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Visual Storytelling 101: What brain science tells us about image strategy
The document provides best practices for visual storytelling based on science. It discusses using photography, data visualization, and emotional storytelling to engage audiences. Various case studies and techniques are presented to help communicators develop compelling visual narratives, including leveraging mirror neurons to increase empathy, showing problems to motivate action, and using green infrastructure as an example topic.
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Visual Storytelling 101: What brain science tells us about image strategy
- 1. Visual Storytelling BestPractices Communications Network, October 2, 2013 www.resourcemedia.org
- 2. If you feelso moved… please tweet away! • #comnetwork13 • #vizcom • Tweet at @LizBanse or @Rmedia with comments or questions @RMedia www.resourcemedia.org
- 3. The fun instore for you today • • • • • Science and best practices Visual storytelling case studies Photography tips and techniques Data-driven communications The doctor is in @RMedia www.resourcemedia.org
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- 5. Wanted: professional photographers Wanted:strategic communicators - Artist: Liu Bolin
- 6. - Artist: LiuBolin
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- 13. Wanted: professional photographersWanted: strategic communicators - Artist: Liu Bolin
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- 17. Did this greenroof work?
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- 19. Decisions are madein the brain’s emotional region
- 20. Speak to theamygdala!
- 21. Make them feel, notthink www.resourcemedia.org
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- 29. Mirror neurons: You feelpain, I feel pain
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- 32. Which mirror neuronsare at work here?
- 33. What makes agood viral story?
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- 45. Show me theproblem
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- 52. Seeing is believing! Findus at visualstorylab.org and www.resource-media.org For questions or comments please email liz@resource-media.org or vizcom@resource-media.org
Editor's Notes
- #2 Welcome and thank you for joining us for this pre-conference workshop to dive deep into visual storytelling. I am Liz Banse from Resource Media and this is my colleague Nicole Lampe, Resource Media’s Digital Strategy Director. Many of you already know Resource Media. We are a communications shop working on community, health and environmental issues for nonprofit, foundation and government clients. We are joined by Kathleen Hennessy, who owns her own consulting firm – 8 Seconds - specializing in visual storytelling for nonprofits. She served on the advisory board for Resource Media’s visual storytelling best practices research project and has an incredible background in photography and news-making, having served as the photo editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and as photo editor of the Clinton White House.
- #3 Please feel free to tweet your thoughts about your biggest takeaways and other colorful commentary. The conference organizers are encouraging everyone to use the #comnetwork13 hashtag. My and Resource Media’s handles are up here if you want to connect with me after the presentation to get any outstanding questions, etc. answered. I am also tweeting on all things visual using the #vizcom hashtag and encourage others to do so as well.
- #4 Today, we will kick in to gear first with – a bit on the science of visuals -- how visuals set the frame for any issue - case studies of visual storytelling that worked -- the latest approaches to visual storytelling to inspire you to try a few new things at home -- tips and techniques to up your game when you are not hiring a professional photographer to do the job, and – those of you who love measurement and evaluation, which should be all of you at foundations, right?! – how to take a data-driven approach to this work The last part of the workshop will be a Doctor is in format where we’ll break you into small groups to evaluate samples from each other’s existing use of photos in your foundation or other communications.
- #5 I don’t think anyone in this room needs to be convinced that visual storytelling is important. You’ve watched pictures and video take over the Internet in the last few years. When I did a webinar for the Communications Network last February I gave a statistic that seemed staggering back then, which is that 300 million photos were being uploaded and shared on the Internet each day. Seven months later, that figure is now at about 600 million photos per day. Mary Meeker, a Silicon Valley Internet trend spotter predicts that number will double in 2014. That’s right, in 2014 it is expected that 1 billion photos will be uploaded to the Internet each day, the major drivers being Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. As the traditional media world craters, you all are going to play more of a role as a content provider. Visuals are at the heart of this content revolution. So, today more than ever, mastering the ability to tell stories in new, more visual ways and to do so in a strategic and effective fashion is incredibly important.
- #6 Is there anyone in the room who is a professional photographer, film-maker, or graphic designer? The good news for the rest of you is that you don’t have to be any of those to be a good visual communicator! You simply need to know communications strategy, and how people’s brains process information and make decisions.
- #7 And most important of all, you need to be able to tell a good story. One that resonates with your audience. Yes, it’s cliché, but one that pulls at their heart strings. I want to talk about Robert Gilka, former director of photography for National Geographic. A legendary man who passed away earlier this year. There is a wonderful obituary of him in the current issue of the magazine. He was adored and feared by his photographers. Underwater photographer David Doubilet was once asked which was more frightening, a great white shark or Bob Gilka? Doubilet unhesitatingly replied, “Gilka – if you did not deliver the goods.” What were those goods? Gorgeous photos? No, that wasn’t enough. As one of his hires, Cary Wolinsky, said: “Gilka wasn’t looking for photographers. He was looking for storytellers.” This is true not just for National Geographic, but for all of us here. We need to look for photographers and photos that can tell a good story. Story is at the heart of good visual storytelling.
- #8 Okay, we are going to start with an exercise. Everyone has several blank index cards in front of them. Take one of those, along with a pen to write your thought down. I want you to write down (don’t say it aloud!) the first image that comes to your mind when I say the following: “homeless person” (Wait a minute) Okay, let’s hear a description of the image you wrote down. (ask the audience to read out loud what they wrote)
- #9 Most of you said a man, a raggedy, beleaguered one at that. Like in this picture here. Now, imagine that you are the social service agency development director. You want people to know how hard it is to be homeless, to sleep out in the cold. You want people to give money because they feel empathy toward others, to the homeless. Will this picture, or one like it, get them to write a check to you? (Wait for answers from audience) I’m going to give you one clue: most donors to this social service agency are female. If we look at the science of the female brain, the answer is that this is not the most effective picture, there are better ones to get donors to open their wallets. Know your audience…
- #10 What about this picture? This is from the Homeless in Seattle FB page. Mandy lives in a shelter, desperately looking for permanent housing for her and her 3 mo. old daughter Acadia (Get answers that women – and people generally – want to protect women and children, the most vulnerable in society.) A grizzled man might scare women at their most basic level, in their reptilian brain. This is the old brain that serves as the gatekeeper and continually scans the horizon on the lookout for food, sex and danger. Photo triggers same behavior you see on the street. Women don’t stop to talk to homeless men, they often feel a basic fear there. There’s another basic instinct, though, that you can play into as a social service agency which helps the homeless. Men and women alike feel the need to protect the young, the little girl pictured here. The mother is also looking directly at the camera, a proven method in fundraising. You can’t look away.
- #11 Okay, we are going to do a second exercise. Take another blank index card, or flip yours over. I want you to write down the first image that comes to your mind when I say the following: “global warming” (Wait a minute) Okay, let’s hear a description of the image you wrote down. (ask the audience to read out loud what they wrote)
- #12 This is a picture of the Columbus Glacier in Alaska. It’s often shown as a before and after (toggle forward to picture of before and then back to this slide). Here it is in 2012 and this next one is a photo from 2006. For much of the American public today and, I would say, even more so, before Hurricane Sandy, the big droughts, and other extreme weather we have experienced in the last few years, this image of the receding glacier was what came to people’s minds when they heard the phrase “climate change.” It makes climate change seem like a distant threat, not in California, Colorado, or in New York, or wherever you live. This type of image, or ones with polar bears standing on ice floes are one of the most enduring images around climate change. In one of the few academic studies done on climate change and images in the past decade, Anthony Leiserowitz found that when people were asked in a poll, what images came to mind when they heard the term “global warming,” the majority of responses, such as “melting ice” were of a distant nature, either geographically or psychologically, and mostly of places, not people. Leiserowitz wrote and I quote, “Critically, this study found that most Americans lacked vivid, concrete, and personally relevant affective images of climate change, which helps explain why climate change remains a relatively low priority national or environmental issue.”
- #13 Nat Geo – James Balog – 2006, permission to RM to use this image.
