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

of the Wright Brothers’ flight. This issue was a National Magazine Award finalist and one of the magazine’s most popular cover stories.
     
    “The Bolshoi Ballet”: This Life series of Bolshoi Ballet images resulted in the creation of one of Joe’s most well-known images, Ballerina on the Rooftop.

    “Olympic Nude Series”: A highly touted series of black-and-white and color photos depicting the United States 1996 Olympic team as a series of nude figure studies, published in Life . The only time in the history of
Life
the magazine ran four separate covers in one month.
     
    As a commemorative, Joe did a photo diary of New York City Opera’s historic first tour to Japan as part of the World Expo 2005. An exhibit of this collection was featured at Lincoln Center.

    Joe is known worldwide for his ability to produce technically and logistically complex assignments with expert use of color and light. He conducts numerous workshops around the world as part of his teaching activities, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for outstanding magazine photography, as well as Pictures of the Year International, a World Press Photo award (awarded first place in Portraits in 1997), and numerous awards from Communication Arts .

    © Brad Moore

    TO VIEW MORE OF JOE’S WORK:
www.joemcnally.com

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Lynn DelMastro
Studio Manager-Producer
[email protected]

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    FACES OF GROUND ZERO-GIANT POLAROID COLLECTION:
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Da Premise

A Description of the Why of the Book
    What you see on these pages is not about a particular place, people, time, or cause. It’s not about one type of picture or another. It’s not about sportsmen or fashion models or war or politics or the news of the day.
     
    It’s about being a photographer.

    It’s about the sheer joy of clicking the shutter…repeatedly! The sweet sound of the shutter and the explosion that occurs in your head and your heart when you make the shot. The deal is the shot, you know. You make the picture and you know something just froze solid in a shifting world. Something stabilized, for all time. You just hung your hat on a moment that otherwise would be gone forever, and now you can go back and take a look at that moment, be it amazing or ordinary, any time you want.
     
    It’s about your eye in the camera as the light hits just right. It’s about the slight turn of your subject’s face that speaks the truth. It’s about holding your breath as you shoot. It’s about the nerves, the joy, and the terror of wondering if you got it. And then dancing about, punching holes in the air when you know you did. It’s about…the moment it clicks.

    Note: If you enjoy these pages, and want to read more stories, go to www.peachpit.com , register your book, and you will be able to download an additional chapter in PDF format.

Chapter One: Shoot What You Love

     

     
     
     
    Get Your Camera in a Different Place
     

    “Get your camera in a different place.”

    Face it, everything’s been seen and everything’s been shot. So how do you make a different picture—especially of changing a light bulb? Climb the Empire State Building!
     
    As maybe Napoleon thought when he invaded Russia, what could go wrong? Plenty. Rain, fog, ice. I climbed that puppy four times and on the last climb, on the last day, I got a frame.

    A bunch of frames really. When the light levels of the bulb and the skyline crossed favorably, I was just ripping film. [ 1 ] I shot 14 rolls of 36 in about 10 minutes, shooting one-handed and leveraging myself back from the antenna and up above the bulb. Time to trust your ropes!

    [ 1 ] Ripping Film: Shooting bursts of photos—you just keeping shooting without ever lifting your finger off the shutter. When you do this, a roll of 36 is gone, ripped, in around seven seconds.

    You know, digital is a beautiful thing. Thinking back, I wish I had an 8-gig card. I changed out 14 film cassettes up there, and if I had dropped one, I’d be writing from a jail cell. Woulda killed somebody.
     
    I waited six months, got aced out three times, have a two-inch scar in my scalp from putting