Universidad Nacional Autónoma de MéxicoFacultad de Artes y Diseño

El Lenguaje de la Luz

Joe McNally

Héctor E. Ramírez Rojas

Last Saturday (October 1st), I attended a conference at FES Acatlán, it was a talk about light.

The marketing manager from Nikon México, Héctor Blanco, started by introducing the photographer Joe McNally to the audience. He talked about many prices and recognitions that were given to the photographer.

McNally told that it was a great effort from many institutions to get him be there. He felt really grateful about UNAM allowing him be in front of the auditorium that Saturday.

Joe said he was amazed of our braveness at waking up early on Saturday just to listen to a conference.

There where two translators on the scene, located in one side. They were trying to translate from English to Spanish what McNally was speaking. In my opinion, there were few expressions wrongly translated, just because of the changes between American and the Mexican idioms.I had heard that Joe was from New York and he said NY people used to talk so fast. The translators received then a proposal: that they would tell Joe to wait a bit for them to be able to translate all the phrases in order to make important information arrive to the public.

There, suddenly, Joe started to show some photographs he took. Talked about Río de Janeiro when Olympic Games were happening. We saw portraits, landscapes, sports, and other kind of images, but then he began to ask us if we knew how it was possible for the camera to work well between the light conditions on the stage and those in the forum. I said yes, so in that moment I thought in the programation settings to accomplish the requirements for that light variations, but the rest of the public and Joe answered the opposite and then I noticed that, of course, the camera wasn’t that automatic to solve that two evaluations about light conditions.

To demonstrate the adjustments that we have to set, a guy step up on the stage and was like a multiple personality freak model who Joe McNally told to pose for him to take some shoots.This guy, called Oscar had signed “peace and love” a couple of times for the shoots, McNally was surprised of his natural comfort in front of the lens.

The shoots were suddenly getting complex, first one flash, then Joe’s assistant helped to set color gels to modify the temperature of the light. After that, the space turned into a light experimental lab, three or four flashes more that were set wireless and modified in potential and temperature in a try-mistake method to arrive to a place on the race to get a “well done” photography talking about artificial light.

The last I saw was the moment when Joe shoot that last reorganization of the image: Oscar was jumping in his place like a rockstar playing his electric guitar, the lights where acting as reflectors to make the space look like a concert or a TV show, was awesome to understand that part of the visual language in photography. It seems my let-down that day was that I expected more from that conference, but it was all my experience because at the brake I had to leave.

References

•Personal notes from Magistral Conference “El Lenguaje de la Luz” at Teatro Javier Barrios Sierra, FES Acatlán, UNAM.Saturday, october 1st, 2016. Mexico City.