Visual Aids on Steroids

As I mentioned last week, I am trying to make better use of visual aids in our training. Before I get into the problem I am having, let me tell you about a great trainer I witnessed, and where I got the idea for some of the changes I’m making to our program. At his request, I’m going to leave the trainer’s name and company out of this, but suffice it to say, he teaches some very complicated stuff. I wasn’t in his class, but I happened to be in the location he was using and when I saw him setting up, I couldn’t help myself, I had go in and ask a few questions.

The first thing I noticed was that he had two LCD projectors running. One display was a pretty typical PowerPoint slide deck being beamed onto the center screen. The second was projecting the pages of a workbook onto a smaller screen off to one side of the main screen. For this display, he was using a Tablet PC in “slate” mode so he could write on the workbook. He said that although he covers the same material every time he presents this course, and as he says: “each class is different and my notes tend to reflect the personality of the class.” He provides each group of students with his annotated workbook at the end of the class.

Each student is also given a hard copy of the workbook, and when he was laying these out, I became really impressed. Next to each notebook, he placed a new scientific calculator. Although he expected his students to have calculators of their own, for this class he wanted them all using the same model. He also wanted his students to take notes in the workbook; along with the calculator was a pack of highlighters and a pen. This guy wasn’t taking any chances.

My meeting and his class were a bit out of sync, so on one of my breaks, I had the opportunity to observe him in action – it was amazing. He moved through his material seamlessly and the students seemed to be able to follow along with ease. Granted, everything about his setup was designed to support his success, but still, there was something magical happening in that class.

I can borrow a few ideas from this fellow, but I can’t duplicate his show. I don’t teach the same topic every month, and I’m not always the stunning subject matter expert when I teach. Sometimes I’m just the first person who figured out the new feature. Also, his was a three-day course, I have about an hour. Finally, only some of my students are in the room, some are attending over GoToMeeting. But, I did start using my Toshiba Portege Tablet PC and I redesigned my single slide deck to support annotation. Soon, we will be switching to Live Meeting, after which I may be inspired to design some standard interactions with our remote students. We are also planning to use Live Meeting’s video conferencing features to bring the remote students into the classroom. Of course, my remote students want me to find a way to send them donuts.

Sessions 51 - 100

Well over five years ago, the good people at Centroid Communications agreed to help me build a training program for our company, on the condition that the goal be “to establish a culture of continuing education”. That goal, I’ve discovered, was easier to achieve than I thought. On the other hand, with success come new challenges. Specifically, how do we make this program better? Notice, I said “we”.

The success of the CLiP (Continuous Learning – Improving Performance) program has been a team effort. I’ve written here before about what I’ve been doing, so let’s look now at what the audience has done. They have attended, and that’s huge; over the course of five years, they’ve consistently filled the seats about once a month. Learning isn’t continuous if it doesn’t occur on a, well, continuous basis.

They have provided feedback. Feedback is important for good training and it’s essential if good training has any hope of ever being great training. CLiP’s 1-3, for example, included screen-capture-video; that got voted that out of the program. CLiPs 4-50 included too much material; OK, sometimes I’m slow on the uptake. Seriously, I’ve been hearing for years that there’s too much stuff in these sessions. Meanwhile, I have been trying to include less content but while I’ve been taking a few items out, my students have been looking for wholesale change. Maybe they should be like the airlines and charge me for “excess baggage.” I’ve also heard complaints about the opening music, which I did finally change, and one person still hates the poem on the introductory slide, which I refuse to remove. Sorry girl, but let’s take a look at that:

The road to wisdom?—Well, it's plain and simple to express:
Err and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
—Piet Hein,
Danish inventor and poet

That is the best recipe for continuous learning I’ve ever seen – I’ll gladly replace the poem with any other 23 words that sum it up better.

I’ve even gotten feedback on food. For instance, we prefer Windsor Donut Shop donuts, except for glazed and chocolate frosted, where Dunkin Donuts wins. Someone still insists that “food is not important, I come to learn” but there never seem to be leftover donuts.

