I had an interesting exchange with legendary photographer and Nikon Ambassador Joe McNally on his Youtube channel. Joe McNally is according to Nikon "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 25-year contributor to the National Geographic, shooting numerous cover stories for those publications." So what happened is, McNally posted an excellent video titled Budapest Fashion with the Nikon D850, which shows how much planning and work it takes for him to create some amazing photography art. Of course this is some high-end pro work, which very few pros are able to produce on such level. McNally is a master of flash photography, and it's just a pleasure to watch his creations.Here's the video, and below my exchange, please watch it until the end:
I'm not sure, if McNally knew who was the inspiration for my snarky remark, but I was alluding to an infamous basement Youtuber from Kentucky, who is a die-hard Fujifilm fan and Nikon Z hater. He just recently got his hands on the new Fujifilm GFX 100, a 100 Mpxl crop-medium format camera, and published several videos raving about it, among them a video after a 5 hours long shoot of horses.
While he is salivating over the high resolution images, do pay attention to how he's framing those horses. A semi-skilled amateur would do a better job getting these horses properly in frame, not cut out parts like the tail, and deliver proper compositions. This is what is wrong with photography today. People buy a 15,000 USD worth camera kit to basically take smartphone snapshots, and then pixel peep to insanity. Of course if one is enamored with horses to a degree that he needs to see every detail of their skin, the GFX is the best tool. Btw, I don't judge! Perhaps Kentucky is different. This is what separates hobby photographers from real photographers: One is creating snapshots and salivating over gear, the other one is creating art that will be remembered for a very long time.
Again KW exposed as a fraud. Not sure how legit this video is, but it isn't the first time he's been accused of this sort of thing.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YQljZlfHn0
If you confront Ken with this sort of stuff, no matter how justified he blocks you. He knows what he is doing, he knows how to make money from deceiving individuals. The guy thinks he is invincible in the social media environment. He always goes on about 'wisdom' yet he doesn't know what the hell that even means. This is just going round in circles. He needs to stop but nobody has the guts to do it. Nobody.
DeleteWe need to unite against his lies and thievery.
The thing with social media is that it has a habit of being very up and down. So people who make money off it (especially YouTube photographers) are all over the place looking to ride along whatever is new or trending. Not to mention the disgusting clickbaiting and tribalism but that's the nature of it.
ReplyDeleteThe thing with REAL professionals is that they're out there making work that defines their style and they don't need to clickbait their way through life because the work is usually good enough people will talk about it anyway. I've said it before and I'll say it again, good photography will always outlast a trendy vlog or video.
Love his lens reviews that Ken does, he gets the lens then takes it either to a place where there are horses or a field of flowers or that weird wank-statue thing he lives near. Never uses it on a job, or to shoot a model or a landscape or something interesting. But he never puts the lens through its pacing on such varied a scene or setup. Who would trust what he has to say when it's never had any real world tests?
ReplyDeleteWait for it...... amateur
Ken, I know you can see these comments. I know.
ReplyDeleteI know you post here anonymously and under various pseudonyms. You must stop the bile and hatred you spew. You must, if only to stop the tsunami of crap that is going to come your way, you're inviting it in.