Podcasting

You need to set a high standard for yourself when it comes to quality and don't compromise. Even if it means more work, the quality will be better in the end.
 
Transcript: "Interesting question here. How do you ensure quality of the episode? That's an internal metric, my friends. That's an internal metric. That is all on your belief on what you want to put out into the world. Personally, for me, I have a very, very high standard for myself because of the professional space that we're in. I may record something or record an interview and I have even gone back to interviewees that I've had guests on the show and have asked them to re-record episodes with me because I was not happy with the quality of the audio or because we talked about a topic that is maybe now, even though it's a short period of time, could be potentially incorrect or irrelevant. And so you really have to put yourself at a certain standard and just don't compromise. Don't compromise on that. It may mean a little bit more work, but at the end of the day, the quality will be a lot better."

After selecting your guest for the show, send them a link to your calendar to book their interview. Send them a PDF of troubleshooting tips and tricks. Ask for their head shot, bio, and social media links before the interview. Once finished, begin on the production process.
 
Transcript: "All right, selecting guests and booking them for your show. I'll see if I can fit this in into the two minute timeframe. So it's gonna start off with the selection of your guest and that's gonna be your choice. And that should be the easiest part of this entire process is figuring out who I wanna interview. You may have a bucket list. You may have something where you have an automated thing on your website or it's through a business and the guests are automatically brought to you. It doesn't matter how you do it. Once your guest is selected, what we do, and I'll walk you through our process because this has been a lot of trial and error to get there. So when we select a guest and I have them confirm, say, yep, good to go, we're gonna be there, we're happy to do the interview. I send them a link to my calendar. That calendar allows them to see all of my scheduling dates which are usually for me Fridays and Friday afternoons primarily. So they select which one of those over the next two months that they would like to use and to interview. So that automatically gets blocked off in their calendar and on my calendar. And then they're automatically sent a confirmation of that. They're also within that confirmation sent a PDF of kind of a how-to troubleshooting list on this is what to expect during our podcast interview. This is how to set up your camera if you do video. Here's how to set up your audio correctly. Here's how to troubleshoot your web browser and some suggestions about only keeping one browser open and closing everything else out for bandwidth and all the little tips and tricks. Additionally, what I do is I have an EA. I'm very lucky that I have that. She goes and connects with them. And this is something that you can do directly. You just automate it or do it yourself. You ask for their headshot. You ask for their bios. You ask for all of the links for their personal socials or their businesses. You ask for anything that they would like to share. If they're sharing books or talking about new releases or exciting things coming down the line. Get all of that information prior to the interview. And so when you sit down, you have everything. And once you're done, you just start on the production process. You kick that thing out and you'll be good to go."

It depends on what content you are producing for your podcast. If it is a shorter episode, then make sure to let your audience know that it is a special episode so that they are aware of the difference.
 
Transcript: "The length of your podcast is an interesting question. We've gone back and forth and for me it depends. The answer is going to be it depends. If you have something, if your podcast is five minute tips on X, Y or Z, then your podcast is going to be five minute tips, right? And so you're pretty much predestined to have that time limit. For us, we do an interview format show. Usually we're around 60 minutes. Sometimes we go two, three hours and we usually cut those up into part one, part two, part three. Sometimes we have short episodes, 10, 15 minutes. It depends on what we're doing. If we do do shorter episodes than the usual, we usually frame it as a special episode so that when you see it on the podcast player, it's a special episode, not in the usual list and that lets people know that it's going to be a little bit different than what they can normally expect with us. Hope that helps."

Any type of microfiber cloth is fine for cleaning camera lenses, but make sure to moisten the lens first and clean the cloth occasionally with a warm, soapy dish detergent.
 
