Neil Danton

…photographer on the loose.

OK so security weren’t actually after me, I was shooting for them.

More specifically for the company that manufactures the equipment & systems:

Of course there’s only so many images of cameras and monitors you can make..

so it always helps to include a person or at least a part of one. Naturally I’m not suggesting one should throw in any old dismembered body part, it can be attached to the rest of a body, but it gives some scale to an image:

In order to give the client the full range of images required, I also wanted to include some GVs (general views) as well. The trick with those is to get the white balance correct. Mixing natural, tungsten & fluorescent light together plays havoc with a camera’s senses and sensitivity (touchy things cameras):

Generally I find it easiest to include at least one human in those images as well, for scaling purposes. It’s best to shoot when no faces are distinguishable. Saves any potential model-release problems down the road

TTFN

Sometimes I nail the best image with the first one I take at a shoot (surprisingly frequently considering I don’t have a clue what I’m doing) and sometimes it’s the last one.

Sometimes as a PR photographer when you’ve done the main images from a shoot and have them safely “in the can” as we used to say in the days of film, you get the chance to try something different. Sometimes you completely bomb-out, other times with a little creativity you can even surprise yourself. That’s what happened on this occasion.

This was the first image from the shoot:

There were a few more of different groups and set-ups and then I think it was my PR contact that suggested a shot near the water and as the sun was so strong I said I’d try a silhouette. Tip: Always keep a good Public Relations Consultant close-by. They’re very handy for carrying your lights and treating you to coffee and such like

Anyway, I fluked a lucky shot:

Of course when you’re shooting against the sun like that you can’t see a frickin thing in reality, but after two takes and four frames it looked OK on the camera display, what I could see on the display anyway, same point about the strong sun, couldn’t really see much, but it looked OK-ish.

Couldn’t have been too bad I guess. The Irish Times used it.

TTFN

As it’s Cork International Jazz Festival time, I’ll throw this post out today

Had a great fun shoot last week for the launch of the line-up for the Clarion Hotel here in Cork. As well as other acts, the hotel is featuring a couple of jive bands, The Jive Aces and the Slammers Maximum Jive Band so what else would you shoot but some swing-dancers for the launch?

The shoot was timed for early evening and now that the nights are drawing in fast I was thinking it would have to be an inside shoot. Luckily though on that day the weather had been great, and I changed my mind and decided that we might just get away with an outside shot before I lost all remnants of ambient light (even though the light-level was dropping by the second!). No need to panic though, I was forgetting how powerful a Ranger Quadra is. One test shot on 3/4 power and I blew the whole side of the hotel to a complete white-out. Think I m-a-y need to turn the power down a little. In the end I needed less than 1/4 power:

We then moved inside for a few more shots and the dancers really got into the groove. You were fabulous lads!:

Seeing as things were going so well I thought we could push the boat out a bit and finish with a last image that might be good for a laugh and so we roped-in the the unsuspecting client-contact at the shoot:

She’ll never be the same! Thanks and well done to Zuzana from the Sales & Marketing team at the hotel.

One take for that. 2 frames and that was the first and best.

While I’d like to take the credit for everything, ‘cos that’s just the way it is , I can’t but not mention all the hard work that was done by Christine Duggan, PR consultant at DMPR who did all the arranging & organising and worked with me on ideas for the shots. Wouldn’t have all come-together without her efforts. It’s nice to work with a PR contact where the creative process is a collaborative effort.

TTFN

..a huge softbox.

Of course, the courgettes and runner beans (oh, and cherry tomatoes) have absolutely nothing to do with the shoot, they were just a bonus that I received as a gift from my subject. The softbox wasn’t a softbox either, I just made that bit up. Read on..

I’ve posted Corporate & Commercial Photography posts recently, so it’s time for Editorial Photography again..

You never know what might come along next as an Editorial Photographer. As a nice change to shooting business features & portraits I had an assignment recently for a woman’s magazine in the UK.

My subject was a lady that was diagnosed with AMD (Age-Related Macular Degeneration) which is a disease associated with aging that gradually destroys sharp, central vision. Sounds like I know what I’m talking about right? Wrong, absolutely no idea until I looked it up on the interwebthingy. Anyway, this lady lived out in the country in a charming cottage with a rambling garden and part of her professional work involved proof-reading. If the AMD were to get worse, she would probably have to give up both and move into the city.

