Joe McNally Photography

Strange things happen when you turn a Moose loose in Times Square.

Yep, the first ever Digital Landscape Workshop Series event in the Big Apple is over. Everybody survived and to my knowledge none of our participants are currently sloshing around at the bottom of the East River wearing cement shoes, or squatting in tiger cages in the belly of a tramp steamer flying the Liberian flag and headed for the West Coast of Never To Be Seen Again. Thank goodness for that.

New Yorkers once again, disproved the universal bad rap of being discourteous, brusque and just generally annoyed. Our group was received with open arms and an almost universally positive reaction to their requests to photograph strangers on the street. To get everybody in the mood, I told that old saw of a NY joke: Lost, desperate tourist on the streets of NY needs directions, but is terrified of approaching anyone cause he’s heard all the stories about rude, nasty New Yorkers. He is irretrievably lost though, so he summons the sand to approach someone who appears to be a “typical” denizen of the urban jungle and asks, timidly, deferentially…..”Excuse me sir, but can you please tell me the way to the Empire State Building, or should I go fuck myself?”

No visit to Times Square is complete without a, uh, photo session with the Naked Cowboy, a regular fixture of that particular neon laced stretch of streets. Now, how he found Moose, and even knew his name, and requested his presence for a photo shoot, I’ll never know. One of those NY coincidences, I guess:-)

We toodled all over the city as well as Jersey based vantage points. From Liberty Park, to Weehawken, to Chinatown, to the Brooklyn Bridge, to Central Park, to St. Pats, to…..you get the idea. Many a mile was legged out. Traveled light and fast. Saw lots of stuff, beautiful views and interesting faces.

As a surprise for the class, I asked Vanessa Moore to join us on the Brooklyn Bridge. She is one of the most exquisitely talented dancers I have ever worked with. I mentioned I was walking on the bridge, and would do a lighting demo, and folks could join me if they were interested. Then I mentioned that they sorta should be interested, because for the next few minutes, I would be very interesting, as opposed to my normal state, which is to be duller than C-span. I started talking lighting theory, and Vanessa swept around from behind one of the bridge towers.

It was almost a religious event out there, wading through the crowd with big Will toting a 3×3 Lastolite panel on a stick and Drew with another stick and arm arrangement with 3 SB900 units firing through the 3×3. Used 3 units cause I knew we would potentially be a bit of a distance from Vanessa and would draw a fair amount of power. Also saturated the heck out of the background at around minus two EV.

I tell ya though, at the end of the workshop, I felt like my brain and body were functioning around minus two or three EV. NY can take it out of you. Recuperated with the gang at my house with barbecue, Fuerza Bruta, dinner at City Hall restaurant, and a bunch of lazing around. Won’t see the DLWS folks again till San Fran in January. Pretty much home bound now, and lovin’ it. More tk….

Yep, heading for Malaysia, courtesy of the efforts of Louis Pang, one of the premier wedding shooters in that country, and for that matter, all of Asia. Louis and I got to know each other when he took my lighting class at Santa Fe this past year, and the irrepressible Louis had ideas. When he gets ideas, actions follow. He went home, put together a plan, launched a website, and off we go. Or are going. First week in February, Drew and I will be in Kuala Lumpur, working with photogs from all over Malaysia and points east. Here’s the link.

We’ll do a series of one day intensives, with small groups, and then a big day in front of a bunch of folks. It’ll be fun. In my off time, as I often do, I’ll work with dancers, to keep pushing that archive.

KELBY TOUR STOP/NYC–YOU TALKING TO ME?

We worked last week in NY with Trent, a terrific model, athlete and all around crowd pleaser. Gave this great expression for a sports portrait. Shot TTL on stage for a great group of folks who came by the Javits Center for a Kelby Location Lighting tour stop. Lotta fun. Over 800 people. Yikes. Trent handled it real well, and even gave me the old, “Joe, you’ve only got five minutes” routine when he morphed from athlete to executive.

Did ‘em both, along with other sets,  in an hour, moving fast, and chatting my way through thinking about the light. All my mistakes (Lord knows there are plenty of those) go right up on the screen immediately as I shoot, along with frames that are more finished. It’s a bit of a tightrope, but it’s fun, and people get into it and are real supportive. Main thing I try to convey is that it is never a done deal, lock solid, take it to the bank success from the first frame. It’s a process, and there are blind alleys and rabbit holes galore you can run yourself into. The main thing, as always on location, is how you recover. Where do you go next? How to pull this job out of the fire? Like an ER doc, you find yourself looking at your picture and saying. “How do I save this patient?” In the emergency room of location photography, you gotta move fast, be decisive and turn on a dime.

