Joe McNally Photography

It’s really tough to get much done:-)

Email’s running slow this morning. Nigel is, well, about 20 pounds of needy. He didn’t see Annie and I much this weekend, and when he and his brother Arie are deprived particularly of Annie’s attention, they really let us know about it. His patented way of saying, “Scratch my ears now!” is to park it on your keyboard and just make you deal with him. I’ve tried typing around him, keystroke at a time, and occasionally, he’s even sent some email, albeit before they were really ready.

Gonna try to ramp up a few things on the blog as the year closes out. Got some stuff coming about camera work, and a few things of note about the long and interesting road of 2009.

Had a great weekend. Scott and Kalebra Kelby came up and we did the Big Apple thing. They are wonderful friends, and it was great seeing them and not being work crazed. Scott, as he notes in his blog, made the mistake of leaving his camera in my care for a few minutes, which prompted me to do some, well, experimental self portraiture. We had a blast. More tk…..

Is there any limit to how much stuff Terry White knows about bunches of stuff? I’ve known Terry a little bit for a while now, but got to know him better during the recent DLWS excursion to the wilds of northern Michigan. (Terry’s a Detroit guy.) He’s with Adobe (about 13 years) and runs one of the most respected tech blogs in the blog world, and is on top of technology the way I’m on top a plate of strawberry pancakes after a sunrise lighthouse shoot:-)

We shot this early am portrait of Terry in the cornfield with one SB900 and a tri-grip diffuser. He’s just got one of those gregarious faces that belongs in front of the lens. I’m surprised he’s smiling at me, ’cause he shared a car with both myself and Drew. Poor Terry. On the way to sunrise shoots, he was just so ready to sink into a passenger seat dream state in the pre-dawn Michigan gloom when Drew and I metamorphosed into a pair of overlarge, one year old golden retrievers in the back seat. I’m like, punching Drew, whispering, “We got Terry White in the car! He can’t get out! Ask questions!”

Drew would start lobbing queries from the backseat, little annoying firecrackers going off inside the otherwise pleasant reveries of Terry’s early morning head. And, because he is first and foremost very gracious, and also because his incredibly nimble mind invariably engages any question about anything that might even be a distant cousin of the pixel, he began answering. It was great. He was stuck with us, and Drew was throwing all manner of stuff at him. Drew, trying to be ingratiating (and to let Terry know he’s pretty tech savvy, too) asked if he had seen this particular, latest and greatest app? Terry twisted around and eyeballed Drew over his glass rims. “Yes, I do know about that app. It’s actually the app of the week on my blog.” D’oh!

Pretty terrific, at least for us. Given that short time in the car, I hatched a plan. Terry would be a great house guest, right? So I’m going to invite him over for the weekend. Hey, yeah, it’ll be fun! Watch the Lions! Annie’ll make some great food! Have a few beers, relax! And then, just when he’s relaxing, I would casually mention…..”Have you seen our studio? You know, like, our work stations?”

And then we’d have him! He’d sit down, ’cause he’d be curious about how inefficiently our stuff is set up, and boom, we’d pull out a document roughly akin to a physics textbook filled with questions. I’d be calling up to Annie, “Hey honey, got some more hors d’oeuvres goin?” “Terry! Wanna beer? Something to put your feet up on? Reading lamp? Cigar?”

He’d be onto us immediately, of course. I’d wake up to the sound of a car door in the middle of the night, and Terry, desperate to get out, would have called one of those New York City car services. I’d race downstairs, chasing the car as it headed down the driveway. It’d be like the last scene in Shane, you know, where the kid runs after the gunslinger shouting, “Shane, come back! Momma’s got some chores for you to do!”

Except now it’d be a hi tech version of that plaintive call….”Terry! Come back! The Ipod still needs a’fixin!”

More tk….

In Vegas for PhotoShop World. It’s cool. It dovetails with a current shooting project I have running to be here. Got in some chopper work the other night. Very lucky, cause the clouds, generally AWOL around here, were amazing. All that’s for next year.

Right now, humming with the energy of all the folks at PSW. There’s an amazing array of knowledge here. The amount and diversity of stuff going on and being taught is unreal. Matt Klowskowski, Dave Cross, Moose Peterson, Jay Maisel, Russell Brown– from shooting to post, it’s all here.