- #14 This is an image from the flooding in Colorado a few weeks ago. If you are working to get people to care and act on climate change – policy maker or member of the public, this is a more effective image to use. Flooding pictures like this one, have been studied and rank very high in making the immediate impact of climate change obvious, personal and threatening - to people’s lives and their pocket books. Our brain is always on high alert for danger and we are immediately drawn to these images. Later on in my presentation, I am going to share with you a twist on this particular approach to communicating climate change, with lessons for any issue that your foundation is working on where you want, or your grantees want to build both awareness and engagement on an issue. Stay tuned.
- #15 Here’s another one. When something just doesn’t look right, something’s out of whack from the normal, you look twice and you look longer and the image stays in your memory for longer.
- #16 People in these disaster images are particularly effective.
- #17 Here’s the final pop quiz. A Puget Sound area foundation commissioned focus groups around the use of green infrastructure. Image testing was part of it. Here is one of the pictures they showed their audience. What are some thoughts that pop into your head when you view this image of a green roof? (wait for response) Aha, this goes to show why knowing your audience and testing an image that YOU think is really cool with others to see if they actually think it’s cool is so very, very important. When focus group participants where shown this image of the Puyallup Tribe Elder Center’s green roof they laughed nervously, as in “I’m not sure what’s going on here and this doesn’t feel right.” People asked, “What happens when the roof is too heavy?” and, “Who’s going to go up there and mow it?”
- #18 Now, here’s a surprise, and this is why testing images before you use them can provide you with such valuable feedback on how to present the most convincing argument. The focus groups were then shown a second green roof, this one in downtown Seattle on the art museum roof. The Seattle Art Museum’s green roof garnered more thoughtful (AKA, open-minded) responses, such as, “I hear it saves money, in heating and cooling” and, “If it didn’t, the owners of these big buildings wouldn’t do it.” Just changing the setting to a business district brought in other beliefs that affected how people perceived the pictures. If a business does it, it must make sense because they are governed by the bottom line, not just by some expensive green frou-frou sensibility. Just like in the previous examples of the homeless and , how you frame your subject, what image you show makes all the difference in perception, urgency around an issue, motivation for your audience to act, or to become open to an idea.
- #19 I am not going to go into most of what the Seeing is Believing guide to visual storytelling best practices covered, but I want to dive into one aspect that I think is the most important.
- #20 Today, I want to do a deep dive into one aspect of the research. It’s probably the most important science that should guide your visual storytelling approach. It is this: People’s decisions and actions are based more on emotional reactions than rational thought Way back when…oh, about 5 years ago, scientists believed that decision-making took place in the conscious, rational mind. Brain scanners turned that theory upside down, showing that decision-making was taking place in the emotional regions of our brain. Emotions guide our decision making. And visuals capture emotions so well. And when people are moved emotionally, they are often moved to then act on that something. That is why they are so powerful in communications.
- #21 Forget the old saying, Speak to the heart, not the mind. You must speak to the mind. We just mean, specifically, the amygdala! This is the emotional center of the brain.
- #22 In retrospect, we could have just as easily made this the title of our visual storytelling best practices guide: Make them feel, not think. I see this as the crux of visual communications. Emotions rule. If you need someone to do something, online or offline, you need them to feel something. Emotions. The type of emotion matters, though, as I will explain later.
- #23 Let’s take a trip down Madison Avenue to see what those Mad Men and Women do. Good ad execs have perfected this technique of tapping into your emotions to make you want something, to open your checkbook to get a feeling. With their ads, they create desire in consumers. And, I mean desire generically, not just the particular desire shown here! They focus on the emotional pay-off elements of their product like that handsome man who will be drawn to you if you wear this perfume. The perfume ad doesn’t describe the smell, it shows you the results. Love. Romance. A man who buys you flowers!
- #24 Rated R romance!
- #25 Rated G romance!
- #26 You could even have a Hollywood romance! Whatever your pleasure, the perfume companies have got you covered!
- #27 So, let’s move to a different kind of racy. Cars. Every ad executive I’ve ever talked to says that when they develop a campaign around any product, cars or otherwise, they start by figuring out what will be the winning image that will help convey the message they want people to hear. What do most of us do? We start our persuasion efforts in the opposite fashion - with words. We sweat over every word choice! But then we spend only a fraction of that time on finding a picture to go with our narrative, almost as an afterthought. Most of us entered the communications profession because we love to write. However, that is the exact opposite way that our brains process information – the visual first, the verbal second. Which corporations know only too well. When you flip through ads in a magazine, you vet the images first. If it passes the sniff test, only then do you read the copy! Look at this Jeep ad. You buy a Jeep and you will be on top of the world. You will buy yourself freedom and independence. These are values that are core to most Americans.