Well along came a vitamin supplement that seems to have halted or even reversed the change in eyesight, and it contains some kind of extract from Marigolds. Yes, the flowers. I have no idea how or why, but of course, the picture editor would ideally like some of said flowers in a few shots. So I, knowing as much about gardening as you could write on the sharp end of a matchstick, thought OK, no problem. There’s a florist just down the road from me, I’ll collect some on the way on the day of the shoot.

Wrong. “Sorry, we don’t sell them”. Bugger. OK, I know that there is a huge garden-centre on the way, I’ll stop there. “Sorry, they’re out of season”. Double-bugger.

Fortunately my subject had some in the garden that were just about still alive enough to use in a few shots. Not only that, but she owned a huge softbox. Slightly unusual thing to find in a garden, but don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. OK OK so it wasn’t a softbox at all, it was a soft plastic greenhouse, and rather than using it to light up my subject, photographer and subject actually got inside it. I think that’s a first for me. Nice soft reflected light bouncing around inside it though:

Of course the other half of the story involved the proof-reading, so that involved an indoor set-up:

This is where the runner beans part of the story comes in:

I liked this one too:

One of my favourites was this though:

As for the gifts: the runners went with a shepherd’s pie, the courgettes went with cajun chicken and the cherry tomatoes just… went in my mouth.

TTFN

Darina.

I did a launch shoot recently with top celebrity chef/TV personality/author/cookery teacher/business woman Ms D Allen who is easy to work with as she knows “the drill”. She’s a very busy lady and is nearly always under pressure to be somewhere else, right about now.

The shoot happened to be in the railway station and I was early as is my wont, so I was all set up and ready to rock and roll when she arrived. Co-incidentally, as we were in a railway station, there was a sound like the roar of an approaching train, and there she was, charging through the entrance at what seemed to be 90mph, small children being sucked into the vortex behind her, and small boats in the harbour nearby capsizing from the wake she left behind.

“Sorry I’m a bit late. I’m in a bit of a rush”. Situation normal then.

“No problem Darina. I’ve got a couple of ideas…”

Another 2 images later, and there she was – gone.

TTFN

Sometimes as a commercial photographer I’m asked to photograph something that’s so big, it’s not possible to get it all into one image.

In this instance it was an athletics facility with a newly constructed stand and ideally the images were to be shot when the facility was in use, rather than just showing an empty stand.

The only way to get the whole facility in one shot would be an aerial view (wouldn’t mind that one), or up in a pretty large crane (I’ll pass on that one thanks). Even with an aerial view though, because the area is so large, any signs of activity by people would look like little ants scurrying around.

All you can do then, is split up the whole area and cover as much as possible from different angles:

A second view from a different angle:

Not forgetting other areas:

Lastly, sometimes it’s not just documenting what’s actually there in bricks & mortar, it’s about conveying a sense of the place:

TTFN

So, 3rd in the series and this one features a business. What’s more, much to my delight it involves beer!

There’s music if you’re maybe at work and not really supposed to be reading this just at the moment, and it’s in monochrome. Yes, really it is. Don’t be fooled by the start, or.. er, the end. Worth waiting for the end though, makes me laugh every time, and I know what’s coming.

Permalink to the Day In The Life Of: Dungarvan Brewing Company on my website.

I’ve always enjoyed telling stories. Years ago Decades ago Eons ago, when I was at school, they were often called lies though. “Please Miss, I did my homework but the cat ate it”. Didn’t have a dog, but the creative lying didn’t extend to inventing one. There were also non-lie stories, essays and such like which I really enjoyed, but telling a story with a camera is a different kettle of fish all together.

As I said when I started the idea of Day In The Life Of back at the beginning of the year, sometimes there’s a story to tell that has to be summarised in a single image as best as possible because if it’s an editorial assignment, one image is probably all that will be used. If it’s a magazine spread it might develop to 6 – 10 images which allows more flexibility, but even that can’t always show the whole story.

With Day In The Life Of there is pretty much an unlimited amount of images I can create to tell a story. The two DITLOs I have posted so far are a story, but also a collection of single images. This one though (I hope) is a complete process, that walks the viewer through from raw material to a very interesting form of re-cycling!

The Dungarvan Brewing Company is Ireland’s latest micro-brewery located in lovely Dungarvan in Co Waterford, which I think is a fabulous place (I think Cork should annex it). They make a range of bottle-conditioned craft beers, primarily Black Rock Irish Stout, Copper Coast Red Ale and Helvick Gold Blonde Ale (all the bases covered there then), but they also make “specials” for different seasonal or festival times.

