Joe McNally is one of the most accomplished photographers of his generation, with a list of achievements that I couldn’t possibly do justice to in this little intro. He’s one of the few people who have managed to be super successful in both journalism and commercial photography, and a few of the highlights of his insane career are working with clients including FedEx, Sony, GE, Adidas and Epson; working as LIFE Magazine’s only staff photographer; shooting cover stories for the likes of Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and Time among many many others; authoring three books on photography and creating several high-profile projects such as the incredibly powerful collection “Faces Of Ground Zero” honoring the first responders to the 9/11 attacks. 

Today on the podcast,

* He talks about something a lot of people think or claim to possess but not so many actually do, which is tenacity. He has some great stories about being - as he says - “pitbull when he has a camera in his hands” and doing whatever it takes to get the shot

* We’ve talked about the vital role of failure many times on this show and I love what Joe has to say about it - about how his failure shooting a horse race early in his career is specifically what set him up for success later in his career on projects like shooting the launch of the space shuttle

* We get into something that’s very rarely discussed, which is the cost of being a super high achiever - some brutally honest discussion about the tradeoffs Joe’s made in his own career, such as the fact that traveling so much as a photographer meant that he missed a good chunk of his children’s formative years. Very real and raw stuff.

Enjoy!

Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.chasejarvis.com/podcast.

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