Joe McNally Photography

Work is pretty crazy right now. We are shooting in the field, catching up with folks from the original Giant Polaroid project of nearly 10 years ago. It’s hectic, but rewarding. There’s a wellspring in these people of good feeling and the power of optimism. There’s also the vibrancy of life in the big city, which I have always thrived on, photographically.

We’ve had a couple bobbles along the way, in terms of getting the show out on the floor of the Time Warner Center for the 10th Anniversary, but hey, it’s New York. It’s not a straight line to anywhere, here. (Is that a sentence? I think you know what I mean.) But we are committed, and going forward, even if Louie Cacchioli, a bunch of firefighters, and the gang at my studio have to pull and haul crates and set up frames.

Photographed Keith Johnson of Ladder Six the other night. Keith is a big, gregarious guy, with an even bigger heart. He drives the tiller truck, 54′, in length, and I’ve seen him u-turn that puppy in a space you’d swear you couldn’t turn around a Subaru. It’s got a driver in the back, Keith up front. As he says, the guy in the back has really gotta keep the wheels straight. “Some guys, you know, they freelance a bit. I’ll look in my rear view mirror, and I’m driving in the left lane and he’s driving in the right, and that’s a problem,” he says, laughing. But his expertise is well needed at fire scenes. His job is to get this massive truck in close to a building, and finesse its’ position so ladders can reach those in trouble.

I’m trying to catch up to people, and shoot pictures that reflect their lives now, 10 years after the dust cloud. One ongoing devotion in Keith’s life is to his daughter, who is just an amazing kid. So she came into the house last week, and we went out on East Broadway for a picture. I asked if we could roll the truck. He said sure. I asked if that would be difficult to do. He looked at me and said, “Hey Joe, wanna see how difficult?” He turned and shouted over his shoulder, “Ladder Six, we’re rolling!”

More tk….

Those pearly blue, magnificent skies of post production, that is. Russell Brown…genius, bon vivant, humorist, master of disguise, thespian, uh, animated photo subject, genius, photog, inventor, genius, software guru, good guy, and finally, truly, genius…..

Ten flashes (you can tell, some of them are in the picture), 45 minutes, SU-4 mode, manual exposure at 250th at somewhere between 4 and 5.6. Had able assistance from our Safari shooters as we threw up a bunch of lights and just winged it. (Ouch!) 14-24mm Nikkor f2.8 with a D3X.

Basically throwing a bunch of hot light around the background to define it. One light up and at the flag. Another right at the tail of the lead plane, creating some floor heat and separation. Another at the deep blue nose of the lead plane. Then, up front, an over under combo of an Ezybox soft box (24″ white interior) and a Lumiquest LTP softbox. All are SB-900′s with no gels. Fun to slap it together ad hoc, with a bunch of people helping.

Shot it Tuesday at Photoshop World, when we trekked to a couple cool places with even cooler planes. The above was made at Stallion 51, home to magnificently restored P-51 Mustangs, among other wonderful flying machines. Just amazing. They are tended to by an equivalently amazing lady, KT Budde-Jones, who was patient enough to actually embrace a visit by some 5o plus photogs. She and her colleagues pulled out planes, pushed them into the sunset for us, and in general made shooting easy. She even got in front of the lens in her WASP mechanics outfit, circa WWII.

Stallion 51 is a remarkable repository of historically significant aircraft, and the way KT takes you through the place, and talks reverently of the planes, you can tell this is a labor of love. There are, if I remember her figures right, about 125 or so Mustangs still flying, and they have several. Folks come to be trained on them, understand the mechanics, or just take a ride and check something off the bucket list. Take a look at their site.

PSW Orlando….nothing like it….more tk….

Had breakfast and coffee with George Divoky yesterday. Breakfast was the smaller part of it, actually. What we really did was have coffee together, which is what you do in Seattle. It is basically a sacrament here, the having of the coffee. George and I grew to be friends, really, over coffee. George is an ornithologist, and he has done the remarkable thing of studying a colony of Black Guillemonts on Cooper Island since 1975. Every year, for three months, George goes up there to this barren stretch of ice north of Barrow, Alaska, and lives in the most basic of conditions with these birds, observing their trends, their mating patterns, and their migratory habits. He might have gone up there to study the birds all those years ago, but the amazing consistency of his visits has resulted in a trove of first hand, irrefutable evidence of weather trends, the melting of the ice pack, and the resultant impact on the cycle of life up there, and hence, everywhere.

