Neil Danton

…not the mythical ones that breathe fire, but the ones that have (different) TV series in the UK & Ireland – Dragon’s Den

If you’re not familiar, the shows feature people with an idea or concept that try to get funding from a panel of “Dragons”, venture capital for an equity share in the business

I got to create some publicity images for Diarmaid Twomey from Cork whose company Expresso Ads was the last to receive backing from two of the Dragons in the last programme of the Irish series

The big coffee cup prop was made by Made in Hollywood. It’s nice to have a great prop for a shoot

Curious onlookers at the early morning part of the shoot:

The first part of the shoot featured one of the Dragons who backed the idea – Bobby Kerr, who is the Chairman of the Insomnia coffee chain:

Well done to Diarmaid on getting his funding, and best of luck for the future:

TTFN

They’re either a bunch of grubby layabouts, or nerdy geeks, right?

Obviously the graduate of the year (female) from a major university is going to be a mousey, nerdy geek. Would that be a reasonable assumption?

Wrong:

Not content with graduating in Law, she then graduated in Medicine as well. Or the other way around. It hurts my brain just thinking about it.

TTFN

I wandered down to beautiful West Cork recently to do a shoot for the home supplement of a Sunday newspaper. The story was centred around what B&Bs are doing to add value to the B&B experience. In this case it was providing different courses while enjoying a stay, and in particular this one was song-writing in the company of a musician. A guitar playing, piano playing, drummer in fact. The list of who he’s worked with is a bit like a who’s-who of the music world, but includes being tour drummer with Ronnie Wood.

I started off with a few general views of the interior & exterior of the property:

Then it was down to the more interesting but slightly difficult concept of how to convey music, peace & tranquility and anything else I could throw into the mix. A bit awkward when’s there’s no sound in a still image!

The location of the property was right on a cliff edge, and I mean right on the edge, so that was a natural place for an image:

The main room where the course will be run was another:

I was still missing something though, even if I wasn’t too sure what it was. I wanted something extra to add to an image. Then I remembered a “prop” I’d met earlier.

My musician’s daughter is Summer by name and summer by nature and after a quick check that it was OK to include her in an image, I asked her if she liked to dance and let her off to do her own thing while her father played:

It took about 3 frames to get the right shot with enough movement in the dress to show it’s not posed:

I just love that image.

TTFN

Not that I’m religious in the slightest, but this particular church was no longer operating as such and had instead been converted into a magnificent home, which I was shooting for a sunday newspaper supplement.

The thing with property shoots is always the issue of that old converging verticals problem. This (if you don’t know) is what happens when you point a camera upwards to include all of a building or structure in the frame. Works the other way too if you point a camera downward, but then it’s diverging verticals of course.

The human eye corrects this automatically. Actually the human eye doesn’t do much I suppose, it’s the brain that corrects it . Cameras aren’t that smart though. Strike one for man versus the machine.

This is a typical, but not extreme version of what happens:

and this is more like we see it:

The two main ways of correcting the problem are either to use a specialist tilt/shift lens (which I did have with me), or to correct it afterwards with some special software in post-production. That’s the route I chose on this occasion for speed. Tilt/shift lenses are great, but they are a bit fiddly and time consuming and I needed a LOT of images from this particular shoot, and not as much time available as I would have liked.

Here’s a couple more bits of detail of the exterior:

and some of the interior:

It’s also quite nice to include some detail when possible:

Oh, and the view from the belfry:

I didn’t dare ask the price the place was on the market for..

TTFN

That’s windows as in glass and stuff, not Windows as in an operating system that barely works, even after multiple variants.

This is a slightly unusual one as, if you are one of those people who have so little else to do you read the blog regularly, you’ll know that most of the time I shoot people, and some of them deserve it.

This was a shoot for a window company that had replaced all the glazing in a large building, and wanted images of the 13/14 different styles of window that had been used:

The thing about buildings is the problem you get with (usually) converging verticals. This happens when you point a camera upwards to include the whole building, and the vertical lines in the structure move toward the centre. The human brain & eyes have a little get-together and automatically correct this so we don’t see it, but a lens is norman-no-mates so can’t do the colluding and we get weird looking structures. I also said (usually) because if you manage to be higher than a building and shoot down, you get diverging verticals where the top of the building appears to be wider than the base. All this and you need no alcohol to make it happen.

