Book review: The Hot Shoe Diaries, by Joe McNally

[jabber]

I picked up my first external flash unit recently, and quickly realized that I was going to have to relearn a lot of things about exposure to employ the flash creatively. Unfortunately for me, The Hot Shoe Diaries assumes a sophistication with flash that I don't yet have. Among other things, it champions the use of multiple and off-camera flash units, while I have not yet gotten comfortable using the one flash on the camera. McNally, a highly regarded pro, writes in a lively, conversational, self-deprecating voice, and the book is full of remarkable photos. But his approach is also Nikon-centric, which is slightly off-putting to those of us living outside of Nikon World. The Hot Shoe Diaries wasn't the right read for me as a photographer just now, but I suspect I'll come back to it in a few years and get more out of it. Three stars out of five.