My coworkers have consistently praised the quality of the material and the presentation itself; for that I am grateful. But, as I read blogs and discussions, and as I sit in the audience of other trainers, I know there’s room for improvement. I am trying to introduce some changes to the CLiP format. My first goal: I hope to make the training a bit more interactive. I want to get the audience more involved in the training. I’ve promised not to put anyone on the spot, but it would be nice to hear other voices and, as Guila taught us, use transitions. In the debut session of CLiP 51 for example: I appreciated and encouraged the questions that were asked, they raised some important issues that I tried to incorporate into the session, referring back to them when I could. I also welcomed a coworker’s comments about how she does one of the things I was suggesting – nothing makes things more clear than a real world example! My second goal is to expand the definition of “continuous” – I want to achieve a more even flow, a continuous journey instead of a series of bumps on the road. I’ll save my plans for this goal for a future blog entry.

My third goal: I am trying to improve my “stage presence”, I want to be a better speaker. I have long been a member of Toastmasters, another continuous learning opportunity, but I haven’t always put that training to use here. One early Toastmasters project was “Getting Comfortable with Visual Aids” and I am trying to put that to use. I added a laptop stand to the table edge (see above). That lets me run in “Tablet” mode which allows me to write on the slides. I’ve added “Question” slides to the template so I can integrate those transitions and write down the feedback. Writing on the Tablet screen allows remote users to see the comments too.

My first attempt at a more interactive training session worked well. I introduced the changes without being too nervous and initial feedback has been positive. I want to thank Joe Corrado, Guila Muir, the members of Greater Hartford Toastmasters, and most of all, my coworkers, without whom, none of this would matter.

Why I Should Have Taken Physics, or Why It's Not Too Late to Learn

Remember that kid in high school who would always try to challenge the education you were receiving by stating "there's no way I'm going to use this in the real world"? If you were that kid, you should know that although you probably got yelled at for asking it, the rest of us were usually thinking the same thing. Looking back now, this was a critical moment for any teacher as their answer had the ability to make the learning experience more real for that student. If someone had told me in 12th grade, for example, that I needed to understand geometry and physics to become a better photographer, I might have paid more attention in geometry, and I might have actually taken physics. At 26 years old, I'm officially saying "Dad, you were right. I should have taken physics."

Of course, as we saw in a recent post by Dan Antion, 55 is too young to stop learning, so 26 is definitely not too old to start learning about physics. I stumbled into this journey via my Photo365 project. I like to shoot outdoors when I can, but if I can't make it out of the office over lunch, my photo has to come out of an indoor shoot at night. This requires some equipment and some setup - generally a tripod, and lighting. Lighting refers to anything I use to provide enough light for a good exposure, and anything on top of that I choose to make the photo more interesting. So far, I've tried everything from my flash to a flashlight, a simple set of monolights, regular lamps and candles, each with varying levels of success.

In photography, good lighting doesn't always require expensive equipment, but it does require an understanding of light itself. All of the information described by a photograph is reflected light - without light, there could be no photography. When making a photograph, we start with light and use a camera as a means to transcribe that reflected light onto film or digital media. I've said this before, but it bears repeating - don't ever let someone fool you into thinking you need an expensive camera to make good photographs - some of the world's best images have been captured on point-and-shoots, pinhole cameras, and even iPhones. But if you've ever taken a photograph, looked at the resulting image, and thought "hmm...that isn't how I thought that would look", you may want to dig out those high school physics texts and read a little about light.

We're fortunate in that the principles of light don't really change. In ten years, you'll probably be shooting with a different camera, and perhaps a different style, but the light will behave the way it does for all the same reasons it always has. There are three particularly important principles for the photographer to understand:

1. Light travels in straight lines.
   Knowing this helps you determine where to place your light source, or where to stand relative to your light source in order to get a good image.
   
   
2. The angle of incidence is equal to and opposite to the angle of reflection.
   Reflections are never random. Whether you are controlling the light indoors, or shooting outside, the location of your light source as well as the location of the camera will determine how reflections appear in your image. You can be very creative with reflections when you are controlling them, but there is nothing worse than taking what you think will be an amazing photo, only to find that an unexpected reflection stole the show.
   
   
3. Light from a source changes in intensity proportional to the inverse of the square of the relative distance from the source.
   The closer your subject is to its light source, the more illuminated it will be. Balancing the distance and the angles between your subject, the light source, and your camera is all part of the process of creating a photograph.

