2 Great Lighting Tutorials with Joe McNally – Digital Photography School

A Post By: Darlene Hildebrandt

Joe McNally is a name you have likely heard before. He’s a National Geographic photographer and a master of lighting. He’s also seemingly fearless, or a little bit crazy – doing things like photographing from the very tip (and I do mean TIP as in climbed up tiny ladders on a harness tip) of the worlds tallest towers, and other hair raising stunts.

I’ve seen Joe teach live and he’s as entertaining as he is informative. If you ever have a chance to go to one of his seminars, do it! He’s engaging and you’ll go away having had a lot of fun and learning a ton. I promise.

For today’s video I have two lighting tutorials by Joe. The first is on comparing sizes of the light source and how it effects the final image. He goes from a regular on camera flash direct from camera, to off-camera, to adding diffusers and softboxes.  After each step he shows the resulting image. So if you are having a hard time grasping quality of light and how it is affected by the size of the light source – watch this, it should help.

Comparing sizes – small flash

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So? Did you get some clarity from that? Hope so.

The second video has Joe deconstructing a recent shot he did, explaining how it achieved it using both the ambient light from the setting sun and flash.

Combining flash and ambient light at sunset

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Want more on lighting and more from Joe – check out these books:

Want more on off-camera flash techniques: