"It Only Takes One" shows that if you want something badly enough, you may need to take a chance on yourself. It was 1978, and there was a strike in the newspaper industry that lasted 88 days. It included writers, truck drivers, and photographers. McNally was a copy boy. One day the UPI picture editor came in and asked him if he ever shot baseball. McNally lied and said that he had. It was the playoffs between the New York Yankees and Kansas City. The first night he got chewed out for shooting insignificant film. The next day he got what turned out to be one of the most memorable pictures of the playoffs. Again, he got the shot.

To become better at something, two things can be done. First and foremost is to go out and do it, make mistakes, learn from your mistakes, make newer better mistakes, and repeat over again. The second thing is to find the people you respect and who have been successful. See what they have done, see how they have done it, and learn from their successes as well as from their mistakes.

The Moment It Clicks is a book that will give you insight into the life and career of a successful photographer. It is from someone who opens up and lets us see the full spectrum of light. It has some technically bad pictures (see the one with Tyrone Biggs, Donald Trump, Don King, and Mike Tyson), but it also has many more masterful ones, such as the one of Ozzie Smith from five different angles at once.

There is a section late in the book that describes the equipment the author uses. There is no doubt he is a professional with professional equipment. One could argue these shots are great because of the equipment, or the access to people, or settings he gets to go to that make these images so good. For some shots, this is the case, but I think most of them come from being creative and figuring out new ways to look at something ordinary. This is what I think makes The Moment It Clicks so special: it's that ability to get into someone else's mind and learn how to think differently.

I am all for going out and making mistakes and learning ones craft, but there are times when you have to look to others to see what they have done. This way, you can find what you like and dislike, and can incorporate new ideas into your own work. The Moment It Clicks focuses more on the how and the why instead of the how-to, and that is why I highly recommend this book.