Joe McNally

May 16

Google!

In Seminars & Workshops, Thoughts at 1:21pm

Was graciously invited by Google to lecture at their campus yesterday. Took me about .5 seconds to say yes. Googler Mike Wiacek sent me an email a while back and mentioned that enthusiasm for The Moment It Clicks was high within the organization and was there a chance I might be in the neighborhood some time or other?

Cool! Got a chance to relax and float around in the foam cushion thing filled with plastic balls. (Photo by Brad Moore.) Evidently some folks relax in here with their laptops.

The nap module was already occupied.

Made the stop on my way to my favorite DLWS location, the Redwoods. (Ahh, the mighty Redwoods! It stirs my soul! I don’t want to be a photographer anyway! I want to be a lumberjack. Leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia! The giant redwoods! The larch! The fir! The mighty Scots pine! The smell of fresh cut timber! The crash of mighty trees! With my best girlie by my side!)

I digress. It figures there are photo enthusiasts everywhere in the halls of Google. Can’t imagine a better place to plug into the fast paced world of digital shooting, the discussion threads, the new tech and gear, than the home base of this internet powerhouse.

Thing is, it doesn’t feel like a big company. It feels very human. It feels like a place where people (and their pets) are valued. The array of food options (for free) is astonishing. There are more cafes and eateries per square yard than Little Italy in NY. Seems management figured out it is cheaper, happier and more productive to take care of their employees and create a positive work environment than to burn them to a crisp, make them afraid of the future, and send them off into the highways and byways of California in search of a Taco Bell for lunch.

Enlightened management is tough to find these days, but I do know of another distinctly wonderful workplace. Scott Kelby and the folks down there at Kelby Media and NAPP are a bunch of happy campers, to be sure. Hmmm. Both these places are forward looking, innovative, very creative, and use the newest of technologies. And, they value their people and treat them well. And both outfits are doing gang buster business….Geez, I wonder if there’s a connection?

There were about 100 folks at the lecture, and Google beamed it out to 8 of their other locations, domestic and international. My buddy Bill suggested that in return for doing the lecture, I simply ask Google to change a few lines of code, you know, couple of minor alterations, nothing truly significant. That way, he said, anytime anybody in the world Googles, “photography,” they get sent to my website. Just a few tweaks in the codes, and, when you type in “Ansel Adams,” it comes up as “joemcnally.com.” Or, “Moose Peterson.” You get “joemcnally.com.” If you type in, “I’m a client with a huge budget and I wanna spend some big ass money on pictures,” it connects you directly to my cell phone.

Way cool day.

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May 12

Long and Winding Road

In Travels at 3:57pm

Just got back from what for me, nowadays, is a long trip. Three international locales, total of 20 days on the road. It’s different now, of course. Road time used to be counted in weeks, not days. First international story I did for Geographic in the late 80’s was 17 weeks, split into just two trips. Crazy. Lived in the East End of London for all that time, in a little flat on the Isle of Dogs, which is a big loop (above) in the River Thames. Had my own local, the Tooke Arms Pub.

This photo took three weeks to shoot. Let me explain. I wandered into the Tooke, which was friendly enough but pretty rough around the edges, as estate pubs in working class neighborhoods tend to be on the East End. No one spoke to me. Had some terrible bar food and a pint of Ruddles. Walked out.

Came back the next day. And the next. Jeez, the food was horrible! I was getting the eyeball, to be sure, but not much else. Kept going. Kept at it. Finally, somebody got curious enough to strike up a conversation. That’s all I needed. Somebody broke the ice, and eventually I was accepted, albeit as an oddity. The pub became my watering hole, a listening post for what was going on in the nabe, and a wealth of potential ideas for photos to pursue.

Shot a young lady’s East End style wedding there, a riotous affair, to be sure.

Also met Robbie there, a wild and crazy Scot, and the driver of the tallest crane in Europe, working over the Canary Wharf site. Wanna come up? Sure!

Got my way to the cab of this massive jib crane, and climbed into a wire frame bucket mounted to the side rail of the jib (no OSHA, no safety belts…toughest part was actually walking out to the bucket. Round, painted steel, just a few inches thick. Crane moving in the wind. Wide, spread legged steps. Robbie called to me in his best brogue. “Now you’ve got your arse in the breeze,” he said, laughing. Said my usual prayer to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes and photographers everywhere.)