Transcript: "Are there any specific types of microfiber clothes that you would recommend for cleaning camera lenses? No, any good microfiber cloth is perfectly fine. I don't care what shape it is, the color it is, whether it lays flat or it gets tucked away into a little pocket pouch with a little hook on it to hang on your camera bag. They're all the same. I would just watch out if anybody ever puts a marketing appliques on, little advertising things that are not part of the cloth, but rather an applique put on it. That can be a bit scratchy. Make sure you always moisten the lens itself by breathing on it or adding a few drops of lens cleaning fluid onto the microfiber cloth. And if you are using microfiber cloths and not lens tissues, lens tissues you toss away when you're done, if using microfiber cloth make sure you wash it out with a warm, slightly soapy dish detergent. Wash all the soap out of it, let it air dry. And you should do that after I'd say every dozen or so lens cleanings, unless you've had some real heavy-duty schmutz on your lens, in which case you might want to clean it off immediately because if that stuff stays on the cloth, you're just gonna be using it to wipe all over the next lens. So again, keep your lens cloths clean and any type of microfiber cloth you want to use is perfectly fine. Have a nice day."

Balance a need for a well-structured script with the desire for a natural and conversational tone in your podcast episodes by rewriting the script in a more conversational tone, taking opportunities to ad-lib and interject, and coming up with new questions based on the feedback from your guest.
 
Transcript: "How do you balance a need for a well-structured script with the desire for a natural and conversational tone in your podcast episodes? Well, Jill and I write the intro and outro as well as the questions that we plan on asking. Now again, there's a certain amount of ad-libbing that goes into that, but the most important thing is before we go live, I'll take all of this, the intro, outro, and the questions, and I will rewrite them in a way that's closer to the way I naturally speak, because quite often you write down a great question or a great line or intro, whatever the case may be, and it reads well and it would look good in print or on a screen, but to say it, it sounds like it was prepared and it sounds written. So what I do is I rewrite everything in a more conversational tone. That's number one. I'll also quite often, we'll go out of sequence if we have to, quite often the conversation goes in a direction where our guest might say something that's a great point to lead in with another question or even a new question. I mean, that's another thing for spontaneity. We have a script and we have questions we want to ask, but we'll also go into other questions. Quite often, one of us will think of something or the guest will say something that leads to another question that's quite relevant to what the conversation is all about to begin with. So those are the whole things I would say. Just write in a conversational way. Do not write overly scripted. Write a script the way you speak and take every opportunity to ad-lib and interject and come up with new questions based on what your kind of feedback your guest is giving you. Just be ready to be spontaneous."

Shooting with film requires you to work slower and be more careful when pressing the shutter button, as you have a fixed number of exposures per roll. Additionally, film has a narrower range of ISO than digital, which impacts your approach to photography.
 
Transcript: "What are some of the differences between shooting with film and shooting digitally, and how do those impact your approach to photography? There are actually several differences between shooting film and shooting digital. Number one is that you can't chimp with film, which means you can't take a picture and then stare at the back of the camera and expect the picture that you just took to come up on an LCD screen, because film cameras don't have LCD screens, and you can't see the picture until you develop the film. So that's number one. Number two, when you're shooting film, you have X amount of exposures per roll, and depending on the format you're shooting, the roll of film could have maybe four photographs if you're shooting panoramas, or as many as 36 if you're shooting a full-frame 35mm or 36 exposure roll. So you have a fixed number of exposures you could take depending on how much film you have. That makes you be a little more careful before you press the shutter button. You can't just shoot a dozen variations of the same picture because you don't have a thousand exposures or 10,000 exposures on your memory card, as long as your batteries are holding up. You only have X amount of exposures, so you tend to work slower and think a little more carefully before you press the shutter button. ISOs, film speed, and sensor sensitivity, that's another big difference. Film is a much narrower range of ISO, depending on what you're shooting, could be ISO 25 for Kodachrome 25, or as fast as 3200, which is a Kodak 2475 recording film they used to make, where the grain was so big you could actually see it on the negative itself. So it was grainy as all hell, but it was ISO 3200. So those are the key differences between shooting digital and shooting film, and yes, it does affect your approach to photography. If you only have X amount of exposure and you've got to be a little more careful and slow down, that's a big difference right there."