Joe McNally Photography

In the midst of all this stuff about flash, digital, and color, harking back to available light…

Got a call not too long ago from Carly Simon’s folks. We worked together once, long time ago. I was still a pup, basically, shooting for People Magazine, and just starting my journeys for LIFE. The idea of working for Geographic was still just a glimmer, unobtainable, in the distance, a photographic mirage.

So when the call came, I was like, she remembers me??? Huh? Turns out, of course, I was not the memorable one, but one of my pictures, even after all this time, is among her favorites of her and her kids.

Sarah (Sally Maria) and Ben, her kids with James Taylor. Geez, talk about the deep end of the genetic pool. Good looking family, yes?

I was nervous as hell meeting her. Trying to be all things, funny, charming, light her well, figure it out, fill 6 pages, shoot a color cover and a B&W inside feature in about a day. Deep breath.

She made it simple by being so gracious and lovely. My personal favorite is below. By the window, with a book.

Easy going available light, Tri-x at 400. You could get a lot done, shooting this way.

And have some fun doing it.

We had a great time up on Martha’s Vineyard. Still remember it fondly, all these years later. Carly’s been promoting some new work lately, checkout her website. Or, join her team.

Lovely lady with a big smile and an even bigger voice…..more tk….

Being in the Communication Arts yearly has always been kinda cool, and we’re selected again this year, after a pretty long hiatus. Didn’t bother submitting much in the last few years, as the kind of magazine assignments that generated that kind of play for us as a studio don’t exactly drop from trees anymore. But this year, we had a pretty visual story, on telescopes, for National Geographic, so we zapped in our entry. The CA yearly anthology is a grouping of some of the best visuals of the year, and lots of industry folks view it as a good guide to who’s doing what.

Contests, awards–they’re funny things. As I’ve always told young photogs, winning a contest doesn’t mean anything on a day to day basis, really. No magazine I’ve ever placed for has come back to me and said, here’s more dough for your next job ’cause you done so good. Given the vagaries of the magazine industry, the opposite is more likely to be true. But what they can occasionally do is make getting the next job easier. Or make the process of wringing money from an institution to fund a project slightly less arduous. That’s about it.

Not that it’s not cool to place, or sake’s alive, even win. It’s a kick in the pants in a good way, and it can take you out of the doldrums of the assignment grind. I’ve always been fond of a couple yearly photo gatherings, most notably the World Press Competition, held in Amsterdam every spring. It’s a bit heady to enter, ’cause you know you’ve just jumped into the pool with the world’s best photojournalists, and your work will be measured by an unforgiving and unyielding yardstick. I’ve  taken a few spots there over time, once winning a first place for portrait, for the shot below, of sprinter Gail Devers, then the fastest woman in the world.

Was it the best portrait taken in the world that year? Dunno, and, quite frankly, I doubt it. Here’s how it came about. Mr. Genius went to LA to photograph her legs. Pretty logical, as that was the engine of her fame. Shot this, which I was happy with.

But, you know, I always advocate asking the question. That uncomfortable, exasperating photog question that just about spins your subject over the top. As we were leaving, literally packed up, I gulped and asked Gail if there was anything else she could show me that I was missing. (Reason for the gulping was that Gail, like many sprinters, was a very forceful personality. Sprinters are often very confident, brash, in your face kinds of folks. I’ve often thought their personality reflects their endeavor, which is of course a complete, explosive, all out burst of energy in a very short time.)

“So, anything else instrumental in your success?” I inquired. She shrugged and said, “Well, I’m pretty strong.” And then popped a bicep that would make Ahhnold jealous. Throw in the fingernails, and we had the makings of a picture. The finger curl pic was shot in less than ten minutes, available light, with a big foam core white board being the only assist I offered the cloudy LA daylight. No photographic virtuosity, just some quick snapping. And a willingness to venture the potentially annoying question at the end of the day.

The other big dog on the contest block is the Pictures of the Year competition, held every year at the University of Missouri. The above pic won a first place, for magazine illustration, which was cool. This of course was a construct, done with light and mirrors, to honor the perennial all star shortstop, Ozzie Smith. As they said, he was baseball’s  Wizard of Oz who looked like he was playing shortstop from 5 different spots at once, such was his range. My solution to show this was mirrors, which spawned a whole generation of mirror pics in Sports Illustrated. Tough shot to do. Mirrors, unsurprisingly, are heavy, fragile and (who’da thunk it!) highly reflective. Just a bear to work with.

