Photo-a-Day #1603
When I used to work in implementation and as a Marketing Support Rep I always remembered the concept of “Under-Promise & Over-Deliver”. So what this means is if you can complete a task in an hour and you know it will take an hour you say that the task could take you up to 4 hours you “Under-Promise”. The person that you are working with expects that the job will take four house. Then when you turn around and complete that task in the one hour time frame you have “Over-Delivered”. The person who was expecting a four hour turn around time now has a what they want in one hour. You have one very satisfied and impressed customer.
I guess that I do this a lot. Partially because I do tend to downplay my abilities. When someone asks me if I can take a good photo I usually say that “I’ve been known to take a few.” When they get the photos that I take they are sometimes impressed.
Today I was at work and I was futzing around with my computer because it suddenly stopped doing anything useful. I had the conficker virus on it and I had to run a number of scans. After that I ran AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy. Both times the searches kicked up trojans and other viruses. So I spent much of the day reading Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I got to Chapter 5 and hope to finish this weekend. I’m really enjoying the book thus far. Some great ideas, some stuff I knew and I already do but other things that I am learning.
I get a phone call later in the afternoon from a co-worker. She asks me if I have a camera. Do I have a camera? I’m usually packing at least 3 of them including but not limited to my Nikon D80, my Canon SD800is and my Flip Mino HD. She told me that the president of the company and many of the top folks were having lunch with top people from a local college and alumni from the college that work at my company. Could I come down and take some photos. Sure. I love being able to do something that I enjoy and I have fairly decent proficiency in while I am at work. I attached the external flash unit and went downstairs to take a bunch of candids while everyone was eating and then some group shots after lunch.
Photographing people candidly is hard! I’m not exactly a people photographer. I need to do this more often to improve my skills. The really tough thing was that everyone was eating and I like to take good photos of people so I wait until people are not eating and take shots. I hope they came out okay. When the V.P. thanked me for taking photos I said, “No problem but this is tricky, I usually just shoot flowers, they don’t move as much.” It got the appropriate laugh and I think she will be pleased when she sees the final outcome of photos.
What can you over-deliver on? What task can you do well and quickly but others think will take a long time?