A day with Joe McNally

Earlier this week, I (and about 20 other shooters) had the pleasure of spending a day with world famous photographer, Joe McNally. Over the course of his career, Joe has shot for the likes of the New York Times, National Geographic, Time, Life, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated. Quite an impressive resume, I’m sure you’d agree.
The venue was a property which forms part of the New South Wales Historic Houses Trust, namely Vaucluse House. It’s a gorgeous old house with buckets of old world charm. As a photographer, it is an absolute paradise. Everywhere you look, there’s something just begging to be photographed.
The day commenced with Joe talking through a couple of different lighting scenarios, both of which pertained to balancing daylight with flash. Watching him work a scene, and to slowly build up the lighting was an amazing experience. With his camera tethered to his laptop, even more impressive was seeing his images appear straight away, and looking like they were straight out of a National Geographic spread and knowing that no photoshop was involved. This was SOOC* at it’s finest!
After morning tea, we split up into groups and were sent off with a model to capture the best ‘one light’ portrait we could achieve. ‘One light’ meaning one flash combined with available ambient light.
The afternoon saw us moving between 4 or 5 different locations, working with different models and multiple lights. While it was a great experience, the downside is that each photographer in the group has their own inner vision, but has to respect the wishes of the other group participants as well. As a consequence, I was not completely satisfied with what I got to shoot, but the main thing is, I walked away with a whole bunch of techniques (some already known, but now reinforced, and some completely new) that I can now implement and develop in my own time.
With only chump change out of four figures for a day’s experience, it was certainly not a cheap exercise, but one that I would wholeheartedly recommend to ANY photographer who:
a) could afford to do it, and
b) was interested in taking their lighting skills to another level.

* SOOC = straight out of camera; an image which has not been touched up in post-production

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New podcast: Nothing to Fear

This is not photography-related, but I’m about to launch a new podcast called “Nothing to Fear“.

It will be a tutorial-based podcast all about the digital audio workstation known as Reaper.

I’m really just posting this here in order to get some inbound links to the site, so the google bots will index it. Sneaky, huh?

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Meetup #23 – Black Friday

Yesterday was Friday 13th, and while I don’t subscribe to any of that superstitious nonsense, I thought we should do something along those lines for our monthly Sydney Meetup.
I decided we’d go for a ‘gypsy/fortune teller’ kind of theme, and a friend and business colleague, Deborah, seemed like the perfect choice for our ‘gypsy’ (given that she’s of Hungarian origin, and is into astrology herself!).
She has always been a fan of my photography, and when I asked her if she would like to be our model, she jumped at the opportunity, despite her protestations of her not being a ‘model’.
And in usual meetup fashion, things had to go pear-shaped in the lead up to the shoot.
First, the studio where we were supposed to be doing the shoot advised me 2 days out that they could not accommodate us due to commitments they had the following day.
So, that left me hunting around for an alternate space.
Knowing what I had in mind for the set design, and being the kind of person who doesn’t mind a challenge, I figured we didn’t really have to shoot in a studio anyway. We could pretty much pull this off anywhere, as long as it wasn’t too brightly lit.
With that in mind, I asked ARN (my employer) if I could use the underground car park as a studio for the night. Thankfully, they consented.
The first couple of images show the typical concrete jungle we were shooting in, but when you see the actual shots we were there to get, you’d never know it was shot in a car park! Just goes to show that amazing things can be done in less than ideal circumstances if you put your mind to it.
If you look closely at the first shot, you’ll see one of my speedlights gaffa-taped to the concrete ceiling, with a Honl snoot attached, directing light straight down onto our crystal ball. You’ll also see a bunch of cardboard filing system folders gaffa-taped over the fluorescent light. What is it they say about necessity?
But then the second disaster struck.
Yesterday morning, I got a text from my make up artist saying that she had fainted, and was not feeling at all well. So, thus began the frantic search for a replacement make up artist. Thankfully, I ended up finding one around lunchtime.
So, came the evening, Deborah and the make up artist arrived and started their work, while I started setting up our ‘gypsy caravan in a parking garage’ studio.
One extra challenge I set for myself on this shoot was to simultaneously shoot digital AND film. I have not shoot on film for about 8 years, and the last time I did, I knew absolutely NOTHING about photography. Of course, I didn’t think that at the time, but looking back now, I can see that I really was clueless. So, knowing how far I’ve come (and fully admitting that 8 years from now, I will view in a similar fashion, my work from today), I decided it would be an interesting experiment to put a roll of film through my old analogue body (a Minolta 700si c.1997) just to see whether the differences between film and digital are as negligible as some claim, or as chalk-and-cheese as others claim. I didn’t finish the roll of film last night, but will endeavour to do that this week. When I have finished it off, I’ll write a separate post to go along with the ‘analogue’ images.
An interesting thing (for me, at least) happened in the process of this simultaneous digital-analogue shoot. I noticed that my Sony a850, a $3000 professional DSLR body, struggles horrendously to focus in low light (with the lens hunting like a Kalahari bushman), while my 15 year old, consumer grade analogue SLR had no dramas at all. I hope Sony are able to address that in the coming years.
Anyway, we had a great time last night. I got a handful of shots I’m really happy with, and learned some things in the process…. which is exactly what these shoots are all about.
Onward and upward.

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Meetup #22 – Bonnie and Clyde

Last night was our 22nd monthly Sydney photographer’s meetup.
This month, the theme I’d chosen was Bonnie and Clyde.
Despite having been immortalised by Hollywood over the last 80 years or so, and portrayed as lovable rebels, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were quite nasty pieces of work.
I wanted to portray some of that in this shoot.
Unfortunately, gun laws in the state of New South Wales made it pretty much impossible to get hold of real guns (or replicas, for that matter) to use as props. I brought some toy guns along, but they just didn’t look remotely believable, when everything else (costume-wise) really looked the part. Big thanks to Jeff Walshe Entertainment in Canterbury for supplying the costumes.
Enter one 3 foot piece of steel water pipe.
Funny how such an inanimate object can lend, when held in the appropriate manner, such a menacing air to a shoot.
Brooke (Bonnie) and Matthew (Clyde) had a great time in front of the camera, and soon warmed to working together. Thanks guys for your involvement! You MADE this shoot.
With the crazy eather Sydney has been experiencing for the last 4 months (!), we had to move this to an indoor shoot. My original plan had been to shoot outdoors with a 30′s-era motor car.
Again, Chris Belyea (Impactfoto) came to the rescue booking Think Studio at Epping for us, again. This was the same studio we used three weeks ago for the glamour shoot with Desiree.
As for post processing, I wanted to give the images a world-weary, well-handled kind of look.
My process was:
1. to mostly (but not completely) desaturate the images (lightroom),
2. apply some split toning (lightroom),
3. generate some grain (lightroom),
4. add a bit of a lightening vignette (lightroom),
5. then overlay some cracks (Photoshop CS5.1).
Thanks to everyone involved. I know I had a great time… again!

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