Joe McNally workshop. Or, I AM HANGING OUT WITH JOE MCNALLY FOR A FULL DAY TAKING PICTURES WOHOO!!!!!!!
That tells you more how excited I was about this day. Add to that that I have been working every day for the last six weeks and I you'd start to understand how happy I was to take the weekend off to fly to New York and be at Joe's workshop.
I booked it as soon as they announced them on the Joe McNally blog. I wasn't sure if I'd get a spot or not so I sent the response with express mail. They responded after a while that I had gotten the spot. Sweet. I needed something to look forward to. I waited a while before I booked my flight and hotel, just to make sure I didn't have to work. After a while I realized that I was going to have to work most likely but also that I would have been working non stop up until the workshop came around. So I decided to just go. I really didn't want to miss this.
I booked a hotel close to JFK since I was flying back really early. Oh man, the area around JFK is pretty depressing to say the least. My hotel was the crown jewel of depressingness (yes, I just made that word up). It looked like it belonged in the former Soviet Union haha. The whole place had a bit of a twilight zone over it. I didn't really care since I was just spending two nights there. I flew in on Saturday, landed at 7. The checkin line at the hotel was crazy so I took my rental car and went out to look for food. The areas around JFK are kind of sketchy to say the least so finally I gave up and defaulted to McDonald's. A really sketchy one.
Went back to the hotel, checked in and went to bed. The next day I woke up early and drove up to Dobbs Ferry where the workshop was. It is about an hour north of JFK.
The workshop was great! Basically we got to hang out with Joe the whole day while he walked us through lighting setups and talked about how he was lighting things and his thought process. That was the most awesome thing the whole day, just to hear how he was reasoning and trying to make the picture work. Really annoying how easy he made it seem haha. There were some models from some agency in NY there too. They were all really nice and normal except one girl who was so funny. Probably the blondest person I have ever met. She kept saying the weirdest things making the whole group biting their lips not to laugh. The later in the day it got the less people could hold the laughter back hahaha. Great entertainment.
The best part of the day for me was just seeing Joe do three lighting setups with just one light where the pictures came out amazing. Made me think a bit that I might be overdoing the whole flash lighting thing sometimes and using a bunch of lights just because I have them, not so much because I need them to get the picture i want :)
It was a long day and I learned a lot, and it was really fun to get to meet Joe and hang out with him and his staff.
Drove back to return the rental car like a mad man after my gps for some reason thought that JFK was on the west coast of the US and sent me that way. Just made it back to the airport in time for not paying for an extra day on the car.
Went back to my depressing hotel exhausted. Had a really bad burger with an awesome Corona (beer tends to taste great when you are exhausted I've noticed..). Went straight to bed after that. Needed a few hours of sleep before I flew back to LA at 6.30am.
Not a very relaxing weekend, but one I'll remember for a long time :)