Recently, we wrote a post about what it’s like to work remotely. We thought it might be interesting for you to hear from our staff members. So here are some of their experiences.

Clare LaVergne
What I like about working remotely: It’s a tie between the flexibility of hours and avoiding rush-hour commutes.

What I dislike about working remotely: Being alone at home most of the time.

Carol Stroud
What I like: Making my own hours is great since I’m not a morning person. And I love not having to commute; I do not miss Metro.

What I dislike: I haven’t established a structure for my day, so I’m left feeling that my workday has no real end. And I miss having people around to talk to.

Mike Owens
What I like: Not having to worry about a morning commute to an office and evening commute home.

What I dislike: Hmm. Oddly, I had to think about this one for awhile. I guess the default answer is lack of contact with colleagues, but that’s not really it. It’s related to it, but it has more to do with not getting a sense for the kinds of things others are working on and getting a sense for the bigger picture of our work.

Sidney Brown
What I like: I’ve been working from home full-time for eight years. Recently I’ve become willing to learn new technologies and to find the answers to my own computer related questions online.

What I dislike: I hate filing; I have to be more disciplined with a home office or my personal piles and my work piles can get all jumbled together.

Frank Millikan
What I like: I like the convenience of not having to commute to work on a daily basis.

What I dislike: I don’t like not having the option to go into work—to get out of the house, to see colleagues, to vary the routine. In short, the social isolation is a big drawback.

Laurie McClellan
What I like: Saving two hours a day and tank of gas a week by not commuting.

What I dislike: Snacks never appear magically on my kitchen table, the way they did at the office!

Paula Mashore
What I like: The best thing about a virtual office is being able to work from any remote location with a good Wi-Fi connection…whether that’s from home, a coffee shop, or while visiting parents on the other side of the country.

Another “best thing” is being able to construct my own work space, which includes regulating the temperature, opening a window, sitting in a room with lots of light, privacy for work calls, and communicating with colleagues for work and occasionally for pleasure on gchat, in lieu of creating or enduring a lot of office chatter.

What I dislike: The hardest thing about a virtual office is figuring out how to efficiently replicate some of the support features of a traditional office, things like: Do I need a laser printer or is my HP going to be sufficient? How often will I need to order which supplies from our office account? Where will I go to shred the confidential materials I create? How do we create expense reports with our new on-line system? How do I best work with our tech people when I have issues with our databases or my computer?

In late February, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made waves by changing her company’s policy on telecommuting. Remote employees, reported Kara Swisher of All Things D, would soon be forced to work at the web giant’s headquarters. Inside Yahoo, it was not a popular decision. In fact, an irked employee even leaked an internal memo written by HR head Jackie Reses to Swisher. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” it read. “We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together.”

It’s an interesting theory. But I’m not sure that it holds water. Over the past few months, PhotoAssist has been adjusting to life without a physical home base. In late January, we moved from an office that we occupied for a decade into a virtual space. Save for special occasions, meetings are held by conference call. People sometimes meet to work in small groups, but most of us spend our days at home, at our desks or kitchen tables.

Even though I’d worked remotely a great deal in the months leading up to the switchover, it was still odd knowing that there was no longer a central hub at which we could congregate. And some days, you feel isolated. This may sound weird, but human interaction was something I took for granted. You miss it. That said, I’ve come to enjoy the freedom that working from home provides. As long as my coworkers know my availability—Google chat is a godsend—I can run out to a dentist appointment or go for a run in the afternoon. (One PhotoAssist colleague recently mentioned that he enjoys taking midday swims on a regular basis.) Am I more productive than I was when we had an office to report to? It’s difficult to calculate. But my overall morale has improved. After Mayer’s decree, Slate’s Farhad Manjoo wrote about his experiences working remotely:

“When I tell people that I work at home, they usually assume one of two things—that I’m un- or underemployed and just biding my time until I get a real job, or that I possess a monkish, single-minded devotion to work that they suggest is required for successful telecommuting. Neither is true. Instead, I’ve realized that, once you learn how to do it, working at home is superior in almost every way. It allows me to be better at my job and at my life—to be a more productive employee and a not-terrible husband and dad.”

Learning how to do it is the tricky part. Admittedly, I’m still trying to figure it out. Because I have more distractions at my fingertips, sometimes I let my days drag on longer than I should. Then again, the fact that I’m able to, say, go for a half-hour walk after lunch, is quite a perk. And I don’t have to worry about D.C. traffic, which according to a report by Texas A&M, is the worst in the country. In the end—despite Yahoo’s claim that “speed and quality are sacrificed”—the pros of working from home seem to outweigh the cons.

Recently, PhotoAssist helped develop the U.S. Postal Service’s new Emancipation Proclamation stamp. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. I attended an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History commemorating that historic document along with another milestone in the struggle for civil rights. The exhibit, “Changing America: The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863, and the March on Washington, 1963,” opened on December 14 and runs through September 15.

For me, the most striking artifact in the Emancipation Proclamation part of the exhibit was the small pair of iron shackles used on the tiny wrists of children. Nothing else depicts the horror of slavery so vividly as those shackles.

I was also especially moved by a framed portrait of an unidentified African-American soldier in Union uniform posing with his wife and two daughters. The couple, like many former slaves, had celebrated emancipation by formalizing their marriage—an act they were denied under slavery.

The exhibit also features an example of a Sibley tent provided by the military for slaves escaping to Union lines. Also known as “contraband tents,” they could house 10-20 people and sheltered thousands of “self-emancipated” slaves during the Civil War.

For historical context and for making Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation come to life, I highly recommend a visit to the “Changing America” exhibit.

If facts don’t matter, then Dewey defeated Truman. No one was living in America when Columbus discovered it in 1776! We’re celebrating because the Ravens scored 1,000,000 points against the 49ers on Super Bowl Sunday!

By now, it should be obvious where we stand at PhotoAssist. We believe that facts do matter. They matter because they’re the building blocks of opinion. Start with the facts, and the point of view grows naturally.

We’re experts at researching and presenting the facts that you and your customers need to know. The facts, in turn, can inform your creative process so that the end product is the best that it can be.

The guiding principle of our founder, Louis Plummer, was simple: Pay attention to the details, and the rest will follow. In our case, the details are the facts. We help our clients present them in the most meaningful way, whether that’s playful and light or plain and serious.

Between fact and fantasy, there are only two choices. But once the facts are known, there can be a surprising number of ways to use them. Because in truth, the facts matter a lot.