Joe McNally Photography

There are certainties in the life of a photog, to be sure. Shoot, suffer, die. In my experience though, the arrival of fog has never been one of them. Except here, in San Francisco, which is why this city has become one of my favorite places to work or visit. Joe love fog. Fog make everything look nice.

You get fog here as certainly as you get water when you turn the tap. Early in the week, I was giddy with it, out on a beach, running around shooting stuff, and a bud who lives locally nodded approval. He said, “Yeah, Joe, it’s a rare condition you’re seeing here. Only happens 320 days a year.”

Not that chasing fog with a camera is super easy. It slips and slides, gets thick, prompting you to pull the car over and grab the gear, and by the time you do that, it vanishes. You stand there with your camera and realize those mysterious shapes that looked so compelling in the mist are actually a bunch of porta-potties at a construction site.

I chased fog the other day and failed, making do with half a picture literally at the edge of a mud filled construction area, angling the camera this way and that, trying to avoid the sea of crap both me and my subject were standing in. You know how we do when it’s not going well–angle the camera, tilt it back and forth, and try to find a comfortable, or even plausible crop that makes some picture sense. It worked out okay, but…..this morning, I went back to find the fog. At sunrise. (It’s easy to find here. There are signs everywhere–FOG THIS WAY.)

Ariel Ford, a lovely ballerina, dance teacher, and student, braved the early morning damp to clamber into the forest on pointe shoes. Light was simple. Elinchrom Quadra, strip light, c-stand, Drew. D3X, with 14-24. Made some frames I liked, which made me less grumpy about the other day. Thanked Ariel and she went off to class. Drew and I went off to Lisa’s Diner. You know how hungry you get after a sunrise shoot? Man, it wasn’t pretty.

More tk….

29 hours, door to door. Check into hotel. Sleep 3 hours. Up at 4am. Go to Thaipusam.

Didn’t know about Thaipusam before this trip, and the timing is completely coincidental, but photographically fortuitous. It is one of the wildest explosions of human frenzy, devotion and religious fervor I have ever been to. It is the Hindu celebration of the birthday of Lord Muruga, and thousands gather amidst the heat, sweat and incense to seek his blessings and render homage. Many bear gifts, simple as a pot of milk, up the long walk to the Batu Caves. Others spin themselves into a frenzy, drift into trances, pierce their flesh, and hoist enormous kavadi on their shoulders. The kavadi is a physical and symbolic burden, a means of imploring help from Muruga.

Many Hindus prepare for the day by cleansing and fasting, and then, upon arrival at the shrine, shaving their heads.

Cleansing is one of the watchwords of the day, as devotees gather at the river to wash and prepare for the hike up to the caves.

It was down by the river that trances were induced and the ritual piercings began. In the intense, sweaty crush, air thick with smoke from burning joss sticks, camphor, and spice smells I had no knowledge of, people yipped, spoke in tongues and were literally harnessed for the journey to Muruga.

Yikes. My head was swirling with the smells, the beating of drums, the feverish cries and acrid air, redolent with incense smoke, not to mention no sleep and a total parachuting into a different realm of senses and beliefs. Potent stuff for pictures. I must have been wide eyed as this young boy, all morning.

Back to the hotel. Sleep. Monday’s on my doorstep…..more tk….

So I was with the DLWS gang in the Marin Headlands, looking at the Golden Gate Bridge, which, I can reliably report, does not move. See below.

No stranger to photog paranoia and insecurity, which rages in the hearts and minds of shooters everywhere, I continued to prove that salient fact over and over again, as if my right index finger had developed a kind of idiot savant twitch, in that it knew how to do one thing well, that is, push the damn shutter button over and over again. I’ve always been good at simple, repetitive tasks, so I went to town and produced a grid of remarkably similar looking photographs. My early career wire service editors, those members of the “One or Two Frames, Shoot It Clean” tribe are spinning in their graves.

I never met a landscape I couldn’t put a person in front of and thus make interesting,  so I importuned Moose’s redoubtable son Jake to be between me and the bridge, and thus save me from myself. Pretty nice portrait actually, as Jake got his mother’s looks and not Moose’s:-) (He did get his dad’s knack behind the camera, though. He’s a damn good shooter.)

And then, of course, I stopped, no doubt worn out from the all the clicking. I was sitting there, enjoying the breeze, looking at the sky, and just generally refreshed by not being inside a building. (I do honestly believe that sometimes, forget the photography, just look and enjoy.) I was sitting, watching the sun go down, and and the sky deepen, and the car headlights come on, and just letting lethargy and laziness take over. I mean, I was sitting on a Moose pack that contained a good chunk of the Adorama equipment catalog, and I wasn’t doing shit with it. Other folks were racing with the light, being photogs, looking and shooting, and I sat there, keeping my fingers warm by placing them under my ass.

Sun’s goin’ down in a big ball. Nice. Good clean throw to the western sky, lotta leeway to the east to get below it and look back. Nice. Got a D3X on a tripod, and a 200-400mm in my bag. Coupla flashes. Nice. I sat there with all this stuff, and my brain disconnected. Remember in T2 when the Arnold cyborg, just about crushed and dead, switches to a backup battery and his noodle flickers back to life? That’s pretty much what happened. I looked around and in one of those coulda hadda V-8 moments put the setting sun, the wall I was sitting on, the long glass and Jake together in my head.