It’s nuts, but fun. More tk….

As I always say, what could go wrong? 5 hours of live lighting in front of 950 people. Thankfully they were very gracious, easy going people, who were an enormous source of support and good will all day long. Very cool.

Day started with Drew, Will and I on the loading docks at 6am getting a boatload of gear up into the Wash. DC Convention Center. Ah, the glamorous life of a shooter. At that point, it’s just a matter of racing the clock to get ready for the doors opening at 9. Both Drew and Will worked incredibly hard, going full blast with only 3 hours sleep.

We started simple. Basic TTL strategies, using umbrellas, Tri-grip reflectors, diffusers, you name it. The guys are very tolerant of me, cause, while there is a general plan or outline to the day, I often riff a bit here and there, and try stuff just for the heck of it. We were blessed with two terrific, talented people in front of the lens, Jen and Tory, who worked with us. Tory didn’t even hold it against me that I called him Corey a good deal of the day.

Simple umbrella and a fill board for Jen.

Then a single Tri-grip diffuser for Tory.

Which became two Tri-grips, with Drew and Will hand holding both, along with the flashes.

Tory has one of those faces that really work well with all manner of light, and most folks reacted well to the idea of doing moody, simple light, TTL, really quickly. The two pics above took about 3 or 4 minutes to do, even with me burbling incoherently into the microphone.

Then Tory went the exec route.

This was an interesting set, in that I got myself into the woods using 4 flashes, all of which needed different power settings, but  only had 3 groups to put them in to set those power ratings. Something hadda give. Luckily, I was able to play with positioning of the lights, and eliminate the 4th flash when the low flash directly in front of Tory put enough catch light in his eyes. It was a good place to be, though, cause it was good information for everybody in the room. We were on the doorstep of either making TTL work, or sending the flashes a message to all go manual, then ratio one of them down, power wise, with the time honored method of neutral density gels, or just forgetting about wireless hoo hah and going with a radio/manual power solution. Everything we tried was valid, and it was fun for the audience to kind of participate and work this out.

Then Tory got into athletic duds, and we tried another iteration of rim light with gels, and a Honl grid light for the face. Never really finished this photo, but it was going in a good direction. Will is just off camera to the right, hand holding the gridded speedlight.

For the last hour, we bring out the Rangers, just to show how strategies might vary between big lights and small lights. Went with an overhead beauty dish for Jen, with a small softbox underneath of her, for a pretty straightfoward beauty light look. Popped an SB900 into her hair for good measure, again taking a look at ways to mix different types of flashes. Will employed the wind machine, aka the eyeball dryer. I couldn’t resist dropping in a little glamour glow on this in post. The post stuff is really seductive, I tell ya, even for a goober like me who doesn’t know how to use it. I mean, I’m capable in a meager way of doing basic darkroom stuff, but I look at PhotoShop and filters and stuff like I’m a twelve year old holding a rocket launcher. “Wonder what this button does? Holy shit! I just blew a hole through my photograph!” Personal opinion? There are some filters and sliders and moves out there now that should be labeled, “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”

Then at the very end, we put a Ranger Elinchrom with a long throw reflector at the back of the auditorium, along with an SB900. Just threw light at the stage. Any guesses which this one is?

Then of course, at the end, we asked for some audience participation to be Jen’s entourage/bodyguards. Da guys were a hoot.

Lotta fun. Hectic day. Each setup transpires in minutes, and we go non-stop. Many thanks to everybody in the audience, Will, Drew, Jen, Tory, and the Kelby gang, who really know how to pull this stuff together. More tk….

DLWS Michigan. It was raining. Hard. So we didn’t get to go to a lighthouse, one of my favorite things. Stayed indoors, and pooled our flashes. Group A, B, and C. Total, 25. I personally think it had nothing to do with technology, it had to do with this charismatic group of photo folks levitating the light out of their SB units.

Great DLWS, even though it was held in the middle of nowhere. Though someone corrected me today, quite defintively, telling me that it was not the middle of nowhere, but that Traverse City was the biggest city in the lower portion of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Or is it the upper part of the lower peninsula? That’s where I was? How does Moose Peterson get me to go to places like this where there’s a whole lot of wet leaves on the ground?

But I am trying, lest Moose loose patience with my meager landscape efforts. I did shoot a tree. And I enjoyed my walk in the forest.

But I have to admit, being a people shooter, I was far more interested in doing a portrait of one our participants, Kim. (Also shot at f2, like the tree above.)

Shot with an Ezybox Hot Shoe Softbox, toted by Drew, who was using a Sylinator paint pole light lifter. Had a good time just working down the light to accomodate f2. Been experimenting a bit lately with real minimum DOF portraits. Dicey with the sharpness thing, but fun to do.

Then, the best thing of the trip happened. We went to a deserted beach. It was deserted for very good reasons, in that it was freezing and raining. But a couple of terrific free spirits had slept out on the beach for the whole night, hoping for some wave and wind action in the morning, and instead found their isolated stretch of sand invaded by about 40 folks with cameras. I approached one of them, JonTan, and simply asked, you know, how about making a few pictures?

It was the picture of the trip. Shot again with the Ezybox on the end of the Sylinator. My thanks go out to Vlad and JonTan, who were very patient with our us and all of our pixels.

THIS JUST IN…..

In DC today, doing a stop for Kelby Tours. Doing live lighting for 5 hours in front of over 800 people. What could go wrong? Shot below is from the first one I did, in San Fran. (Pano stitch by Drew Gurian.)

Like before, I’m sure I’ll be so damn nervous I’ll be in the hallways out back of the place, looking for a place to yak…and then I’ll get a camera in my hands and it’ll be okay.

STUDIO SHENANIGANS…..

Will Foster, a great guy who freelances with us, was so impressed by Drew’s workflow blog he went ahead and re-christened him……DREWBO!

I can just see Drew now, standing in front of the computers in the office going, “Okay pixels, I’m comin’ for ya. This time it’s personal……”

More tk…..

Last day of this October’s version of Jay’s workshop, or, more descriptively, the class the sun forgot. We’ve had about two hours of decent sunshine this week, and tried to make something out of it. It’s been a good week. Jay tore a hole right through the picture I posted yesterday when I showed it. He pointed out the lettering, “PAR,” “Zurich,” and “Yahoo,” hijacked any discussion the photo might have started with a prospective viewer. I was not wild about the pic, but liked some of the color and mood, which enabled me to not really consider my choice in an complete way. (This is why we need editors of our work.)

Thing is, he’s right. Ever been to a meeting where somebody who hasn’t done their homework, or feels compelled to assert some sort of superiority,  or whose therapist is on vacation, goes off on an irrelevant tangent for several minutes while the rest of the folks present engage in eye rolling exercises? I think that’s what Jay was saying. Those elements he brought to my attention are like that guy at the meeting, squashing meaningful discourse by clamoring for attention and distracting everybody. He also pointed out the bus on the right was not really a New York City bus.

I will try this again.

So I went out and photographed a man with sad eyes….

Classic Jay: A guy comes to him with a whole tray of slot canyon pictures. First one comes up, and Jay says, “This is nice. But, you know, I don’t think you’re challenging yourself shooting all this stuff, cause I’ve never really seen a bad picture of a slot canyon.” Second one comes up. Jay turns and says, “On second thought…..”

It’s interesting now, shooting on the street. The two pictures I feel strongest about I am reluctant to throw up on the blog. One had really nice gesture. A couple in a bar. They knew I was shooting them, and were okay about it. Their body language was great. Lots of questions as I look at the pics. Beginning of the relationship? End? Chance meeting? Pretty wonderful, the imaginings one could have.

The other was of a mentor relationship between a young boy and a 30 something guy. On the subway, the guy was showing the youngster how to warm his hands by rubbing them together. Nice moment. But, it’s a kid and I just dunno. Also, I shot it on the subway, and the pixel police might get me. The way we live now reminds me of a cartoon I saw years ago where this doofy guy comes out of his house in a bathrobe to confront soldiers, tanks, helicopters and a couple of trench coated G-men on his doorstep. They look at him and say, “We understand you tore the little tag off your mattress.”

More tk…..