Speaking of good teachers, there’s always…..THE MAN WITH THE HAT…

My bud Jerry Courvoisier just updated his website. Jerry’s one of those low key, patient guys. I know this cause he tolerates me. He doesn’t shout or jump up and down, he just knows. Somebody could walk in with their computer with all their images on it having just been run over by an 18 wheeler and all the smashed pieces are in a laundry basket, and Jerry will sit down with that person and say, okay, let’s see what we’ve got here, hmmmm….. (Jerry’s good at saying, hmmmmm.)

And before you know it, wire by wire, bit by byte, he’s got the person’s machine running again and they’re working their raw files. Calm, in a word, describes Jerry. Check out his website. He’s got a great Lightroom book, and he’s got a tour going with short, intensive, hands on Lightroom stuff. Chicago in October is next stop. And he teaches digital printmaking, at which he’s a master. Also, as you can see above, he’s a rakish, good looking guy. (I’m just saying that cause I took the picture and made him look better than he’s ever looked:-)

AND THEN THERE’S RC….

We shared dinner the other night, and I could barely eat from laughing so hard. RC’s, well, RC. He defines what it means to be a good teacher. Plus he’s a riot. (Question to RC….”What’s a website?” RC to questioner…..”Remember the photo album you had when you were a kid? The one you scotch taped all those pictures in? It’s like that…in the sky!”)

Plus, he’s an amazing shooter. He is married to one of my dear friends and all time amazing photo subjects, Jenn, a truly exceptional ballerina. Shot this of Jenn on a Tampa beach for a Kelby Training video.

Jenn, along with their daughter Sabie, is in front of RC’s lens quite often. He shot one of my favorite frames of all time, this one of Jenn on pointe, with little Sabie looking up at her.

Such trust, such wonder…in a photograph. Pictures like this, and talented folks like RC and the NAPP gang, are the reason it’s great to be here. The whole week…walking, talking, looking at and shooting pictures. It’s gonna be a great time. More tk….

The best camera is the one you have with you. True words indeed. Variations on a theme. Jay Maisel always says it’s tough to take a picture if you don’t carry a camera with you. Now Jay sports a D3, but Chase Jarvis has just elevated the Iphone camera to legitimacy with this new book. The camera’s quiet and cool, and doesn’t intrude. It is barely noticeable in the act of photography, but it is a formidable recording device, as he shows.

This book is sleek, small and well designed, not unlike the machine that made the pictures. Combine those qualities with Chase’s eye, and well, there you go. The other thing that ramps up here for me is kind of a quiet, heretofore inside thought I have thunk on occasion, which is, when I have a camera on my shoulder, I feel, you know, dangerous. I’ve got a camera, I can see, I know how to work it, and well, let’s just have a look at things. The act of making pictures can be considered inherently subversive, obviously. Why do you think there are lots of people who have jobs specifically designed to control us? Control where we stand, what we shoot, and how what we shoot gets used, where it goes, and how it is displayed. I mean there are cadres of folks out there just waiting to say, “No.” The people who are just so willing to put a velvet rope around the sense of possibility and imagination. Plus they’re generally kinda cranky. Maybe their shorts are too tight.

Okay, so I was raised Irish Catholic and I’ve got authority issues. Photography can be wonderful, friendly, healing, easy going, and enjoyable. It can be a window or a mirror, to borrow some words from my old managing editor at LIFE, Dan Okrent. But what a camera sees can also be really truthful and incisive. Clear headed. A camera can actually show us stuff. Imagine that! But hey, wait a minute, we can’t just have a bunch of people with cameras running around here!

Well, hate to clue you in Mr. You-Can’t-Stand-Here, but we do. It’s interesting to me. I have walked down corridors and paths in out of the way corners of the world with a 35mm camera or DSLR slung and it can feel like you’re walking around with the UCLA marching band on your hip. I mean, it’s an announcement, you know? “Hear ye, hear ye! Pictures are about to me made!” Sheesh. Part of the art of this is to segue, you know, slip and slide, see moments and instead of trampling them, kind of sidle up to them, quietly.

I guess it’s a variation on that old joke about the old bull and the young bull up on the ridge, looking at a whole valley full of cows. The youngster can barely contain himself. “Let’s run down there and nail one of ‘em!” he says to his elder. Who just smiles and says, “How ’bout we just walk down there?” Knowing wink. “We’ll nail ‘em all.”