Those principles are the basis to understanding the physics of light as it applies to photography. Although you probably don't want to return to high school, I assure you that even a quick refresher on some basic physics and geometry will help you improve your photography. There are many great resources out there dedicated to lighting, including blogs like Strobist and books like the one I'm reading now, Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting. Spend some time online or in the art section at your local bookstore (if you can't find it, it's generally the most unorganized one) and you'll find something that speaks to you.

To wrap up this series on photography, I want to thank everyone so far for their feedback, and encourage you to keep shooting, keep learning, and most importantly, have fun.

The Perfect Presentation

I’m filling in today for an ailing Faith. That’s her Photo365 photo-of-the-day over there so I guess she’s not faking. If you follow my other blog, you know that I was privileged to be in the audience last week for an amazing presentation by Admiral James Ellis, CEO of Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO). One problem with great presentations and great speeches is that we sit there in such awe that we don’t pay attention to how they do it. I’ve heard people in my Toastmasters club apologize to good speakers that they were evaluating, they admit getting “too caught up in the speech” to take notes. I didn’t take notes during this speech, but I did write some impressions down shortly afterwards. Here’s a few of the things I will be trying to work into my next presentation:

Join the Audience – The first thing Admiral Ellis did was to step away from the podium. He took the remote control for the presentation and stepped out into the audience and began speaking. The acceptance level in the audience was palpable; it was like he was a guest in our living room.

Forget Bullets – There were very few slides in the presentation and even fewer words. Most of the slides had four large pictures in the corners and the pictures accompanied stories. Audiences love to hear stories; stories are verbal comfort food, and the Admiral walked us around the screen telling us a story that was illustrated by each picture. Sometimes, hidden pictures would emerge and overlay as he was speaking but it never looked mechanical. He was totally comfortable with the timing.

Judicious Use of Humor – He began his presentation with a joke that was absolutely perfect. It fit the meeting, it fit him (it was about an admiral) and he told it perfectly. If you have to force a joke into context, or if you’re a doctor and the joke is about an Indian chief, OR if you don’t tell jokes well, skip the attempt. Several other times during the speech, he snuck in very subtle, perfectly placed humorous remarks. These served to keep the mood of the audience from getting too serious even when the subject was very serious.

Get Comfortable With Yourself – The Admiral has had a very successful career and he’s currently the CEO of an impressive organization. We expected him to be an expert, and he was. But, he wasn’t the kind of expert who lectures like a college professor. His expertise was understood, he leaned on his position a few times (well placed times I might add) but he was totally comfortable with himself and he made us comfortable with him. I don’t know how the Admiral does it, but when I give a presentation, I like to remind myself that the audience came to hear me speak. If you can get comfortable with the fact that you’re in the room, that you’re the center of attention, and that these people want to hear what you have to say, you can be yourself.

Contact – In Toastmasters, making eye-contact with your audience is emphasized. Well, the Admiral did more than that. He made eye-contact, and he talked to people. He singled out individuals and bounced jokes off them, bowed to their expertise by reference and borrowed their support by extending his experience to theirs. A comment like: “I know this happens to you all the time…” builds a bridge with the audience instantly.

I don’t know if I can pull off a presentation as well as the Admiral. Fortunately, I have a speech scheduled in Toastmasters in a few weeks that lends itself to some of these techniques. I’m going to try to benefit from what I learned by watching this great speaker. Maybe someday, I’ll be able to rewrite this blog entry in the first person.

Because 55 is Too Young to Stop Learning

There are two great things about a blog series written by others. The first thing is that we reach a broader audience by including experts from other fields. The second thing is that I get to learn something. The title explains why that’s important. That concept is the impetus behind this blog – that we should never want to stop learning. Today, I’m the guest inside Faith’s series, but I’m talking about what I’ve learned from her about photography. Coincidentally, it also ties in with the previous series on how we learn by actually doing work. See, most of what I’ve learned from Faith, I’ve learned by taking pictures with her.