But it worked. The trick of the pic, if you will, is that Ozzie himself is standing right next to me at camera while I’m shooting this. Just had to locate the mirrors specifically to his angle and light it well. Sports Illustrated liked the photo,  running a different version, one with Ozzie actually in the frame with his reflections, on the contents page.

But, to fit it onto the contents page, the biggest, most important reflection (created by the mirror closest to camera) of Ozzie had to be cropped out. Which pretty much punctures the picture. Sigh. These things happen. It ain’t my magazine.

This one won another first at Pictures of the Year, which came from a boomed F4 with an SB 24, 25 or 26 on it, fired by radio. The camera was clamped to the end of a c-stand, which I had resting on my shoulder, and hash marked right where I needed to run it out to. Which I had to do repeatedly, in the days of shooting film. Pull it in. Reload. Run it back out. Yikes. The real prize here is that we landed safely.

Contests. They’re a nice pat on the head. But be careful about all the backslapping and hand wringing that goes along with them. I won the first Alfred Eisenstadt Award for Journalistic Impact for a story called The Panorama of War.  A couple of pictures from the story are below, shot in Rwanda, post genocide. There was an awards dinner, which is typical of these things, and prizes, a check, and all sorts of stuff. It was a worthwhile evening, during which numerous photogs received honors, and many speeches were made. Only thing was for me, as I stood at the podium to accept my award on behalf of LIFE, I was pretty much the only person in the room who knew I had been fired by LIFE  just the previous week. I was their only staff shooter at the time, and in what has become a yearly rite of passing in print journalism, I was let go, along with numerous of my colleagues. At Time Warner, it wasn’t called being fired. The process was referred to as “reduction in force,” or “RIF.” So I didn’t get fired, I got riffed.

So be it. Happens, right? I remember being up on stage, smiling through the irony. Thing about being a freelancer, as podunk as it is, you keep moving. You have a camera, and an eye, and there will be someone else to shoot for.  You stay in business. You keep shooting. What the hell else you gonna do? Lord knows I’m not going to fire myself. And, I don’t regret a minute of my time at LIFE, and I’m still involved with the name in a big way. (Some photo historian eventually might note that I am the last staff photographer at LIFE, thereby making me responsible for the death of photojournalism.)

It’s all cool. Things change. Institutions come and go. Film gives way to pixels. Awards sit on shelves, and gather dust. We can’t. More tk….

I’ve been friend of the house since 911. Known as the “Miracle House,” they were among the first responders on that day, but lost no men. Miracle, indeed.

Capt. Jay Jonas (now a chief), and firefighters Matty Komorowski, Mike Meldrum, Billy Butler, Sal D’agostino, and Tommy Falco  were with Josephine Harris, coaxing her down a stairwell, quickly, but not quickly enough, as all 6, who were aware the first tower had already come down, knew quite well.

They didn’t leave her, or each other. Which meant all of them were in the same space when the North Tower came down on them. Somehow, even though the entire landing rotated 360 degrees during the collapse, it stayed intact, and they all lived. Turned out Josephine’s pace of descent was a lifesaver. Those above and below that blessed piece of stairwell didn’t fare well.

If you want to read an interview account of that day, and those stairs, hit this link. Stone Phillips did a good job, letting the guys just talk about what happened in there, minute by minute.

Capt. Jonas (now chief)

Firefighter Bill Butler (now lieutenant)

Firefighter Sal D’Agostino

Josephine Harris

Firefighter Matt Komorowski (now lieutenant)

Firefighter Tommy Falco (retired)

Firefighter Mike Meldrum (retired)

They took a leap of faith and came to the Giant Polaroid camera, and are included in the book Faces of Ground Zero. Since then, the  house and I have stayed in touch. They’re good people. And they handle a lot of stuff. Fighting fires in Chinatown has unique difficulties. It’s a warren of aging buildings jammed together in one of NY’s oldest and most charismatic neighborhoods, and, as one might imagine, not too much corresponds to building codes and blueprints. Surprise walls, mysterious, makeshift staircases, overloaded circuits, boilers that might have been built in the days of steamships–all this can present in the middle of the night, in the middle of a fire.

There’s been some big fires of late, lots of activity, and a bunch of the guys got medals, which was an occasion to have the whole house come together. Medal day. So, picture day. Call Joe.

I’ve done it before, a few years ago, in a rainstorm. I tell ya, if you gotta do a group shot in pelting rain, make sure it’s a bunch of firefighters. All smiles, not a word of complaint, everybody looking at the camera.

