Neil Danton

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

Here we go then with the first of what will become a series, Day In The Life Of: Midleton Tattoo Show.

A note of caution: There is a soundtrack, just in case you are messing around wasting time doing “valuable research” on the internet at work.

Here’s a permalink to the Day In The Life Of: Tattoo Show Gallery on my website. Fewer images but much larger, and depending on your screen resolution, higher quality. Even when viewing the video in HD there is a bit of quality loss.

If you like photography slideshows you can subscribe to my YouTube channel. I say channel, there’s a grand total of er, one video there at the moment (plus one hidden one!), but if you subscribe you’ll be notified when any new content is published. Apart from DITLO there might be some other things in the pipeline…

Of course, to stay up-to-date with the latest Demented Ramblings here on the blog, you can subscribe to the RSS feed or if you prefer Facebook to get your new notifications, “Like” my page where all the blog updates appear as well.

Oh, and don’t forget to say something from time-to-time. It gets kinda lonely locked up here inside your computer, so the occasional comment either here or on FB would be appreciated. If you could slacken-off the chains on this ridiculous white jacket as well… Makes it difficult to type with my arms behind my back.

TTFN

Had a (very) quick shoot recently with these two mad-uns who were heading off to Finland to take part in the Wife Carrying Championships.

It was very quick because they were going to be travelling from Ireland to Finland BY ROAD and had just collected their camper van and were running a bit behind schedule, and I was under pressure to get to another assignment.

Literally a 5 minute shoot then, but I love the quality of light that the Ranger Quadra kicks out.

TTFN

Had an assignment recently for one of the Sunday newspaper magazines to feature some images of an art exhibition.

It was in the Crawford Art Gallery in the city, which has 2 main gallery sections, the light bright section, and the dark moody section and on the way there I was wondering which one the exhibition would be in, obviously from the point of view that more light = less work for me. Which section was it in? Yep, you got it, it had to be the dimly lit section.

Apart from some exhibits of paintings & drawings which might be interesting but are very err, flat, one of the pieces I had to get was a sculpture. At least there’s some form to that.

Two minor problems: very low light levels and the colour-balance of the lighting. This was the result of my first test shot on daylight white-balance:

Nice huh?

I tried tungsten white balance but that wasn’t exactly correct either:

so I ended up setting a custom white-balance and throwing up a flash with a white-shoot through umbrella and just giving the scene a little “pop” of flash to give some shape to the exhibit:

TTFN

It’s always strange to be in a sports stadium on non-match days. I’m used to being in Páirc Uí Chaoimh when there are anything from 10-45,000 people in the place, so to be there with just my subject (and the grounds-man out on a tractor cutting the grass) was slightly surreal.

I was on assignment for one of the “Sundays” and my subject was former Cork hurler and All-Star Sean(ie) McGrath.

Of the 7 or 8 images I made, these were my favourites:

For the first one I wanted something… not melancholy but maybe, reflective. Days gone by and all that, looking out towards the pitch..

Started off with this as the lighting with just the small amount of natural light that comes into the tunnel, so that wouldn’t quite do:

Never mind, I have an app for that. Oh no that’s something else. I have a flash (strobe) for that. One flash with a snoot on top of the steps out to the left. Don’t want to light up the whole stadium, just enough for top-half of the body. A small change to to the working aperture and we were nearly there:

Et voila, the result:

Whady’all think? Load of crap? OK, moving on..

One-light again, 580EX flash with a 60cm softbox:

..and finally, one-light with a mini beauty dish – no need to light the sliotar (ball) too much, just him:

TTFN

10 day old baby giraffe Aoife with mother Roisin at Fota Wildlife Park.

As Fota is a client, I was given exclusive access to the giraffe house to get images of the new arrival. It took a little time as mother is obviously very protective and they must be approached very slowly. There was a little snorting & tail swishing to begin with, but as soon as I stopped doing that the giraffes settled down.

There’s a different image on my Facebook page

TTFN

…including completely flooding the basement of the prestigious Lewis Glucksman Gallery in University College Cork. Kind-of created a bit of a problem, as that’s where artworks are stored when an exhibition finishes, before being returned to their source.

It rains a lot in Cork of course, but this was ever so slightly over-the-top rain. It was like India in monsoon season this past winter, and so when an already just-about-breaking-it’s-banks river had a gazillion tons of water released into it from the dam up-river, the city ended up like Venice on a bad day (and I know Venice on a bad day, I lived near it for some time).

A couple of months later and I was assigned by one of the “Sundays” to create some images for one of their magazine supplements. This was to be a “How is it now?” type feature after most of the art that was damaged has undergone a conservation process. Not much to be done on images showing the actual conservation, but some of the work was back on display, and that would do me. Of course I’d need to add a yooman-been into the images as well, as that’s what I mostly do, make images with yoomans in them (well apart from wedding images of course, I’d rather eat a bucket of s…..).

So, luckily for me the Director of the gallery was available to be photographed. Pause for a moment now, while you imagine some kind of mad-professor type (like astronomer Patrick Moore) wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches.

Fortunately, SHE is nothing like that. There is one problem with her though (it’s OK F, don’t panic), she wears glasses (eyeglasses for U.S. readers). Very nice they look too, BUT, glasses as with anything reflective, can create a problem when using flash lighting. I want to see my subjects eyes, not a big flare from the glass, so particular care is needed when making images with a subject wearing glasses.

