Neil Danton

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

I was asked to come up with a creative idea to promote the Irish Wheelchair Association’s Angel-pin day. This is a flag-day where lapel pins are sold to the public to raise funds for a charity.

Sometimes with charities they think some kind of personality and a brochure or flyer and that’s more than enough for newspapers to be falling over themselves to publish the image. There’s too much of the same old shite year after year promoting the same event, and picture editors get sick of looking at it. Not just them, me too. I prefer to push myself with ideas, and fortunately my client appreciates that:

It’s the second year I’ve been asked to dream up something for this worthy cause. Last year I decided on a very dark background:

This year I thought I might go with white-seamless instead. Then (as I tend to do unless dragged back to reality) I started to go overboard and decided that EVERYTHING should be white. Should be simple enough to light, white people wearing white clothes against a white background. *Why do I do this to myself*

Fortunately in this case I’m lucky enough to work with a client who appreciates and supports me. I dream this shit up, and leave him to sort out everything apart from the photography side of things.

Here’s another from the shoot:

My male model, for those not into sport or perhaps not from Cork is dual (hurling & gaelic football) player Eoin Cadogan. My female model is 6 year old wheelchair user Laoise.

**For people who aren’t familiar with Irish names, rough pronunciations are Owen & Leesha**

Last one for now and possibly my favourite because of Laoise’s impish smile:

Finally a shout-out to everyone that made it possible:

Obviously Eoin Cadogan for being brave enough to risk the ribbing he’ll get. He’ll probably never speak to me again.
Laoise and her family.
Thos O’Leary of the IWA for doing all the organising and logistics.
Stacy Corkery of Bare Minerals located in Brown Thomas for doing the make-up.
Norina O’Callaghan at the Silver Springs Moran Hotel for her assistance (not forgetting the staff too).

There will be a behind the scenes slideshow coming next, and also a post regarding white seamless (you’ve been warned. Go on holiday, emigrate, disconnect the interwebthingy). Wow, 3 posts from one shoot. I wish I could do that every time.

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

Here’s an interesting question from Brian that arose from a previous post Little Green Men belong on Mars

Brian asked: I shoot a lot of pub pics in places with red ceilings. Could you do any custom WB thing to allow you to still bounce flash yet avoid turning people into martians or do you just have to gel the flash?

Well, in my experience using a custom white balance with flash won’t help. Custom white balance or any other fixed temperature WB camera setting is intended for when that light source is the only light source. Mixing (for example) Tungsten WB at 3,200K and Flash at around 5,200K is going to give some fairly whacky results. Probably worse than the original problem.

The other thing is, I don’t think I’d ever bounce a flash off a ceiling unless it was pure white. I would rarely do it even if it was. The very problem of the distance the light has to travel up and back down again means more power required therefore increasing the flash recycle time. In the situation Brian describes, shooting “social” or “reception” images there are two disadvantages to using bounce flash.

The first is that there is often not much room between you and the subjects. This means that when you consider the light going almost vertically up and almost vertically back down again, most of the flash is going to be hitting the top of the subjects’ heads. What light does hit their faces is going to produce some pretty nasty shadows under the nose and eyes.

The second is that often a lot of images are required in a short space of time. I’ve already mentioned the longer recycle time, but add to that the blinky problem. The blinky problem comes about as a side-effect of using flash and can be measured on a exponential curve. You want me to explain that? OK then:

When you fire a bright light at someone they will on occasion blink. Some people will blink a lot anyway, some people naturally blink more than others, and some will blink more when they are expecting a flash. If that is shooting one person, you may end up with 25% of the shots having one or more eyes closed without even considering the subject’s expressions. To be safe then, you might want to shoot at the very least 2/3 images. Now add in another person and you’ll appreciate that the number of shots required to be safe goes up. Now factor in that these shoot locations are often very dark and dismal making the blink reaction to a bright light worse and you get the picture regarding the exponential curve. Then add in to the shot subject 3 and maybe 4 and…. So the last thing you really need is to be waiting around while the flash whistles and whirrs and recycles because it’s been bounced off the ceiling.

