The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets From One of the World's Top Shooters

way to go onboard a sub. I brought three small SB flashes with me, bounced one to open up the dark recesses of the torpedo room, and then placed a double-gelled unit inside the tube, lighting the sailor’s face.

     
    It’s Good to Have Friends
     

    “I mean, it was a long line, kind of around the block. Have to admit, I was feeling pretty good about it. Jay fixed that.”

    It’s good to have friends and mentors who keep you in line and keep your head on straight. Jay Maisel is such a friend to me, in addition to being a font of wisdom and an incredible talent.
     
    I was doing a poster signing for Nikon at PhotoPlus one year, and I had a big line waiting for my signature, apparently oblivious to the fact that when I sign something, the value actually diminishes.

    I mean, it was a long line, kind of around the block. Have to admit, I was feeling pretty good about it. Jay fixed that.

    He saw me and motioned me over. “McNally,” he said, in his best Brooklyn accent. “McNally, I saw you had a big line for your poster. That’s nice. But don’t get a big head, McNally. McNally, if you were charging a nickel…no, no, wait…if you were charging a penny for those posters, there woulda been nobody on that line, McNally, nobody.”

    You know something? He’s right.
     
    You know something else? White’s tough to shoot, especially on digital. Especially white on white on white.

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    Always remember, any meter, no matter how sophisticated, wants to run home to mama, who’s wearing 18% gray. Most camera meters will look at this scene and give you a middle gray. They’re pre-disposed to give you a classic histogram with the bell in the middle.

    You don’t want that. You want high-key. You want a histogram that’s screaming, “Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! You are approaching Ice Planet 255, where there is no sustainable life!!!”

    Laughing in the face of danger, this is where you step forward and fly the ship. Program in +1 EV. That will pull your exposure to the right and give you the white you are looking for. Bracket your EV. Experiment. Find the limits of the file. Push it right to the edge and that’s where your best white lives.

    Usually the rule is to get your subject away from the background (to minimize shadows on the background), but here I placed her right up against the background, where the shadows fall sharp and hard. So why did I do this? Simply, I had seen it done and I wanted to try it myself. I wanted to play. A lot of fashion gets shot this way, and although this was shot in a daylight, rooftop studio in Miami, I assisted the available late-day sunlight with a huge 12k daylight-balanced movie light positioned behind me and to the camera’s right. The sunlight provided the overall light, but the movie light is what provided the crisp shadow.

     
    Don’t Leave
     

    The Observer of London assigned me to photograph Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the most famous of the Merry Pranksters. They evidently hadn’t checked with him.

    I arrived at his house in Oregon, which was sort of like Times Square on New Year’s Eve—just more rural and fewer people.
     
    At first, he ignored me. Then he avoided me. Then he wasn’t gonna pose.

    “Make it clear you’re not leaving.”

    “I don’t care how big the camera is, I won’t salute it,” he declared, saluting me instead.
     
    Luckily, he had this great hammock on his front lawn and it was summer. I took a long nap. Came back the next day and did the same. Went to lunch. Came back. Took another nap.

    Late on the second day, he came outside. “Wanna go feed the cows?” (On location, when your subject asks you a question like that, say yes.)

    So Kesey and I started throwing bales of hay off the back of a moving pickup truck to a bunch of hungry heifers. “This stuff is like tai stick for cows,” he said, taking a long pull on what distinctly looked like tai stick between his lips.

    He relaxed after that, got in his Eldorado with his cocker spaniel, and I got a picture. I think he just wanted me to leave.

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    This is shot with available light—late afternoon, using a 20mm wide-angle lens.

     

    Ken Kesey
    Yanko Supremo
     

    Mike Ruth

    I occasionally went to the picture picking session at Sports Illustrated . When slides were shown, the managing editor at the time was generally the only one who spoke. He would sit there eating ice cream or