Product Description

When it comes to photography, it’s all about the light.

After spending more than thirty years behind the lens—working for National Geographic, Time, Life, and Sports Illustrated—Joe McNally knows about light. He knows how to talk about it, shape it, color it, control it, and direct it. Most importantly, he knows how to create it...using small hot shoe flashes.

In The Hot Shoe Diaries, Joe brings you behind the scenes to candidly share his lighting solutions for a ton of great images. Using Nikon Speedlights, Joe lets you in on his uncensored thought process—often funny, sometimes serious, always fascinating—to demonstrate how he makes his pictures with these small flashes. Whether he’s photographing a gymnast on the Great Wall, an alligator in a swamp, or a fire truck careening through Times Square, Joe uses these flashes to create great light that makes his pictures sing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6164 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-13
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 2.00 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
JOE McNALLY is an internationally acclaimed American photographer and longtime photojournalist. His most notable series is “Faces of Ground Zero—Portraits of the Heroes of September 11th,” a collection of giant Polaroid portraits. He also photographed “The Future of Flying,” the first all-digital story for National Geographic. His award-winning work has appeared in numerous magazines and, in 2008, Joe wrote the critically acclaimed and bestselling book The Moment It Clicks.

Customer Reviews

Pro knowledge about portable flash
Having seen McNally present his portfolio slideshow several times, I'm a big fan of his work, and this book is an order of magnitude better than his previous book "The Moment It Clicks". The technical information is helpful when deconstructing each shot (as every enthusiastic photographer should be doing all the time), and the anecdotes are interesting.

Part One of the book shows the consideration that each professional photographer must grapple with before every set-up, and provides a knowledge base that is critical to success. As an experienced photographer, myself, I find plenty of information that took me years to learn by trial and error, and some that is new.

Most of the book presents large picture spreads with colourful writing describing the technical and environmental problems that he needed to overcome. These are interesting, and are technically pumped up versions of the previous book.

I'm not really crazy about the writing style ... too much fluff to get to the punch line of each pithy joke, and too colloquial in tone. The "Hey ... I'm from New York" thing is way overdone, and is even less funny than somebody trying to write in a Texas drawl, or Irish brogue. In fairness, he talks this way too, and I suppose it's a style that suits his purpose.

Overall, this is a good book for the knowledgeable photographer looking to advance his skill set with portable flash techniques, and for the imaginative neophyte who wants to consume every aspect of the medium.

Just Amazing
This is just the best photography book for someone who want to learn how to use decently the speedlights! Really recommended for nikon user since Joe McNally uses Nikon system. But I think it can be really helpful to anyone. Wow I am really amazed by Joe's talent and his fun way to explain photography !

Highly Recomended

Like working side-by-side with a Pro
This book is written in the manner of a conversation between a couple of photo buddies. Joe McNally is a seasoned working photographer. He believes strongly in the edict "you don't take shots, you make shots". To this end he also makes light work for him rather than simply waiting for ambient light conditions to be right. He uses an informal tone and humour to demonstrate his principles and practice.

He has worked out how to get excellent lighting results from those small, portable hotshoe-mounted battery powered flashes commonly known as Speedlights (Nikon-speak). Beginning with many examples of shots made using a single flash, the book progresses to two or three flash shots and eventually deconstructs a shot made with 47 flashes to light a plane on wet tarmac.

Each chapter starts off with a photo that illustrates a particular lighting idea. The text outlines what the challenge was and what steps were taken to get the shot along with any problems encountered and solved. In some cases additional shots are reproduced that reveal setup, partial steps or mistakes -- perhaps just, "this is the wrong way". A number of chapters include a hand-drawn placement diagram outline the camera, the subject and the flash placement.

There's plenty of discussion about wireless flash: how to get it to work reliably using wireless controllers; when to use sync cords. The wireless topic covers the light-enabled wireless flash mechanism only (there's no mention of radio wireless, like Alien Bees, or Canon's product).

One thing to note is that Joe is a Nikon shooter and all of the terms used and equipment shown and discussed is Nikon. That said, I'm strictly a Pentax shooter and I had no trouble translating to Pentax-speak and trying out his suggestions and techniques using Pentax equipment. There are a few things that the Nikon CLS does that my stuff can't handle, like Groups, but 98% of the book is applicable. Many topics and ideas discussed are universal and can be applied to any flash situation, for example the use of light modifiers (diffusers, umbrellas, softboxes, etc.) and gels for simple white-balance correction or more often for creative colour use.

You'd be likely to position this book at the opposite end of the spectrum from technical books. This is not a reference textbook! I'd like to see an improved topic index that helps match lighting ideas to chapters. I've had trouble locating the chapter covering a particular topic like using a gel'ed flash to light a model to improve a sunset backdrop.

When my copy of THSD:BLfSF arrived I practically couldn't put it down until I had read it from cover to cover. I have rarely used flash for my shooting in the past. Now I own two Pentax 540FGZ hotshoe flashes and gels and my shopping list includes diffusers and reflectors. Mr. McNally has hooked me completely on the creative use of small flashes!