Last week, it was sunny, which was a different photographic problem, for sure. Did it all small flash, eight total, six on high stands. Three camera right, three camera left, master hot shoe unit doubling as a flash, and one up top on high boom, for good measure.

Now, you don’t see this type of light in the ads in Vanity Fair. Lush, it ain’t. But effective, yes. This shot isn’t about the light, or the shooter, or the numbers of pixels. This is about recognition, about every guy here going home and saying to his wife, girlfriend or kids, “There, see, there I am.” Not a time for subtlety, just a time to bring the light, and make sure everybody sees it.

Speaking of pixels, I shot it D3X, going to ISO 400. If I had to go higher, would have switched out to D3S, which handles higher ISO’s well. Had three groups going, all wireless, all manual. Yep, no time to mess with the TTL squirrels on this one. Sent them all a signal to go manual, ½ power and then tapered it to ¼. Which is the reason for multiple lights. Coulda done it with fewer, but would have taxed them pretty hard, and, it being an active house that could have gotten a call at any moment, I didn’t want to wait on recycle. Shot about 25 frames, and we were done. Told all the guys they had to see the camera with both eyes. You forget sometimes, you know, ’cause when you can see the camera you think it’s all cool. But you might be seeing it with just one eye, and that means the other half of your face ain’t in the picture. So I had the guys do the blink thing, back and forth, so I knew I had everybody’s eyeballs.

Also got the lights way high. Reason being, you want to fly the flash literally over the front rows to the back rows. Light from eye level the gang up front gets nuked before you can get anything to guys in the way back. So get the lights high up, and the downward spill will take care of the front rows.

Group shots are tough, right? Don’t know a single shooter who really likes to do them. About 1000 ways to screw it up, and only one or two to do it “right.” But it’s cool stuff, ’cause these are some of the most important pictures of life. This is the stuff of memory. These get passed on. These hang on walls.

Maybe, someday, when my pixels have long since turned to dust, one of the young guys in this picture, somebody with a girlfriend now, will return to the house with his grandchildren. He can point to this shot, hanging on the wall, and say, “That was me, a long time ago.” And they’ll look, and he’ll be there, face filled with light, looking at the camera with both eyes.

Keith Johnson (seated, 2^nd from right) is a good guy, and the walking, talking definition of the word “gregarious.” He called out to me at camera and told me to make sure I made him look good. Told him no problem, I had a sub-menu of custom functions buried deep in my X that I’ve come to call the “Keith Johnson Function.” Just makes everybody look good. I’m thinking about talking to Nikon about it. More tk….

Working in Europe, under a giant umbrella of volcanic ash. No fly time now. Just as well. I’d rather drive just about anywhere than fly. Except home, of course. Gotta fly home, and pretty soon, so hoping for a wind shift, or maybe one of those movie special effects deals where all of sudden the volcano goes into reverse gear and sucks back down what it just threw up.

Working with Nikon Europe and a bunch of Annie’s extraordinary colleagues over here. What started small in Copenhagen 4 years ago has become a barnstorming tour, with stops in a various cities across Europe, particularly, this year, in Germany. Yasuo Baba, the manager of NPS Germany, and a complete, total force of nature,  has put together a terrific itinerary that has us in Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, as well as 6 stops in Germany. Somehow, through his efforts, every place we show up, there’s ballerinas and body builders.

Just crossed into Austria. Gonna be a while before we hit Ljubljana. Darkness closing in. Domen and Rene up front sharing the driving. Young guys, they are, somewhat oddly, into 80’s music. Dire Straits through the speakers. Annie eating gummi bears.

People across the board have been wonderful at the various stops. Meeting photogs from the commercial world, newspaper guys, wedding shooters, you name it. Playing with light and shooting stuff. Talking gear, the language we all understand.

Years ago, my first foray out of the US sent me to England. I was a student, and my photography professor, Fred Demarest, urged me to come over and mix chemistry for the Syracuse London photo program. I got 9 free graduate credits, and 5 pounds a week.

I jumped on it. Got myself a cold water flat with a shower down the hall in Parsons Green, south of the Thames, for six pounds fifty a week. Ran the lab, shot stuff at Speakers’ Corner, looked at lots of pictures. Went to the London Royal Photographic Society, where they had a show of Gene Smith’s work. Went back six or seven times.