When I first approached Jen their Marketing Director about telling their story she was very helpful and everyone was a joy to be around on the shoot. Unlike an Editorial or Commercial shoot, there are no set-up or staged images in this story. Everything was shot as it happened (OK, I think that twice I actually said, “hold that a second” or something similar), but for the most part I just tried to not get in the way too much! Having spent so many previous years shooting sport, if I can’t catch a bit of action by now I ought to give up.

On the techie side: the only time I used some lighting was the modelling light from a Ranger Quadra, which isn’t very powerful, but just helped enough with the images in the fermentation room. For everything else, no big lights, no flash, so some images were shot at 1600 or even 3200 ISO, which shows as a bit of “noise” in a few frames. I can live with that for a documentary.

Many thanks to the Dungarvan Brew crew of Jen & Claire, Tom & Cormac for letting me tell their story.

I sense they are going to get bigger as word, and their product, gets around.

TTFN

Fortunately, we both managed to avoid a soaking, although I came pretty close to it.

A second look at the back-story to creating a fairly simple editorial image. Nothing remarkable in the image as such, pretty standard fare for an editorial feature in a sunday newspaper. Fairly shallow depth of field to focus on the “widget” (yep did the reverse image as well, with the subject in focus and the “widget” out of focus).

It’s the setting-up that I’m detailing…

The subject is an engineer and the “widget” is part of a system that assists visually impaired people with swimming. Anyway, the sunday newspaper in question really wanted a image taken in a swimming pool environment and a local leisure centre were happy to oblige us – but we could only have access before they opened for the day (no cameras or phones allowed in swimming pool areas nowadays).

OK fine then. “What time are you open to the public?”

“7am”

“and what time do the staff open-up?”

“06:30/06:40″

Now that in itself wouldn’t be a problem, nice early start, get shoot done, off for breakfast.

One small fly in the ointment – having experienced shooting swimming competitions, I know that generally it takes AT LEAST an hour, sometimes longer, for all the metal, glass and electronics in a camera to adjust to the very high humidity in an indoor pool area.

So three conditions then. Opening time (fixed), kicking us out time (fixed), camera equipment fogging up (hmmm, maybe a variable there).

I had to make a choice on equipment at 6am and stick to that choice. The gear was put into the passenger foot-well of the vehicle and I drove to the pool with the vehicle heater on full blast. Happened to be in a period of fairly warm & humid weather which rarely happens here. Brilliant, I’m wearing shorts & a t-shirt and the heater thinks it’s mid-winter.

Arrived at the pool, almost fell out of the vehicle which, even with the windows open, was like being in a greenhouse by then, left the heater on until the moment we gained access at 06:40, and then carried the gear inside wrapped in a fleece!

The pool area was fairly hot, but the actual pool is covered with a canvas overnight so the humidity wasn’t over-bearing. By the time the canvas had been reeled in we were set to go, 5 or 6 images and we were done, just as I could feel the humidity starting to rise from the water.

No fogging on camera or lens, and exited the leisure centre at 06:59

Above is my preferred image, but the paper used this one:

Think that’s the earliest I’ve done a shoot, done post-processing, transmitted to picture desk, had breakfast, and all by 8am!

TTFN

A couple of editorial portraits coming up on the blog this week, just to show a little of the back-story behind a seemingly simple portrait.

Some of the requests you get have your brain going around in circles. This portrait for a sunday newspaper was of a lady writing a thesis on mental health and the differences in how it relates to men & women.

Them: “We need something that depicts that ideally”

Me: “Oh OK (WTF?). Sure (WTF?). I’ll see what I can figure out (what the, what the, WTF?)”

Simple then. An image of something that’s not solid, or tangible or quantifiable.

I arranged with my subject that the best time for me to do the shoot was during the coffee-break at the conference she was at.

I had an hour to get there, set-up and dream up an image.

I took a couple of straight portraits as back-up (the safety shots) and then commissioned a couple of conference delegates for the background of just about the only thing I could dream up:

Not too sure what else I could have done! What do you think?

TTFN

Shot the launch pics for a charity cycle a while back. It’s always a bit of brain-strain trying to think up something different for those. We’ve all seen the “people looking through the wheel shot”, I’ve done it myself, so I thought up something different this time:

Expect to see a rake of copies of that idea appearing in local media over the next few months.

Big-ups to Cork Hurling & Gaelic Football dual-player Eoin Cadogan for generously giving up his time to help out (and go along with a few mad ideas); and to Audrey & Katharine for helping out.

TTFN