Joe McNally Photography

A few folks were interested in the a sketch of the light grid for the hyperwall deal of yesterday, so made a quick Iphone pic of the above. Now, when the figures are silhouetted against the screens, the foreground lighting (the 2 units on left) are off, and you get real mood and saturation.

When you need to see what’s going on the in the foreground, the other two units crank up. One is for the face, and one is for the ground, which is important to see, otherwise the guy just….floats….in….space…..

Easy to trigger the whole deal by just bouncing the commander signal off the drop ceiling. Then, just play with the values and power of the lights. Pretty straight forward. Obviously, the Honl grids are on the foreground lights so they don’t spill everywhere and kill the saturation of the screens.

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Hey, leave it to Scott Kelby to take Groups and Channels where they have never been before–T-shirts! And hoodies and coffee mugs. Just ordered a bunch. Pretty cool, and what’s even cooler is that all the dough goes to The Springs of Hope Orphanage in Kenya, which Scott has been helping for some time now. Check these out at cafepress.com.

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My bud Moose Peterson is in someplace called Bosque del Apache, which if you say it quick, sounds just like Santa Monica. Anyway, check out his blog ’cause he’s just shooting some amazing bird stuff. Read his blog today, and he says, “Our third day of Base Camp Bosque was a killer! There’s no doubt the bird count is down but it only takes one bird to make my day!” Gosh Moose, I feel the same way!

I gotta get that boy out more often……..more tk…….

This guy once said, get your camera in a different place. I tell ya, sometimes when you have a camera in your hands you just feel you want some sort of hovercraft. Something that will let you magically float your camera into a different, unique position. That’s what I wanted down in St. Lucia. Instead, I got a 14′ ladder on an inclined tin roof, with a couple of guys for sandbags. Looks comfy, don’t it? By the end of this shoot, I was definitely numnuts:-)

It enabled me to get this, which is no screamin’ headline of a picture, but gives Karolin Troubetzkoy, the organizational and marketing force of nature who keeps Anse Chastanet/Jade Mountain running, a bit of a different look. Anytime you can offer someone something with a bit of difference, you might be ahead of the game, just a little.

What can you say? The place is pure romance. You don’t just look at the pretty flowers and trees. You are in them. You don’t just listen to the birds. They have breakfast with you. And you don’t just breathe the air in that mechanical, gotta keep gulping to keep living way you do when you are walking the streets of NY. You drink it in. You savor it. It is not just another lungful. It is an infusion of well being.

Good thing to, cause I came back to reality with a thud. Lightning in Atlanta closed the airport for a bit on Sunday, and I didn’t roll into my driveway until 3:30am. Kept moving somehow, blogged, showered, and staggered to the truck for the 6am drive to Philly where I’m shooting some annual report type stuff. Today was a corker. My whole body feels like it’s got some miles on it, just like these old Saint Lucian toes I made a pic of in Soufriere.

More tk…..

Had a blast in St. Lucia this week, hanging and shooting at one of the most amazing places I have ever been, the Anse Chastanet, Jade Mountain Resorts. I fell in love with the place from the very first time I went there, some 15 years ago. And just this week, during our first annual hot shoe flash lighting workshop, came the news that lots of other folks really love it, too. Travel and Leisure named Jade Mountain the number one resort in the Caribbean, and number three in the world. Anse Chastanet pulled in at number four in the Caribbean.

And here the place was letting us run around with a bunch of cameras and speed lights. Considering it’s the occasional home of celebs, famous football players, and even more famous “girls next door,” all of whom were in attendance last week, we could have been built in, go to paparazzi corps. No need, though. We had great subjects, witness the pic above.

Victor is the best dive buddy you could ever have. He had, by last count, a bit over 27,000 dives. He’s on a first name basis with most of the fish who abound on the Anse Chastanet reefs. He is one of those hardy souls who defies time, and gravity. This portrait was done with a new unit I am pretty batty about, the  Elinchrom Quadra. At 400 watt seconds, it is small and incredibly light (the heads weigh .5 pounds each)  and it can fit onto a big light shaping tool, like the deep Octa. Check out Scott Kelby’s blog for a cool production shot of this pic. Another episode in my ongoing adventure with expensive electronic equipment and large bodies of water.

