Neil Danton

…Mummy depending on which version of English you speak.

This assignment was nearly 2 weeks ago, but I had to wait until post-publication before I blogged about it. Didn’t have to I suppose, but it’s the normal etiquette (and sometimes a contractual requirement).

This is the tale of Mortified-Mommy, Snot Queen, Small One (The Artist formerly known as Princess of Puke) and Soon-To-Be. Not my terminology, but that of my subject that I was assigned to shoot, for one of the “Sundays”.

Actually Mortified-Mommy is my phrase, but was inspired by her own comments after the shoot. How do I know? She blogged about The Photo Shoot and I even got a mention! I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been mentioned in print. Well, if you discount the writs, the lawsuits and the banning orders….

My subject(s) of the day were a stay-at-home mother/blogger/author and family. Family in this case are 2 gorgeous little girls and a soon-to-be husband (poor soul, 3 women in one house, he’ll be driven demented in a few years time). The story was related to post-budget financial implications on families.

I arranged the shoot for early evening and was under instruction to get a couple of pics of mummy with girls, and a couple of both parents with girls, and a specific requirement for a “letter-box”. (See, occasionally I do listen to what a picture editor says. Not often I’ll admit, but just occasionally..).

A “letter-box” is a very wide but not very high image. It usually means it’s going be used in a page banner.

Snot Queen was just adorable and I fell for Small One immediately. How could I not? The instant I met her she smiled at me. I have that effect on females. Oh OK OK so the grown-up ones normally laugh at me, still….

So here we go with the images that we started before soon-to-be husband arrived:

I think most of the images were shot with 2 white shoot-through umbrellas. That option gave me plenty of light at various distances from the camera, as they tend to spray light everywhere. Mommy might have sat still if I’d asked, but I couldn’t guarantee the little ones working under instruction from me! I didn’t want anything too staged or formal, this was not an family portrait session in a studio, so I needed some lighting flexibility to allow a little freedom of movement.

“Soon-to-be” then arrived home, and was commissioned into action immediately (he hardly had a chance to get his coat off):

And then the “letter-box” image:

That doesn’t look much like a letter-box, because I only cropped it a little bit from the bottom, but by arranging the family in that way allows (if needed) the image to be cropped like this, to fit into a banner:

Now that is what I mean by a “letter-box” image.

In the end the “letter-box” wasn’t used. The top image posted above was slightly cropped up from the bottom and was used 6-column (full-page width), above the fold as a supplement Splash (page 1). Niiiice. It’s gives you a warm fuzzy feeling when your images are used nice and large, as opposed to the times when you bust your arse to get an image, and it’s used the size of a postage stamp!

So finally, for Mortified-Mommy:

Could you send me a biscuit? I didn’t have one while I was there as I don’t normally eat them, how do you think I keep my Adonis-like figure? (That’s Adonis if he’d lived to be 95).

After all the effort you went to though, I feel guilty now.

TTFN

…again. Isn’t it funny (funny strange, not funny ha ha) how things go in cycles?

Having just recently shot a portrait of a boxer, I had an assignment to shoot a weigh-in for a boxing contest about 3 days later. No sight nor sound of boxers or boxing for about 4 years, and then 2 in a week.

This was the weigh-in for the vacant All-Ireland Middleweight Title between Gary (Spike) O’Sullivan from Cork and Ciaran Healy from Belfast that was due to take place the next day. Actually, if you know anything about boxing, that’s a fairly obvious statement. If memory serves me correctly, under boxing regulations the weigh-in HAS to take place between 36 & 24 hours before the bout.

So, shot the usual. The standing on the scales shots, and the standing with the fist-up shot (Spike left, Ciaran right):

Then, in the time honoured tradition of boringly repeating the same shot that’s been done a million times before boxing press conferences, shot the head-to-head where they both look very tough and stare at each other, except that for once this one was a bit different, because they both got a fit of the giggles:

I then wanted to get a quick portrait of Spike. Although I was on assignment for a national newspaper, national in newspaper terms doesn’t extend to Belfast, so given that I would probably only have time to get a shot of one of them, it was going to be Spike.

Having asked him if it would be OK to get a quick shot and almost getting it before getting “bumped” by the actual weigh-in, I’d had to wait until afterwards. I literally had about 10 seconds to get the shot, as Spike was already under strict instructions from his manager to get dressed again to keep warm. His manager and trainer is Paschal Collins, a former boxer himself (and brother to the legendary former world champion Steve Collins) and I certainly didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him!

I had a hand-held strobe with a grid ready, just guessed at the power, shot 3 frames, and due to my fantastic ability more by luck than judgement nailed a pretty good image:

You might think that someone who goes into a ring and pummels another person as hard as they possibly can, would be nasty and aggressive outside of it too. Not the case. He came across to me as helpful, mannerly and unassuming. Don’t think I’m going to volunteer to be his sparring partner anytime soon though.

Seeing as how this post won’t be going out for about a week or so, I can tell you that Spike won the fight on a points decision, and I was assigned to the bout as well.

