John DeMato
Photographer & Visual Story Expert
Leading Behind the Lens
Episode Summary
When I signed a copy of my book for John DeMato, I said: “You make moments matter with your amazing work!” I later realized John displays a form of leadership I had not considered before—leadership behind his camera lens. I sat down with John to discuss why this often-overlooked form of leadership matters.
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Bio
John DeMato is a branded lifestyle portrait + virtual photographer who collaborates with expert-based business owners to create an emotional connection with their audiences through persuasive visual storytelling.
More than just a photographer, John sets his clients up for success beyond the portrait session by strategizing with them on how to best leverage their image content for every touchpoint across their online presence – website, social media, presentations, digital ads, blogs, etc.
John spent more than 20 years working as a television producer for Maury, Yahoo, reality shows, and private corporate clients. John is a C-Suite Network Advisor and a Photography Sponsor for the NYC Chapter of the National Speakers Association. He also educates photographers on creating a memorable online presence as a guest contributor for several photography websites.
Website
https://www.johndemato.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndemato/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/dematophoto
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/john.a.demato/
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/dematophoto/
Leadership Quote
The best way to lead and influence others to get past what’s holding them back? Show, don’t tell.
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Transcript
The key to sustainable leadership lies in the ability to thrive during uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Grand Heron International brings you the Coaching Assistance Program, giving your employees on-demand coaching to manage through a challenging situation and arrive at a solution. Visit GrandHeronInternational.Ca/Podcast to learn more.
This podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network, turning the volume up on business.
Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact through the power of executive coaching, facilitation, and professional speaking.One of the principles of the Keep Leading!® Podcast is that almost everyone has the capacity to lead. To that end, I explore different facets of leadership on this show. Today, I will share a different type of leadership. I’m calling this Leading Behind the Lens. I’m going to interview John DeMato. After John did work for me, I wrote a note in the book I signed for him that said “You make moments matter.” How does John make moments matter? John is a branded lifestyle portrait and virtual photographer who collaborates with expert-based business owners to create an emotional connection with their audiences through persuasive visual storytelling.
Here to tell us more is John DeMato. John, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
John DeMato:
Well, thank you, Eddie. And after that wonderful intro, I am even happier to be here. Thanks for having me.
Eddie Turner:
Well, John, tell me a little bit more about yourself.
John DeMato:
Sure. So, as you mentioned, I work with experts, speakers, trainers, authors, consultants, different types of business owners, some in the executive suite and what we try to do is capture image content that visually punctuates the sentiment of every single story they want to tell, whether it’s a story of vulnerability all the way up to and including moments of joy and success and happiness and everything in between.
Eddie Turner:
Now, that’s what you do but what about you. Tell me about John.
John DeMato:
Me? I’m just some crazy kid from Astoria, Queens, that one day decided that working for someone else wasn’t my cup of tea anymore. So, I decided to jump out the window, quit my job and start a business while never having the thought of starting a business prior to that point.
Eddie Turner:
And here you are.
John DeMato:
Here I am.
Eddie Turner:
Now, you refer to it as branded lifestyle photography. What is that?
John DeMato:
Branded lifestyle portrait photography is the image content that acts as a fly on the wall. It’s candid photography that captures my clients’ day-to-day activities so that it gives their audience the opportunity to get a sense of what working with them looks like, what brainstorming ideas looks like for my clients, to give their audience the opportunity to get an entry point into their life, to give them an opportunity to engage their content. We want to create relationships as business owners, especially as expert business owners. And the way to do that is by demystifying your processes for those that you serve. And visually, you can do that by capturing what your world looks like and then offer that up to your audience to give them that understanding.
Eddie Turner:
How is this different from regular photography?
John DeMato:
Well, the difference between a branded lifestyle portrait and say a headshot is that the onus in the headshot is to look directly into the camera. Now, those images are also included in a branded lifestyle portrait session but the stress is on capturing images that allow people a sense to feel welcomed into the frame. So, instead of just looking into the camera which is more of a “look at me” kind of photo – “Hey, everybody, look at me” – It’s more of a “Hey, come with me on my journey as I show you how I can help transform your life” and whatever the area of expertise for that particular person is.
Eddie Turner:
So, more than just a normal head shot. I love your phrase. You invite the viewer into the frame and you’re giving people a glimpse into the person’s daily life, their activities and revealing a different side of them.