What was even more special about the week was my wife Annie surprised me by just showing up, unannounced and unexpected. And my dear friends Scott and Kalebra Kelby came down as well. Scott took over the reins for the last afternoon of the class, doing real time Lightroom magic that had everybody jazzed. Scott’s artistry with that program defies belief.

We had thirteen participants, and we cruised through lots of flash stuff…..blending exposure, light shaping tools, hi speed sync, rear curtain, flash and blur, portraiture, you name it. Then we wrapped the week with real time shooting in Soufrieres, the little fishing village a short boat ride from the hotel.

Way cool. Even in this tiny little Carib town, there is the power of the internet, and the reach of Scott Kelby’s voice. We wandered into the local fire department and met a wonderful guy with the improbable but terrific name of Garvey Charlemagne, firefighter, photog, PhotoShop enthusiast, and…reader of Scott’s blog.

Scott walked into Garvey’s firehouse and I thought we were going to have to turn the hoses on him to calm him down. It was just great. They rolled out the red carpet for us, and a bunch of the class had a blast shooting around the house.

Then, on Friday afternoon, it was time for Junior and the flambos. Lighting up the beach at Anse Chastanet is a long held tradition, just a bit longer than the tradition I have of photographing Junior doing it. He is remarkably patient with me, seeing as the first time I shot him firing up flambos was in 1994.

Once again, Junior lit up the beach and the sky for our class. I first did this with him 15 years ago, shooting with a Fujica 617 Panorama camera. Times have changed, and this was done on a D3 with 7 SB900 units, running on manual and triggering off of a Pocket Wizard. No going TTL here. It would have been possible, I think, with a little sleight of hand at camera, but we hadn’t tried PW triggering of manual flash during the week, so we played with that.

Following light in one of the most beautiful places on earth. You know, sometimes, when you don’t have a client or a deadline to worry about, and you haven’t got a wire service editor calling you names, and the gear is working as well as your eyeballs, and the world just plays out in front of your lens in a wonderful way…..being a photog….doesn’t suck…..more tk…..

Joe make joke. This is not small flash. This is not a job for small flash. This is the kind of job that makes your speed light start calling those internet 800 numbers that promise, well, enhancement…..

We were in the neighborhood of 30,000 or so watt seconds on this one. This is the LBT, or Large Binocular Telescope, which is the largest ground based telescope in the world. Shooting this observatory was the lynchpin of the telescope story I just shot for Nat Geo’s July issue. It sits atop Mt. Graham in Arizona, at about 12,500 feet of elevation, or just enough elevation to make climbing steel catwalks with a couple large power packs in hand a dizzying experience. Size wise, it is the equivalent of a 22 story building.

Vantage point is from a 175 boom crane, which in the wind at 12,500 feet gives new meaning to shimmy, rattle and roll. The crane operators on the ground were watching the boom pole dance around in the sky and were saying novenas that the wind didn’t pick up and exceed limits. If that happened, they woulda pulled me outta the sky. Bye- bye picture.

What shocked the heck outta me was that we did it in a day. Rob Stephen from San Diego, Dan Bergeron from LA, Drew and myself hauled 40 plus cases of gear up there at dawn, had the crane truck blocked into the side of the hill, staged the lights, tested, clamped the cameras into the basket of the boom, got the position, did a lot of light tweaking over the radio, shot the picture, had dinner, boxed everything up and drove over 100 hairpin turns off the mountain at about 2 am the following morning. Life inside the the yellow border…

LOOKING FOR LIGHT IN ST. LUCIA…..

