Joe McNally's Location Lighting Techniques workshop

ian408

I attended a NAPP sponsored event today in South San Francisco called "Location Lighting Techniques" given by Joe McNally. The short version is this one day workshop is well worth the 99 bucks non-NAPP members will pay. If you're a NAPP member, it's twenty dollars less--an even better deal.

The morning is spent talking about off camera flash and using multiple flashes. McNally uses his experience shooting in the field for publications like Sports Illustrated, National Geographic and Life Magazine along with a couple of models to show you how to best use flash to give your photos a professional look. The afternoon builds on the morning sessions and covers portraits, high speed sync, bigger flash units and a variety of other topics. There's a lot of information given in this one day workshop.

Although he shoots Nikon and most of his material is geared toward Nikon systems, it doesn't mean other shooters won't benefit from his techniques.

McNally is a natural teacher. Using his expertise, humor, years of experience and the philosophy "never let them see you sweat", he keeps the session moving. During the breaks, he's available for you to ask questions and it doesn't hurt that as he is explaining something, he is also showing you how it's done.

There are unspoken takeaways from this workshop too. One is how McNally treats his assistants, models and the people attending the workshop. It's a lesson we can all benefit from. He's respectful and curteous to everyone and it shows in the work these folks do--this was the first time for this workshop and there were 700+ in attendance. Yet it ran smoothly. Each session started and ended on time and during the sessions, he communicates with his assistants and the models guiding them and coaching each in what he wants to accomplish--it's a well oiled machine and did I mention this was the first time he'd done this for NAPP?

I'm still working on digesting all that was presented today. It was well worth the time and expense and it's certainly encouragement to attend a smaller workshop with some hands on experience and I would encourage those of you interested in learning more about using flash to attend this well thought out and well executed workshop when it comes your way.

wildviper

Thank you for this report. I will look for it if it comes to SoCal.

I had attended David Ziser's one day workshop and it turned out to be more product promos than anything. So am glad to hear you can actually learn something here.