual stories. And I'm also going to provide examples. Now the examples I'm just going to go through quickly because I want to make sure that we have enough time for questions in the next presentation. So we can use visual stories on your website, your blog, your annual report, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MEO, YouTube, Pinterest. And there's a lot of organizations that are doing really incredible work with visual storytelling. The first sample I want to share with you guys is The Dobb Stories. And it's a refugee camp and they're sharing videos and still images via blog posts. They're really incredible and really make you connect with the people who are in these camps. I would really encourage you to go through it in detail. There's a lot of inspiration in there. It's a great annual report. Now I can't even read the name. It's been, hold on a second. Thanks. The University of Iowa. And they actually are using visual storytelling. And it's pretty abnormal actually. In annual reports I'm not often seeing people using visual stories in this way. And I think it's a great place for donor retention. So be inspired to use visual stories in maybe unexpected places. It doesn't have to be a straight report. I love Girl Scouts' Facebook page. They put their branding everywhere. It's really fun and upbeat. They're always doing videos and stills. So check out their website as well. Generosity.org has some of the most beautiful imagery that I have seen on any nonprofit. I mean, it is gorgeous. And it just draws you in. I'm perpetually retweeting their things because it's just too beautiful to pass up. Doctors Without Borders has an excellent Instagram page. They really work with the square format. And I feel like they use both graphics and images in a compelling way. Liberty North Korea, beautiful video work. This is mostly about photos, but I wanted to include the sample anyway. And it's sort of different. The Saves It Children CEO on Pinterest is some really interesting visual storytelling. I'm not seeing a lot of people use Pinterest in that way, but I would encourage you to sort of be open to the opportunities of where visual storytelling can take you. So to review what we learned before we move on to the next speaker is find a hook, build a story using the story formula, crack your story for each media channel, and repeat. I mean, your organization has so many stories and you can present them in a visual way that really can interest people. I hope you do that. So as Becky told you guys, I'm from NGO Storytelling. You can email me there if you like. Check us out. We have an e-book that also talks about visual storytelling that's free. If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get it. And if you want to see more of my work, my website is chrystalymandazo.com. Thanks guys. Becky Thanks so much for that, Crystalene. I love that you showed examples of each of those different media and how organizations, a good example to look to of how they are using those on the different media. We had a couple of questions I want to jump into really quickly, just one or two, before we move along to the next section of the webinar. But we have one person asking, how do you bundle images to create a story if you're posting it on something like Facebook? Is it something that you do you just trickle them out, or are you putting 6 to 8 or 10 images in one format if you're trying to tell one type of narrative with it or one story with it on a medium like Facebook or Twitter where maybe you only have one photo that you can actually include in your post? How does that work? Crystalene Yeah, so my best recommendation for this is that this is where you use the hook photo. So you want to put the hook, the most powerful image on Facebook and Twitter, and then link back maybe to a blog post or something else that you can sort of give more information and more detail. So I would use these sort of sparingly, just the hook, and then drive all of my, you really want to drive your track back to your website anyways. And this is a great way to do that, go from Facebook to blog post. Crystalene Terrific. Yeah, I think that's a great point so that people don't try and cram too much in, use that powerful hook photo to draw people to where you really want them to go, which generally is your website. Maybe it is a Facebook page if you don't have a website or maybe it is some other campaign site or something like that. But I think that's terrific advice. And one other question before we get started with Annette, but we had a bunch of people asking, are you getting permission from people? Are you having model releases signed? And do you do that in communities where maybe there's concerns about confidentiality, or maybe you can't show faces as much? So do you have this kind of a two-part question? But what do you recommend people doing as far as getting releases and permission to use images, particularly around kids or sensitive audiences, or where you may not be able to actually use their face? Absolutely. It's a great question and one that's up for discussion in the photo community as well. So for me, I often fall back on what are the organizational ethical guidelines? Like what do they have in place? Do they require a model release? So in every country I live in, I