Not that announcements are a bad thing always. David Turnley, an incredibly fine shooter who spent numerous years documenting apartheid in South Africa, was on assignment in Harlem, USA, for the Day in the Life of America book project in the very early 80’s. He walked into a pretty tough looking bar, and of course, he was an outsider. A white outsider to boot. He walked up to the bar tender and respectfully introduced himself and the book project and said he’d like to spend some time in the bar shooting pictures. The bar tender evidently nodded, and in a large voice announced to everyone, “This here fella’s gonna shoot some pictures. Anybody don’t like it can get the fuck out!”

It’d be nice to have someone around like that all the time.

I digress. I think what I’m getting at is that Chase has taken this camera, with its’ still nascent technology, combined it with a cool app (kind of home turf for the Iphone and many folks who use it) and also extended its’ reach to ink on paper. Everybody’s talking about convergence nowadays, and here’s a very cool, accessible example. It also gave me, along the lines of David Hobby’s recently voiced sentiments, one of those “coulda had a V-8″ moments. Christ. I mean I’m having giggles with my Iphone downloading things like Atomic Fart, and here Chase goes and builds his own app.

It pleases me no end to think of Chase roaming airports and such, and interpreting stuff people walk on, over and around into graphically striking photos. Iphone in hand, he sidles up to the heretofore unseen. Often the scene or moment is quiet, and via the Iphone, it is quietly observed. It is also pleasing to think of the combo punch of this accessible, almost invisible piece of hardware with a lens plunked into it and the potential it has for recording, interpreting, and taking in the world around us. Then launching and sharing those visual missives instantly. An updated wrinkle for the visual community. Another possibility. For me, it is doubly pleasing to think there might be some folks annoyed by this.

Photographers. Despite efforts to corral us and tell us what to do, we refuse to listen. We’re like a nerf ball. Squeeze us one way, we splurge out another. Be it the Iphone, the D3, the Red Camera, the point and shoot…..the urge is upon us all to visually record our life and times. Visual passion. Knowing. Seeing. Point, shoot, breathe.

Or maybe look hip. Below my daughter Claire shot dad on recent shopping trip. It was the only way she could think of me not looking tragically flawed. (How do people work in those A&F stores? I spent 15 minutes in there and had acoustic whiplash for the rest of the day.)

This guy Chase, man, he’s good. We’re friends, and respect each other a great deal. When I spoofed him a bit in a video not too long ago, he laughed a lot and in an email called me a “mad bastard.” Well, back to ya, man. Typically, he not only shot these for himself, but with the book and technology, he opens a door for all of us to take a ride. Good onya.

Check out his new book here.

Damn this guy, though. Here I’ve been happy shooting 2-4 Iphone pictures a day. Shit. I’m gonna have to go to 5-10:-) More tk…

I like it. I’ve certainly lost weight, and have the lean, mean look required for success in the intensely competitive arena of the photographic marketplace nowadays. Strong, elongated, prehensile fingers, and at first glance, it would seem, opposable thumbs which are always useful. This of course was conjured for me by the irrepressible Mr. Hobby of Strobist, who recently mentioned an article on the HSD in this month’s Digital Photo Pro.  He’s done things like this before- taking my face and placing it in the movie poster for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

This is great. David and I spoke last week and I told him such ramblings fit perfectly with two goals I have for the rest of my career: A) Never take myself particularly seriously; and B) Have fun.

Not the first time David and I have gotten a touch, well, goofy, witness our Dubai antics (Shot by the equally goofy Bobbi Lane)…..

Of course this type of activity–a creative imagination plus a bent sense of humor plus knowledge of Photoshop plus access to the internet does create a climate the nuns used to warn us about. You know, “idle minds,” etc. We were urged to go to confession for having an idle mind, which, when you are talking about the mind of a 10 or 12 year old boy, is never particularly, you know, idle. I never really feared confession, to be honest about it, ’cause the priests I would be confessing to back in the day seemed to be in such a perpetually booze fueled state of serenity that virtually nothing you could say to them in the confessional was overly troubling to them, and they would mete out relatively light penances. You would, you know, confess all sorts of goings on in the typically X-rated big top of the youthful male mind, and they would come back with a gin fumed mandate to say five Our Fathers.

