Neil Danton

I was asked to come up with a creative idea to promote the Irish Wheelchair Association’s Angel-pin day. This is a flag-day where lapel pins are sold to the public to raise funds for a charity.

Sometimes with charities they think some kind of personality and a brochure or flyer and that’s more than enough for newspapers to be falling over themselves to publish the image. There’s too much of the same old shite year after year promoting the same event, and picture editors get sick of looking at it. Not just them, me too. I prefer to push myself with ideas, and fortunately my client appreciates that:

It’s the second year I’ve been asked to dream up something for this worthy cause. Last year I decided on a very dark background:

This year I thought I might go with white-seamless instead. Then (as I tend to do unless dragged back to reality) I started to go overboard and decided that EVERYTHING should be white. Should be simple enough to light, white people wearing white clothes against a white background. *Why do I do this to myself*

Fortunately in this case I’m lucky enough to work with a client who appreciates and supports me. I dream this shit up, and leave him to sort out everything apart from the photography side of things.

Here’s another from the shoot:

My male model, for those not into sport or perhaps not from Cork is dual (hurling & gaelic football) player Eoin Cadogan. My female model is 6 year old wheelchair user Laoise.

**For people who aren’t familiar with Irish names, rough pronunciations are Owen & Leesha**

Last one for now and possibly my favourite because of Laoise’s impish smile:

Finally a shout-out to everyone that made it possible:

Obviously Eoin Cadogan for being brave enough to risk the ribbing he’ll get. He’ll probably never speak to me again.
Laoise and her family.
Thos O’Leary of the IWA for doing all the organising and logistics.
Stacy Corkery of Bare Minerals located in Brown Thomas for doing the make-up.
Norina O’Callaghan at the Silver Springs Moran Hotel for her assistance (not forgetting the staff too).

There will be a behind the scenes slideshow coming next, and also a post regarding white seamless (you’ve been warned. Go on holiday, emigrate, disconnect the interwebthingy). Wow, 3 posts from one shoot. I wish I could do that every time.

TTFN

Using the sun as a backlight is a common thing to do, but what about when it’s pitch-black night-time? Here’s something that’s a lot trickier to do than you might think from the resultant image.

Sometimes you get stuck having to create an image when you’re pretty low on options with the location. In this instance, it was evening-time and dark, there was nowhere indoors that lent itself to be a reasonable backdrop and all I had outside was a field. OK it was a pitch. Not a pitch at a big stadium where the stands might be suitable to place a subject, no, just a pitch. OK it was a field then.

The one thing it did have was the pitch floodlights. There you go then – artificial sun! Sometimes they can work well. They provide a backlight to separate the subject from the background, which obviously on a pitch at night is… the sky. The black sky. The floodlights give something to feature in the side of the image as well.

The bit that makes it tricky is the floodlights are so powerful, it’s pretty difficult to focus accurately. One of the few occasions where having a camera-mounted flash might have been handy. The focus-assist feature (a pulse of infra-red light) would have come in handy. I didn’t have one handy though, so I switched to manual focus. Now that takes me back a bit!

The thing about big floodlights like that, is that at some point, even though you don’t realise you are doing it, you will look directly at the floodlights and then you can’t see anything at all in your nearby field of vision for about 5 minutes until the light-spots in your eyes fade away. It’s only when it’s too late do you realise you’ve done it. Very similar to walking down the street and suddenly you get a whack on the back of the head from your partner, and you didn’t even realise at the time but on reflection, yes you had actually had a tiny glance at the pretty girl who had walked past.

My excuse is that I’m a photographer and I’m looking for potential models. The fact I only work with models a few times a year doesn’t count for much though. In total I’m pretty sure I’ve been whacked more times than I’ve worked with models.

TTFN

Had great fun last week at the launching of a couple of Currachs. A currach 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 Currach, 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 Currach 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.

TTFN

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