Joe McNally

Apr 28

Venice Has Legs….

In On Location, Seminars & Workshops at 11:32pm

Leaving beautiful Venice. Great week, as one would expect in this incredible place. Last year, when I taught here, we wandered in as a group to the Ostaria Sora al Ponte, a small eatery at the foot of one of the myriad bridges. I literally can’t recall laughing that hard, that long. The gentlemen who run the place, Marino and Mario, should take their more than slightly tipsy act to Vegas. They would be headliners in a heartbeat. Marino runs the front of the shop, Mario cooks. Collectively, they tipple their way through the day, laughing, tweaking, debating and generally disapproving of their customers if said customers appear cautious, quiet, sober or don’t want any dessert. If you are wise, you go with the flow and get into the spirit(s) of the establishment, and kiss your sobriety goodbye almost immediately. Last year, I barely ate, though I remember drinking a lot and laughing even more.

Well, we did it again.

Jonathan and Marzia of the VSP Workshops and I threw caution to the winds and wandered in there. About the same time, a lanky redhead walked in with short shorts, legs long enough to get an NBA tryout and killer stilettos. Marino immediately began telling her his legs were better than hers’. Naturally, photographically speaking, I joined the debate.

Of course, Marino insisted on further comparisons.

Photographically speaking, I figure my legs are about plus 3 EV. (Photo by Jonathan Maher) Recalled a time, many, many moons ago, when a bunch of us were in Las Vegas for the Larry Holmes-Jerry Cooney heavyweight bout. What you did back then was shoot film tests, soup it at the local lab, and eyeball the results before the fight. We were all hanging around poolside when the test Ektachrome arrived, and various shooters pulled out their loupes and wanted to use my back for a light table. Ouch!

The observers of all this silliness were of course the regulars. I believe I remember these faces from last year. In fact I’m not sure any of them have ever left the bar.

Next morning, up at dawn and in the Piazza San Marco, where we photographed a decidedly more beautiful pair of legs, those belonging to the lovely ballerina, Francesca.

Many thanks as always to Jonathan and Marzia of the VSP workshops, who create a wonderful environment for a workshop. Also, a huge thank you to Marco Tortato, who represents the photographic division of Vitec here in Italy. He helped us with everything from Gitzo tripods to Manfrotto grip equipment to Lastolite diffusers and Skylite panels. Our class was stylin’ to be sure, thanks to him and his generous support.

In Madrid airport now, pre-dawn. (What else?) On the way to Dubai to teach at the Gulf Photo Plus. An amazing workshop with a great group of instructors. (I think everybody in the Strobist community should chip in a buck or two and charter a 747 to Dubai for David Hobby’s classes. In between my schedule, I’ll be slipping into the back of his lectures, Chase Jarvis‘, Bobbi Lane, Ben Willmore….you name it, the list goes on.)

Speaking of Chase, I owe him several beers and a steak the size of Texas. He graciously took over my first class as I am running late to Dubai. After leaving Venice, I have been off the internet and kind of out there a bit in a mysterious land surrounded by a yellow border:-) Many Thanks, Chase!

More tk……

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Apr 22

Ahhh Venice…..

In Seminars & Workshops at 6:36pm

In Venice currently, teaching at the VSP Workshops, run by Jonathan Maher and his lovely wife Marzia. (Jonathan’s one of those guys, you know, in the club. Married waaayyyy out of his league and wanders around dumbstruck that somebody as nice as Marzia actually said yes.)

Jonathan’s a good guy, and he and Marzia team up to run a wonderful set of workshops staged quite literally around the world. I’ve been blessed to teach two of them here in Venice, and when asked to teach in this most beautiful of cities, I really don’t even bother asking them where their other workshops are, even though they are in some nice places. I just come here and teach. I mean, why go anywhere else?

We go to palaces and villas and theaters and piazzas, and drag along some grip equipment, a stash of Nikon SB 800 strobes, and light up some beautiful places and people. Julia, above, makes a great veiled lady of the castle. She is also a ballerina who will brave the 6 am pre-dawn chill of Venice and come with us to Piazza San Marco on Thursday dressed in a tutu. She is truly a lovely person, and has worked well with both the classes I have taught here.

The above was shot as a class demo with two SB800 strobes firing through a shoot thru umbrella. Key to the deal was the outer skin of the shoot thru was peeled back halfway which is a good trick to use when trying to get the flash to concentrate a bit and gradate down the body. I use Lastolite umbrellas, with an outer black/silver skin covering the standard white umbrella diffusion. You can peel the outer layer back by half, and thus block low spillage of light. Concentrates nice, soft light on the face, right where you want it. Jiggled the hand held camera a bit just to get the edge of movement, which was a cinch cause I had downed about 5 double espressos by that point. The shutter was dragging pretty good for the ambient backlight, but she stays sharp cause the strobe dominates the foreground.

It’s great here. The waterways churn like crazy, gondoliers passing constantly, and I hear accordion music and the occasional “Arrivederci Roma” from my hotel room just over a canal. (Actually wish it was occasional. It’s more like, often, which, depending on who’s singing, can easily verge on too much. From there it’s a beeline to “Jeez, can’t you just shut up and row?”)

Yesterday I saw a guy driving a cargo boat through a busy swatch of water, standing on the boat, arms folded over his chest, sort of swaying back and forth. The boat was turning here and there, and I was wondering how that was happening when he passed us by and I looked back and saw that the tiller was firmly jammed in his butt crack, and he was making course corrections by doing his version of an easygoing maritime rumba. I hadn’t noticed if he was smiling broadly while doing this, but hey, it’s cool. You gotta love your work.

Hard to call shooting pictures in Venice work, but it sure is easy to love.

17    comments

Mar 26

Flash in the Canyon

In Lighting, On Location, Seminars & Workshops at 1:13am

Maybe we set a record last night. Dunno. Probably not. But we had fun, and once again, proved that trying to get photographers to read and then abide by the dictums in the instruction manuals is roughly akin to the New York Knicks going on a substantial winning streak. Just ain’t gonna happen.

There are 33 participants this time around at DLWS Moab, and 12 of ‘em are out there in this photo holding Nikon SB800 flash units. We started off with splitting the VALs into the three groups of A, B, and C, and that worked well, but then we decided to stress the system and put all dozen units into A group, which the manual does not recommend. I have no idea what the max is, or what the manual actually says, but even if we had known we would have blown it off anyway in the interests of experimentation and devil may care, laugh in the face of danger shenanigans.

Son of a gun, it worked. I mean, it worked after I got all the guys alerted to the fact that it wasn’t gonna work if they had their big hairy thumbs covering the receptor on the flash unit they were holding. That minor issue resolved, all twelve fired off of my little friend, the SU800, hot shoed to the camera. Overall exposure was about 1/6 second or so and maybe kind of 5.6 with EV minus two dialed in on aperture priority. All flashes have zero compensations dialed in.

The key to the coloration is pushing the white balance into tungsten, and covering the daylight flashes with 2 full cuts of CTO (color temp orange) which brings the units to the temperature of your average bedroom lamp. The minus 2 stop overall exposure gives the moody blue color to the fading daylight, and then the gents all light themselves up.

We’ve been working pretty hard out here.

Josh Bradley and Brad Moore are just about done in. Some of the participants are a bit pooped, too. But, as I always tell the assistants, don’t limp. If they get sick, or tired, they get left by the side of the road. We’re really gonna miss those guys.

11    comments

Mar 25

Phil In the Middle of the Road

In On Location, Seminars & Workshops at 12:45am

It was rush hour last night in Cisco, Utah, so naturally we took the whole workshop onto the middle of the highway. That’s what you do as a photog. When you finally figure out the best angle it is always in the middle of something. Thankfully the rush last night in Cisco consisted of precisely one car, so we weren’t overly obstructionist.

I’m out in the wilds of Utah with my buds Moose and Sharon Peterson, Laurie Excell, Kevin Dobler, Josh Bradley and Brad Moore, all of us working on another edition of the Digital Landscape Workshop Series. It’s cool out here, and we always get into some great locations, thanks to Moose’s encyclopedic knowledge of National Parks, and amazing landscapes in general. It’s gotten so with Moose he should bring around small placards to put up in the best spots. You know those Kodak signs they have at Disney….”take good picture here?!” Moose could put up something similar, except his would read. “Shoot from here with the 14-24mm Nikkor on aperture priority with EV minus one dialed in. Double process the raw, set your black point in NX, move two exposures into blend mode, stack the images and combine them for foreground detail and background drama. Use Epson Ultra Smooth fine art paper for best results.”

I ain’t completely kidding. I’m along for comic relief and to bring out some SB800 units and mess around with what’s left of the daylight. Drug the ever patient Phil out there on the highway and told him to give me that old cowboy, hang dog, she done left me after swindlin’ my money, sleeping with all the neighbors, swipin’ my bible, stealing my pickup and shootin’ my dog kind of look. (All the other stuff woulda been okay but I’m right pissed about the dog.)

It was a tall order, but Phil actually pulled it off quite well. We lit him up via aperture priority mode (minus one EV) and one SB800 camera right, gelled to a warm tone and running through a Lastolite tri-grip one stop diffuser. Red rim light comes from 2 SB units on floor stands in the road, with red gels stuffed in the dome diffusers. Triggered the whole shebang with an SU800 unit hot shoed to the camera. That puppy is pretty effective. Looks like a small version or R2D2 and is a pretty directional, powerful trip for the remote SB flashes. Lens is Laurie’s 24-70 mil. Shot about 5 or 6 frames that worked out okay.

But hey, I’m a little bent out of shape about breakfast. You know, Moose blogged about me the other day and showed a pic of his empty breakfast plate. I wasn’t even in Utah at the time. Well, now I know why. He’s basically cleaned out the Jailhouse Cafe of all their ginger pancakes and now that I’m here I gotta resort to a breakfast of pharmaceuticals.

He’s across the table double ordering bacon, and I’m sitting here with my glucosamine and ginseng. Tomorrow I’ll fix him. I’m gonna order like, 5 omelettes.

9    comments

Mar 20

Donald

In Seminars & Workshops, Tips & Tricks at 8:24am

One of the reasons I teach is that I learn constantly. I learn from my class participants, who are routinely terrific. I learn from the whole workshop environment, especially one such as here in Santa Fe. Reid Callanan and Renie Haiduk have created a wonderful oasis of photographic enthusiasm and energy out here, and just bouncing off of it for periods of time puts juice back in my own work.

And I completely enjoy, and learn from a group of folks who are routinely taken for granted–the workshop models. These folks come out, for very little money, and help out the classes by posing for them.

I have known Donald now for about 5 years. He consistently gets assigned to my classes, and we are always the better for it. We talk a bit, and he is a font of wisdom, wry humor, and he has that wise “seen it before” twinkle in his eye. He also at this point knows a hell of a lot about lighting. I once saw him eyeball a light a participant was putting up, and quietly say, “I think you’re going to want that light lower.” He was right, and the photog in question made a nice picture.

Donald got sick a while back, and we were all concerned, but typical of him, he just beat it back, and kept coming to pose for the Workshops. I asked back then how he was doing and he replied, “Joe, the day they lay me down, all the music in the world’s gonna stop.” I believe he’s right.

I have always told Donald I would make a picture of him–just take a couple minutes away from the class and do his portrait. Never got the chance until this week. It was an honor to have in front of my lens.

Some folks have asked for lighting grids and sketches about the last couple of pix I posted. Those are coming…just gotta go to Dunkin Donuts and get the napkins to sketch on:-)

10    comments