Some mindlessly frenetic scrambling and shouting produced the camera and lens combo, Drew with a flash on a paint pole, and Jakester in position. See below, shot by fellow photog Rob Aramayo.

Got this, with Jake looking like one of the Watchmen.

Of course the sun’s just about gone. Every frame I got prior to this was either a test or a flat out bad shot with people wandering about the background. If I had started even 10 minutes earlier, woulda had several good frames and a ball of sun. But I didn’t. I didn’t see it ’cause I wasn’t looking. I’m pretty hard working, generally speaking, but I tell ya, sometimes I get so damn lazy out there it makes me wanna upchuck. Anybody else out there ever pass up a good frame ’cause you were too much of a lollygagger to pull out the camera? Or worse, there’s a camera in your hands and you just can’t muster the energy to change to the right lens? Guilty as charged, your honor. I’ve passed up good pictures just ’cause I didn’t want to put down my coffee.

Shot at f18 at 1/50th of a second, 200mm on the zoom. Plus one on the flash. Minus 2/3 on the camera EV. Wish I had more of ‘em. Maybe I will next time, when I remind myself to shoot and move, instead of sit and watch. More tk….

Always wanted to have one of these published:-)

Actually, I’m pretty happy with the picture, and my editor at the Geographic, Bill Douthitt, made a good pick here. The jazzy looking thing in the photo is NASA’s  Hyperwall-2, a conglomeration of 128 hi def screens all linked together via a main frame computer the size of Arizona and spinning out coordinated images of the galaxy. The huge telescopes at play now generate tons of information every night on ever deeper areas of space, and this device is one way scientists can actually visualize the info these puppies are generating. I was like, hey, I got a DVD of Death Race, whaddaya think? Wanna pop it on? The scientists frowned at me.

I’ve always believed that the art and craft of photography is a diverse collection of styles and substances comfortably living together and jostling each other in creative fashion under one big tent called visual storytelling. You can shoot phojo on the streets, fashion in the studio, landscape in the wild, you name it. All of it is valid, all of it has merit. Being a generalist myself, I’ve always embraced that notion of diverse approaches, even within the context of a single story. Most of the stories I’ve shot for the Geographic in the 25 years I’ve worked for them have been either problem children, or grab bags of diverse elements that needed sorting out. In other words, I’ve had stories in the mag that over a series of pages encompassed portraiture, straight up photojournalism, production work, and concept photography. A big, rambunctious hodgepodge of stuff, all of it heading in the same direction, albeit down different paths.

The question at the end of the day that needs to be asked is: Does it serve the reader? That’s the bottom line. The page stops there. We are a conduit. It’s our job to communicate in a powerful, effective and interpretive way the visceral, flesh and blood experience we are having in the field with the camera in our hands onto ink and paper, and see it get shipped halfway round the world and hope that someone opens those pages and goes, “Holy shit!”

That’s hard to do. Sometimes, on these stories, you have to wait out there with the patience of Job, and let the story and the pictures come to you. Other times, you have to dig for it like deep core driller. Other times, you have to think it through, and play out the story in your head, then go out there and create pictures that give that it a beginning, and end, and a meaning. All different approaches, all valid. (Tom Kennedy, the DOP for a number of the stories I shot at the yellow magazine, used to say there was a tipping point in every assignment when the photographer, after having the story just generally kick their butt for a while, steps forward and gains control of it. That eureka moment can come from a shot frame that turns the key in the photog’s head and heart, or from a signature personality encountered during the coverage, or even a stray phrase or piece of conversation. After that, the shooter knows what is needed, and where the pictures should go, even if that destination is surprising and unanticipated.)

The pic up top was just me by my lonesome, no assistant, and a couple of bags of stands and small flashes. It was a great day. How often do you get into a room with a device like this and have people say to you, okay, it’s pretty much yours’ for the day? (The crew of folks running this device were terrific.) Worked hard, and ran through a bunch of different lighting scenarios during the course of things, some of which worked, and others that were perfectly ridiculous.

The glow behind the array comes from four SB units, gelled a deep theatrical blue and pounding into the back wall. That surface serves as a giant fill board to wash the light off, hence the glow that surrounds all the monitors, and helps define them. (Don’t light it, light around it.) That was the basic building block of the shoot–the background light, not the foreground light. Drew took every frame I shot that day and squished them into a quickie movie you see below. Things got a little strange there, in the dark, with me using myself as a polaroid subject, but ya gotta have some fun.

I also tried some stuff with a couple of lights on the scientists at the work station driving the imagery on the screens.The keys for the people in foreground were another set of SB units, gridded and gelled warm, just establishing someplace for the person out there in all the foreground blackness to live. To give form and shape, basically.

I pretty much knew the zoom wouldn’t fly back at the ranch, but ya never know, so I gave it a try. On location, shoot it. Don’t think for the editor. Don’t foreclose a possibility. You will never be there again.

