Neil Danton

Recently shot the launch images for the Carrigtwohill Medieval Festival & Country Fair which takes place next week-end, the 3rd & 4th July.

The event takes place in the surroundings of the historic 15th century Barryscourt Castle just off the main Cork to Midleton road with Medieval jousting, falconry, WW2 battle re-enactments, archers, dancers, FOOD (lots of food) including pig on a spit, and lots of other things going on.

This is falcon handler & trainer Vincent Cashman who will be giving falconry demonstrations, photographed with a Lanner Falcon.

TTFN

Well that’s not strictly true, but I will be back tomorrow.

That was a nice little break from blogging that I needed and I’ll be posting again on a regular basis, so you may be well advised to find the remote-control and change channel now.

I’m having to abandon the idea of APAD. I just can’t find time to blog every day so I’m reverting to a couple a week, maybe every other day depending on workload.

One small change that I’ll be making: The images that are displayed used to be a direct embed from my archive, which makes for very easy posting, but even a single image is actually a slideshow, so it’s Flash. With the increasing popularity of iPhones & iPads and other devices that can’t display Flash, in the future I’ll be embedding images that don’t suffer that problem.

See, you can’t even save your eyes by reading the blog on an iPhone anymore.

Even though I’d probably be classed as one of the Maceratti, in this instance thanks a bunch Mr Jobs for the extra work this entails.

See y’all tomorrow.

TTFN

You may have noticed I’ve been quiet for a week or so.

I hate seeing other blogs that look like they’ve been abandoned, so just saying that it’s intentional abandonment.

I’m taking a social-media break for the rest of June at the very least. I’m hoping that a break will renew some enthusiasm for it.

See you in July.

Maybe.

TTFN

A lot of business people don’t have much time available for a portrait session. More time might be allocated if it was for their own corporate or commercial use, but when it’s an editorial shoot for a Sunday newspaper you have to work fast.

This was for the Business section of a Sunday newspaper and the feature usually calls for an upright (portrait) image so that’s what I shot, but I also shot each image horizontal (landscape) as well. Requirements have a habit of changing.

Subject was the Chairman of a company that produces bed-side medical gizmo thingamajigs and fortunately the company have a mock-up hospital room with the device.

Slightly tricky lighting for this, as the “monitor” didn’t show up very well in the very bright ambient light level in the room, so for once too much light was the problem.

The solution was to kill-off all the room lights and set the exposure so that some detail was visible on the display. The rest of the scene is completely lit by a small amount of light coming through the blinds-fitted window, and an Ezybox softbox.

Total time from walking my gear in the door was 20 minutes to set-up, shoot and dismantle. That gave me 7 different images in 3 different locations. If I go any faster I’ll have the job done before I get there – and I can just sit at home all day drinking coffee.

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Anyone who makes a comment about that title referring to me is in deep trouble.

It’s the shape of the image, which is required to fit full-page width “above the fold” of a Sunday newspaper, specifically the Money section. Takes a bit of thinking about.

The last 3 Money section front-pages I’ve shot for this particular newspaper have all needed to be capable of being cropped to “letter box” shape, and they’ve also all involved children of one size or another.

The latest was the youngest though:

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Not the Pelican Brief which was a movie, and it’s not called the Pelican Run, it’s called the Cheetah Run. (This post follows on from a recent one about last year’s run entitled Runners in the Park).

It’s a road-race through Fota Wildlife Park, but I wasn’t going into the Cheetah area to create an image, so I chose Pelicans instead, as they don’t have claws. Like the title of the movie though, I’ll be brief, so here it is:

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I’ve photographed some famous people, some unknown people, some Very Important People, both those who really are VIP and a few who are only legends in their own minds. I’ve photographed royalty, presidents, Taoisigh (Prime Ministers of Ireland) and lots and lots of common-or-garden people just like me.

Recently was the first time I can ever remember that I was nervous about photographing my subject.

It didn’t help that I only had half an hour notice as he just happened to be in Cork City at a meeting regarding his up-coming exhibition and I had to squeeze in this shoot before the other two I had that day. Then the classic three drops of rain and the traffic comes to a standstill in the city factor, meant I was 20 minutes late for the appointment before I even started, and I’m NEVER late usually.

Whether he was actually in the slightest bit bothered I’ll never know, but he certainly didn’t seem at all concerned and after an all too short chat (about 4 hours too short as far as I was concerned) I knocked-out a couple of quick portraits in the (very short) time I had available.

My subject was music photographer Fin Costello.

You might not know the name, but I’m sure you’d know some of his images. He’s been a photographer since the late 60s and shot The Stones, Kiss, Pete Townsend, Cat Stevens, Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant, Phil Lynott and many others. His portfolio is like a who’s who of the music industry.

The shoot was for a magazine supplement in a Sunday newspaper but it was much too early to have his exhibition images at the shoot, so much as I’d have liked him with some of his work, it wasn’t to be:

A brilliant photographer but just as importantly (maybe more so), a true gentleman.

His Pictures in Rock exhibition will be at the Cork Vision Centre from 2nd June – 28th July. I haven’t seen the exhibits but it’s highly recommended anyway!

TTFN

Had great fun last week at the launching of a couple of Currachs. A curragh is a traditionally built wooden framed Irish boat, usually covered in canvas nowadays although animal skins or hide were used in the past.

When I say launch, I mean literally:

That was the smaller of the two, a Boyne Curragh, sometimes referred to as a Coracle. They are paddled from the front with an action I can only describe as similar to stirring a giant pot of paint:

The larger Owey Island Curragh was a bit heavier so had a slightly more sedate launch. The moment of truth as it entered the water:

The boats were built by students at the Crawford College of Art & Design under the guidance of the good folks at Meitheal Mara and in particular Pádraig Ó Duinnín. Meitheal Mara (ma-hal ma-ra) translates roughly as Workers of the Sea, and is an organisation that build boats in the traditional way and also trains people to do the same.

Will it might have made an interesting image if one or the other had sunk on it’s maiden voyage, I’m glad to report neither did:

The only danger in sinking would have been from filling up with the incessant rain that we had that day.

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Fota Wildlife Park to be exact.

I’ve a busy day with four shoots and the last one will be to cover the Cheetah Run, a 4 mile road-race through the park, so here’s a couple of images from last year’s event.

Now any dope can photograph a mass-start, or a race finish, but it takes a special kind of dope to think up something different. Fortunate then that I was available:

Or as one of the newspapers that used this image titled it:

Caution: zebra crossing

TTFN

You won’t find me, because I’m not there anymore.

I was in a wood (well a copse really) recently for a commercial shoot for a client and just thought I’d post one image as it was interesting to set-up.

The client works with forestry authorities and the timber industry to maximise the production from trees, using lasers to forecast the best yield and cutting method.

The set-up was to create an image with living trees, cut wood and a laser and the tricky bit was to light up a small area of wood which was pretty gloomy.

I used an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra as the main light (nice and handy, as the nearest power supply was about 3km away), which lit up the front part of the image nicely, but the trees in the background were in deep shadow. Hidden behind the two outside trees in the image then are 2 580EX flashes fired with Pocket Wizards. The flashes are laying on the ground, with highly sophisticated direction pointing aids (sometimes known as twigs) and lighting up the trees at the back:

TTFN