John DeMato:
Yes. In addition to that, Eddie, the added layer, the vanilla frosting, if you will, is also illustrating that expert’s personality, areas of their personality through their facial expression and their body language and the way that they’re engaging whatever lifestyle activity that they are participating in while that photo was being taken. So, it not only shows the audience what they do, how they do it and why they do it but it also gives them a sense of who that person is simply based on the emotional sentiment created by that person’s expression and body language. So, it all kind of works together to really inform their audience of what this person’s all about.
Eddie Turner:
If I’m a leader, why does that matter to me?
John DeMato:
As a leader, it’s important to illustrate your expertise. It’s important to illustrate your level of confidence in your own ability to help solve people’s problems in the way in which you solve them. And when you reinforce your powerful words that you share through your content and your website and the way you express yourself on a podcast such as this, the way that you visually punctuate all of those sentiments that you want to impart upon that audience and inspire them to want to learn more about you, to captivate their attention is through the way in which you express those aspects in your image content, through your expression, through your posture as well as, again, the activities in which you’re participating in the photo.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you, John. It’s interesting because we have always heard the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words.” And that might even be more true today as we live in the world of Instagram or Insta as the young people would say, you don’t say the whole word anymore, right?
John DeMato:
Yeah. No, no, that’s too hard. It’s too difficult to say the extra four letters. Yes, I know.
Eddie Turner:
I just show my age when I say the whole word but it puts an emphasis on what you do for leaders in that of capturing the essence of them in a way that perhaps people are not used to seeing. And I normally say the website at the end of the session but if you are listening to John and I talk right now, I invite you to go to JohnDeMato.com as we’re speaking. Certainly, we’re going to drop the links to the episode so that you can press that on your devices and go directly to it and see exactly what he’s talking about and how John brings people to life.And John, normally I don’t ask people for a client list but in your case, when we’re talking about this, give people just a glimpse of some of the big names you’ve worked with that you’ve helped bring to life.
John DeMato:
Well, I photographed Seth Godin once at an event. I’ve worked with a lot of people in the National Speakers Association, people such as former past president. I photographed Ron Carr speaking. I photographed people like Sylvie de Giusto and Phil Jones and people like that. I’ve also worked with C-Suite folks such as Jeff Hayzlett and dozens and dozens of other experts along the line within both of those communities. And it’s pretty inspiring working with folks that are very successful and very driven and passionate and very generous with their time with other emerging experts coming up the pipeline. So, I’m very lucky. Very grateful.
Eddie Turner:
So, from the biggest names in marketing to the biggest names in the National Speakers Association, the most recognized brand of top speakers in the world belongs to that association, the C-Suite Network where the executives are and where people who serve executives are, you have worked with all of them. In fact, John DeMato has gone from being someone we did not know to being the only person you call when you have an event as a speaker, when you have an event as a facilitator, trainer, coach. He’s the person who we all are using.
John DeMato:
Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Definitely. I have to say, Eddie, it’s been quite a journey. I remember when I first started working as a photography sponsor or volunteering as a photography sponsor for the New York City chapter of the National Speakers Association and what I now know is that I essentially was working with an all-star team of people. And it’s never lost on me how fortunate I am to be in that particular chapter.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, the New York City chapter of National Speakers Association, I’m partial. That’s where you and I met. That’s one of the chapters I belong to. It is the rockstar chapter. I didn’t know that when I joined. I joined because I was on a contract in New York and I couldn’t be a part of my what was at the time my home chapter. And I immediately fell in love with them. They adopted me and took me in. And you and I met as a result. So, I’m even more grateful that I joined that chapter.
John DeMato:
That’s right. And I got a book out of the deal. So, I was pretty psyched about that.
Eddie Turner:
And so, John, when I talk about leading behind the lens, you’re taking the lead and helping leaders present their best self as a leader but you’re leading when you’re working with them and it’s an aspect of leadership that people may not easily recognize because you’re influencing them. Can you talk about that?