I spent a mere nine days on Cooper and I can tell you, there isn’t a Marriott in sight. It is basic tent living, out there with the birds and the polar bears. To do it, as George has, for 36 years, is a tale of dedication, a labor of love, and an inquisitive mind. His notebooks are a road map of changes in the weather and the earth, all observed firsthand. And, while he’s a dedicated scientist, he’s also got a great sense of humor, which was the basis of our friendship struck out there on the ice ten years ago. He’s an amazing guy, the subject of many magazine interviews, a coming book, an appearance on David Letterman, and even a play in London. You can check out his activities and observations here, at Friends of Cooper Island.

Outside of having friends like George,  I do love being here in Seattle. Nice city, nice folks. I have a theory. I feel it’s very important that it remains resolutely cloudy here, every day. Hear me out. The unrelenting cloud cover produces a wonderful sort of torpor, a blanket, if you will, that one can continuously crawl under and, well, yawn the day away. No pressure, no people shouting at you to get out their damn way, no subways jammed with folks eyeballing each other suspiciously.

It’s come to that in the NY subway, by the way. In this age of the dominance of the internet, there is the phenomenon of newspaper-less commuting. Used to be, even in the most crowded of trains, you could avert your eyes, and bury yourself in a Cindy Adams column, or the antics of celebrities caught with their pants down on Page Six, or be engaged by a clever headline. Now that most riders are no longer armed with a tabloid or the even more effective camouflage of a broadsheet, they’re left to balefully, soullessly glare at each other with doubt and regret, if not outright aggression, as after all, the best defense is a good offense, or something like that. Thus when the apparently blind, legless person on a trolley (think Eddie Murphy in Trading Places) with the incredibly bad singing voice pushes themselves and their tin cup through the crowded car, most straphangers no longer have the pup tent of a daily newspaper to dive into until they move on or shut up. It probably works out well for the down on his luck supplicant, as there are always lots of newcomers to the NYC subway system who haven’t seen the trolley bound tenor before, and thus donate some change and hope they vanish into the next car. Little do they know that some of the folks who work the subways might actually own three taxi medallions and have multiple rental properties in Brooklyn, and for them, the subway thing is a part time gig.

Back to Seattle. Even the cab drivers here don’t honk their horn. Amazing. Again, methinks, those soporific, mellow mood inducing clouds at work. Geez, I even walked through a building yesterday and from the speakers came drifting Seals and Crofts, fer chrissakes.

Enter the coffee. You see, there’s a synergy here. A place like this would probably pull a Rip Van Winkle and just drift off  entirely to sleep were it not for the bountiful, splendid variety of good tasting caffeine. The coffee sort of meets the clouds halfway and produces just the right mix of energy and conversational connectivity that enables everyone to hold down a job even though they spend a good deal of the day chatting or tweeting or emailing in a beanery. It’s a beautiful thing. I would move here in a heartbeat, except that I’m just generally too antsy. Put me near this much coffee and I couldn’t help myself. It would be an irresistibly frequent and dangerous combination,  like a moth to flame, Stockton to Malone, Charlie Sheen and saying something irretrievably stupid.

This is all just a theory, but I think I’m onto something…..more tk….

Went through Dallas on this trip to visit a couple of dear friends. We met through photography. They fit a bit of a typical profile for photo enthusiasts. One is a very good, ardent shooter, and the other is an ever patient, equipment toting spouse.

I taught a bit at a local high school, lecturing both the art and journalism classes, and hopefully meeting the two in the middle. While down there my friends offered to host a dinner to acquaint friends of theirs’ with the Giant Polaroid Collection known as Faces of Ground Zero. It was a very welcome attempt to attract funding for the collection. The collection itself is covered now, thankfully, under the umbrella of the New York Foundation for the Arts, and their tax deductible giving program known as Artspire. Follow the link to learn more, or make a contribution.

A quick note came in today from my friends in Dallas…..  ” I too, spent some time with these Faces of Ground Zero, since it was my living room they inhabited for two days this week.  I had not been prepared for the emotional impact these huge images have when one is able to see them face to face.  To those of you who admire Joe’s work and follow his blog – Please, please join us in this fundraising effort with Artspire so these images can be installed in the  9/11 Memorial Museum. Every contribution, large or small, will help ensure the safe future for this magnificent Collection, described by the Museum Director as, ” An endeavor of exceptional artistic, emotional and historical significance.”  Joe McNally, who gives so generously of his time, his caring, and his expertise in photography to all of us who admire him, can do with some help on this.”

It was the first time I had seen these pictures staged in a sedate, non-public setting. I made them, unbelievably, 10 years ago, in the tumultuous month that followed 9/11/01. Now, in the quiet of this beautiful room, we had a short, but wonderful conversation.