I might save a couple of images of the fight-night for another post, or I guess I could do it now. What do you think? Pardon? What was that at the back? You want me to do it now?? OK then.

The lighting in the stadium was the worst, shittiest lighting I’ve come across in quite a while. From my ring-side position, the contestants were completely top-light, so most of the time it was a case of shooting up into the shadows. I set up two 1D MkII N’s, one with a 28-70mm f2.8 and hot-shoe mounted flash, and the other with a 50mm f1.2. I spent quite a while testing out both while the under-card bouts were being fought, and really couldn’t make my mind up which worked the best. Actually that should be which worked least worse. Met up with friend and fellow pro Cillian just before the main bout started, and he was having the same issue, so it wasn’t just me then!

In the end I went with the f1.2 lens, shooting at f1.4, which only gives a depth of field of a thin piece of paper, but I preferred it to the other combo, where the distance between the ring ropes is perfectly sized so that when you shoot through the ropes, the flash head is right in line with the top rope of the gap you are shooting through.

The 28-70mm and flash combo came in handy straight after the end though, for the decision announcement:

I left that image as shot and didn’t crop in, as for me the image is made by the MC on the left. He was one of the “Layyyydeeees annnn Gennulmen” traditional MC’s and just added a nice touch to the image.

I think there must be a training school somewhere that you go to in order to become a boxing MC. It teaches you how to extend a single vowel or consonant to about 10 seconds.

TTFN

…it must be Panto season!

So there I was, at a publicity shoot in the Brown Thomas store for Cork Marketing Partnership to launch the Christmas in Cork website, when four pantomime characters arrived as my “models”. They certainly caused a bit of a stir as they passed through the store…

The characters were from Aladdin, which will be the Pantomime that’s performed in the Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork.

So, for my non Irish/English readers who might not have a clue what Panto is, I’ll try and explain. It might be easier to explain the rules of Cricket, but I’ll have a go (the Wikipedia explanation of Panto if you need more).

Panto is a theatrical musical-comedy performed around Christmas / New Year holiday time and is intended for family audiences and encourages audience participation and interaction. There are plenty of double-entendres and mild sexual innuendo that will appeal to the adults, but which will happily pass-by the children. It’s principle male character is often played by a woman, and the “panto dame” (an older female character) is usually played by a man in drag. The principle character often has a brother, and that’s usually played by a female too. All clear then? Glad we cleared that up.

I knew I should have gone with the Cricket explanation.

So here is Aladdin with his love-interest Princess Jade:

The lovely Princess Jade on her own:

Widow Twankey and Persil (Aladdin’s mother & sibling):

Persil making a promise that won’t be kept:

and the four of them together:

Great fun. All four of the characters were so professional and easy to work with, even though the shoot was a bit of a scramble, so a big thank you to Fionula (Persil), Roisin (Princess Jade), Shane (Aladdin), and Jim (Widow Twankey).

I thought the time had passed for getting the images placed as nothing appeared for a few days, but got a half-page image used in De Echo and a five-column one in the Irish Examiner (shame they couldn’t find room to squeeze in the photographer by-line, with that big patch of spare white space underneath the image…).

TTFN

…basketball player. Or to follow on from the theme of the previous post of one-light, two-light, I had better make this a one-light, two-light, three-light post.

This assignment was back at the beginning of the year, so lighting specifics will be somewhat hazy!

So first up, the one-light. Bare-flash on lightstand:

Then the two-light, key left, fill right, both 580’s fired through white shoot-through umbrellas:

Finally, the three-light. Two lights as above plus a 580 sitting on the floor on one of those little “feet” that come with the flash (you know the ones, you can either find 3 of them in your bag, or none). This was fired roughly toward his back, to light up the edge of the ball, otherwise it might blend into the background.

As I’m advance writing this for posting in a week or so, I can’t think at the moment of a four-light. However……. I am doing something in a couple of days where I just might give it a whirl…

TTFN

…academics.

Sometimes PR photography can seem a little mundane. Images need to be shot that the client needs, but they don’t exactly inspire the creative juices. This is where one needs to go “the extra mile”. The client may well be satisfied with “standard” images, but, well frankly, I’m not.

The first image is one that needs to be shot. It’s for record purposes. Signing of some important piece of paper or something. One-light (yes, there’s a clue on the post-title). In this case, due to the usual time constraints on these occasions, I cheated and used a shoe-mounted flash with a Stofen. A wonderful creation, loved by press photographers. It’s just a shame most of them don’t know how to use them properly.

Next up, simple close-up portrait for website use. Again one-light, in this case a ringflash.

Lastly, and here’s where the push to get the “real” picture comes in, a one-light, off-camera flash, mounted on a lightweight stand.

Additional time taken to get the 3rd image, 5 minutes. Additional “value” to the client – not quantifiable, but I would bet on it that neither of the first 2 images would be suitable for anything other than internal use, whereas the 3rd one would.

Next up – a two-light assignment. Fortunately, I did one the very same day.

TTFN