I’m a Joe McNally fan. If you are not familiar with his books I’d say go get them but wait…
Joe is a seasoned veteran in the biz. His books are great IF you are the right audience.
A newbie or pro-sumer that does occasional work for friends or family might be disappointed in his manner and lack of detail in cookbook recipes for shooting. His books are for those that have well-mastered the basic techniques of their gear and are looking for inspiration in the next great thing to do.
At least they are for me.
Shooting for the A-List at http://www.austin360.com doesn’t allow me a lot of freedom to place strobes and get the best shot. I still try for best shots and can get them as the opportunity presents them.
Sometimes I feel that I’m out of control when shooting. It happens more than you would think. Fortunately I shoot so much I’m not bothered with thoughts of “am I getting this right” or “let me make sure I have everything dialed in correctly” when I’m in a fast shooting environment. There is something to be said for getting camera settings close to what I want because I’ve been shooting for so damn long!
I do tons of shots for the Statesman’s entertainment website (Austin360.com) with the flash mounted on the hot shoe of the camera. I keep a diffuser on the strobe about 99% of the time too. They published about twelve-thousand of my pics in 2008. Hopefully, I’m doing something right.
Many people talk about taking the strobe off the camera and placing it somewhere else. This is great advice if you have the time to do it. I don’t have the time for most assignments. I’m shooting lots. I capture moments at events. Even if I had an assistant I wouldn’t be able to parse out instructions fast enough to get them in position to help light a shot. I work by myself in creating thousands of images.
Lots of pics I take suck. I’ll blog about that soon. I try not to send sucky pics to my editors. I do have a reputation to maintain….don’t I?
Do I love having a strobe on-top of the camera? Well…yes and no. There are lots of reason for moving the strobe ( go read one of Joe’s books) On the camera mounted flash situations I do make the quality of light better by diffusing it and getting close to my subjects. I love to shoot as wide as possible when doing event pics. Shooting wide allows me to work in very tight spaces and get the light close to my subjects. Diffuse and close light is a great thing in many cases. It doesn’t matter if it is only diffuse a foot or two around the center of the camera. I can deal with falloff. It is diffuse and it is close to the subject. I can get good results with that.
I’ve learned to love how to use what I have to use, as should you. I can teach a cell phone camera user how to take better pics – just understand the limitation and love what you have.
I will go on about shooting in controlled lighting situations later when I have time, which I don’t for most assignments. I enjoy studio work and the control I have over lighting. It is just not the bulk of my paid work.
Shooting with matrix metering and flash at -2 ev to add a touch of fill
I have to love the set-up I’m stuck with. I know how to control the light and can kiss the subject with just enough light to make a good pic once in a while.
For this shot I chatted up the subject briefly. I asked him to turn sideways as that would allows the strong available light to backlight his hair. He lit up a smoke and I got the pic. This was shot in shutter priority mode at 25th/sec and matrix-metering as I am after getting available light into the shot and I trust the Nikon metering system to do its job. The SB-800 flash was dialed down to -2 ev as I quickly composed the subject and then blam! – one shot, that works.
I have plenty that failed.
Keep shooting!
David