Yesterday I went to the DC Convention Center to see off-camera lighting hero and guru Joe McNally discussion Location Lighting Techniques for Kelby Training Live. I’ve read Joe’s book The Hot Shoe Diaries and watched his seminars on Kelby Training Online so I was familiar with his work (which is quite impressive! His online portfolio can be found here) but it was great to see him “in action”, and realize even though he’s an oustanding photographer, he still, as he puts it, screws up as much as anyone else. “Numnuts” as he refers to himself in his books and on his blog, makes mistakes and has to create an image with time, patience, experimentation, etc., just like the rest of us. Kind of like our sports and music “heroes”, we sometimes forget they’re not much different from us, which was good to see.
Before the show started, Joe was walking around a bit and I had my copy of The Hot Shoe Diaries which he was gracious enough to autograph for me. Felt like a groupie, but as I told him, you have to take chances sometimes, and some opportunities won’t come again. He nodded his head and said something like “hang in there” (or something like that — as I type this I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of not giving up sort of thing). From the seminar and the stories he shared, it was apparent that Joe had to remind himself of that many times, and in the end he was (and continues to be) rewarded for his hard work and effort.
Thanks for the great seminar, Joe. Even if the only thing I ever got out of it was encouraging words from a great photographer such as yourself, it was well worth the time spent and the money paid to attend. The rest was icing on the cake.
(below is a self-portrait I did of myself using off-camera lighting, which Joe was teaching, and I used it for my 365@50 Project as well)
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