Joe McNally

Type of Photography:
Editorial, Portraiture, Comercial

Favorite Camera and Lens:
Nikon D3S, 24-70mm f2.8

Activity:
I shoot mostly for magazines and major multi-national corporations, as well as shooting for books, lectures and workshops.

City- Country:
Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA

Publications:
Virtually every major publication

Website:
joemcnally.com

Quote:
I am a visual storyteller. I really believe in the importance of the mission of the photographer. It is to lay down a visual record of our times. Just as they did on cave walls thousands and thousands of years ago, we record what we see, what we feel and what happens in our lives and the lives of those around us. Even though the tools we use—digital cameras—are highly evolved and technologically complex, what we do with them is absolutely basic and central to our core as human beings. We tell stories.

Product Testimonial:
I have used Manfrotto supports literally all over the world. I have used them to hang lights and cameras off of buildings, airplanes, and race cars.
I have sunk them in swamps and surf. I have done pictures with them that literally I would have not gotten were it not for the dependability and ingenious nature of the support or platform. Wherever I go and shoot, be it studio or location, our Manfrotto gear is with me. I rely on it. I have to, because many of the situations I shoot I can’t get back or do over.

BIOGRAPHY

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 911, McNally, using the world’s only life size Polaroid camera, created a project called “Faces of Ground Zero,” which traveled through 2002, became a book, and helped generate approximately $2 million dollars 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 911 tragedy. His fine art work is represented by the 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 in the history of the National Geographic, called “The Future of Flying,” a 32-page cover story commemorating the 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, Sony, Nikon, Land’s End, General Electric, MetLife, Adidas, American Ballet Theater, and the Wildlife Conservation Society..