Joe McNally Photography

The truth can finally be told. I’ve been tinkering with the notion of a program like this for years, and well, all I can say is thanks to all those folks at Apple who listened.

Joe make joke.

It’s here. Geez louise, it’s here. After a whole bunch of swirl and anticipation, Aperture 3 is launched. Drew and I have been working with it for months now, and I have to say, I feel like I did when I got a D3 in my hands. I liked the D2X, and enjoyed driving it in the middle lane of the freeway, windows slightly open, enjoying the breeze, listening to Judy Collins on the FM, big slurpie in the cup holder, a veritable picture of moderate contentment. Then the D3 slammed past me in the fast lane and sucked out my headlights. Been hanging onto the throttle of that bad boy ever since. It was a quantum leap in cameras.

Feel the same about this. I liked Aperture 2. Worked out fine. But this thing is a monster. Apple just started a whole new ball game here. It is sleek, elegant, and clean. The complete workability of the full screen mode is terrific. The brushes are sweet. And for me, for whom life is succession of hotel rooms and airports, the slide show feature is what I have been waiting for. Instead of timing, and re-timing, and juggling music and pix endlessly, the slide show feature for Aperture 3 just rocks. You can blend still and video, and make it all sing and dance together really easily.

Check out the full skinny here. While I was sleeping in Malaysia, those fellas in Cupertino have been busy. More tk…..

On the West Coast, finishing my last few days on this story for the great chiefs of the Land of the Yellow Border. Few things going on….

ADORAMA IPHONE CONTEST!

This is pretty cool.  Great prizes, easy to follow up and enter. Hit this link to check it out. I think this is wonderful, fun acknowledgment that we are all just a bunch of distracted slackers out there who really don’t do any work anymore but just wander through the streets and our workplaces making snaps and videos and playing with apps. We’ve come a long way since the time when we would slide into the video arcade and spend our whole lunch hour playing Pacman.

The best part for me is to be on the judging panel with a bunch of my favorite folks…..Scott Kelby, leader of that notorious Tampa based NAPP gang; Moose Peterson, fresh from the woods, having spent the holidays with his furry cousins; Syl Arena, who given his hair, could be one of those furry cousins; Eric Meola, who is older than I am and got his start at the same place–The Syracuse University Daily Orange; and Boomer and Carton, those maniacs over at WFAN. First time in my life I’ve been included in a “celebrity panel.” Geez. Does this mean I have to start behaving badly and stumble drunkenly out of limos while not wearing underwear? Pull a pistol on one of the other judges if I don’t agree with their choice? Grab the mike from the hands of the host while announcing the winner and declare that I really thought the prize should have gone to that fellow who shot all those HDR Iphone self portrait nudes? Such a range of behavior is possible when you throw the word “celebrity” into the mix:-)

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Had a blast the other day with those crazy Ozzies, Bruce Williams and Shelton Muller over at Shutters Inc. Podcast. They are an absolute hoot, and we had a great time talking pictures and saying “mate.” They are a great source of photo info and (as they freely admit) inconsequential, wonderful blather. Good blokes, as they say. (Here at the studio, we are pulling together the bits and pieces for a series of workshops down under for next year, so stay tuned. If we go, Bruce and Shelton are definitely on for several beers. Thanks guys!)

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Lectured last week at the Twoffice! Very cool….many thanks to Dustin Diaz over at Twitter for working it out. Dustin is a good shooter who has pushed himself to do a portrait a day for 365 days. It is an extraordinary document–check it out here.

I did get a little chatty and ran over 140 characters, but that was just ’cause the questions were so good. Great place, nice folks (who were really attuned to photography), and…great food! Had lunch there, and it was probably the healthiest I have eaten in this millennium. More tk….

Yankees won. Cool. I’ve been a Yankee fan before I even knew anything about NY. We lived in Cleveland when I was a kid, and my dad would only bring me to the ballpark when those damn Yankees were playing. He brought me down to the third base seats and Casey Stengel was standing in the coaches box. My dad yelled, “Hey Case!” Stengel was standing there, thumbs hooked in his belt, and gave me a wink and a quick wave. Been a Yankee fan ever since, though, like Yogi, I did have a hard time liking anybody in pinstripes back when The Boss was in full cry.

