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Life lessons from a pro: Joe McNally on capturing his imagination

Joe McNally has seen it all. Known for his technical skills and vast storytelling experience from shooting for the likes of LIFE, National Geographic, and Adidas, McNally has worked in over 70 countries on both journalistic and commercial assignments. In his new book, “The Real Deal: Field Notes from the Life of a Working Photographer”, he looks back at the past 40 years of his work and the stories, skills, and observations to come out of it. We talked to McNally about his book, how he ended up where he is today, the experiences and lessons he has gained along the way, and that time he brought a cow into the kitchen. Where did the idea for the book come from? There are many photographic books in the marketplace that show you the f-stop, the shutter speed, where to put the light, where to put the camera, it’s basically a blueprint for producing X type of result. This book is not that. The motivation for the book stems from being a photographer for a very …

Off the leash: how to get more freedom with wireless tethering

Shooting tethered no longer means being confined to a set radius. With the emergence of wireless tethering, both studio and on-location photographers can now be closer to the action while maintaining a smooth workflow and close collaboration with clients and colleagues. What is Tethered Shooting? Shooting tethered is simply shooting with your camera connected to your computer so that the images taken are quickly imported into the editing software, where they are displayed in real-time. While shooting tethered, the photographer can change exposure, trigger, and compose through LiveView. This provides an environment for the photographer, a creative team, the subject, or the client to have great control over the output by seeing the images on a large screen and adjusting the shoot parameters on the fly. Many photographers work with tethered shooting as it also allows them to instantly organize their images and apply styles or sets of adjustments to better show a client a closer-to-finished result. Traditional tethering is done via USB cable between the camera and computer, and as a good quality cable …

Using HDR for architectural photography

While blending or merging several exposures into one final High Dynamic Range (HDR) image remains a popular creative option for landscape photographers over the years, its use in architectural and commercial shoots has some big benefits that are unique to the challenges of shooting these genres. In many scenarios, especially outdoors, photographers can normally rely on graduated filters to balance a scene by blocking large parts of the frame with a neutral density layer – evening up the brightness from the shadows to the highlights. But while this works well on large, sweeping horizons and foregrounds (i.e., landscape shooting), when it comes to making that process work for odd-shaped buildings and structures with various hotspots and dark areas, we’re often unable to use the same approach. And where using a filter isn’t an option, or where the sheer amount of “fill light” you’d need to balance the scene becomes prohibitive, that’s where Capture One’s HDR Merge function can now deliver the results you need. How It’s Used HDR Merge relies on you capturing two or …