Great workshop going here at Anse Chastanet, Jade Mountain in St. Lucia. We are having a ball. The island is so beautiful every turn you make just astounds. Yesterday Claudette posed in spiritual fashion for class in the jungles by Anse Mamin beach. The gang hit the beach and Drew and I got into the pool with the Sylinator. Scott Kelby shows up today to start his Lightroom magic. The class is stoked……

In yet another case of bedsheets disappearing from hotels, the suspected perpetrator of these thefts struck again, operating in unusually brazen fashion in front of 5 or 6 horrified onlookers in Venice’s historic San Marco Plaza. Going from hard light to soft light, he allegedly pulled the sheet from his equipment bag with a flourish, uttering what has become the bandit’s signature location phrase….”Let me just whip this out.”

Venice is a beautiful city. Amazing. It has a patina and character that is all its own, which might stem from the fact it is under water a great deal of the time. The Cafe Florian is undoubtedly one of the most historically significant places in the ville, and what makes it truly wonderful is that you can plop yourself smack dab in the middle of its beauty and character for the price of a cup of coffee. An expensive cup of coffee, to be sure, but still, one of the red velvet chairs in the joint can be yours’ for a cuppa joe. Anybody who has had the dubious privilege of spending 5 bucks in a Starbucks for a triple vente soy bean no foam iced latte’ knows that it don’t come with a red velvet chair and wall art dating back to 1720.

I’ve been thinking about shooting here ever since I first came to Venice 3 years ago. It’s just an amazing place, dripping with history and ornate detail. Given the way my noodle often operates, I was sitting in there and it crossed my mind that it would be an interesting portrait venue for maybe, I don’t know, lemme guess, a ballerina! Mongo like!

The opportunity here came about via the good graces of Marco Tortato, of Manfrotto, makers of all things to hang lights and cameras from. His wife, Sylvia, handles public relations for the cafe, and I was allowed to shoot there in the early morning, before any caffeine seeking crowds descended. Not only did Marco facilitate the shoot, he worked his magic all week with our VSP class, pulling and hauling gear, and providing us with C-stands, Manfrotto air cushion light stands, Justin Clamps, Tri-flashes, Lastolite tri-grips for diffusion and reflection….(Hmmm…..diffusion and reflection. Sounds like that should be a desk at the state department. “Department of Diffusion and Reflection, may I help you?)….

I digress. Anyway, our class was kitted out admirably with the gracious assistance of Marco and Manfrotto. We toodled all over various water bound locales, even shooting early am in San Marco……

The above is one SB900, zoomed to 200mm, and placed outside the columns on one of those little floor stands that come with the unit. Full cut of CTO. 70-200mm lens on the camera, and an SU800 linked to the hot shoe via 2 SC29 cords, firing just to the left of the columns. The light is maybe 40-50 feet away from the CLS trigger. Kinda set this up for the class, and everybody got a chance that morning to work with light and wonderful dancers. Thanks to Beatrice, Barbara, and Celeste who arose earlier than any other ballerinas in recorded history to make this shoot happen for all of us.

Shooting inside the cafe, the setup was a bit different. Gelled all the lights warm, and just let them rock at a 200mm zoom from about 20 or so feet from the glass. No diffusion, just hard, warm light.

That combo produced a slashing, shadowy light, and it pushed the color button pretty hard. Eventually I put a 4th SB900 in there, Justin clamped to an existing stand, and just banged that down into the ground, hoping a little bounce light might grace the ceiling, which was equally reflective and gaudy as the walls. Had a traditional Venetian mask on hand, which Beatrice graciously wore for a few frames.

Enter the bedsheet. We clipped it up with a couple of plastic A clamps brought by Frank Keller, who attended the workshop, and is on the very beginnings of an intersting photographic path. That big swatch of diffusion softened the light and filled the whole room with detail embracing, easy going photons.

As they say, a face in a place…..

Up early and off to the airport. Commercial job this week. Drew’s been in Nashville shooting the lollapalooza, or bananarama…something like that. It’s a music festival. As you saw last week, he’s a good music shooter who always manages to talk his way on stage somehow. He’ll pick me up at the airport. Had no choice but to get up early. Nigel’s been getting bigger. I think he’s about 21 pounds now. That boy is hungry all the time. He jumped on the bed about 3:30, and you can’t sleep through that. It’s like somebody just dropped a bowling ball on your pillow. More tk….