Ate at the original, and at that time, the only, Hard Rock Café. Played basketball for a semi-pro team called London Amber. Had a blast. Starting five was a crazy Ozzie, me, and some terrific English blokes, one of whom was a chauffeur during the day. For a road trip, he could stuff the whole team into his massive limo. Played some pretty basic gyms, lacking, uh, amenities. Jesus, that car stank after a game.

Went to sea. Wandered up to Lowestoft, the eastmost tip of England, and signed onto to a fishing trawler named the Boston Shackleton for a two week stint in the North Sea. In November. On board, they called me “Hank the Yank” and made fun of the fact I had to hang on to stand up. Couple of them piped down a bit after I climbed the mast, which most of the crew wouldn’t do. Fun up there, a seaborne roller coaster, complete with salt spray.

Nighttime on the the Dogger, as some fishermen liked to call the North Sea, is particularly, deeply black. The wheelhouse was like a cocoon. Outside the sea circled the boat like a powerful snake, waves coiling and uncoiling. Wind sharp as a thrown knife. Inside, the glow of instruments, and the smell of strong tea.

Thirty five years and nearly 60 countries later, still at sea. Still love staring at darkness, slipping by. Still love the uncertainty of photography. Still love the fact that it kicks my ass. Nowadays, love knowing that all those millions of pixels, hot wired for color and speed, are still blind without the eye of a shooter pointing them the right way. Still love that my imagination precludes the possibility that I will ever grow up.

Still love the passport stamps, and the fact that each one means a connection made, a culture observed. Lessons learned. People met. Bridges, however temporary and fragile, made. Never get tired of the sound of a shutter. Never tire of nights like these, especially now that I share them with Annie. Here in the dark, asleep now, listening to her breathe.

Ljubljana still couple hours away. It’s okay. They can drive slower if they want. More tk….

Jim Marshall died today. That name might not mean much to lots of folks, even photographic folks, but we are all the poorer for his passing. He was an iconic shooter of the rock and roll scene in it’s heyday. He lived hard, and chased pictures even harder. He didn’t shoot raw files. He just shot raw. His demands for access were as unflinching as his lens. “If someone doesn’t want me to shoot them, fine, fuck ‘em,” he said. “But if they do, there can’t be any restrictions.”

An eye that doesn’t blink can be unflattering. One of Jim’s most famous images is Johnny Cash at San Quentin, flipping the camera the bird. Hendrix, Joplin. Jim shot them all. His way. Real isn’t necessarily pretty. But it can be memorable.

“I don’t sign shit either, I own all of my photographs and no one I’ve shot, not Dylan, not Miles, not Cash, has ever complained about how my pictures of them have been used.”

We are at a place where 50 or 60 or 100 shooters all vie for space in the pit for 3 songs, if that. All of them are outside the velvet rope, hoping for a glimpse, waiting for an opening. Jim, working in a different era, made his own openings. His pictures smell of sweat, incense and dope. They pop, ’cause they’re real. And, more importantly, he owned them. He was careful with his negs. As he said, “I took care of my negatives. Now they take care of me.”

Has anyone ever shot a memorable picture of, for instance, Coldplay? I ask this question from afar, as I am not a rock and roll shooter. From what I hear, again,  from a serious distance, is that this is a band, like many, who has left the term “control freak” in the rear view mirror. Absolute control of image, and images. I guess that’s understandable. It’s a business. Good music, to be sure. Sanitized, moderated imagery. Will we look in 20 years? Will that retouched, altered image hit a nerve? Seeing as many shooters now have to sign over rights to gain access, will we ever see it? Because of his talent, and tough stance, and his steely eye through a Leica, Jim gave us memory. I cannot imagine growing up without knowing the picture of Hendrix setting his guitar on fire.

I met Jim several times. That doesn’t mean I knew him. Actually, quite the contrary. I had to be re-introduced every time we bumped into each other. He was always direct, and said on a couple of occasions, sotto voce, “You know Joe, I don’t really know your work.” That was more than okay. It was, in a funny way, validation. He was Jim. He didn’t need to know.

My wife Annie befriended Jim. He was fond of her. (Who isn’t?) She tried to guide him through the digital woods, but their conversations almost always veered away from pixels into matters far more interesting.  He sent her autographed books, and gave her a suite of signed prints, which are on our walls. The print of Hendrix up top is her favorite.

“I love all these musicians - they’re like family,” he said. “Looking back, I realize I was there at the beginning of something special, I’m like a historian. There’s an honesty about this work that I’m proud of. It feels good to think, my God, I really captured something amazing.”

Looking back from where we are now, even more amazing. More tk….