Robbie ran me out to end of the jib in this contraption and started slewing me back and forth over the site. Got to be fun. Pictures never ran, cause they sucked, basically. Just record overviews of a bunch of girder work and dust. Best part was the ride on the jib, and then driving the crane afterwards. Robbie just cautioned me not to hit the emergency brake as the rig would crumple like paper. Okay!

Then back to the Tooke for pints.

Met a bunch of former dock workers who kept up the tradition of taking a weekly steam. Can I come along? Chuckles all around. “Well,” one old salt said. “We’ll all be in the nude!”

I said fine. Kept my Leica wrapped in a towel. Always joke I shot the whole job on one roll of film. (Had no pockets.) Also shot this.

There was considerable discussion about these pics at Geographic. One of them was gonna run big, but there was hesitation about the steamy junkyard, and ultimately the more demure photo won the day.

Time is compressed out on the road now. Which is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. This recent trip was painful. Missed home a lot. Missed Annie a lot. Enter RC and Jen.

They were in NY for the Kelby Training Days at B&H, and had made arrangements to see Annie for coffee and a bite. Annie was expecting me home that day, but not until late. The real deal was that I was landing at JFK at 8:30 in the am. Called RC from Abu Dhabi airport. Dude! Make sure you get Annie out to see you guys. Make sure she sits with her back to the door.

Landed and hit NY. Got a new shirt, socks and underwear. (14 plus hours in a coach seat…my buddy Bill at Geographic calls it “chicken and goat class.” Let’s put it this way, I wasn’t very huggable.) Went to the gym. Showered and shaved. Gussied myself up as best as this bedraggled bag of bones will allow.

Got flowers. Great guy at the market. Pulled a whole fresh bunch for me. Sat down in the bus stop at 34th and 9th tried not to go to sleep. Eyeballed the front of B&H. Called RC. All set?

Natch. RC had done the very smart thing of getting Jen to call Annie that morning and swing the deal. You see, Annie and Jen know each other really only for a few hours but it’s like they’re sisters. They know about each other’s families, inner thoughts, secrets, childhood, education, favorite foods, workout routines, nail polish, camera pointers, etc. I mean they’re women, and they’ve thoroughly embraced the gift of speech.

In between hoots, clicks and grunts, RC and I have gotten to the point of agreeing the Knicks are a mess and Isiah Thomas is an asshole.

Kidding, really. RC is a great talker and storyteller, and is an over the top, giddy, soon-to-be father. He’s also a terrific shooter, and he had his D300 in front of him, teed up and ready to go. The three of them were chatting away, at the Skylite Diner on 34th, and I slipped up behind the table. Leaned over and said, “I believe the lady ordered flowers?”

It’s been a long and winding road, to be sure, but it led me to Annie…….

Photos by RC Concepcion.

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May 7

Basic Dubai Shooting Kit: Hi Speed Sync & a Hoodman Loupe

In Lighting at 6:28am

Just back from the Middle East, Spain and Italy in reverse order. Up at 4:30. Time for lunch!

Got some blogs and bits and pieces coming from the trip. David Hobby and I threw together a desert shoot at the last minute that mixed in a bunch of SB 800 units, one lovely lady from the Czech Republic, a makeup artist from China, an assistant from India, two wild and crazy desert drivers manning Land Cruisers, a bunch of camel dung, and, when it comes to David and I, two overcooked imaginations that could only be produced by hours and hours in detention hall.

That’s David on the 50 cal! They were closing in! We were low on ammo and fuel! We went to SU-4 mode on the SB units!

Really dating myself here, of course. The Rat Patrol ran for two seasons back in the (gulp) 60’s. Funny what sticks in your head. I mean, you know, my head. Oh, well…..more tk on the adventures in the dunes.

The sun in Dubai obviously kicks your ass on a regular basis. Comes up big and nasty. It’s a good opp to explore Auto FP Hi Speed Sync. (Say that 10 times really fast.) I’m guessing (and could be real wrong, here) it’s a mode many folks don’t pay a lot of attention to, especially when trying to get acquainted with other, slightly less exotic features of the SB flash. You’ll see it come up in the back lcd panel, next to TTL and BL settings.