actually do have model releases translated, but I don't use them in every shoot. So a lot of times it's a discussion with the organization, is this something that they want? And if they do have these guidelines in place, then I absolutely operate with them and I get the model release signed and I go from there. Now there's a lot of organizations that don't do that. And I encourage everyone to look into that. As a photographer, I actually have less power in that situation. It's really the organization who's connected to the people I'm photographing. So they actually establish those guidelines for me. In terms of photographing people without showing their faces, I have done that kind of work before where it's very dramatic. You may shoot it in profile or backlit or something like that where you're still trying to get the story across, but you don't want to show someone's face specifically. So I mean I hope that answers the question. It's a complicated issue that we're all trying to figure out and navigate. So my best answer is that I do use model releases some of the time. That's great. And people can find sample model releases and minor model releases in the link that Susan just chatted out in our digital storytelling lesson plan. You can find those kind of resources. But I'd like to go ahead and move this along into Nanette's presentation which is going to talk a lot about using that smart little computer that we're all carrying in our pockets all day long and taking selfies with and shooting pictures of our dog and posting them online with and how we can use it in a more powerful way for our own organization. So Nanette, welcome to the program. We'd love to hear more from you. Hi everyone. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here and talk to such an amazing group of people doing such awesome things. Now that Chris Aline has really gone over the components of visual storytelling, I'm here to really tell you about how to capture these stories using your phone or whatever tools you have handy. Here's just my contact info if you have any follow-up questions or want to connect on social media. Today there's a few topics I want to cover. From phone basics to prepping for a shoot, to post-processing. I really wanted to equip you with a technical foundation you need for shooting and telling these civil stories through mobile photography. So first I'm going to start with the basics. Really getting to know your mobile phone. When you're in the fields and in the middle of action, the last thing you really want to be doing is fiddling with your phone. And just for some background, this screenshot and what I use is an iPhone 6S. So the first thing I do when I get a new phone is I make sure I have all the grid lines set up in the camera. I'll go into this a little more into detail later, but it's really helpful compositionally to have grid lines when shooting. And also another thing to note is really learn how to manually expose on your phone camera. And by manually expose, I pretty much mean that you should know that whenever you're focusing on, the camera will expose the lighting to adjust to that. So if you're shooting a subject, a really dark subject, when you focus on it, the camera will adjust and increase the exposure shows more well lit and vice versa. So that's really good to know when you're shooting to be aware of the lighting on your subject. And for most phones to focus, you just use your finger to press on the subject. Another thing to be aware of is HDR functionality. If you are going to be shooting a lot of photos, you might want to turn off HDR functionality because it takes up more space. However, when you're out and about shooting during the day with a lot of harsh sun or shooting landscapes, the HDR functionality will be really vital and helpful in the end. Next, I'm going to talk about storyboarding and prepping and researching before a shoot. Essentially before every shoot, I like to do my due diligence and really research and prep as much as I can. Whether you're shooting food, you're shooting people, or you're doing engagement shoot or an awareness campaign, always make sure to research the area and subject of what you're shooting. And I like to create a storyboard. And this is where Chris Maline's secret formula can be really used as a guide here when you're shooting people. Knowing who you're shooting, what the photos will be used for, and why you're shooting it will really help guide your shot list. You can see here I'm not a professional artist by any means. I just draw using stick figures. But typically before a shoot, I sketch out what shots I like to get. Obviously, this is just a personal guide for yourself and it's not set in stone. But it's helpful to have that guide when shooting in the field. Like I was saying earlier, when you're dealing, you're in the field, you're shooting people, interacting with people, the last thing you want to do is interrupt the flow and think about what shots you need to get. That way, you can have a certain shot that you want to get, especially if you're using specific photos for different types of storytelling. And then afterwards, you can feel free to experiment and really get caught up in the moment. Essentially, this is just to avoid going home, seeing the whole set of your photos and thinking, I can't believe I didn't get that one shot of the mother holding the child that I really wanted. It seems kind of obvious when you're shooting to go with a specific set, but sometimes you'll just forget to get a really important shot and having the shot list there is really helpful. Oftentimes, some people just kind of discard it mid-shoot because they have it all memorized, but it's always better to be over-prepared than under. Also, I create mood boards before specific shoots. If you're dipping your toes in a completely new style of photography, then mood boards are really great for inspiration. I use this site called Make Trays and it easily compiles a bunch of photos into a mood board for you. This is kind of before storyboarding. If you're going to shoot something specific, you're not sure what kind of looks you're going for or what exactly you need. You can create a mood board with shots that you find inspirational. For example, you can put in Migrant Mother and a bunch of other photos that really inspire you. Look at them together and you'll most likely find a specific element drawing all these inspirational shots together. You can use that cohesive element to guide your own work. Next, now that you're all researched and ready to go, it's time to talk about going into the weeds and really shooting. One thing I always do as well right before shooting is checking the weather. Familiarize yourself with sun patterns, especially being with the sun rising in the east and the sun setting in the west so that you can plan accordingly. This is really helpful when you're shooting specific landscapes and depending on how the sun is going to set and light the place, the landscape or the people. You always want the scene to be really well lit. I personally like shooting during golden hour, which I'll talk more about later, so I always plan for that. I have multiple apps that help me tell exactly what time the sun set and what time the sun will rise. Also, one thing is don't be afraid to shoot during gloomy weather or cloudy days. In fact, cloudy days are often better for the soft to fuse lighting and also help to add a certain mood to your photos. I included two apps here that are really helpful for weather. Obviously, one is called Magic Hour app. It pretty much tells you what time the sun sets and the sun rises with extreme detail and also has a little countdown. If you're really into knowing more about weather patterns, the Photographer's Ephemeris is a really great advanced tool to help you figure out what direction the sun is coming, what time the sun is going to set, at what angle, that type of thing. So it's great for the more hardcore people shooting nature and landscape photography. Next, it's finally time to start shooting. There are a few things to think about when you're shooting. Of course, take a quick look at your shot list before you go and then start snapping away. One thing to think about is don't be afraid to move. Get low, get high, get sideways, and just don't be afraid to really contort yourself into odd angles. And of course, make sure you're wearing comfortable clothes. I always air on the side of overshooting just because you want to have as many options as possible. One thing, you know, sometimes you get really caught up shooting horizontally, so make sure you also rotate your phone and shoot vertically. You never know what you might need to say if you're, like Kathleen said, if you want to use Pinterest as a social sharing platform, you're going to want the vertical images, but oftentimes in blogs or on Instagram or on Facebook, horizontal might be better to crop into square or just scroll better when you're on a site. And also, feel free to shoot the same scene at different exposures, as I had mentioned with the different focal points. That way, if there's a lot of harsh shadows, you can blend photos together to create a perfectly lit photo. And then moving on to composition. So there are a few things to think about when composing your photos. If you're a beginner photographer, these are a few things to think about to help you compose better visuals and have a foundation for your photography. First is the rule of thirds. You might have heard of it before, but the rule of thirds states that pictures are generally more visually appealing when the subject matter is placed on any point where the two lines intersect rather than the smack dab in the middle. So you can see why I have the grid here on my phone is so I can see where to follow the rule of thirds. And also, it's really great for making sure like doors are straight, buildings are straight, horizons are straight. This also goes, speaking of horizons, it's also good to place a horizon on the upper two thirds or bottom two thirds of the photo versus right in the middle. Of course, this is an end-all be-all, so feel free to experiment, but it's a great foundation for when you're beginning to shoot. You can see in this picture the points where the lines intersect are highlighted. And you can see in the picture on the right, we have the deer. He's placed on the upper right, and it's just a little more appealing and less symmetrical. Another surefire way to create aesthetically pleasing photos is through leading lines. The viewer's eyes will follow where the lines go, so be sure to draw attention to a certain photo by composing landscape lines or literal lines towards the subject. On the first photo on the left, you can see the lines are really subtle, but the ground meets the beach area at a vieve right where the subject is, so your eyes are really drawn to her. In the right photo, you can see the roads and the sides of the dirt are all converging to meet in the middle at the distance, which actually creates a sense of mystery and wonderment in the viewer, like what's at the end, to really make them think about the photo. Another compositional trick to go with is negative space. Negative space is always really good in visual appealing. With a lot of photos, people tend to really keep them colored, so when you have a photo with a lot of negative space, it really makes the subject pop more and has just a clean, fresh feeling. There seems to be a trend, especially in social media these days, to create really minimal shots, and negative space is essential to that. And by negative space, I mean just to have a lot of white or empty space around the subject. You can see here on the left, there's just a lot of sky and a lot of ground that's pretty stark to draw attention to the person walking, and the same here on the right, it's just a blank wall and then the dog on the left. And now that we've gone over some compositional tricks, I'll go over lighting. So lighting, I mean photography is essentially writing with light, so it's very obvious that lighting is crucial to photography. As I mentioned before, I like to shoot during golden hour, which is about an hour before the sun sets. I also will shoot during sunrise, and that's collectively called magic hour, which magic hour is the short period after the sunrise or the period before sunset when the lighting is most soft and diffuse. It's really great for portraits and lighting your subject. It's flattering on skin tones, warm, and dimensional. So when you're shooting people, I would highly suggest shooting during golden hour right before sunset. You can see here on the left, these are both shot on, I think the one on my left was actually shot on my iPhone 5 or 4, but it's right before the sun setting. The subject is backlit. It really shines through her fur and the trees are coming and the colors are just really strong, but not, there's no harsh shadows. On the right, you can see that sunsets really work well with landscapes as well. You can see that the colors are really coming out. There's a little bit of lighting to add an ethereal touch. Next, photo selection. Like Crystal Leen said, start with the strongest photos and then pull in all the related photos and look at them together. She went into great detail and obviously her tricks are really great, so I won't go too in depth into it. But one thing to remember is when you're looking at all your strong photos, if there's one that doesn't quite fit in the story, don't be afraid to cut it because you'll probably use it later on for social media or wherever you need one really strong photo on their own. Next, moving on to editing. What's really amazing about technology is how it makes photography so accessible to everyone these days, and along with that, editing. With the hundreds of apps out there, you definitely don't need a computer to edit your photos to have a professional look. In fact, oftentimes you can have a full creative suite in your hand. Here are a few popular photo editing apps. Obviously I use Pixar, which a lot of people have said is like having Adobe Photoshop in your hand and for free, might I add. You can mask, layer, erase, filter, draw, add text. There's endless possibilities. What people like the most about Pixar is the ability to erase part of your edits. For example, say you put a filter on a photo and you don't like how the filter looks on the sky, but you like how it looks on the rest of the photo, you can simply erase off part of that filter, which is super, super handy. Snapseed is Google's photo editing app, and a lot of people enjoy using that. And for those of you who use Lightroom, Polar is almost an exact replica for those who are using Adobe Lightroom to edit your photos. When I'm editing my photos, I kind of have a basic formula of sorts that I like to follow. First, I crop the photo. Sometimes if I didn't shoot following the rule of thirds, I'll crop with that rule in mind. Then I adjust the brightness. I usually pump up the contrast, lighten the shadows, decrease the highlights, and then add a little bit of sharpness. Right after that, I'll put a filter on it. I like to start off with the basic adjustments before you add the filters and other fun things like lens flares or bokeh that you can use in Pixar. One thing to remember when you're editing on your phone is to not overdo it on the filter. Some people get really excited with filters, but you want your photos to look really natural, especially with people, not like early Instagram when there are a lot of weird borders and colors. Also keep in mind that consistency is really key. When you're shooting for a company or for yourself, you want to have a specific type of look. You want the end goal is to have someone look at your photos and say, oh, that came from so-and-so or your brand or company. Maybe that means using a certain