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April 23, 2008
[ SHINE THE LIGHT ]
PICTURE THIS. You are the marketing manager of a camera company with a new product to flog. It’s a modest digital compact which you want the camera reviewers and retailers to try. But you must make certain that they go away from the launch convinced that the new camera is the cat’s pyjamas and that the reviewer/retailer is the best photographer ever to clap an eye to a viewfinder. How do you do that?
It’s easy. You hire a bevy of beautiful models and a whole studio full of lights, skilfully placed by a professional lighting director. Throw in a few props, like a Porsche, a boat and a white dog and the selling job is done.
A pal says: “It’s really too easy, isn’t it? You can’t miss.” If the light is powerful, diffused and truly white, and the models are brilliantly coiffed and made up, you can’t help taking some half way decent shots, no matter how basic the camera. You just hope that no one will think too seriously about the fact that a customer buying a $400 camera is not going to be kitting herself out with thousands of dollars worth of lights.
However, the admired professional photographer may start with the expensive basics that make photography mechanically easy, but the priceless factor of imagination comes into play.
Joe McNally is a New York professional who takes photographs for Time, Sports Illustrated and National Geographic, amongst other famous publications. His new book “The moment it clicks” is distributed by Penguin (RRP $50). Joe is blessed with imagination and a huge bag of lighting devices that he lugs with him on assignment wherever he goes.
Very rarely Joe is content with natural light coming through a window or doorway, but more often he will position remotely triggered lights outside the window or door to create his own, controllable light source. You read his descriptions of elaborate lighting rigs and you think: “Might as well give up now!”
But Joe’s advice can be boiled down to fundamentals. He makes the point often that if the light is coming from the camera then the photo will be a dud. In other words on-camera flash is what he calls “disaster light”. He does include one photo in the book of Mike Tyson with his handlers shot in a dark corridor with nothing but disaster lighting to hand. The picture is interesting, but only because the subjects are interesting.
McNally’s says: “There is a logic to light. It’s gotta come from somewhere and something has to be making it.” The viewer needs to sense the light origin, even if it can’t be seen. One of his best photos is an unposed shot of the actor Jason Robards Jnr, sitting near a window in a restaurant, with the light apparently coming from outside, And he has a dramatic photo of a submariner checking a torpedo tube with a hand held torch – the light appears to be coming from the torch when it is, in fact, coming from a remotely triggered flash inside the tube. Very clever and atmospheric.
McNally’s book is all about light and nothing much else. After all, what is photo-graphy if not about writing with light? And for $50 we get the distilled essence of a seminar that we are told has a ticket price of US $795. A bargain.
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Posted by terry at April 23, 2008 11:35 PM
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Comments
Terry,
thank you so much for bringing Joe McNally's inspirational book "The Moment it Clicks" to my attention via your Green Guide article several weeks ago. I was able to finally get a copy by ordering it through the Art Gallery's book shop. I only wish I had it on hand during the past eight years while I worked as a photographer on suburban newspapers.
regards,
Len Williams
former ABC Personnel Officer & passionate amateur photographer
during the 70's, 80's, & 90's.
Len Williams
Network Photographics
Phn: +61 3 9438 2063
Mbl: +6 0419 894 727
netphoto@ozemail.com.au
Posted by: Len Williams at June 19, 2008 06:26 AM