“FP” refers to focal plane shutter, and what happens in hi speed sync mode is the flash pulses through the slits of the shutter, and essentially stays “on” for the duration of the exposure. Thus the entire scene sees the flash as the shutter travels, and you don’t get that black slash of unexposed area that you would traditionally see when you exceeded the standard upper level of flash sync speed on the camera, which nowadays is commonly 1/250th. In the Nikon system, you can permanently enable the Auto FP feature by going into the custom menu under “bracketing/flash” and seek out the flash sync speed option. Move the camera into 1/250s(AutoFP). That’s it. You can tell it’s enabled when you look at the flash sync speed option in the menu and you can see a tiny asterisk there. Boom, you’re good to go.

So here’s the catch. (Hey, it’s photography, there’s always a catch.) You lose power. To make this hi speed sync deal work properly, you gotta move the strobes in close.

The specs on the above read out at 1/8000 sec at f4. The lights are slightly back of the subject, the ever cool Salim, giving him a hot rim of light, and skipping some angle of incidence/angle of reflection highlights off his form. Think of it as playing air hockey with the light.

Here’s the lighting rig. Turned and caught a local soccer team wandering through our set.

A closer look involves Sid, our Gulf Photo Plus assistant, doing the old make believe you’re adjusting the light deal. “Not you, henchman holding wrench. Not you, henchman arbitrarily turning knobs, making it seem like you’re doing something.”

Why multiple flashes? If you can gang ‘em, they will compensate for the loss of power. That, along with closeness of the light sources to the subject, definitely helps. You can pull more power of course by yanking off the dome diffusers, and zooming the throw on the strobes from wide angle to 105mm. That gets you some extra punch.

Of course you can do it with just one direction to the light as well.

Zied here looks like he’s levitating effortlessly. Only indicator he’s traveling upwards off a trampoline is the up kick of the tag on his swim suit. Was looking here to fly him by the sun, and would have wanted one of those Arabian sunsets we have all read about, but never got one. The dust and the haze gave this sunset all the pizzazz and energy of a turd that just dropped out of a tall cow’s ass. So I hyped it a bit in Capture NX, and pulled in a small amount of color.

And of course, wouldn’t have known what the hell I was getting without the Hoodman Loupe. Essential for blazing light conditions like this. In fact, it’s just plain essential. Goes with me everywhere now.

More tk.

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May 3

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

In Seminars & Workshops at 1:57pm

DAVID! CHASE! HAVE YE GONE MAD!? THE ENGINES’LL NEVER TAKE IT!!!!!

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of light, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of pixels and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into…the Dubai Zone.

Dubai. This just may be the final frontier, indeed. It is 3 parts Vegas, one part planet Tatooine, and 6 parts oil money. Mix in a pantload of concrete and rebar, every luxury brand name store in the world, some very gracious people, a rampant interest in digital photography, one of the best faculties I’ve ever been honored to be associated with, and BOOM! Gulf Photo Plus springs up out of the desert heat right along with the skyscrapers.

(I realize in the first 10 sentences I’ve just mixed up together a whole bunch of sci-fi adventures.)

This is an amazing group of instructors. I mean out there. And the best part has been, even though we have been working hard, we’ve been able to hang a bit, too. You know, like hang out, like at the neighborhood bar. Except in Dubai, one of the neighborhood bars just happens to be the Skybar at the Burj Al Arab, touted as the finest hotel in the world, possessor of seven stars, and a monument to reserve and understatement. David Hobby, the wonderful, over the top genius of strobe, and Chase Jarvis, photographic visionary with an incredibly open and giving spirit, above, are just about to beam out of the bar and back to the planet earth, where presumably you don’t have to take out a second mortgage to buy a beer. (Note to Kraj Diesel…I would not buy you Johnny Walker Blue here!)

So if the Burj is so frikkin’ fancy, why’d they let us in? Thanks to Mohammed Somji, who worked a connection, they let about 15 ragtag photogs and friends in the joint. I’m sure today a memo went around banning point and shoots.

More tk.

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