Joe McNally: The Rule of Thirds
In this video, Joe deconstructs the setup of a recent location shoot in Mexico and explains the importance of following the Rule of Thirds, especially for publication photography.
Published on May 29, 2014
From Joe McNally’s own website at JoeMcNally.Com we learn Joe McNally is an internationally acclaimed photographer whose career has spanned 30 years and included assignments in over 50 countries. He has shot cover stories for TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, New York, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Men’s Journal. He has been at various times in his career a contract photographer for Sports Illustrated, a staff photographer at LIFE, and currently, an ongoing 23 year contributor to the National Geographic, shooting numerous cover stories for those publications.
Joe was listed by American Photo as one of the 100 Most Important people in Photography and described by the magazine as “perhaps the most versatile photojournalist working today”. He has been honored as a member of Kodak-PDN Legends Online, as well as being a Nikon Legend Behind the Lens. In 2010, he was voted as one of the 30 most influential photographers of the decade in an industry-wide Photo District News survey. McNally won the first Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Journalist Impact for a LIFE coverage titled “The Panorama of War.” He has also been honored numerous times by Communication Arts, PDN, Graphis, American Photo, POY, and The World Press Photo Foundation.
In the aftermath of 9/11, McNally, using the world’s only life-sized Polaroid camera, created a project called “Faces of Ground Zero,” which traveled through 2002, became a book, and helped generate approximately $2 million for the relief effort. It is considered by many museum and art professionals to be one of the most important artistic endeavors to evolve from the 9/11 tragedy. His fine art work is represented by Monroe Gallery of Santa Fe, and his prints are in numerous collections, most significantly the National Portrait Gallery of the United States.
He shot the first all-digital coverage of the history of the National Geographic, called “The Future of Flying,” a 32-page cover story commemorating the centennial observance of the Wright Brothers’ flight. The coverage was deemed noteworthy enough that it has been incorporated into the archives of the Library of Congress. In the last two years, McNally has written two books, The Moment It Clicks, and The Hot Shoe Diaries, both of which cracked Amazon’s top ten list of best sellers. His advertising and commercial clients include FedEx, Epson, Sony, Nikon, Land’s End, General Electric, MetLife, Adidas, American Ballet Theater, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, among others. His client list obviously also includes Adorama Camera in New York, for whom he made this video.
Joe McNally is known internationally for his ability to produce technically and logistically complex assignments with expert use of color and light. Joe is a grand master of both. As part of his teaching activities, he conducts numerous workshops around the world. I haven’t had the pleasure yet to meet Joe McNally, but we have many professional photographer friends in common, all of whom tell me Joe has the energy level of a twenty year old. I wish I knew how he does it! While Joe may not talk about his “fountain of youth” in this video, he does share a considerable number of other trade secrets in this video. Joe knows his subjects, and as a lecturer he is someone who’s opinion you do not want to miss.
Joe McNally is a teacher who teaches as he works, from a grounded, methodical, and artistic base in everything he does. Half scientist, half artist, fifty percent project manager, fifty percent researcher, and one hundred twenty five percent consummate marketing professional. Thank You Adorama, for sponsoring this great educational material, and many thanks to you Joe for sharing it with us.
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