- #28 Here’s another Jeep ad playing on people’s desire to go far from the grind of their day jobs in the city, doing things others only dream of. We buy things, we invest in things to achieve a certain feeling. That is also why people give to one nonprofit over another – because it gives us the feeling of making a difference in this child’s life, or helping this person achieve their lifelong dream, whatever it is.
- #29 Here’s another example from REI. They used to just have one store in Seattle. Now, they have stores all over the country selling outdoor recreational gear. Want to know what led to the explosion in their growth – from when they shifted from selling gear to hard-core mountaineers to selling the same gear to weekend recreationalists? Pictures. One of the interviews I conducted in this research was with the man behind REI’s re-branding. He points to a single recommendation he made to the company’s marketing department that led to all these regular ol’ guys and gals streaming into their stores to buy their merchandise. He told them to change their pictures from showing people ascending Mt. Everest to showcasing your average person doing average things with REI merchandise. When people saw themselves in the pictures, they thought, there’s probably something in that store for me. And you know what else, they showed pictures of people having fun while they were using REI gear. Notice the main subjects of this picture are not the tents, they are the people. And the picture is shot, so you feel part of that circle, you are sitting just to the right of the guy whose back is to us. See the tent off to the side. That’s what they are selling, but you wouldn’t know it from this picture. See the motto above their tent: Pitch it, then play. That’s right, so easy to assemble that you can spend your camping weekend hanging out with your friends. They are showing you the emotional payoff of buying their tent first and foremost.
- #30 That’s why I want to talk to you a little bit about mirror neurons. When I say, make them feel, not think, I’m talking about activating your mirror neurons. Mirror neurons not only have us imitating what we see (you smile, I smile), but also feeling what we sense others are feeling. You are living vicariously. Think of the power of mirror neurons every time you pick a picture or develop a video from here on out. (toggle back) Look back at this REI picture and think of the mirror neurons at work. You can relax and have fun with an REI tent, no stress with assembly!
- #31 This is sort of a crass title for this slide, but it was the end result of this image. Mirror neurons in action. This is a picture of a Peruvian boy taken in 1985 (as exemplified by the 1980’s grainy quality!) by a National Geographic photographer. The boy’s name is Eduardo Ramos and he is visibly upset and crying after a speeding car killed 6 of his family’s sheep. You can see he is poor by his threadbare clothes. The emotion on the boy’s face affected readers of National Geographic. Without being asked, readers mailed in donations requesting that the magazine help this boy. National Geographic used those donations to buy the boy’s family six new sheep, a water pump for the village, and tuition for Andean schoolchildren. Emotions moved people to action.
- #32 So, for my earlier homelessness example, the more effective picture was that of the mother holding her infant. That works. But, here you see another way a social service agency could appeal to your emotions. Instead of showcasing the need through the emotions in the face of the needy, this organization shows you the happy results if you give. Technically, I’m not sure these kids were homeless, but they were low income enough to need help with school supplies. This is a picture of how happy they are at receiving new school backpacks, so they can be like the rest of the kids when they return to school. No sad faces here. Remember the power that mirror neurons have. You feel the joy these girls feel, making you want to donate to give that happy feeling right back to the next two sisters in line.
- #33 Let’s take a look at the Obama campaign’s lessons learned from their image testing. Simply showing emotions in the image is not enough. What you are seeing here are two different photos that the Obama campaign ran last year on their website to see which one generated more interest among potential donors (you give $25 or $50 and you can enter to win a chance to dine with Obama). These were part of an A/B test, where some people saw version A and others saw version B. Yes, Obama is radiating happiness in the image on the left. He’s projecting emotion. But, look closer and think about how our brains work. The image on the right that showcased other people enjoying time with Obama, not the close-up image of the President himself, got a 19% higher conversion rate, meaning people clicked through to donate to win a dinner with him. Why do you think that was? People saw the emotional payoff for other winners, and wanted to be like them in the picture on the right! After testing these two images on a small portion of their audience, the campaign immediately switched to just using the image on the right for the rest of their Dinner with Barack fundraising campaign.
