It's a seedy, dark place that's ripe for a murder. But as photographers, we love it. - Joe McNally

It was comments like these that I found I was jotting down in my Moleskine rather than the lighting diagrams during Joe McNally's one day workshop in Dobbs Ferry, NY. To be sure, I jotted down the lighting setups McNally and staff put together. It was the reason I had travelled 400 miles to be there. But as someone (Hobby/Peterson/Kelby I can't google search who) said about, when McNally talks and why he should write a book, lighting gems just fall out of his mouth. (Like all the quotes in this post, that's paraphrased.) So when I heard things like the above and the few below, I wrote them down. Because they're genius and there was no way I could remember them otherwise.

The workshop itself? Unbelievable. A jam packed day. It started at 9 and officially went to 6 but really went to about 6:30 or so with McNally jamming in two more setups at the very end of the day. Most, like my wife, will balk at the sticker price of the workshop but believe me, it is worth it. For a full day of training like this with all that comes with it, it's a steal.

One of the highlights for me was being one of the models used in a quick demo McNally did right before we broke for lunch. I doubt McNally will post the picture to his website (in fact I'm sure it went straight to the recycle bin) but here is a cell phone picture I took of it:

And a few more quotes:

I prefer polka music on the set but you just can't get kids today to dance to polka! (referring to what type of music to play during a shoot)

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Take a pic of that and I'm going to blog the hell out of it.

And of course, here are some stunning pictures I made with the help of Joe McNally: