Joe McNally

Apr 3

Whoosh!

In On Location, Thoughts at 12:10am

Last week was a week and a half. It went by in a whoosh, which is always the way of a DLWS week. We start off on Sunday afternoon, clean our sensors, have a cookie and Boom! It’s Thursday.

We were in Moab, with lots of reds rocks, but the twist of the week was going to this little ghost type junk pile of a town called Cisco. I realize that last sentence might offend the 3 people who live in Cisco, but there ain’t no getting around it—the burg is basically a big car garden by the side of a very lonely county road.

But I loved it. Give me old, dilapidated, run down and rusted out any day of the week. Why is it that photographers look at a place most people would figure to be a likely setting for a crime and go, “Cool!”?

Got home late Thursday night. Had a bit of a family weekend, thankfully. Monday. Up at 3. Back on a plane. Oh well. Staggered through LaGuardia Airport. For whatever reason, I tripped the metal detectors, and I wasn’t even trying to pull off a Spinal Tap. Dunno. My fillings, maybe? Had to get frisked and wanded. Generally speaking, when you hear somebody snap on a rubber glove immediately behind you, it’s not gonna be a good day. I tend to disappear, and imagine the wand thingy is the thingy that Bones used to use on Star Trek. “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker!”

There was great stuff in Cisco, even though I’ve never been a very good “thing” photographer. I tend to need people, context, story line, that sort of stuff. I’m liking photographing things of late, though. Maybe I’m tired of 30 years of people asking, “How long is this gonna take?” (Answer: “As little time as possible!” Big smile.)

It’s wonderful, actually, being a people photog. I’ve met amazing folks. But it has it’s downside, too. I got introduced to the vagaries of photographing very important people a long time ago. My first cover of Sports Illustrated was of Herschel Walker. If you remember Herschel, you’re either old, a real football fan, from Georgia, or a bobsledder. Herschel was switching leagues, and headed for the Dallas Cowboys. This was big news.

To work with somebody like Herschel, you need to deal with a sports agent. Some are wonderful. Others are like gum on the bottom of your shoe. The situation here was that the deal was done, but the ink wasn’t dry on the signatures, so the only cover I could shoot was of Herschel with the Dallas helmet halfway on. I’m not kidding. Only game in town. Shoot it with the helmet just off his head or don’t shoot it.

Not one to let the fact that I knew the picture was gonna suck before I even took my cameras out of the bag stand in the way of a cover fee, I shot it. Met Herschel, who was a great athlete but a bit of an odd duck. He kept referring to himself in the third person, as in, “Herschel has to do what’s best for Herschel.”

Right. And Joe has to do what’s best for Joe and shoot this job and get back on a plane to the planet earth.

Anyway, high angle, 3×4 soft box in close, out of focus greenery in the background, and we were done. It alerted me to the fact that a soulless snap of a photograph could do just fine as a cover of a national magazine. Covers are not photographs, they are trained seals, designed to make noise and entertain. They need to jump through certain hoops, like being visible on a newsstand from 30 yards in a sea of other pubs trumpeting weight loss solutions, have large swatches of out of focus monochrome so star spangled type and a sticker announcing this month’s subscriber contest actually enhances the picture, and a bland little corner to accommodate the bar coding.

Cisco, by comparison, made no such demands. Cisco was, in fact, a very good friend of mine.

(This is another one of those weeks. Here teaching at Photoshop World. Whoah! Pretty crazy. Lots of fun. Time flying. More tk.)

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Mar 15

Back on a Plane

In Rants, Thoughts, Travels at 9:59am

Back on a plane. This time through Atlanta to Albuquerque. Gonna teach my lighting workshop at Santa Fe, which I always look forward to. More on that tk.

Early morning rush at the Delta terminal in Laguardia and I’m shuffling towards security, my pants down at my ankles, holding a tray of meager possessions. Only thing missing is some split rail fence, the pungent smell of cow flop, and the occasional moo.

In the background I’m hearing the drone of the TSA lady. “Please keep moving. Walk forward. Please keep moving.” Superfluous advice, no? I mean, of course I’m going to keep moving. What do they think I’m gonna do? Riverdance?

Actually, the TSA has gotten much better to deal with. They have it as streamlined as it’s gonna get, I think. They are certainly working on being a bit more friendly. Guy who checked my ID today was genuinely decent about it, so, you know, I’m inclined to be pleasant back. We bantered a bit, and I thought, he’s a hard working guy, probably got up even earlier than I did, and he’s out here getting his ass kicked just like I am. So there you go.

BREAKFAST…..

The best was yet to come, though. Got onto a way overstuffed jet to Georgia, I mean packed. We’re talking pickled herring back there. Overheads are spilling stuff everywhere, and we’re trying to get outta Dodge and the flight staff is urging everybody to move out of the aisles so we can shut the door.

So there’s this lady. She is one of the last people on board. Bling city. Bandana in the hair, Hollywood sunglasses, hubcaps for earrings, pink bra, with some sort of tied up piece of material that I guess serves as a shirt but leaves her back pretty naked, a burp blanket over her shoulder, a 4 month old baby, and a carry on the size of your average Midwestern city. She’s got two flight attendants in tow, one of whom is carrying her baby, and the other is trying to sort out what to do with the bag. They are probably just as exasperated with this passenger as everybody else, but for now, they are hewing to the path of sisterhood and trying to help her out.

I mean, if I had tried to get on at that moment with that size bag, they would have hand checked it immediately and, as soon as it was out of sight, switched the destination tag to Duluth, just to teach me a lesson.

LUNCH….

But, you know, there might be formula or diapers in there with the rest of the jewelry and lipsticks, so they encourage her to disassemble it and stick various small pieces in a variety of overheads. Everything that comes out of this bag was incredibly colorful. There was a hot pink purse with gold corners, a Betty Boop backpack (not kidding), multi colored scarves, you name it. I’m watching this and thinking, shit, the circus in town?

She’s breaking this thing down like a Russian matryoshka doll, and bending over and bending over and then standing upright to reach the overheads repeatedly. I feel like I’m watching an accelerated version of the “bend and snap.”
And then, of course there’s the thong. She’s got low slung, painted on jeans and she is standing in the aisle next to my seat putting stuff in the opposite overhead which means of course I am eyeball height and inches away from the old butt crack. Talk about fill the frame.

And there it is! Again and again! Peek-a-bootie! She certainly didn’t look like a plumber! There was this little swatch of material supported by 3 strands of floss. Good thing I didn’t have anything stuck in my teeth, but that would have been too forward on my part, I imagine. Geez Louise. Thankfully my eyes don’t focus that fast, that close too well anymore.

And of course I find this funny and just start giggling like an idiot and the flight attendant leveled me with a look that said, “One word outta you and I call the air marshal.” She was stressing pretty bad with this passenger.

ASSUME CRASH POSITIONS!!!!!!

Ahh, the ongoing adventure of the skies!

Back to basics in the next few blogs…got some lighting stuff etc. Enough of this levity!

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Mar 7

Mistakes

In Rants, Thoughts at 7:10pm

(Photo by Scott Holstein)

“Hi, my name is Joe, and I make mistakes.”

I always say it. In Webster’s, next to photographer, it says “he or she who makes mistakes constantly.” Let’s face it, we are the most fallible of creatures, and I’m not saying that to knock us down. Lord knows, your average photog does enough self flagellation to qualify for a 13th century monastic order. (Chant after me, and Monty Python. “Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem.” Thwack!)

No, mistakes are just with us, that’s the deal. I could wax on/wax off poetically about how we make mistakes because we are supposed to embrace the world with the eyes of a child: So new! So fresh! (Say the last with Michael Jackson’s voice.) But that could easily be construed to be just so much smarmy bullshit. I think we just plunge ahead, as the English say, bash on regardless, and mistakes occur. I make tons of ‘em on location. Zig when you should zag. Commit to the wrong angle, and get back to the studio and look at a bunch of images that might as well have “What was I thinking?” embedded right there in the EXIF data.

I can’t tell you how many times on a job I’ve looked at a Polaroid, or an image on my laptop, and shook my head in dismay and thought it was a great thing I wasn’t doing brain surgery cause there just went the piano lessons and the gift of speech. (These are inside thoughts, of course, cause usually the client is looking over your shoulder and you have to be happy happy joy joy. “Oh yes, it is going to be fine! We just have to tweak the lighting a little! Just soften the tones, you know, because we’re being forced to shoot the boss man right after he got hammered at lunch and now he looks like a stoplight with a neck tie, but that can be fixed in post and if we move the light this way a bit you won’t even see that stylish plaid shirt!”)

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Mar 5

A Couple of Daves

In Links, Thoughts at 12:24pm

I could have continued, and done, you know, Raves for a Couple of Daves, or, These Daves are Faves, or…..well, you get the drift.

When I got into this business, my aims were pretty simple. I wanted to do some cool pictures, and make my pix decent enough to enjoy the respect of my peers. Pretty straightforward. I remember wangling a student credential to the 1976 Democratic National Convention in NYC, and getting in there in the limited way I could, with my Nikkormat and a couple of lenses. I was overawed, not by Carter-Mondale, or the convention itself (though Barbara Jordan was pretty cool) but by the shooters. These guys were pros. Big time. I didn’t know any of them of course, but I had heard of them. I couldn’t believe I was watching Wally McNamee and Danny Farrell work, for instance. Completely unflappable. Kept their eye in the damn camera while the whole world was crashing down and people were shouting and shoving and just in general gettin’ pretty wild eyed. (And this was not D3, auto focus, auto exposure, auto white balance, auto registration of your images with the Library of Congress, auto park the car and walk the dog territory. This was the days of the F, F2 if your paper was fancy, with lenses darker than Fanghorn Forest and focus rings so stiff you needed a crescent wrench to crank ‘em.) Still, they would just shoot, and nail it.

By contrast, I would stand open mouthed at something going on, and then remember after it was too late I had a camera around my neck. Good old Mr. Nose for News.

Now, fast forward 30 plus years, and I’ve gotten to know a whole bunch of great shooters, and call them friends. I wrote a paper about Jay Maisel in school, for instance, and now I call him friend. (He calls me a bunch of different stuff, which is cool with me.) It’s one of those gifts continuing to endeavor in this field gives you, along with the knee surgeries, the nights alone in places by the side of the highway, and the continuing angst over when the next good frame will come your way, and how the hell you gonna pay next month’s (make it this month’s) Amex. But that is for blogs tk.

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Feb 22

Update on The Moment It Clicks

In Lighting, Links, Thoughts at 2:09pm

The book has been pretty well received. When I first looked at its ratings climb on Amazon, I just figured it was my sisters, clicking away, running up their credit cards, helping out their baby bro.

But, the book kept climbing, and holding up a pretty high ranking, spiking all the way to #10 of all books on Amazon. That puts us up there with all the murder mysteries and romance novels!

I thought about it and figured the appeal must be the noir-ish, sweaty style in which I wrote it, thrown in with some good photo info. Think of mixing the Adorama catalog with a bodice ripper.

A sample:

It was a dark and stormy night. Outside the windows of the cheap motel, the thunder rolled. Her heart was quaking. He had sparked her with a pepper, re-arranged her pixels, and she knew she would never forget it.

“Will you stay?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

In the flashes of lightning, she could see his face was stern and resolute. “I can’t stay, babe. I told you when all this started I wasn’t a stick around kind of guy.” The lightning effect was augmented, of course, by the Pocket Wizard transceiver he had in his pocket, tripping an Elinchrom Ranger RX unit with a Free Lite head and a long throw reflector on a c-stand complete out in the parking lot. Inside the reflector pan was loosely taped a Rosco Cinegel quarter blue (Quarter CTB), to give the light a pale, cool feel, just like lightning.

“I know,” she replied. Her voice was steady but her quivering bosom gave lie to her words. “Will you come back?”

“Depends if there’s ever any news again in this lousy burg,” he said. “It would also help if you had a twin sister. But I guess that’s no go on both counts.”

He shouldered his cameras and stepped to the door. Framed by the lightning and the slashing rain, she could see he had a Nikon D3 with a 200-400mm AFS VR Zoom f/4G IF-ED. How she longed to touch it one last time!

He tossed her an Lexar 8gb UDMA 300x CF card, and on it was scrawled a note….”Thanks for the good times…”

When she looked up, he was gone.

Kidding of course….

[More after the jump]

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