Back in February of 2002, the collection began an odyssey. Starting at Grand Central Station in NYC, it migrated to Boston, London, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and then back to NY, which is where they ultimately belong. They came out of storage again at the 5^th Anniversary of 9/11, staging at the Firefighter’s Museum, down on Spring Street. During the course of this journey, they became a book, elevated awareness, and helped in an effort that raised almost $2 million dollars for 9/11 relief.

Other than that, they’ve been in storage. 24,000 pounds of framed, crated pictures, all over nine feet tall. Storing them month after month has been an uphill fight for my small studio, and in tough years, damn near broke me. Adorama came to the rescue a couple years ago, and now they pay the storage bill. It was the first of numerous, wonderful collaborations I’ve had with that camera shop on 18^th St.

It was good to see them again, like greeting old friends I hadn’t seen for five years. They called me back to that time, in that studio, with that giant beast of a camera. I slept over it, actually, in a loft bed. Didn’t stray farther than a couple blocks from the studio the whole time. Crews from ground zero showed up, often unannounced, at 2am, 8am, midnight, whenever. If they came, a picture was made.

I say “picture” advisedly. For most of the folks, I made one picture only. Each sheet of Polaroid was $300. Thank goodness the Giant Polaroid didn’t have a motor drive attachment.

The images bring back that desperate time, quite vividly. Every time the studio door would open, dust from the pit would sweep in, filling the room with the tang of destruction. There were tears, and anger.

But mostly, I remember the people. Filled with resolute dignity, they stepped in front of this strange photographic instrument and shared their story, their loss, and their determination. A bond was made, and I feel it still. In the moment of exposure, an agreement was struck, a wordless understanding: I’ll stand for your camera, then it’s up to you to see it through.

As a group, we have traveled quite a ways for quite a while, and hopefully we’ll come soon to a destination. The 9/11 Memorial Museum wants to be their permanent home, which is appropriate, and I have hopes. I’ve been a photog too long to say more than that. I have hopes. After 30 years behind the lens, it’s enough to have.

It’s a wonderful thing to be a photog. We can illustrate the pages of our adventure, sometimes with pictures that really mean something.

More tk….

Well, at least about getting your pictures up on the web effectively. Which, if you’re going to have a voice, a presence, a personality, and a chance of survival in the roiling  sea of photogs out there, is simply a necessity. Especially now, as the click of keys has replaced the roar of presses, shooters and scribes are no longer ink stained wretches, but pixel pushing, web browsing, self publishing lords of the internet. To compete nowadays, you have to get in the game, and this book is the playbook. Here’s a link, Get Your Photography on the Web, by RC Concepcion.

Hell, I wouldn’t know HTML from a dashboard plugin, and I’m enjoying reading it. It is so concise, logical, and simple, it demystifies the hydra-headed monster known as the internet, and paves the way for you to just go do it. I liken the book to the tunnel leading onto the playing field. It is a directional, no frills, easy to negotiate one way street. You keep going, and the dark recedes, things get brighter and brighter, and you hear the muffled roar of the crowd. Then–BOOM! You are in the light, on the field, the people are screaming, and it’s on! Game time! Website! Blog! Portfolio! Your pictures are no longer in a box under the shelf at the back of the closet. They are on the world wide web, and anybody can see them, and say anything they want about them. Heh, heh! Be careful what you you wish for.

There’s a personal note to all of this for me. I’m just so damn happy for RC, who is one of the most giving, ebullient, warm hearted people on the planet, not just our industry. Down at the Kelby Camp, they refer to him as the Swiss Army knife of the internet–he can do anything and everything with a computer, including rebuild one with spit, glue and well, maybe a Swiss Army knife. He also the author of one of the sweetest dance photographs–ever.

RC shot this of his lovely wife Jen, who is a magnificent ballerina, with the adorable Sabie, their daughter, looking up from mom’s pointe shoes. I have been blessed to work with Jen a couple of times, capturing her in flight.

Jen’s a typically perfectionist ballerina. I brought her out on the sand, and she was saying, “Ooh, I won’t look good on this surface. I won’t be able to leap, or jump, or anything!” Then she goes off like Superwoman in pointe shoes.

What’s even cooler for me, personally, is that I was standing right next to RC when he shot the cover of the book, which is a wonderful frame of Central Park in NYC. I called my friend Rita, who lives in a building with one of those views, and she asked a neighbor for a few minutes on their porch. We went up, shot some pix, and then she treated RC and I to borscht, bread, cheese and vodka. Definitely a New York night.

Whether you’re just starting, or thinking about ramping up your web presence, this book is the bible…..more tk….