filter all the time and always having something like a high contrast. For me, it's always having bright, airy photos. So whenever I edit, I typically increase exposure and brightness. Also, if you're a photojournalist, be careful with cropping because that can dramatically edit the story that you're telling. And that's it for me. So if you have any questions, I'd love to answer them. Back to you, Becky. Becky thanks so much, Nenette. Really good advice. And I imagine that with whatever tool you may choose to use that there are probably great little tutorials or little videos or little resources on their respective websites that can help you learn how to use them better and do all of those things that Nenette just mentioned around adding filters and adjusting brightness and things like that if it's not something that's really apparent to you from using it yourself. So before we jump into the full Q&A, what kind of camera do you shoot on? I mean, you mentioned you shoot with an iPhone for some of your photos, but what else do you shoot with? Becky Yes, I shoot with a Canon 60 and I typically use a 6 macro lens to 50 millimeters which I think it's really great for portraits because it gives that depth of field to really highlight a face of people. So if you're looking to, if you know if you're like a nonprofit, you want to invest in some equipment, I would definitely, the lens is always more important than a body and I would definitely invest in a 50 millimeter. Becky That's great advice. And Crystaline actually echoed that in a question she answered in the chat window. But Crystaline, can I have you come on for a second and let us know what do you use when you shoot photos? Crystaline Sure, long list. So when I shoot, I'm often in motion and I'm shooting a lot of things at the same time. So I usually shoot with two different bodies. I shoot with a Nikon D800 and a Nikon D600. And I cover my ranges. So I have two major lenses that I use and one is 17-24. No, sorry, 24-70 is sort of my workhorse lens. And then I have a 70-200. So I can go wide or long and I have those on two different bodies. And they're both 2.8 so I really would echo the net. And everybody says, what is the best camera I can buy? If you get a basic SLR and you spend a little more money on the lens, it can go a long way. I also have a 650. It's a great lens. I use it a lot and I have a 6105 macro. Becky Great. And all these numbers make no sense to me as a non-photographer but for those of you who are interested in that, I hope that was helpful. For those of you who don't have cameras and are maybe looking to get some, I want to talk really quickly just about some different photo tools that are available to you through TechSoup. I'm not going to go into detail because I want to get into Q&A again. But for those of you who are looking for that professional grade photo editing package, this is not just for photo editing but Adobe Creative Cloud is available with a discounted annual membership available for the professional level, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Photoshop, Lightroom, those are the two photo specific apps as part of their suite of Creative Cloud apps. And then InDesign Illustrator, those are your desktop publishing, your layout tools that you would use to design brochures and things like that. But you get the video, the photo, and the design and layout tools all as part of one package. And you can access that with this $5 admin fee. You get the subscription which is a $240 fee per year or something right around that fee for the full subscription and that is discounted I think 40% off of what their regular rates are. So it's a very good discount for those of you who are seeking that. We also have Adobe Premiere and Photoshop Elements package which is a bundle of installed desktops. So once you get this, it's yours forever for $27. And this is a consumer level tool for editing video and photo. Not quite as robust with all the bells and whistles of Photoshop, but it has probably more than most of us need maybe professional photographer like our two experts today would need something more robust than this, but most of us would not. And then I wanted to mention two sources. I realize the slide is not in here correctly so I apologize for that. But we have two programs that are pretty new to the TechSoup Catalog. One is JourneyEd. And the JourneyEd access is a $5 admin fee and it gets you access to a wide variety of discounted software and hardware including digital video cameras, digital photo cameras from regular point and shoot cameras to bodies of SLR cameras and lenses that you get substantial discounts. And this is typically only available to educators and this was a discount program for them that is now available to nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup with that $5 admin fee. So look at that as well if you're looking for gear. And then we also have a new program with Dell that you can access just through TechSoup.org slash Dell. And a small admin fee gets you access to greater discounts on not only Dell laptops and hardware, PCs and things like that, but a lot of the gear that Dell carries too like digital SLR cameras and lenses and just the body if you already have the lenses. So lots of great resources that you can find within