The Hot Shoe Diaries (Joe McNally)

Joe McNally is a very experienced and internationally acclaimed American photographer who has shot covers for National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, as well being a staff photographer for Life magazine. He is also known for his photography workshops and a number of tutorial videos for Nikon and the Scott Kelby’s Training site.

This is his second book after, “The Moment It Clicks” (see my review of that book here.)

The Hot Shoe Diaries aims to educate the reader about practical applications of small, dedicated flash units to produce the types of images that are normally created with large studio strobes. Whilst the first book was mainly concerned with the story behind the images, this book goes into a lot more detail on how the actual images are created.

Joe takes us through the thought process involved in deciding how to light the images, often including mistakes that were made and lessons learned. There is also detailed information on the camera settings that were used and tips on shooting images in similar conditions or environments.

The book runs to just over 300 pages and is organised over five sections. The first section is a tour of the flash and lighting equipment that Joe uses, as well as an explanation of various concepts and terms used in flash photography. This gives the reader a good understanding for the following chapters and can prove as a reference to come back to, should an unfamiliar term crop up. The next three sections make up the bulk of the book and describe scenarios using one flash, two or more flashes and then finally a large bunch of flashes! The largest section is that containing the one-flash scenarios, which is probably what the vast majority of readers will relate to. Each scenario contains one or more images, showing how the final image was created and often including lighting diagrams (hand drawn by Joe on whatever paper was to hand at the time) or images of the lighting set-up. Some of the scenarios have already been covered in his blog (link at the bottom of the review) but the book covers them in greater depth, so that you never feel short changed at having seen something before. The final section is an appendix describing how to set up Nikon Speedlites as Slave/Master units in the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS). Joe’s descriptions throughout the sections are in his usual style, varying from irreverent and humorous to heartfelt and touching, making the whole book an entertaining read.

Since Joe is a Nikon user, the book is very Nikon-centric and a lot of the details are specific to using Nikon cameras and Speedlights. This could put non-Nikon shooters off the book, but all of the lighting scenarios can be applied to other flash systems with a bit of thought. The Nikon CLS system might make the setup easier, but users of all systems will gain a lot of information (I currently shoot with Canon gear). If you can get past the Nikon bias then this book comes highly recommended. It is a wealth of information on shooting with small flashes, regardless of what system you use, and will show you what your speedlites are capable of.

You can read a sample chapter of the book on the publisher’s website here.

Joe McNally also has a blog that is similar in style to the book, containing plenty of images with background stories and lighting information. Visit the blog here.