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I attended Joe McNally’s lighting workshop at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London on July 23rd. While it wasn’t a hands-on workshop, due to the sheer fact that more than 500 people attended it, but Joe is such an outstanding photographer and trainer that it was still totally worth the journey from Germany.
All in all, it was a whirlwind tour for on-location and studio lighting using mainly small flashes and a variety of light modifiers to achieve the desired looks. The stage setup was simply a white seamless (with an, admittedly, incredibly high ceiling).
They brought along two professional models, Anna and Ollie, which were both great and professional and a joy to photograph (I assume.) Anna was especially versatile with her two outfits (more on that below).
Joe never really got a break since people ran up to the stage in a stampede to have him authograph copies of his books or just discuss all things photography. He barely got out for the hour of lunch-break that was scheduled since people kept on approaching him. He dealt with all that really patiently and professionally, which he gets my highest respect for.
While Joe shot 90% of all the setups with small flashes (a battery of 4-8 SB-900 flashes on the set all of the time, triggered with an SU-800 or SB-900 on camera using TTL), later on he broke out the bigger lights. In this case, these were Elinchrom Quadra units in a clam shell setup.
He also used his proven tethering setup, connecting his Nikon D3s to his MacBook Pro using Nikon’s Camera Control Pro software. The MacBook was then connected to two projectors, so the entire audience could actually see the results of Joe’s shooting.
More behind-the-scenes shots are available in my Flickr Stream.
In summary, it was an intense day spent with one of the most incredible photographers on the face of the earth right now, with a lot of great spirit and entertainment. I’m really looking forward to putting some of the tricks I learned to good use in the months and years to come.
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Queen of Hearts
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Summer Girl
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Mrs. Croft
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Wild.
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Time to change
Recent happenings will make for some interesting times for the remainder of 2010 and beyond.
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Leaves
(Also available as an iPad background.)
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The final version of Lightroom 3 was just released. It’s a $99 upgrade for owners of previous versions.
While most of the new features were available in the beta cycle over the past months (improved noise reduction, tethered shooting, Flickr integration, and image watermarking for example), the final version ships with a brand new “Lens Corrections” panel in the develop module, allowing for corrections in terms of perspective and distortions. They even ship with lens profiles for optics from popular camera manufacturers, providing a one-click correction for your images.
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A plethora of free photography tips and articles from long time National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson. A true must-read.
(Via Rob Galbraith.)
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This final release of Camera RAW ships with the new lens correction functionality everyone is raving about.
