I finally got around to finishing “The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes” by Joe McNally and I wanted to share a few of my thoughts about it.

I’ve actually had this book for a long time now and I’ve been reading it gradually, one or two sections at a time. My life has been crazy busy and I simply didnt’ have enough time to sit down and read it straight through. But I wanted to (it’s that good)!

It’s not exactly a continuation of his first book, “The Moment It Clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world’s top shooters“, but it’s written in a very similar style. If you liked the first one you will definitely like this one as well.

The Moment it Clicks was more about the backstory behind each image while The Hot Shoe Diaries is about the thought process involved in creating each image. Where Moment present a single image on each two-page spread and included some descriptive text about the people involved or the location used, Hot Shoe is broken down into short chapters about different lighting techniques. Each technique is presented over 2-3 pages and usually uses 2-3 images showing how the scene looked before and after the lighting was completed. Sometimes there are a couple of different images from each shoot instead. For almost every technique McNally includes a lighting diagram (typically a rough sketch on a used napkin, see the Napkin Notebook) showing where each light and modifier were positioned relative to the subject and the photographer. This is essential information for anyone that really wants to understand how the image was created.

On the surface this book is a technical manual by a Nikon shooter using Nikon Speedlites. But it’s really so much more than that. It really is an attempt to show some of the thought processes required to make some of the iconic images that Joe has produced over the years. It’s about thinking through the requirements of the image rather than simply about the gear involved, and that makes it extremely powerful. Because thinking can be used over and over again no matter what gear is used.

The fact is that the Canon and Nikon lighting systems both have very similar capabilities. Some of the gear from the smaller manufacturers does too. As long as you can understand what techniques are involved, it really doesn’t matter what gear you have. It is a relatively trivial thing to translate “Speedlight with i-TTL and CLS” (Nikon) to “Speedlite and e-TTL” (Canon). And you can always use your old Vivitar flashes in manual mode to accomplish the same effect (maybe it won’t be quite so easy, but it works). You can head over to Lighting 101 by the Strobist to learn more about that.

Joe’s witty and slightly self-deprecating writing style is extremely easy to read (check out his blog if you don’t already read it), and he has this way of spinning some of the most amazing tidbits of life knowledge together into a web with his intended subject. It’s very easy to get lost in what you’re reading and to only truly coem to understand what you learned upon later reflection. Sometimes the best parts of this book aren’t even anything photographic; there are lots of life lessons and tidbits on how to work with people buried amongst Joe’s inner thoughts on how the world works.

I really loved The Moment it Clicks and I was very happy to discover that The Hot Shoe Diaries lived up to that promise. I highly recommend this book for anyone that wants to quickly make their photography better.

This thing is great!  I found it after reading Joe McNally’s most recent blog post (if you don’t read his blog, you should; not only is he a great photographer, he’s funny as hell too!).  Joe often presents the details of the lighting setup that he used for the pictures he presents on his blog in the form of a lighting diagram.  He usually scribbles them on the nearest piece of paper that he finds lying around, such as a notepad from the Hotel he’s staying at.  He also uses napkins or any other piece of available paper. 

So it was hilarous to realize that he now has a spiral bound Napkin Notebook to sketch out his lighting setups.  These notebooks are perfect for anyone who needs to jot down their thoughts and ideas, no matter where they are.  If you are an engineer or an artist, or anyone else that that needs to be able to remember the ideas that fly in and out of your head, this product is for you!

Speaking of Joe, if you’re a photographer you really have to check out his two books, “The Moment it Clicks” and “The Hot Shoe Diaries“.  These have become instantly classic volumes on photographic lighting and on being a photographer.  They are easy to read and contain hundreds of valuable nuggets of incredibly useful information….