John DeMato:
Absolutely. It’s a dance. Any time that I work with someone in front of the camera, there is a dance of establishing rapport and having a conversation going on and essentially getting the person comfortable enough because for many folks, regardless of what their status is, how successful they are, people have certain things that kind of bother them about the way they look. So, one of the things that I work on is put on the psychology hat and work them that way. Another way is having conversations with them to get them comfortable because the effort is made to get someone in a place where their guard is dropped, they are open and receptive to direction, which I give heavy, heavy, heavy amounts of direction in any session that I shoot and get them in a place where they’re revealing authentic honest expressions of aspects of their personality. And there is a lot of work that goes into that. And then on top of that, there is the marketing aspect. I don’t just show up with a camera and start snapping away the shutter button. There is a heavy amount of strategy that goes on beforehand because I need to know what are these photos for, who are your people, what are you all about, what are the nuances and wrinkles in your processes that we can illustrate visually in these photos so that they are the most honest representation of how you live your life and the work that you do for others in service. So, there’s a lot involved before and during the session.
Eddie Turner:
Indeed. And so, you take these people who are used to being in command, being in charge and they really submit themselves to you and the final product is flawless. So, you are exemplifying leading through influence as you lead behind the lens.
John DeMato:
And, Eddie, you know that is true but also one of the things that I’ve noticed is these particular experts, especially the higher up the food chain you go and the level of success that they have, the more open that they are to my direction and the more not only open but encourage it because they don’t want to have to think about how these images are created, there’s a level of trust and that only comes over time through these conversations, through the strategy and through the photos that we’re creating throughout the session. We spot check all these photos throughout because that is what helps build that trust so that they are able to let me do my thing and get what we need for them.
Eddie Turner:
Well done, John. And is there a lesson in this for other photographers who may not see themselves as leaders?
John DeMato:
Yeah. One of the biggest lessons that I had to learn was number one, put the blinders on and stop worrying about what every other photographer is doing because that prevents you from tapping within yourself to find what makes your images uniquely yours and that will have a direct result on the deliverables that you create for your audience. The more that you are in tune with who you are and your own confidence in your work behind the camera, that will naturally elevate the quality of your work to a place that it would not normally go if you just continue to mimic what other photographers are doing. And the other big thing in terms of leadership is to truly understand the problems that you’re solving with the images that you capture. If you do not know what these photos are serving your clients, then it’s basically chasing vanity-driven images and creating pretty photos, absolutely, but if they have no soul, if they have no essence, if they have no purpose, then these photos are best served for a magazine spread and not for your client’s online presence.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you, John.We’re talking to John DeMato. John leads behind the lens as a branded lifestyle portrait photographer. We’ll have more with John right after this.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
This is Karen Jacobsen, the GPS Girl, and you have reached your destination because you’re listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
We’re back. I’m talking to John DeMato and we’re talking about how he leads behind the lens as a branded lifestyle portrait photographer.John, before the break we talked about what branded lifestyle photography is and why it matters to leaders and quite frankly, why it’s a form of leadership that many people may not easily recognize. I want to switch gears here just a little bit and talk about something else that you are doing that might matter to many of the people listening to our conversation. Everybody doesn’t have to be a professional photographer. You’ve launched a program where you’re teaching people how to use that iPhone that they have in their hands better to be an everyday photographer. Can you talk about that?
John DeMato:
Sure. It is called Shoot It Yourself: Develop a Portrait Photographer’s Eye with Your Phone. And I launched it earlier this year due largely because of the pandemic because of a lot of people sheltering in place and even as things start to lift, people’s reluctance to have strangers in their house taking photos of them. So, what I wanted to do is create an opportunity for experts and people who really just want to have high-quality self-portraits so that they can use them to promote their business, their services and their brands online but still have a level of artistry to their photos. So, what I did was create a nine-module course that breaks down the bare bone basics of how to take a well-composed image. And I’ve fortunately gotten a lot of positive reception from it. The feedback has been wonderful. There’s been a lot of people that are “Wow! I didn’t even know this was on my phone. I had no idea all I had to do was hit a button.” And I’m like “I know, right?”
Eddie Turner:
Right.
John DeMato:
And essentially, what this is about is geared towards people with smartphones but what they’re really learning is how to take a well-composed photo period, meaning you can take a photo with your phone or a professional camera and you’ll still have the same understanding of how to leverage lighting and composition and locations and all of those very important critical elements to creating a well-composed frame and snap away and feel confident and feel good about the images that you’re sharing.
Eddie Turner:
Yes. And I believe that has tremendous value and I was so excited to see you launch that. I am not you by any stretch of imagination but I still carry a camera when I go places and it never fails that when I want to be in the photo and I hand it to somebody, people look at me like I have two heads and they say “What’s that? What button do I press?” People aren’t used to using regular cameras anymore but everyone has the camera that’s always with them and that’s their phone. You don’t have to give the instructions which button to press. Everybody knows how to take a photo with the mobile device. And so, you’re adding value by helping people get the most out of something that they already have but are not fully maximizing, thereby, here again I say, you are leading behind the lens.