Five Our Fathers seemed cheap admission to the realm of my imagination, truth be told. Kinda like paying a nickel to go to a particularly colorful peep show.

I digress. What the ever prescient DH has actually construed with the Gollum idea above is, I think, nothing less than the….Photog of the Future. Hear me out.

Obviously, lean and mean, as I have noted. Doesn’t eat much. Could probably subsist on a diet of rainwater and bark. Remember in the movie, he would jump into a stream, grab a fish, and just start eating it raw? So, imagine the Gollum photog gets booked into a hotel that has one of those aquarium displays with over-sized koi in some algae infested waterway near the reception desk. No bills for dinner! ( I’ve never completely figured out the indoor lagoon thing in lobbies. Why would you want to sit and have coffee and a bagel next to an under tended, foul smelling water display invariably complete with a drizzly waterfall effect that makes it sound for all the world like your table is right next to the urinals in the men’s room?) No matter. This raw fish meal practice would thrill the accountants at a place like Time Warner, ’cause it would cut T&E substantially. Not that it has gone up all that much. They haven’t raised the per diem there (last time I checked) since the 80’s, so you are still supposed to spend something like five bucks for breakfast, twelve for lunch and hoo boy, 25 balloons for dinner. Get crazy! This of course means that if you go to Denny’s for breakfast and have a French Slam and a large OJ, you’re on your own dime for eats for the rest of the day. Your per diem is just as burnt as the toast.

Gollum knew the secret passageway into Mordor, remember? That means the Gollum photog would be most likely devious enough to slide, unaccredited,  into virtually any presidential tight pool, at least for a few frames.

Clothing. Uh, minimal, obviously. The means no special wardrobe to be purchased even for extreme conditions, and certainly no dry cleaning bills. This type of expense has always nettled the accountants. The legendary story that rattles the hallways of the Geographic is of a shooter who was assigned to an extremely cold location and promptly went out and expensed a hugely costly fur coat. The powers that be of course bounced that piece of paperwork back to the wayward journalist. It was turned in again a week later, with the exact same total and a note that read simply….”Find the coat.”

That brazen display of contempt for the accounting process of course is mild by comparison to that of the China correspondent for Nat Geo circa the 40’s. I cannot confirm this, but legend has it this particular scribe received a telex from home base stating, “Mission accomplished, return to HQ.” To which he replied, “Confirm. Can I bring my junk?” To which home base replied in the affirmative. Several months later, an ocean going freighter with a full blown Chinese junk strapped to the deck steamed into the Washington ship basin and the individual in question lived on it for several years.

I never had the benefit of working in those days of shenanigans and largesse. When I came along, the accountants were slowly, Gollum-like, hissing in the ears of the powerful, and loopy, frivolous, “gifts for natives”  expense accounting (an actual category in the old Geographic daily log books) was  rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Closest I came to a whopper was during the first launch and landing of the space shuttle. Hank Morgan, David Strick and I were out in the vast nothingness of Edwards AFB, trying to figure out which corner of the sky the shuttle was gonna drop out of. Hank being Hank, said something endearing like, “So long, sucker,” and brought the hammer down on his rental. I plunged after him, which was a mistake, cause given the dust trail he was churning at 100 plus mph I could see absolutely nothing. But I figured as long as it was dust, it would be okay. If the cloud turned to flames, then chances are Hank met with something truly unfortunate, and I should slow down.

A tremendous crack reported from the undercarriage of the car, and while it still drove well enough, I noticed my gas level was heading south as fast as a dropped rock. Much perhaps, like the rock I had just run over, which plowed a canal in the gas tank wide enough push a supertanker through. Holy shit. David and I started pulling gear outta the trunk like crazy, thinking that a vehicle with a hot engine in the desert sun in the middle of a lake of gas had disaster stamped all over it. I called the car rental outfit and complained that their vehicle had malfunctioned and hadda get towed from somewhere in a couple thousand square miles of desert. They called me two days later, and hadn’t yet been able to find it. Yikes.

I started thinking then about how I could creatively use my expense account to incrementally cover the cost of a Buick Regal. You know, a few high priced dinners, lots of Manhattan cab rides, a camera repair or two…..Sheesh. They did find it, thankfully. But you know, if it was the Gollum photog, there would have been no rental car needed. Food for thought….more tk.