Patience – We’ve all seen photographs and thought how the photographer was lucky to be in the “right place at the right time”, I can tell you, it usually isn’t luck. There’s research involved, knowing the best time of day, the most interesting time of year or the best vantage point, and then you wait. Sometimes you are waiting for the absolute right light, sometimes you wait for people to enter the shot and sometimes you wait until all the people are gone, sometimes you wait for something to make a splash, sometimes you wait for the waters to calm so you can get the perfect reflection.




Composition – I’ve been on photo-shoots with Faith where I have taken a picture of the same thing from roughly the same place but we get radically different results. A friend once said “you take good pictures, she takes photographs (like the one at the right).” This is where I love digital cameras because you can review your composition with someone else, and get immediate feedback, and, if the light and the people are still right, you can retake the shot. I understand some of the “rules” of composition; they are similar to the “rules” for making good furniture. And, just as I like to visit museums to see examples of good furniture, I like to look at galleries (real and online) of good photographs. Of course, I start each day at Faith’s Flickr site, for her Photo365 photo-of-the-day, but I also follow the lead of HDPhotosOnline, who recommends great photo collections every day.


Effort – Photography isn’t a contact sport, but it isn’t always easy. Even us amateurs have a camera bag that gets tiresome when lugging it around a trail or a city. Throw a tripod on top of that and you start wondering why you aren’t just taking pictures with your phone. When you do get to the thing you want to photograph, it seems, there’s always a better place to shoot from. Fortunately I am pretty bold about going "near the water", "near the edge", or figuring out how to get “over there” but the effort often involves thoughts like: “why didn’t I bring boots?”, “Why didn’t I buy that walking stick?”, “What happens if I fall?” Ironically, I think what ultimately keeps photographers safe is their concern about their equipment.



Knowledge – That sounds obvious, but there are features on my camera I don’t really understand. I know what the results are, having fiddled with settings and compared shots, but I need to learn more about how all these things work together. I know I can change ISO, aperture or shutter speed to compensate for lighting conditions, but when do I want to turn what dial? When do I want to combine them, and how do they work together? Those are things I still have to learn. The photo at the top is one of my favorites and not just because of the subject. I have 25 versions of that photo, most with swatches of glaring snow and a dark silhouette of Faith. As I was taking and complaining about each one, she offered suggestions from her perch below. She explained how I was going to have to “over expose the snow” and how I should “try not to get a lot of bright snow in the picture”. She asked “what ISO are you using?” and looked woeful when I said “Auto”. She corrected that and then suggested specific speed and aperture settings to further my command over my camera; I think you’ll agree, it was worth the effort.


If you have the opportunity to take photographs with an expert, or to do anything you enjoy with an expert in that field, take advantage of that opportunity, you won’t be sorry.

Learning to See, Part 2

Several readers of last week's post indicated that they would like to know more about the training I received that led to my passion for photography. In life, and especially in training, feedback is a gift, so I will try to honor that request today.

As I stated last week, I studied photography at the Hartford Art School, during four of the most challenging and rewarding years of my life. I've reflected quite a bit on this time since, and realized that the most valuable training I received there focused more on the creative mindset than on technical ability.

First, let me say that if you are interested in photography or would like to sharpen your skills, bravo to you. That is a truly wonderful place to be in, and there have never been more resources available to help you in your journey. You do need an understanding of the basics: composition, exposure, light, and processing technique. Any photograph, even a snapshot, is the product of a series of decisions you'll arrive at by asking questions. My inner monologue often goes something like this: "How would I describe this light? Will this make a better color image than black and white? What's the most interesting angle to see this from? Do I have enough light to shoot this without a flash?..." and so on, and so on.

Of course, you don't always have time to ask those questions. Sometimes you have react to the photograph that appears before you, and you've got to trust your gut instinct that you're making the right decisions. People who have to react, people in the military, in law enforcement, in sports, etc. train to the point that their reactions are reliable. The same applies to photography.

I began to learn these lessons in school, and I am still learning them, with every photo I take. The most valuable training tool I've found along the way has been feedback. In school, every project would end with a critique, a formal review of your work amidst professors and peers. At first, this was frankly terrifying. Having foregone food, sleep, friends, and sanity in the process of producing a series of work, sometimes all I wanted was for someone to say "That's clearly the best thing you've ever done. Take the night off". I still crave that sometimes, and have yet to hear it. What I learned was that the critiques were there for a positive reason - not so you could hear what you did wrong, but so you could learn from people with far more experience and varied backgrounds, what you might have done better. The most valuable thing you could do was listen to the advice, learn from your mistakes, and apply a new perspective to your next project.