John DeMato:
Well, it’s all about empowering people to capture, as you mentioned before, moments that matter when you wrote that in the book. It is empowering people to capture their moments that matter when it’s happening because it’s impossible to have a professional 24×7 but you have that phone with you 24×7. So, now you have the creative license and the technology and the knowledge to be able to leverage that moment in a really, really wonderful high-quality self-portrait.
Eddie Turner:
Indeed. And I think it becomes even more important now because I’ve always believed in capturing the moment and that’s why I wrote that in the book for you that people sometimes chide me a little bit when they see me come because they know I’m going to take a photo but during the pandemic, it’s really shown the value of those memories because Facebook does a nice job reminding us of all these events we’ve attended but we get a chance to look back and relive those precious memories with our friends or our loved ones. And so, I think more and more people just can’t wait for those opportunities to open up again and they’re going to be taking advantage of the ability to preserve those going forward if they took them for granted before.
John DeMato:
Oh, absolutely. I think there is going to be a major influx of house parties and “Hey, we’re all out and about” and everybody’s taking photos. I definitely foresee that happening once we are more opened up, completely opened up as a country and I really look forward to seeing all those photos.
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. And nine modules. That’s impressive. How long is it in total from start to finish, if I want to take this?
John DeMato:
It is 48 minutes.
Eddie Turner:
Oh, okay. So, we can finish it in one hour. You’ve broken it down into nine digestible chunks.
John DeMato:
Yes. Yeah, short and sweet is the way to go. Once upon a time, when I worked in the television industry, that was the phrase – “Keep it short and sweet. Keep it short and sweet” – because attention spans can go. And especially when you’re talking about technical based things, you want to keep these chunks manageable for people so it doesn’t feel like they’re drinking from a fire hose every five seconds. You want to keep it so that it is manageable and actionable immediately.
Eddie Turner:
Yes. And speaking of your television career, do you mind mentioning a little bit about some of the work you did on TV?
John DeMato:
Sure. For nine years, once I got out of grad school, I started working for a talk show The Maury Povich Show and I worked there as a field producer.
Eddie Turner:
You are not the father.
John DeMato:
I know, I know. And it’s okay because you said my name so wonderfully in the intro. You know what, it’s fine but in terms of working there, it was a boot camp in a lot of the stuff that I do now in the sense of understanding how to tell a story and wide shots, medium shots and close-ups and how to capture emotion, understanding the value of getting real close to a subject and truly showing their essence. Despite the fact that there was a five-alarm fire every day on that show, I’m very grateful for the lessons that I learned and the ability to apply all of that experience to what I do now with my experts.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. John, what’s the main message you would like to leave our listeners with today?
John DeMato:
I believe that one of the most important aspects of the way that you present yourself is through your photos because photos aren’t meant to inspire people to immediately sign on the dotted line but what they do inspire your audience to do is to pick up the pen. And that’s the goal of your image content. When you have a perspective of understanding that it’s meant to create an opportunity to start a conversation, that’s when you really start to truly benefit from the power of visual storytelling. And that’s something that I think everyone who is an expert, who is a leader, who is someone that wants to build a community of those that they serve, they need to keep that in mind.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. Well, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed talking with you, John, and I appreciate all the great work you’ve done for me over the years. In fact, I haven’t been able to take advantage as much of your in-person services as I have your virtual services. And so, go to John’s website. He’s doing all kinds of work for people. And John, tell us your website again and tell us anyplace else that you want people to know how to contact you.
John DeMato:
Sure. It’s JohnDeMato.com. And fortunately, on every single page of my website there is an opportunity to follow me on my social platforms at the bottom of every page. And if someone were more interested in learning more about persuasive visual storytelling and branded lifestyle portraiture virtual photography and all the other stuff that I offer to my clients, I would suggest you sign up for my blog. I put out 13 blogs a month and you can do that through my website as well.
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. John, thank you for showing us how to lead behind the lens and for being a guest on the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
John DeMato:
Always a pleasure talking with you, Eddie. Thank you very much.
Eddie Turner:
That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work, please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
Thank you for listening to C Suite Radio, turning the volume up on business.
The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.