At the end of the day, the published double truck was a pointing picture, that old no no of press photography. But it worked okay. Once again, we are in a business without rules.

I tell ya, it was easier than this shot.

I showed this one before on the blog, and it is in the current American Photo. This is a whole mess of big flash, three assistants, two truckloads of gear, and a very nervous photog atop a 175′ boom crane.

Not nervous because of the height, just nervous I wouldn’t get the damn picture after all that trouble. The crane had a 25 mph wind tolerance, which you can easily exceed at 11,000 plus feet on Mt. Graham. That bucket was waving around pretty good, but thankfully, it remained calm enough that they didn’t pull me outta the sky.

So both of these efforts ran in the story, the big effort atop the mountain, and the one conjured by me with few small flashes, dinking around in dark room for a day. Radically different methods and scale of approach. But they both helped tell the story. And I guess that’s the point…..more tk….

Couple folks have asked about Wilma of late, the Neanderthal beauty I shot for last July’s Nat Geo cover story. She has hit stateside evidently, and there are rumors in the hallways of Geographic that they may be preparing a tour for her, kind of nationwide, rock and roll type extravaganza. She’s getting her own bus and and entourage. Evidently since the cover, she’s gone diva and there’s just no dealing with her:-)

Anyway the above pic did not run in the mag, which is cool. Thought I’d show it and discuss a bit, because there is some camerawork here that is really simple, but can appear hard or complex. First thing I always deal with for Geographic is that I do no post on any photo whatsoever. Every frame I shoot goes to my editor, and those frames are straight up raws that come out of the camera. Don’t touch ‘em. Don’t go near ‘em.

Which means anything I offer to them has to be a field solution. Done deal, in the camera. Fancy or not, lit or not, street shot, portrait, big production–it all goes to the mag just as it came out of the camera. And they are cool with at least receiving things like double exposures. If they run them, it is noted to the reader.

So this is a double that was done in-camera. Programmed a D3 to two exposures, lit each face in turn, and the two exposures became one file. You can see below the rough physical layout of the shot.

The notion sprang from a chance meeting with Marina, the current resident of the land where the new batch of Neanderthal DNA was found. It was that discovery that prompted Geographic’s re-examination of the Neanderthal life style, and the construction of Wilma, our red headed star. (She was exquisitely crafted by the Kennis brothers, who are amazing artists, and great guys to have a beer with.) Marina, a lovely lady, and a modern, slightly red haired female, owns the land that Wilma might have once walked. It got me to thinking.

It lead to us putting black material on the side of a barn, and building this impromptu studio in broad daylight. As you can see, I have identical light sources (shoot through Lastolite all in one umbrellas, and Elinchrom Ranger packs) positioned off the the sides of our subjects, who stand in profile to the lens (70-200mm). The angle of the light is from behind them. (Imagine each of their noses to be 12 o’clock. The lights are at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock, respectively.) This angle of the approach of the light to each of their faces ensures there is drama to the profile, and serious, quick fall off into shadow on the camera side of their faces. This gives me dark shadow area to play with as I mesh the backs of their heads together. Too much detail back there, and the mix of their hair and their craniums could get confusing and messy.

Ran the lights pretty hard, power wise so I got around 11 to 16 as an f-stop. Two reasons–depth of field across their near eye and nose, and snuffing available light. No stray ambient allowed. Black background. The only thing the camera sees is what you light.

Shooting was pretty simple. Each exposure was made with a single pop from each light. (Each pack was programmed to its’ own Skyport channel.) To enable multiple exposure mode on a D3, you need to go into the shooting menu and program it (up to 10 exposures) for each multiple you shoot. The setting expires after each exposure made, I guess, because the precise, organized engineers of camera like this view photographers as scatter brained and irresponsible, so much so that we would shoot a whole day with multiple exposure engaged if this setting wasn’t programmed to be a one frame at a time deal. Saving us from ourselves, yet again:-)

The sleight of hand, if there is any, is to use the focus cursors for lining up each image. (This is just the way I do it, there are others, to be sure.) I go to focus mode where I have one cursor highlighted in my viewfinder, and I locate it over the near eye. Then, for the second exposure, I toggle the cursor to the corresponding left or right or matching spot where I then put that little red doober right on the near eye of the second image. That way, I know the images will line up. I keep the zoom the same, and in this instance, I had the additional help of Bill Marr, the art director of the Geographic, holding a string, literally, from the edge of my lens shade to the nose of each of the ladies. That way, as I did my little two click dosey doe with the camera, I knew I had the same distance from camera to subject. (Great having an AD like Bill in the field, something that happens only rarely. He’s got a terrific sense of the picture on the page, and he was a shooter himself, so he knows the reality of location work. All hands were welcome on this shoot, ’cause Wilma’s 200 pounds, and we had to carry her a good ways into the woods.)

Only shot a few frames, and I as I mentioned, it was not published in the story. But it remains a good memory of that take, and a worthwhile stab at an impromptu, different, field solution to a problem. The pic of Marina and Wilma that did make it into the mag is below, with Marina playing with Wilma’s hair, and Wilma spectacular in a fur wrap.

More tk….