You don't need to go to art school to do this. I've been out of school for almost four years, and I still crave that dialogue. Social networking communities are great for achieving this. Post your work on Flickr or another photo community and I guarantee people will talk to you about your work. More importantly, I learn more from looking at other people's photos, asking them questions, and seeing through their eyes, and their lenses, than I ever will from looking at my own. Blogs are another great way to engage in continual learning. The mission of Strobist, "Learn How to Light", is one example of a really valuable learning tool. There are easy-to-understand tutorials for everyone, no matter what your experience level is, no matter what camera you use or what kind of gear you have (or don't have yet, but lust over, in my case). Nikon's new Learn and Explore site is also marvelous. Spend a few hours here and you'll be getting training from today's top commercial photographers.

There are more resources, far more than I could ever describe here. All you have to do is look, and you'll find something that works for you. The trick is to push yourself to keep looking, keep learning, keep seeing. It's a wonderfully rewarding process, so don't wait to start - get out there with whatever camera you have on you, and happy photographing!

"I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term -- meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching -- there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster." Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)

Learning to See, Pt. 1

My first camera was a used Olympus OM-1. First introduced in 1972, it was known as a "compact SLR", or Single Lens Reflex camera, although far heavier at 24oz than what we are accustomed to today. It shot 35mm film and didn't have a single automatic feature. Not one. In order to produce a decent photograph, I had to learn how to focus (manually), adjust the depth of field and shutter speed to compensate for available light (manually) and correctly set the ISO to the film speed that was currently in my camera (you guessed it...manually). I was 14 years old and in order to use my new camera, I had to learn how to make quick, educated, critical decisions.

In case I'm starting to sound like a luddite, let me offer some proof that I'm not one. I eventually went to art school, got a degree in Photography, and invested in my first digital camera three months after graduating. Four years later, I use my Nikon D200 every day and I'm still learning, and marveling, at what it's capable of. I work in marketing for a technology consulting firm. I'm very hopeful that someone in my lifetime will actually invent the Heisenberg Compensator and clear the way for a transporter. I'm a geek, a gadget-freak, and I love technology.

That being said, I'm increasingly and almost profoundly disturbed by the direction that digital cameras have taken in recent years, which seems to be along the path of eliminating the need for any thought, critical or otherwise, decision, or actual knowledge of the workings of a camera prior to the making of a photograph. I said "making" instead of "taking" deliberately, as I've always thought of the photographic image as something that is constructed, as the human eye and brain works in conjunction with a tool, the camera. That is starting to change. For less than $400, you can buy a camera that not only recognizes when people in your shot are smiling, but can actually be programmed to wait until all people are smiling, or until a child - specifically a child - is smiling, before it takes the shot. Furthermore, if you somehow manage to take a photograph in which some members of your party are not smiling, you can simply switch to a playback mode and use the camera's face-recognition technology and retouch menu to add smiles to the faces of your uncooperative models.

These features eliminate more than the need for critical thought; on the surface, they would seem to eliminate the need for training, whether self-taught or formal, that leads to a solid understanding of the tool in one's hand. I'm not arguing that cameras should be so complex that non-professionals can't use them, or that everyone needs to get a degree to be a photographer. In fact, I'm arguing for a return to a far simpler approach, more universal approach, something like Kodak employed when they released the popular Brownie, (shown in the image above) a camera intended to be one that virtually anybody could use. "You push the button, we do the rest", was the slogan. But by "the rest", Kodak meant the 3 variables I referred to earlier - depth of field, shutter speed, and ISO. People who used the Kodak Brownie still had the chance to construct their image. To wait for children to smile. To watch, and listen, and see.

So many of the world's most well-known photographs would not exist if it weren't for photographers making their own decisions, instead of relying on the tool to do it for them. Next week we'll see some examples of those, and try to explore the concept of training through this particular lens. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a quote I love, and respectfully ask for your thoughts on the topic.

“You put your camera around your neck in the morning along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera”. - Dorthea Lange