- #34 This idea of hitting the right emotional note is not just about getting people to open their wallet for your cause, though. Many of you may be familiar with Jonah Berger’s work. His work on what makes a story go viral was the subject of a Communications Network webinar a couple of years ago. Since then, he has written about it in his best-selling book “Contagious.” He and his colleagues researched which types of stories were the most emailed articles on the NYT website. Does anyone remember what those were? The most emailed stories consistently generated what are called “active emotions” that people can react to, like anger. Anger is an active emotion, we want to do something about it. Sadness is a disempowering feeling. An inactive emotion. People did not forward sad stories. High arousal emotions, like anger, excitement, something being awe-inspiring or humorous, not sadness or contentment, make things go viral. When we care, we share.
- #35 I want to show you a few examples of pictures that fit these categories – inspiring awe, surprise, anger, humor. This one, obviously, is one that generates a sense of awe. The classic National Geographic-style image. This photo is by James Balog of the Extreme Ice Survey. This is Birthday Canyon in Greenland. You’ll see a lot of these types of awe-inspiring images on Pinterest or Instagram, for example. These types of images get lots of likes and get shared a lot.
- #36 This is a picture that ran in the Billings Gazette two winters ago (February 2011). It made the rounds among Resource Media staff. It was an exceptionally harsh winter in Montana and the antelope were starving. The news story was about how hard it was for the animals to find food under the immense snow cover. Can you imagine telling this story without a picture like this? How much easier it is to understand how hard it must be for a doe like this one to get to her food source underneath the snow when you look at this picture. File this one under, “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.”
- #37 People are drawn to before and after pics. They help us understand a problem, consequences. Our eyes are constantly looking for differences. We love a puzzle. These hold our attention for much longer. And the longer you look at a pic, the more it will be cemented in your mind, you will remember it.
- #38 Humor is powerful. Most of us work on tough issues. So much gloom and doom. People are on social networks for entertainment. If people really care about your work, they will want to share it with their friends, but they certainly don’t want to be known as the Debbie Downer among their pals. Make it easy for them and look for opportunities to inject humor into your work, or ride the coattails on whatever is hot and funny on the Internet. Like Ryan Gosling! One of the more popular memes on the Internet.
- #39 Our female college intern researched Ryan Gosling memes (and enjoyed that research project a lot, thank you very much) and said they really pop during finals time when stressed out girls need to take a break and, while feeling punchy, create new ones. I now know that there is a Chrome plug-in that will replace every photo on a web page with a photo of Ryan Gosling. Who’d a thunk?!
- #40 National Wildlife Federation did a great spin-off of the Ryan Gosling “hey girl” memes. “Hey girl, these goslings are cuter than Ryan. It gets your attention with pop culture reference + a little bit of a clever puzzle element (Ryan Gosling)
- #41 This is a young woman from El Salvador deciding whether or not to make the horrifically dangerous journey toward Mexico in the hopes of reaching the US border. (This is from the film The Invisibles). For those that read the Seeing is Believing guide, you know that one of my mantras was to “Put close-ups of people’s faces in pictures…looking right at you!” This is a sure-fire attention-getting method for both pictures and video. This goes right to how our eyes and brains work. We watch people’s faces – their eyes, their expression, to know what they are feeling. Travel back in time again to cave man days and think about what people needed to do to gauge others’ moods – is that stranger friendly or are they about to club me over the head? We are biologically programmed not to look away from people looking straight at us. So, I want to ask you now, related to this, who knows what is National Geographic Magazine’s most recognized photograph ever?
- #42 The “Afghan girl” image on the cover of the June 1985 issue. She also graces the 125th anniversary collector’s edition of the magazine as its most iconic image. What is so remarkable and unforgettable about the image? She was not anyone famous, easily recognized. Sharbat Gula was a 12-year old refugee at a camp in Pakistan. My bet is on her intense, blue-green eyes looking right at you, piercing you with her unflinching gaze. And that is what National Geographic staff say as well. Quoting Robert Draper, “We knew her instantly, and we could no longer avoid caring…those eyes cut through the clutter.” They were looking right at you, almost through you.