Corny, right? But hey, it was the 50’s. In Cleveland.

Big sports stuff in NY last weekend. The Iggles handed the Giants their heads and other parts of their anatomy, and the NYC Marathon was won for the first time in a long time by somebody whose address isn’t the Rift Valley. I spent 3 weeks in this astonishingly beautiful place for the National Geographic when I was doing a story for them on the limits of the human body. (Though now that Usain Bolt is running, we should re-define those limits. That guy’s amazing.)

The sheer beauty of these athletes was breathtaking. While running, their upper bodies remained virtually motionless, while their legs, seemingly unattached and thus unburdened by the weight of a torso, would pinwheel endlessly through the countryside. Mesmerizing.

I lived at one of the camps up there for a bit, and would get up for pre-dawn workouts with literally dozens and dozens of runners. It would be so dark in this tiny Kenyan village, virtually bereft of electricity, with only the pale pre-glow sky to see by, that the runners would simply be moving, stretching ghosts, barely discernible.

I stood out there with them in the clutter of the street, watching them get ready, using broken walls and gates to push and pull against, warming their muscles in the chill, windmilling their arms amidst the standing pools of water, and the occasional gaggle of scurrying chickens. Naturally, I was out of place, being the only white guy, and the only one out there who had any body fat. So I would attempt conversation, as one does when one is the lone photog in an alien environment, desperately trying to fit in, make a bridge, seek even the remotest shred of acceptance.

They were invariably polite and congenial. I remember one conversation that went roughly like this.

“Hi, yeah, I’m shooting this story, runners are part of it. Do you run professionally? Do you compete?”

“Oh, yes, I do.”

“Great. Do you compete just in Kenya, or do you run in international events?”

“Oh, yes, I run internationally.”

“Cool. What’s your event?”

“Oh, I run the half marathon mostly.”

“Great, that’s really great. Do you do okay with that? Is it a good event for you?’

“Yes, not too bad. I set the world record for the half marathon last year in Amsterdam.”

“Oh, yeah, well that’s really good, you know, uh, great. Don’t mind me, I’m just, you know, a complete ass, you know, uh, yeah. Like, uh, you see that cow turd over there in the street? Yeah, well, that’s my cousin….”

In the shadows of this downtrodden village in Kenya, amidst the garbage, the mud and the wandering cows, there were probably about 4 or 5 world record holders at various distances. What a wonderful and surprising world.

You know, I have an amazing wife. She is so wonderfully patient, sweet and kind. She weathered the storm this week of one of those modern rituals of maintenance….the dreaded colonoscopy. Hey, it’s a good thing…..afterwards.

Of course I complained. Understandable, right? I wanted to cancel, but I got the eyebrow. The word “reschedule” was barely out of my mouth when Annie’s left eyebrow hit her hairline with the speed of a bottle rocket.

So I went and got all the stuff. Then of course, I misread the directions. Oops! According to this protocol, at certain times, I was supposed to take 2 Gas-x pills, and then 4 of the Dulcosomething or others. (Could they give these things more attractive names?)

Anyway, I got it transposed, and I took 4 Gas-x pills, which is the limit of what you are supposed to ingest in an entire 24 hour period. Seeing as I’m a bit of a dirigible anyway, Annie got very concerned. Actually, she rolled her eyes first, then got concerned.

She insisted on calling the pharmacist, even though I told her it would be okay. I didn’t make the call easier for her by inflating my cheeks and popping my eyes like a giant blowfish every time she looked over at me. She was doing the right thing of course, just being safe. It would be embarrassing to have a death certificate that read, “Overdose of Gas-x.”

I was halfway surprised the pharmacist didn’t tell her to immediately drop the phone and grab a clothesline and tie it to my ankle, lest I bumble out the porch door like an out of control Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float. If I had, she woulda needed to call the police, and before you know it, they would’ve been diverting valuable resources like choppers and stuff to search for me.

“Chopper One, I got him. He just cleared the power lines up here on I-84. He’s gaining altitude. And I think he’s gotten a little bigger. There’s some wind up here (ouch!) and he may be headed for the approach patterns at LaGuardia. Request instructions.”

Oh well, I made it through. Got wheeled into the exam room, half blotto, and evidently the crew had been informed of my pressurized mistake, cause they were all wearing flak jackets, just in case.

More tk….

It inevitably happens that I fall behind, and don’t catch up to numerous questions we receive here on the blog. I’m able to get to some on an individual basis, but I often don’t get back. I have the best of intentions, but things do slide, given the road sked we have had this year. And those unanswered questions nag at me, cause I really do appreciate folks chiming in here on the blog, and often they are terrific notes and notions that could open up worthwhile discussion. Also, cause I was raised Irish Catholic, I feel guilty as hell about it, and probably sometime in the late spring of 2014, when get around to my next confession, the priest will slide the little trapdoor, urge me to confess my sins, and might be taken aback when I mention the whopper of “unanswered blog questions.”

My dear publisher, Peachpit, and the creative folks in their office came up with a bit of a solution. A photo Q&A that will acquaint me with unfamiliar traits….being timely, predictable, and organized. Hit this link, and while I still won’t get to all the questions, they will organize them for me, and I will ping it regularly, with encouragement from my editor Ted Waitt, who worked all this out last time we were out in San Francisco. That week in San Fran was great. Was at all these cool places, like Apple (the mother ship), Livebooks, Lexar, Google….while we were there, Drew had some correspondence with folks at Twitter, who asked about doing a lecture there next time out. Ted, ever the wordsmith editor type, saw a golden lining there. He said, “Wow, what an easy lecture. You have to keep it under 140 characters.”

One question we will answer here, though, on the home blog. We have been getting numerous queries about our work flow, and the intrepid Drew is gearing up a blog for next week where he will explain it in detail. He knows it better than I, because, as soon as the job is done, in the grand traditon of NY based prima donna asshole photogs, I immediately don black garments and retire with a gaggle of insufferably hip swells to some ultra-hip, downtown eatery to begin a round of partying that will reel into the wee hours. It is Drew’s current lot in life to roll up his sleeves, pound back several vodka laced double espressos and begin the grim task of saving my sorry ass yet again by making the hundreds of relatively incoherent frames I have just shot (alot of my takes kind of feel like I had a seizure while holding a D3 on consecutive high) and presenting some sort of reasonable visual document to the client.

It should be a good blog, as our work flow invariably involves high drama, passenger pidgeons, and a truly unique machine we refer to as the digital transmogrifier. You see, I’m still shooting Agfachrome (those rich earthy tones) but Drew is able to dump it all into this machine and it crunches everything down, embeds metadata and spits out files at the end that make it appear that I am shooting high end digital cameras. It’s a tough day at the studio when we kick in this machine for a big take, cause it sounds a bit like a wood chipper, but hey, deadlines call.

Drew will then wait for the red phone to ring, usually late at night. It will be my agency, run by the one we simply know as “The Corsican with the Scar.” Voice suffering from french inhaling too many Gauloises, he will rasp, “Do you have ze photos?” Drew acknowledges that we do, and then immediately gets onto the train for a late night trip to the city. There’s a bank of pay telephones at Grand Central, just by track 17, and if he hits it right, when he gets off the train, the 4th phone from the left will be ringing. There, an intermediary for the Corsican will give him instructions where to drop the files. The exchange point is usually the first garbage can (are they trying to tell me something?) on the right side of the pedestrian ramp to the Staten Island Ferry. Drew drops our bag o’ files there, and behind it is a paper sack filled with non-sequential, used dollar bills. Though, I must admit, with tough times lately, it had generally been a bag of loose change, most of it zlotys.

