I'm a storyteller. I tell stories at 
Making WordPress print-friendly and registering shortcodes.
While not everyone has to worry about creating printer-friendly content, at the Free Methodist Church – USA, this feature is in high demand.
There are a lot of ways to go about it, but we settled on using printfriendly, along with their fantastic WordPress plugin.
While the plugin offers a lot of customization, we ran into one small hitch. Whatever icon or link you choose, it’s inserted within the post content itself, while the natural place to insert it would be to the right of the metadata.
Printfriendly provides a great option for this too. You’re able to use the following snippet of PHP to insert it manually into templates:
<!--?php if function_exists('pf_show_link')){echo pf_show_link();} ?>
Fanstastic. Now we can just stick this wherever we want. If you want it to appear only on posts, just throw it in the single.php file.
However, we use often use custom post types on our network, and it would be a pain to have to put the code in each of their templates.
Thankfully, our Canvas theme has a built-in meta manager allowing us to modify the metadata for each post using shortcodes.
All that was left then, was to register the new shortcode:
<!--?php function printfriendly_func( $atts ){ if (is_single() && function_exists('pf_show_link')){echo pf_show_link();} } add_shortcode( 'printfriendly', 'printfriendly_func' ); ?>
Now, we have a handy print-formatting tool available across our network, with minimal setup time.
It's important to tell your story →
Another piece I wrote for Light & Life Communications about the tool we created to gather news from within the denomination.
The FMC has more than 120,000 members in the United States alone, and close to 1 million worldwide. We want to use the web as a place for Free Methodists to gather.
Why Instagram is such a great tool
During my senior year in high-school, I had the pleasure of meeting Jimi Allen, an amazing photographer, great storyteller and fervent follower of Christ. We dropped by his studio, and he took the time to listen to me and invest in me. Being a young photographer, I was so grateful to soak up everything he said.
The thing he impressed on me most was a challenge to shoot everyday. At the time, this seemed daunting. It has been seven years since we met, and I realize now that this is the most important piece of advice you can give a young photographer.
Recently, Karina and I moved into the iPhone camp. One of my favorite things about the phone is the camera. The image quality is surprisingly good, and the interface gets rid of any complications. It makes capturing little moments throughout the day easy. Most importantly, it helps me see.
You can have the best camera in the world and take horrible pictures with it. Your eye is what’s most important. Your eye only gets better by seeing through a camera. You only see through a camera by consistently shooting one.
What takes things a step further, is Instagram, an iPhone app which allows you to do some light processing and immediately publish your photo on their network. It also publishes to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other networks. It’s a great way to explore other photographers, and a good way to display your own work.
These are today’s polaroids. Fun photos. Easy to take and easy to share. Easy to learn. Easy to see. All of this eye-exercise trickles down into our client work. The tighter we see the world, the better we’ll perform when the moment comes.
Thanks to a tool like the iPhone, we always have a small, unobtrusive camera with us. A camera I know I can tell stories with, whether we’re going for a walk downtown, or visiting a friend’s new baby.
The cheat sheet →
A great list of resources from my Dad’s Wordcamp Detroit talk.
Tinyletter →
A simple, free, service for sending out email newsletters.
Just tell people to subscribe, then write whatever you want, whenever you want, and we’ll send it out.
Recently purchased by MailChimp.
Memory and memories
If someone just starting out with photography as a business, they don’t often know where to focus their dollars.
Probably the worst thing to spend money on is a top-level camera. Amateur cameras are capable of incredible storytelling if used correctly.
Lenses are a good investment, as they often significantly affect your low-light capability. However, many cheaper lenses are fantastic performers. People often purchase pro-grade lenses unnecessarily.
Lighting can be a great place to spend, but it would be ridiculous to run out and buy three speedlights, stands, modifiers and wireless transmitters if you don’t know how to use them. Start small, with one flash, and get to be a whiz with it. Then start adding.
Memory is cheap. Memories are not.
Anyone who has priced out a 32gb Compact Flash card recently may disagree, but this phrase has been making its way around the internet since the dawn of digital cameras for a reason.
Imagine being at a wedding reception. The bride and groom have just finished their dance, and the bride’s father takes the floor. You look down at your camera and see you have 100 shots left on your last memory card. You still have a lot of dancing to photograph, and you start conserving shots.
Whether it’s on your camera or in your head, you never want to edit moments on the spot.
It’s a huge responsibility to tell a story, no matter what the story is. If there’s something happening that you or your client might want to remember, you should be shooting it.
This obsession with memory shouldn’t end at the shoot. Be proactive in protecting your files after the shoot is over. Back up everything. Send it up to a server somewhere after that for good measure.
As a storyteller, you could be shooting with a cheap point and shoot camera, but if your’e still shooting, you’re still telling the story.
Skimping on memory means skimping on memories.
Adventures in creating a WordPress network →
Here’s an article I wrote about the recent web work I’ve been doing with Peter Shackelford for the Free Methodist Church – USA.
When we set out to redesign and relaunch the old freemethodistchurch.org, we weren’t just looking to change one site. We wanted to unify and solidify the Web presence of the denomination’s many departments and ministries.
All the comforts of home →
Ryan Brenizer, one of the best wedding photographers working in the U.S. today, has developed a new habit of starting engagement shoots inside client’s homes.
I love starting engagement shoots in couple’s homes, because the central mission of an engagement shoot is to make you as comfortable being photographed as possible, and to show your real relationship and personalities, and the home is where you’re most comfortable and most of the real life of your relationship plays out.
It’s a great idea. We should try this.
iPhone 4S reserve and pick up →
Reserve yours beginning at 9:00 p.m. tonight for
pickup tomorrow.
This is a great way to handle the short supplies. Finding Sprint phones in Chicago is pretty difficult.
Now hiring: operations manager →
My team at The Free Methodist Church – USA is looking to make a new hire:
The Operations Manager will be the first impression of LLCOMM. They oversee general day-to-day operations, answer phones, consult with WMC and FMCUSA teams as a project-intake coordinator, track budget, work with LLCOMM staff to assign tasks and help keep projects moving to completion.
One of the greatest blessings my family has received this past year is employment under Jason Archer. Our team is passionate about doing great work for the kingdom.
The job is located in Indianpolis, Ind.