- #43 This idea of searching people’s faces to determine how they are feeling is especially true with babies. We instinctually look at babies to determine if they are doing okay. Researchers have found this to be true not only for women with their maternal instincts, but also with men, and many speculate it goes back to our earliest tribal days when all in the community had to look out for the babies, so that they might survive to live past the age of 5. This is an example of an ad from Earthjustice where they played on public’s concern for babies, our future generations, very effectively. You look to the baby’s face and go, ah, he’s okay, and then, voila, the text they want you to read is right below the baby’s face, so your eyes naturally go there next. It is a perfectly executed ad.
- #44 Now, let’s say you want to grab the attention of your audience and get them to actually take action on your issue. I’m going to show you two images and ask you which one would be the most effective. Your job is to make people feel the issue of climate change is important and that they can do something about it. This one? You know the power of flooding images, especially with the victims shown.
- #45 …or this one? This is a photo of a teacher on a school roof in Coral Gables, Florida that was painted white to reflect the heat. It saved the school $35,000 a year in energy costs. This picture needs a caption for full impact, right?! Or both? Raise your hands if you think the first image would be best. Second image: Or showing both? The best answer is to make room for both images. You need threats to grab attention and signal that there is a problem. But, then you need to show solutions photos to signal to people that there is hope, that it is worth their while to engage, that this is not an overwhelming, unsolvable problem. The research I have seen on climate impacts images shows that when presented without an accompanying solution, they play a huge role in making people feel they can do nothing about climate change. That said, if you can only use one photo, go with the solutions photo and tap into people’s natural bias towards optimism, rather than risking a photo that will simply cause people to disengage out of feeling helpless over such a large-scale problem.
- #46 Here’s an example from the public health sector. Some of you may know Joanne Edgar who has been a part of the Communications Network from the very beginning. She was formerly the communications director at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. While she was there, the Foundation funded a tropical research program, which included an effort aimed at eliminating trachoma by 2020. Trachoma is a bacterial disease spread by flies and lack of sanitation. People who are infected as children can become blind from the disease later in life. They did an excellent job of achieving the right balance visually. Just showing photos of happy, hopeful faces – the “let’s just be positive” line of thinking wasn’t right for a disease that causes a lot of suffering.
- #47 They knew they didn't want to focus on the stereotype of the African child – the typical one of dirty faces caked with mucus and covered in flies. As Edgar stated, “Photos were so powerful…Yet the dirty-face image is so disrespectful to communities that have to walk hours to get water.” So they tried to avoid those images and tell that part of the story in words. These types of photos are also so horrifying that people will literally turn away from the images, distance themselves from the issue as a coping mechanism.
- #48 They got the image balance right, with the overarching impression being one of joy – joy in the faces of the children, their seeing eyes, a feeling that you, the viewer, want to help preserve. No exploitation of the people they seek to help, and no shaming of their U.S. audience they hoped to inspire. You get a happy feeling from knowing that these kids are avoiding this terrible fate. They’re happy, you’re happy. Mirror neurons at work yet again. Humans love positive photos, more so than negative photos. They play into our optimism bias. We are a hopeful species. We are more likely to share them on social networks as well, which Nicole will tell you more about
- #49 I want to show you a wonderful example of foundation visual storytelling. Open Society Foundations. I saw a few people who signed up for this workshop were from Open Society. Want to raise your hands? http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/ I love the visual storytelling of your grant work.
- #50 Immediately, you see there are real people affected by policies.
- #51 The pictures aren’t of the foundation officers or even of their grantees, but are of the people being served. They are the hero of the story.
- #52 My final bit of advice is a number: 1,331. That is the number of photos taken by National Geographic photographers for every one that is published. While we may not sift through 1,331 photos for every project, we should embrace the message here: That we parse over our images as carefully as we do our words. Acknowledge that four hours searching for the perfect photo is OKAY, just like it might be for you to spend that amount of time on the accompanying text.
- #53 Thank you!