Neil Danton

You know how I like to keep you abreast of the news and don’t like to go on about a storm in a C-cup *I’ll stop now*

This was a fun shoot to fund-raise for breast cancer awareness month. I was pleased to be shooting model Brianna Dougher who is the current Miss Cork and also Cork Rose Kathryn Brennan:

This light-hearted take on a serious problem is for ladies to send their old bras to Sean Murray’s in Skibbereen together with a donation to the Irish Cancer Society

The largest lingerie department in West Cork wanted to raise awareness of the Action Breast Cancer Campaign and will be collecting the bras (and possibly hanging some up around the town!).

The store will also be holding a fashion show during October and at the end of the month there will be a tug-of-war with all the bras collected

TTFN

p.s. You can now subscribe to the blog by email and never miss an exciting post about great photography and interesting things you must know. You’ll also get my stuff:

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

In the portion of my life where I still shoot as an Editorial Photographer, I’m often shooting business people, mostly for a couple of sunday newspapers.

It’s always a challenge to avoid the man-in-suit-with-laptop, or man-with-folded-arms type portraits, which need to be saved up for emergencies, as sometimes they really are just about the only thing it’s possible to do! However, I try my damnedest to avoid them.

So here’s a quick business portrait shoot where I managed to create a couple of images without using the “last resort”.

This CEO has a business, which although based in deepest, wildest West Cork is a global operation and there are clocks on the wall showing the various time-zones with some of the countries where they operate, so the first image I wanted to create was going to include those.

This was the starting point light-wise at the aperture, ISO & shutter speed combo I wanted to shoot at:

First thing to fix is the light on the background. Nothing too directional, just a 580EX flash firing into a white shoot-through umbrella, camera right (probably around 1/4 to 1/2 power, sorry, I’m a bit like a chef that cooks “by taste”, there’s not too many rules!).

That takes the background from this:

To this:

Next is to light the subject. This would be a 60cm (2ft) Ezybox soft-box, again with a 580EX fired through it, camera left:

In order to get the right perspective I used an 85mm lens, which meant I was pretty much jammed up against a wall, on my knees, but using any wider-angle lens would have “lost” the clocks.

Here’s a very approximate lighting diagram:

Still trying to avoid the “last resort” we managed to find another location for a 2nd image. Just the soft-box for this one. Get it back far enough and it’s going to light plenty of the general area as well:

Nice and relaxed. Nothing worse than business portraits that are too stuffy, or where the subject looks wooden (usually because they’re scared stiff of having their portrait taken!).

Oh, I didn’t leave the CEO sitting there all the time while I set up lights. The first image wasn’t actually shot first. It was a misfire from the Pocket Wizard on-camera when I started shooting for real.

*That’s because you hadn’t switched it on Neil*

Sshhhh

TTFN

…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

I was asked recently to shoot a promotional image for a Corporate Quiz night as a fund-raiser for a charity.

Hmmm, what on earth can I do to create something interesting from what seems at first to have limited potential for an interesting image. A quiz night, really????

I see so many boring images with any lack of creativity for these types of shoots. The idea is to get people to stop when they see the image published somewhere and at least peak their curiosity as to What is That Then?, or Why Are They..?

The intention then was to portray the subjects studying for the quiz, as if cramming for an exam.

I know I keep banging on about this, but it’s the difference between taking a photo and creating an image.

Just something a bit different is all.

Yes, regular readers will notice that the tree fetish continues.

TTFN

Thought I’d post something different today, and shock horror, there are no people in today’s images. Instead, laydees n gennulmen, I bring you CAKES!:

Black Forest and Madarin gateaux to be precise.

Not just big cakes though, you could also have something more bite-size. Chocolate or fruit?:

Maybe a slice of Apple & Cinnamon?:

Or a piece of Madeira perhaps?:

All these cakes are handmade and the fresh cream ones are unbelievable. Have a slice of one of these Swiss Rolls?:

All these images were produced for a bakery who make them all in-house, by hand, for wholesale and retail customers. One of the nice advantages of shooting commercial photography in Cork is that sometimes you get to shoot something you can eat!

Fresh Cream Slice anyone?:

My tastes would be more towards savoury things in all honestly and so I’m not a huge fan of sweet things, at least regarding food

I saved my favourite until last though, as I could definitely go for one of these at any time!

Fresh Cream Eclairs, wonderful!

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

It’s yet another in the “not another executive with folded-arms series”.

I was on my way back from a lovely magazine shoot recently, complete with home-grown garden goodies for my belly – more on that story after publication – when my fave “Sunday” called and asked me to shoot an executive for the business pages.

An image had been supplied, and this is where the post title comes into play, but it wasn’t suitable. There was nothing wrong with it per se. It was correctly exposed, in focus, and not an arms-folded shot! Everything you’d expect really as it was taken by a pro (a pro I actually know, and whose work I like), but it hadn’t been taken for editorial use. I’m assuming it was a “filer”, an image kept on file for when a image needs to be sent out quickly to a publication, or it could have been for a corporate website or brochure. Not quite right for editorial use in a quality broadsheet though. The background was too dark background, and was a studio or cloth backdrop and so was too plain.

Suits me quite nicely then, thank you very much, I’ll do something more in keeping with the publication’s style:

Generally if it’s at all possible, I like to shoot and supply a left, a right, and a vertical (maybe even a left and a right of those too), each with a different background. A left and a right refer to which side of the image the subject is on, or which side the are facing. Some publications always like to have images of people facing “towards the fold”. On occasion it’s possible for them to flip the image if it doesn’t face the right way, but care needs to be taken then if there is any text or branding in the image. I’ve seen images that have writing in the background that is reversed, like looking in a mirror. Not very professional looking and something that should be picked up by a sub-editor, but sometimes they slip through!

TTFN