However, a thing two things three things are available to help you reduce or rectify the problem.

1. Get back as far as you can. The problem is exacerbated (that’s a big word I just fell over and used instead of “made worse”) when using a wide-angle lens. The wider the lens, the closer in you get, the worse the problem becomes. An ideal lens would be 50mm or longer as a 50mm lens is approximately the view that the human eye sees. It’s actually 57mm if you want be be pedantic.

Now when I say 50mm, that’s 50mm as it relates to a 35mm film camera or full-frame digital camera. It’s a weird thing with some digital cameras as they use a smaller sensor compared to the equivalent film camera, which has the effect of making the lens focal length longer. It’s a very complicated subject that I could explain thoroughly with a few diagrams and degrees in Physics and Mechanical Engineering, none of which I have.

So in principle then, get back further and use a longer lens. For the image above I couldn’t get everything into the frame using a 50mm, so it was a 28-70mm at 39mm.

2. Sometimes of course it’s just not possible to get back far enough, and that’s when you can use a brilliant but expensive solution in a special lens called a tilt-shift. Actually, pausing for a mo’, that’s what Canon call them as that’s the brand of gear I shoot with. I’m sure that Nikon and others have some similar sort of solution. Anyway enough of the saddos Nikon users. Here’s one of the 4 different ones that Canon makes:

These are specially designed for architectural work and allow the horizontals and verticals as seen in the camera to be aligned perfectly. More diagrams and at least a PhD needed to explain that fully but I still don’t have any so you’ll have to trust me – it works.

3. You can actually correct the verticals in post-production with your preferred image-tweaking software. I’ve done it in Photoshop before but don’t use that anymore, but for Aperture there’s a plug-in called.. called…. Lines or Bends or Curves or something. Anyway it works, and most of the time I find further back, longer lens and post-production works OK. When it’s really very very tight, I know someone I can borrow a tilt-shift lens from

Finally (not much more now) the whole point of this post is that most of the different styles of window were on the ground floor, so shooting them individually wasn’t a problem. There was one unique one though and if you look back to the original image it’s half way along the right-hand side on the top floor. I would have highlighted it with a red circle, but I don’t have a red circle to hand.

A couple of things that made it slightly awkward. We weren’t allowed access to the inside of the building and no cherry-picker or crane to get up to the correct level. That’s where the unusual lens comes in. One of these:

It’s a 400mm lens, or mummy-bear as I call it (daddy-bear is the 600mm that I also have). With that I could get way back on some waste ground and shoot the window full-frame with only the slightest problem of converging verticals.

Fortunate that I have a 400mm lens then.

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

Another in the “not a man with folded arms corporate announcement image” series (which isn’t really a series, but an occasional musing).

Could also be filed under the WTF am I going to do in this instance category, where nobody (including me) has any real ideas initially on how to portray someone when there is no physical “thing” for them to hold, stand next to / in front of etc.

My subject has been appointed to a 3rd-level (college) institution as an Entrepreneur in Residence. He’s more than qualified to do so with a very impressive CV (resumé) in founding some extremely successful companies.

Anyway, for my part, it’s once again trying to figure out how to create an image that isn’t man-with-folded-arms (please, no), or man-with-laptop (please please, no) or man-at-desk (please, shoot me now).

The location, which I’m very familiar with, didn’t used to have a real focal point that identifies it to a viewer (unlike the other 3rd-level institution in the city) but not too long ago a new area was constructed and it is a definite identifier, but unfortunately, it’s too big. There’s still no way of using the whole area as a backdrop, so I just chose to use part of it as the weather was good (OK, it wasn’t raining, that’s counts as good here).

No, I wasn’t laying on the ground to get the image, he’s on an elevated area, which brought into play a rather unique piece of equipment (this is the techie bit) a WTL.

As you may or may not have realised by now, shooting with on-camera flash is a no no for me 99% of the time. In this case I was using a Ranger Quadra rather than a Canon flash, which fits nicely onto a lightweight stand, but the stand was never going to be high enough to get above my subject. That’s where I sometimes have to use a WTL, which come in all shapes and sizes. A WTL is a Walking Talking Lightstand, sometimes referred to as a human being. “Would you mind lifting this thing up and pointing it towards that gentleman? A little higher. Perfect, thanks a mill.”

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.

TTFN

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:

TTFN

…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