Lynn, bless her, has a hand in this process as well. She scours the rubble of one of my takes, desperately searching for a frame that could be loosely interpreted as “portfolio material.” She then will run it to the local CVS and have an 8×10 printed, which she then takes to the basement and runs off hundreds of copies on a hand crank mimeo machine. She will then take the copies and staple them to light poles all over the neighborhood. (Business isn’t up, but boy, complaints are, so someone is noticing.) The stuff off the mimeo machine is kinda monochromatic, lacks detail and is certainly out of focus, but we figure that’s the sweet spot of the marketplace right now. Just trying to catch up here with current trends…..:-)

A quick note of thanks to the folks at Shutterbug, who worked with the studio to produce the August cover….

And thanks to Barry Tannenbaum, who puts together Nikon World Magazine. He’s a good writer, and a knowledgeable photo guy, and we just collaborated with the Nikon gang to produce a wraparound cover for the new issue. Kinda cool for me, in a very personal sense. I grew up looking at this magazine, and other anthologies Nikon would produce, and my eyes would get pretty glazed over. I would think, maybe, someday, could I get a picture in there? Far fetched at that moment of course, cause I was ragtag photo student and this mag was replete with work from my heroes like Jay Maisel, Pete Turner, and Eric Meola. They were at the forefront of the wave of Kodachrome shooters who were taking color photography to places it had never gone. Many years later, made it. Another thing on the list of things to do before I die I can check off.

The cover subject is dance, and the dancer is Jenn Concepcion, one of the most truly gifted and physically expressive dancers I have ever worked with. Imagine how hard it is to do ballet. Then imagine keeping your line, your cool and your moves together on a nearly blacked out stage with multiple stroboscopic flashes going off in your eyes. Then you get your head around what Jenn did for me to get this picture. We shot this for Kelby Video Training, once again working with all the gifted folks at NAPP. More tk….

Drew here, Joe’s first assistant/tech guy/personal darkroom, etc.  I’m the guy who helps Joe keep up with all this stuff when he’s on the road, as I tend to be back in the studio a bit more than he is.  I started working for the studio back in October, when my good pal, Brad Moore moved down to FL to assist Scott Kelby.  Previous to this job, I was a PA-based freelancer (website), doing a lot of work in the music industry… 

So, first off welcome to the new blog, and thank all of you for the amazing feedback on both the blog and website.  Hopefully, all of the little glitches will be ironed out very shortly, and YES, that includes the RSS feed issue (most of which “should” be fixed right now).  The amount of feedback we’ve gotten, and the speed at which we’ve gotten it has been extremely helpful, so keep it coming.

Also, wanted to give you a few tidbits about the redesigns, and say a few thank you’s.  We worked on the website with our friends at Livebooks, and would like to give a big thanks to Jon Lucich, Pochih Chang, and everyone else we worked with over there!  The blog was designed and coded by the great Lauren and Eric Murrell at Volacious Media, who patiently worked with us to bring our ideas to life.  They all did an amazing job, and without them, we’d still be tinkering with a sketch pad.

A few things have changed around here…we think, for the better   There’s now links to Joe’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc..  This handful of online sites can hopefully help you keep up with Joe, no matter where he is (and no matter where you are, for that matter).  Twitter is the place to see all his spur-of-the-moment thoughts, cool links, and other quick updates, especially while we’re on the road or on-location.  Facebook will be continually updated with all kinds of behind-the-scenes photos/videos.  The blog..well, you’ve all come to know what to expect here!  We’ll also be adding much more video content on both YouTube and the website in the coming months.

You’ve probably also noticed that the workshops calender is no longer on the blog- but you can check that out if you click the “workshops” link up top. That’ll bring you right to the workshops page on the new site.

The “What’s in the Bag?” page has always been one of our most requested items, so we moved it up in the right bar…just about any equipment inquiries you may have can be answered there.

We have a bunch of great ideas rolling around in the studio, but being that we have this incredible community here, we’d love to hear from you as well….feel free to comment anything at all you want to see, and it very well may come to life.  Any questions you have, just drop us a line.

Lastly, for an update on the One-Day Lighting Summer Workshops (click here for PDF), there are only FOUR spots left!  If you’re interested in getting in, email Lynn, our studio manager/producer at lynn@joemcnally.com.

Looking forward to bringing you a ton of very cool content in the coming months.

Cheers,

Drew