So here’s a little look at how I lit this assignment. For once I kept quite a few of the setting-up and testing shots to give me enough ammunition for this post.

So here’s one of the images (the one that was used in the magazine btw):

Looks simple enough right?

Except, this was the starting point at the aperture & shutter speed I wanted to work at:

I started off with half an idea that I was going to try and get away with the one-light approach, but in reducing the flare on the painting, I was starting to get too much of a side-lit portrait. That’s not too bad if the subject is a man and you want dramatic lighting, but for a lady? I don’t think so. There was too much “fall-off” to the right side of the painting as well:

I really needed to get some separation as well. No, not as in “Six Degrees of Separation”, I just needed one degree, subject – separation – painting. The separation is basically just getting some light behind the subject in order to “lift” them away from the backdrop, so they don’t merge into too much of a “flat” image.

So, I was going to keep the one-light (Ezybox softbox) as the key from left, but add a second light as the fill from the right. Hmm, small problem, there’s a wall in the way.

Time I think for the famous napkin lighting-diagram, except I can’t find a white paper napkin, so it’ll have to be kitchen roll:

As is customary with extremely accurate and highly complex Technical Plans & Drawings, I offer the following warnings:
Not to scale.
Double-check all measurements.
If in doubt ask.

That gave me just about what I wanted:

And the final image again:

The umbrella just put some nice soft light between subject and painting. If you want to see it larger it’s on my website in the Editorial section. Can’t put a permalink to the specific image as I move things around in the portfolio, but it won’t be far from the start. I think the image really “pops”.

I then went for something slightly different, and put subject and a part-restored piece on the floor, softbox on subject, and umbrella into ceiling bouncing back for art-piece. Shame it still needed to be covered as part of the conservation, but we rotated it until there was enough clarity to see what it was:

In between those two images, I made another one, but I saved it until last, as it’s my favourite.

There was a wall where there was some descriptive text regarding the conservation. This was the ambient light that I had to work with:

Similar lighting problem to image-one there though. Too much direct flash and the writing would disappear. Not enough and it would be too dark to see that any writing was there at all. Solution was similar to the first image, except softbox and umbrella reversed like this:

And the resultant image:

So there it is.

The Glucksman Gallery is a fabulous place to visit if you happen to have some time when in Cork. Wonderful location, fabulous (award winning) building, great exhibitions and ADMISSION IS FREE!! (make a donation though, it’ll cost you less than a couple of cappuccini). Open every day except Mondays. No-one gets in on Mondays, unless you happen to be a photographer on assignment .

TTFN

…no not that type of playing the field. Get your mind out of the gutter.

This is more like playing ON the field. I was assigned the other day / week / can’t remember exactly, to get a few portraits of one of the Cork Gaelic footballers, or is it Cork Hurlers?

Actually it’s both, as he’s going to be playing both codes this season. That used to be not uncommon, but with the increase in training and match schedules, in the last few years nearly everyone has opted to declare for one or the other. Even the legend that is Seán Óg decided that Hurling would be it, rather than continue with both.

Bear in mind, for those not of the Irish persuasion, that Gaelic Games is an amateur sport. These guys aren’t professional athletes. They have to work full-time, in addition to all the training for their chosen sport.

So the time for the assignment was set, and the journo was due to interview him at around the same time, which (at this time of year) was fast approaching dusk. As usual, journo had a ready-made excuse as to why he needed to go first (sorry Michael, couldn’t resist ), so it meant I’d be shooting in near darkness outside by the time he’d finished the interrogation.

The location was a hotel, which, in common with most modern hotels, is a bit restrictive in terms of backgrounds. Still, no worries, it was going to be pitch fricking dark anyway for the outside shots. At least said hotel has a little bit of a garden that I could probably make use of.

Did a couple of shots inside, a half-length:

and then a close-up:

There were also a couple outside:

and the stand-out image for me:

All images were the old favourite – one-light. The half-length was using a 24mm lens, the close-up a 135mm and the 2 outside using what is increasingly becoming my favourite lens – a 50mm. All those years of going round and round in circles with different lenses, going from wide-angle to wider-angle, and I’m now back where I was donkeys years ago, shooting a full-frame camera with a 50mm lens. Technology, PAH.

So which one was published? None of those above. No, as usual they published the only one I didn’t really like which I haven’t shown. Typical.

Lady readers please stop drooling before you go to work.

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

…stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade, and he carries the reminders….. lah lah lah lah lah. With apologies to Simon & Garfunkel.

Look, just think yourself lucky you can’t actually hear me singing it. I’ve heard that burst eardrums are particularly painful.

So.. I was commissioned to shoot images of some up-and-coming young sports people, as part of a college bursary scheme. Strange word bursary. I’m more familiar with scholarship, but there you go.

Fortunately we had use of a Jimminyasium (someone once said it to me like that), as on the day of the shoot it was the weather from hell. Horizontal sheets of rain.

So once in the Gymnasium and having cleared up the pools of water that poured off me, I got to work.

For me the stand-out images of the shoot were of a boxer, and first up, just lit with a softbox:

Believe me, that’s a big fist when it’s up that close.

I then decided I’d kill-off the ambient. Regular readers of my drivel excellent weblog will know it’s one of my fave ways of focussing the viewers eyes onto the subject, and me being able to control the light instead of the other way around.

Lit with a gridded mini-beauty dish. Gridded? Can’t be a real word surely?

TTFN