Video Answers

I’ve been publishing my Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ) email newsletter for over seven years now, and from time to time I’ve explored ways to bring new value without fixing what isn’t broken. I have resisted the urge to include images in the email for a variety of reasons. I’ve contemplated utilizing an attached PDF to enable more flexible formatting with images, but that introduces a challenge for the many readers who check their email primarily on a portable device (yes, these are mostly iPhone users, and I hear from them whenever a formatting issue makes the DDQ emails less than readable on the iPhone).

So often I’ve thought about how much easier it would be to show someone what I’m talking about in an answer rather than have them read about it in the email. As attendees of my workshops can surely appreciate, seeing something done while it is being explained takes the learning experience to a whole new level.

Suddenly it made perfect sense to provide answers via video, especially since I’ve been utilizing video for teaching in a variety of ways for a number of years. And YouTube makes this all so simple.

Today’s edition of the DDQ email newsletter was the first to include an accompanying video. The question related to the best method for converting a color image into black & white, and I provided an answer both in text and in the form of a screen capture video posted to my channel on YouTube.

My hope is that this will make the DDQ email newsletter even more valuable to readers. Early responses indicate that readers already enthusiastically feel that goal has been achieved.

You can view the video inline below, or by visiting my channel on YouTube. And be sure to subscribe to my channel so you’ll receive automatic updates as new instructional videos are added.