In one sentence, describe what the following article is about: Often, the beginning of a professional storytelling career involves many free performances at public events.  By volunteering at a local library, community day care, cafe, charity, or other venue, an amateur storyteller can gain the experience needed to perfect their craft and transition into becoming a professional storyteller. As the old saying goes, “Practice makes perfect.” If you don’t have many events or storytelling venues near you, take the initiative and found your own.  Propose the idea to start a public storytelling hour to your local library or coffee shop.  Give your story event a theme.  For instance, you might open the event up for proposals pertaining to specific themes like romance, adventures on the sea, or troubles with technology.  Don’t make your theme too specific.  For instance, a theme like “my first date” might get a lot of similar stories and be boring for the audience. Set a time limit so you don’t get stories that are too long and rambling.  Ten minutes is usually a good limit for the average story. Alternately, you could just get your closest friends together in your living room on a Friday or Saturday night and swap stories in a semi-structured way.  You could select a specific theme, or you could just provide an open forum for sharing stories. StoryCorps is a podcast which attempts “to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.”  For the hefty sum of $3,500 per day, you can host a StoryCorps event in your community.  (You might consider soliciting public funding or private fundraising to help with the fee.)  Interviews can last forty minutes and are added to the Library of Congress archives.  They are also available online. A podcast is a streaming or downloadable audio interview.  Podcasts are a great format for telling your own story or those of others.  With some editing, you can incorporate music into your podcast too.  Your podcast can be narrow (stories in the history of astronomy) or broad (stories from around the world) in focus.  Podcasts can be hard to produce.  Get help from a trained sound engineer to record and produce your podcast. As you build your audience, seek local businesses for financial support.  Offer them advertising space on your podcast.  While you can easily do a simple podcast on your home computer with your built-in microphone and recording software, a good podcast will need to invest in high-quality technology.  If conducting interviews over Skype, Pamela is a great program for PC users.  A similar program, Ecamm Call Recorder, is available for Mac users.  Adobe Audition is a useful program for editing purposes. Storyteller groups host festivals all over the country.  Whether you attend festivals or conferences as a participant or as a member of the audience, take advantage of the opportunity to hear other storytellers to hone your own craft and inspire you to find new stories of your own.  Conferences are great opportunities to perform or engage in professional development.  The largest festival -- the National Storytelling Festival -- takes place each year in Tennessee.  Check the National Storytelling Network’s calendar at https://storynet.org/calendar/ to search for storytelling events in your area. Read both fiction and nonfiction in a conscious way, thinking about what made a given story memorable.  Memoirs are especially useful for helping you think about how to frame your personal experience and regurgitate it as a great story.  Read storytelling guides to improve your delivery, learn how to pace your story, and understand what makes a story great.  While you might intuitively understand some or all of these storytelling elements already, explicitly recognizing how these elements work in conversation with each other will hone your storytelling skills You probably have lots of questions and issues about becoming a professional storyteller that someone else has already dealt with.  Learn from their experiences, avoid their pitfalls, and adopt their paths to success. Don’t get feedback from any random audience member. Get feedback from people who are professional orators, actors, writers, and storytellers.  Ask them what worked and what didn’t.  Make improvements if their criticisms are well-founded and continuously review your own storytelling style and material to become the best storyteller you can be. Beyond some simple feedback and nurturing, consider getting real coaching from another storyteller.  A storyteller coach will tailor their advice to your specific needs and presentation and give concrete steps to help you build your business.
Summary: Volunteer your storytelling ability whenever you can. Start a storytelling club or event. Start your own podcast. Attend storytelling clubs and festivals. Read a lot. Solicit feedback.

Problem: Article: Reduce the amount of ambient light that it might create. Open the box and hold it up to a light source. Use duct tape, electrical tape, or any other kind that is opaque to block out any light creeping in through any cracks or splits. Spray-paint the box black, both inside and out. Measure the inside dimensions of one of the box’s smaller ends. Use a ruler and a pen or pencil to trace an outline of these dimensions on a piece of cardboard. Add an extra inch to two sides to create wings. Cut out this outline with a utility blade. Fold the wings back so that you can stand your film holder up inside the box. Spray-paint this cardboard cutout black as well to keep the inside of the box as dark as possible. In the center of one of the box’s smaller sides, cut a small square hole, roughly a half-inch by a half-inch (1.27 cm x 1.27 cm). Now cut a slightly larger square from a roll of tin or aluminum foil. Tape this foil square over the hole. Be sure to secure all edges so no light creeps into the box from around the foil. Use a pin, needle, or thumbtack to poke a hole in the foil. Finally, stick a small strip of electrical tape over your aperture to use as a shutter. Tape your foil to the inside of the box so the electrical tape doesn’t rip it off the box when you open your shutter. Do this is a dark room. Remove a sheet of photographic paper from its box and tape its edges along the film holder, with the paper’s glossy side facing the aperture. Insert the film holder back into the box with the paper facing the aperture. If needed, paper-clip the wings to each side of the box to keep the film holder in place. Replace the shoebox’s lid and seal the edges with electrical tape to keep light out. Double-check that the shutter is still in place before leaving the dark room. When putting the film holder back into the shoebox, use the photographic paper’s longest side to determine how far away from the aperture it should be placed. For example, a 4x6 sheet of paper should be placed 6” away from the aperture. Set your shoebox on a flat surface well away from anything that might disturb it. Aim the aperture at the object whose image you wish to capture. Lift the shutter and expose the film. Close the shutter over the aperture again after 30 seconds. When you use your camera for the first time, use it in a setting with controlled lighting so you can replicate the shot later. In a dark room, fill one plastic container with developer, fill another with water, and fill a third with fixer. Remove your photographic paper from your camera and place in the first container. Agitate it in the developer for a couple minutes. Once an image begins to emerge, transfer it to water. Once you have rinsed it, place it in the fixer. Let it sit for 5 minutes and then hold under running water for 15 minutes to rinse off the fixer. Learning how long to expose your photographic paper will require some trial and error. Plan on taking a series of test pictures of one object in a controlled setting. Once you have developed your first picture, note how light or dark it is. If the image appears too light (or doesn’t appear at all), increase your exposure the next time around. If it appears too dark (or is totally blacked out), decrease your exposure. Note that your developed image will be in negative, meaning that something that is black in real life will appear white, and vice versa.
Summary:
Make your box as light-proof as possible. Create a film holder. Make an aperture. Load your camera. Take a picture. Develop your film. Assess your image.