Neil Danton

Those CEO portraits don’t always have to be from the man-with-folded-arms school.

TTFN

It was a lot trickier to line up all 4 eyes than you might imagine!

TTFN

…is not a camera setting to be used when shooting Caucasian people

This is one of the settings that a lot of people ignore, leaving a camera on “Auto” because they don’t understand it, or are just a teeny bit frightened of it.

I have no intention of going into too much detail about it at the moment, as it’s just a way of quickly referencing a couple of tricks I use on occasion, to jazz-up an image when I’m looking for something a little different.

Truth be told, I forgot to write today’s post, and so this is being done in a panic, waaay too early in the morning, before I head out for a busy day.

Before I go on then, a quick explanation of white balance (WB):

Light has a colour temperature. You might not think so, but that’s because the human eye is a wonderful creation, far more intelligent than all the electronics that camera manufacturers can jam-in to the latest cameras. When, for instance, the human eye receives a scene that isn’t natural daylight, it compensates for any colour shift and still displays white as white so it appears that the scene is “normal”.

Cameras can’t do that. Adjusting the WB setting on the camera tells it what is really white. The “auto” setting can do it to a certain extent, but not completely.

Light varies in colour temperature from warm to cold, with different types of light in different situations giving a different temperature. Even outdoor daylight varies, depending on whether it is sunlight, cloudy, shade etc. The “value” of the light is measured in Kelvin, with daylight being very roughly 5,000 to 6,000. Camera “Auto” can usually cope from about 3,000 to 7,000, but can still give differing results between one shot and the next. That’s why about 90% of the time it’s better to set the WB manually. At least then, even if the setting is slightly wrong, all the images are going to be wrong in exactly the same way, and can be easily fixed in post-production. Manually setting the WB allows a far greater range, from about 2,000 to 10,000.

An added complication is artificial light, tungsten & fluorescent, have a tint to them. Un-corrected, a scene lit with tungsten lighting will appear to the camera to be yellowy-orange, while a scene lit with fluorescent lighting will appear green.

When using flash as a primary light source it doesn’t matter an awful amount. Portable flash (strobes) are daylight balanced, so that will eliminate much of the problem.

Oh dear, I said it wasn’t going to get techie, and it’s starting to, so I’ll head myself off at the pass and move on.

The whole (original) point before I got distracted, was that occasionally I use a little trick to change the background of an indoor scene. This little trick (and the 2nd one I’ll mention in a moment) have to be used sparingly otherwise they start to look ridiculous.

Trick 1 then is to set the camera to tungsten WB when in daylight, or a mix of artificial light and daylight, which has the effect of turning the scene blue. Of course any people in the scene turn blue as well, even if it’s not very very cold. The solution to that is to light them with flash, and fire the flash through a coloured gel. In this case it’s a CTO gel that I use. CTO = Colour Temperature Orange, orange being the opposite end of the colour spectrum to blue. Oh dear, getting techie again.

So, turn an industrial scene with dubious lighting blue, light the subjects with a gel-covered flash shooting through a white umbrella, et voila:

Used sparingly it gives another option to change a scene.

Another trick, again occasional use only, is to use a wacky lens. In this case I mean a fisheye. You can usually tell when someone gets one of these as a new toy, because every image they produce will look like someone has bent every straight line in the world. I use mine 3 or 4 times a year I’d say, no more, but sometimes it works:

That’s it, got to run…

TTFN

…Don’t They?

Apologies if you’ve just used a search-engine and are looking for the 1969 Sydney Pollack directed film about a dance marathon, but this is nothing to do with it.

This is about me shooting horses, actually more about shooting a horse-trainer, and only shooting with a camera.

I was assigned last week by one of the “Sundays” to head out into the countryside early on a very cold morning to shoot a feature on former jockey, now trainer, Jim Culloty. Jim won many races as a jockey, including the Cheltenham Gold Cup three times in succession aboard Best Mate.

I met up with the journalist and we arrived together, so while the interview was taking place, I was off scouting locations and setting up lights.

By the time the interview was finished, I had my shot-list sorted out in my head, and lights set-up in two locations.

First up was a shot in the Yard, one-light with a mini softbox:

Then there was an archway that led from the Yard to the Gallops and I wanted something there. This was going to be quite difficult to balance the daylight coming into the arch from the Yard, with the darkness underneath the arch itself. I had set-up two lights on stands behind the conveniently located doors that hid them, both firing out towards the entrance at about 45deg. As best I could guess I had the power about right, at least that’s what the images of the back of my hand were telling me!

I had my subject lead a horse through the archway, and believe it or believe it not, I’d nailed the flash-power with the 1st image:

I made another couple in different locations, here’s one:

The one that was used was actually taken in one of the stables, no lights, just subject interacting with one of the horses. Out of about 6 frames I chose this one to transmit and it was used pretty-near full page width:

That was it. 15 minutes to set-up lights, 20 minutes shooting, 5 minutes to pack-up lights and 30 minutes & 20 miles down the road before I could feel my fingertips again.