our catalog or outside of our catalog. And again, using the smartphone in your own pocket can be a great tool for you as Nanette exemplified with her examples and tips. So I want to get us into some questions. Nancy asks, let's see, and so maybe I'll ask this one to Christine first and then Nanette if you want to jump in after you're welcome to as well. She asks, as a community foundation we try to highlight how our grants and convening events create ripples in the community. This usually means that pictures reflect a lot of different types of organizations and events. Do you have any tips for highlighting stories that are really broad like this? And I think this question could apply to a lot of different types of organizations where you may have multiple different types of programs. So not everybody just has one programming function in their organization. Maybe you have a program that serves kids and another program that serves elders in the community and another one that sets up computer labs. You may have lots of different programs. So how do you create stories with photos that can reflect this kind of broad array while also helping keep a narrative? What do you recommend in that kind of scenario? Sure. Well, I think first of all there are different ways to approach stories and one of the most powerful ways to connect with people is the story of one. And I feel like organizations sometimes when they are really broad they have a lot of different programs. They try to cram all of that into one story. They are like, we help the elder do it. We help children. We help puppies. We help everything. We put it all together in this one story. And what I would recommend is break it up into story groupings. You want to tell the story of how you are helping children, how you are helping the elderly, but don't present it all on the same piece. If you are trying to do a descriptive story or a founder story or a purpose story on your website, you can do a short video maybe two to three minutes that quickly highlights what you do. But when you are putting these stories out on Facebook I would recommend that you do small groupings. Tell the story of one person you are helping in this group, another person you are helping in this group. They should be separate. Great. I think that is really good advice. Annette, do you have anything to add on how to tell multiple types of program stories? Just really quick for me when it comes to editing, I would always, I think it is really helpful to have one person or one type of style photographing these stories because even if the stories are slightly different you will have one type of cohesive element through editing whether it is the way they shoot everything to tie it all together. That's great. And I think really useful to think about how you connect and kind of keep that thread of this is who we are as an organization connecting through all of your different types of images and programs. We have a question here from Ron who asks, we typically use photos from smartphones for our digital media and social online posts and things like that. But when we are featured in a print magazine the publisher always needs better photographs. Do you have any advice for photography that will also meet print needs? And so is there anything you can do if really the tool at your disposal is a smartphone? Is there anything you can do with your smartphone to help improve that quality so that if you get somebody who says we would like to use this in our local paper for an article that it will work for that? Or do you really need to be shooting with a higher end digital camera? For me I would always make sure you are shooting the highest resolution. Sometimes people shoot in smaller resolutions to save space on their camera so always shoot in the highest resolution you can possible. But there is a point where your camera just won't cut it because it doesn't meet the technical requirements for printing. In that case what I would do is I would, there is a lot of camera rental spots if you do need to shoot some photos that will go to print. I would recommend renting a camera because it is more economical if you don't find that you need to buy one and then shoot using that. And the photography concepts are the same but you are just using a different tool. Great advice. Anything you would like to add to that, Christine? So I think one thing is for you guys when you are setting your settings on the camera, just set the highest resolution possible. Usually for photographers that is raw format but in your guys' case you actually might want to do a high res JPEG because I don't know what software you are using and a lot of the lesser quality software won't even open up raw images. So that is something to be aware of what you set your camera on will affect on the back end if you are trying to edit. So you want the highest resolution possible, just make sure it is compatible with the software that you are editing with. Good advice to keep in mind before you get started. Let's see, we also have questions about iPhones versus Android as far as quality. Have you guys noticed much of a difference between the different types of phones out there or even Windows phones with the cameras available? Is it really a mixed bag? I mean, there are a million different types of phones out there these days. I don't know if I am going. I actually don't know. I have an iPhone that is usually what I am shooting on. I have never shot on the Android so I really don't have experience to contribute here. Okay, Nenette, do you have any opinions on Android versus iPhones? The seminal battle? I actually choose an iPhone not only because of the camera but I also like that there are a lot of other apps that are compatible with the iPhone that aren't necessarily, they don't even have it for Android. However, I have heard a lot of amazing things about the Samsung Galaxy S7 that the camera is really amazing. So I would kind of, it depends I think on what you are looking for. If you have like the latest Samsung phone, I know that is getting a lot of iPhone users to go over to Android because of the powerful camera. For me, I find that the iPhone still has a really strong and powerful camera and I tend to shoot with it because it also has a wide range of editing apps and other apps that help me make my photos a little better. Terrific. I think that's a lot of really great advice and thank you both for all of your advice today on really putting together and thinking about the shots before you go out there in the field. So whether it's at your annual event or a fun run or whether it's just your day-to-day operations that you want to capture on film, thinking about what types of shots you want to capture to tell a story. And of course thinking of that story concept up front, like what is the impact that you want to show? What's your ride-off into the sunset story? Or maybe it's that you want to show that hook photo that's compelling people to want to contribute to help eventually get you to a ride-off in the sunset photo. So thinking about those things up front and then using Crystalene's advice, her story formula of taking that mixed bag of 6 shots, 8 shots, 10 shots, whatever it might be and really thinking about the close-up, the wide shot, the portrait, all of those different elements that she mentioned to try and piece together what becomes a narrative. And for a lot of people they are taking photos and making them into videos too. And I could see a lot of these could be great components of a short video made from your photos. So you can interact with a variety of media types using photo as your basis. So think about all of these great things and the advice that Nanette gave around using your phone and looking at the way you compose those shots, understanding how to set up those grid lines. Again those are things that you can search based on your individual phone model and I'm sure find really quick little step-by-steps of how to set your phone up so you're taking better photos as soon as you take it out of your pocket. So go ahead and chat in one thing that you've learned today that you will try and implement to help improve your photo storytelling. We hope that one of the things that you'll be trying to implement is participating in our Storymakers Contest by submitting your photo story or your short video story by the end of May to TechSoup.org slash Storymakers. We hope that that's what you'll do because we want to help you continue improving your organization's story and increase your impact in your community. We'd also love it if you would share this information with your colleagues and friends who may also benefit from it. And we also want you to take that post-event survey that pops up to help us improve our webinar programming. Just looking at a couple of our upcoming events this as well is not showing up the right slide for me for some reason so I will correct this before it gets sent out in the final email. I don't know why it didn't swap out. But we have a couple of webinars coming up, one on digital skills for older adults on teaching them how to use technology. So if you work with communities of people who are older that maybe need a little bit of helping hand on technology this will be a great course on how to help them. Designed primarily for libraries but applicable to I think anybody who may assist people in older demographics that need technology support. We also have one that's coming up on the 19th that's not listed here that is a tutorial webinar on retouching photos with Photoshop. So if you actually use Adobe's Photoshop, please join us for that event. We'll share the link in the follow-up email as well. Keep an eye out for that email within the next few days. And like I said, please take a few minutes when you're done to complete our post-event survey. Thank you so much to Crystalene. Thank you so much to Nanette. Really appreciate you sharing your expertise today. And thank you to your organizations for letting you take the time to be with us. Thank you to Susan for your help on the back end. And lastly I'd like to thank our webinar sponsor ReadyTalk who provides the use of their webinar platform for us to present these webinars on a regular basis. If you are looking to present webinars of your own you can check them out at TechSoup.org slash ReadyTalk where they have a donation program available to you. Like I said, please complete that post-event survey and let us know how we can continue to improve. We hope you'll join us for another webinar soon. Thanks so much everyone and have a great day. Bye-bye.