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

…metaphorically and literally.

When on a commission I normally try and get the “safe” shots first, and then go for something more interesting. In this instance though, because of the timing being rapidly approaching dusk, I went the other way around.

This commission was to create some images for the launch of the Ashbourne & Purcell cup-finals week-end. These are competitions for 3rd level institutions (University age) in the sport of Camogie. Camogie is the ladies form of the men’s game of hurling with a few subtle rule changes. It looks a bit vicious with lumps of wood being flailed around, but has less injuries caused than Gaelic Football.

As always I was trying to think up something that would be a little bit different and when they sky started turning nice I knew I had the shot in mind.

So in reverse order of timing, the standard shot:

Two-light, no modifiers.

The slightly more interesting shot:

One light, white shoot through.

The nice sky (and the “oops missed shot”):

and the, well you decide:

Two-light, no modifiers.

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

…or is that artefacts?

I love it when a plan comes together (where have I heard that before?).

Was commissioned last week to cover the launch of the UCC Library online guide to the archive of Murphy’s Brewery*. Worrying thing about PR Photography and anything that mentions “online” is you can end up with “Man in Suit with Laptop” images, and as they are sometimes the only thing available as a very very very last resort for a business portrait, I didn’t want to use up any of my very’s on this occasion.

*Murphy’s is a beer, actually it’s a porter (stout). There are 3 made in Ireland, the most well know worldwide is probably Guinness, made in Dublin, so we won’t talk about that any more (they do great tv ads though). The other 2 are made in Cork, Murphy’s and Beamish, both now owned by Heineken, makers of the yellow stuff. Murphy’s started producing the famous black stuff in 1856 when James J, and his 4 brothers built a purpose designed brewery. Photography and now history lessons, I’m starting to spoil you.

So I could have done the launch, and it would probably have been OK, but this is where I get that “go the extra mile” itch that I’ve mentioned before. Fortunately the client knows me well, and it didn’t take much pitching from me before we decided that creating some images featuring some of the artefacts beforehand would be a nice addition to the actual launch.

My client arranged access for me to the Library and the Brewery and I’m glad we did it, because it was fascinating stuff. Lots and lots of records as you might imagine (no, not LP’s and singles, written recorded information).

Note for younger readers: LP’s and singles were what the old folks used to listen to before you listened to your music by sticking those plastic bits in your ears, and annoying everyone around you by cranking up the volume so that everyone around you on the same bus / train was plagued by two hours of listening to Chnnk Chnnk Chnnk Chnnk Chnnk Chnnk.

Made a few images of the Librarian and Library Archivist with Tenant Agreements and a Register of Workmen from 1913 – 1914:

I then did some detail on some of the register entries. In the image below, entry 129 shows a man employed as a Watchman, earning 3s/5d and 74 years old! It’s not entirely clear whether the 3s/5d is per day / per week etc., but I did some digging around on the interwebthingy and as best as I can figure out, it’s per day. Could be wildly wrong there of course, so if you’re a historian (get real Neil, why would a historian be reading your blog), or know a historian and can enlighten me I’d be interested to find out.

3s/5d is old pound (Sterling) currency of course and equates to about 19 pence / 21 Euro cents (29c U.S. ish). I could find out by digging around (isn’t the interwebthingy wonderful – sometimes) that that would be around £60 nowadays, that’s about €68 / $90, so it wouldn’t seem wildly inaccurate (as if I’d know about accurate, I’m a photographer not an actuary).

I just love the flowery writing.

Note for younger readers: Writing is how the old folks used to communicate with each other b4 evry1 sttd txtng n twtrng.

The next two images show another man aged 41 employed in the Tun Room (entry 102).

The interesting part is the entry from the right-hand page of the register, where it says “Volunteered. To be re-instated if returns” and “Volunteered for active service 18/8/14″:

It’s the “to be re-instated if returns” part that intrigues me. Did he manage to return from volunteering to fight in the first world war? Or did he end up, as so many did, dying in a field in France somewhere? I have an urge to find out more now. I might make it a bit of a project to try and find out.

That’s it then. Client was delighted with the media coverage we received. Anything else I need to tell you? Oh yes, the lighting. The images with the humans were all one-light, using an Ezybox softbox, and the detail images were with 2 flashes (strobes), no light-modifiers but just pulling out the wide-angle diffuser on the 580EX to soften the light a touch. No the paper doesn’t look white (I could have made it white by adjusting the colour correction) but that’s because it’s not white. It’s from 1914 after all. You’ll probably look a bit faded when you’re 96 years old as well.

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

…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