My advice would be to use a Stofen *rummages around on the internet* er, actually my advice would be to use an Omni-bounce manufactured by a company called Stofen There’s also an explanation of how they work. They are fairly widely available at good photo or camera stores or suppliers.

I’ve used one in a nightclub in virtual pitch-dark and got great results. I’ve also used one with some subjects very close to a white wall and the resultant image produced virtually no shadows on the wall.

The 2nd piece of lighting gear you ever buy (after the 1st – a flash) should be one of these babies. It’s like a miniature soft-box that fits in a pocket. It softens, bounces and wraps light around an indoor subject.

They have to be used properly though, at 45degrees (if you use Canon, the 580EX has a click-stop at 45deg). I’ve never seen such a simple piece of equipment used so incorrectly, so often, by so many supposed pro photographers.

DON’T use it with the flash head at 90deg to the flash body, it can affect the ETTL auto-cutoff. DON’T use it outdoors like I’ve seen supposed “pro press” photographers doing on TV, that’s a waste of time as they reduce the output power by A LOT, you might as well turn the flash off altogether.

They are perfect for indoor use though, but don’t forget that if you turn a camera upright to shoot a portrait shape instead of a landscape shape, then you have to change the 45 deg angle as well so that the flash-head goes toward what would normally be the side (then it’s still upright when you turn the camera through 90 degrees).

Hope that helps.

TTFN

..Ladies. Or Gentlemen I suppose. *Not wishing to appear judgemental*

Here’s something that’s a bit different, and I only use it to point out a couple of things (well three actually having thought about it).

This was an editorial shoot for a beauty/female supplement and the focus was on the make-up:

Point 1: Use a custom white-balance. Don’t want the different skin tones as the make-up is applied to affect the white-balance and the camera try to compensate.

Point 2: Use a 2-light set-up. In this case I used one of the classics for ladies, the over-under. Your subject will love you for it. If the focus was on the hair, I would have added a 3rd as a hair-light to err, highlight the hair.

Point 3: I’ve only thrown this composite together very quickly, so the images don’t line-up 100% but that’s the 3rd point to note. Use a fixed focal length lens instead of a zoom. You are more likely to stand in the same place then and get the same aspect ratio of the subject. You need to either use a tripod to maintain the camera position (I don’t like using a tripod) or put some kind of mark on the floor to maintain the same position for each shot.

I find it easiest to take a hammer with me, and use a couple of 6 inch nails to secure my feet to the floor. Maintaining the same position is pretty easy after that.

TTFN

Darina.

I did a launch shoot recently with top celebrity chef/TV personality/author/cookery teacher/business woman Ms D Allen who is easy to work with as she knows “the drill”. She’s a very busy lady and is nearly always under pressure to be somewhere else, right about now.

The shoot happened to be in the railway station and I was early as is my wont, so I was all set up and ready to rock and roll when she arrived. Co-incidentally, as we were in a railway station, there was a sound like the roar of an approaching train, and there she was, charging through the entrance at what seemed to be 90mph, small children being sucked into the vortex behind her, and small boats in the harbour nearby capsizing from the wake she left behind.

“Sorry I’m a bit late. I’m in a bit of a rush”. Situation normal then.

“No problem Darina. I’ve got a couple of ideas…”

Another 2 images later, and there she was – gone.

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

Had an editorial shoot recently where I was asked to photograph a music student, at a piano. Nothing remarkable in the shoot, except it took me 3 lights to get the effect I wanted, and I’m not sure what I wanted was what the publication wanted, because the article didn’t run in the end! Oh well, my vision for portraits doesn’t always coincide with the poorly-lit cheesy-grin portraits that seem to be used in abundance.

We had access to the CIT Cork School of Music, where they have a large quantity of Steinway pianos (so many in fact, they have a Steinway engineer permanently on site to ensure they are tuned to perfection). A Steinway is a work of art in itself and I wanted to capture some of the beauty of it in the portrait.

Here is my first test shot with a one-light set-up. I was quite surprised at the result, mainly as I had forgotten that the previous day I was shooting in Monochrome mode!

In all honesty, if it was my publication I would probably have used that image. However, it’s not my publication, so…

Here’s the same thing when I switched back to colour:

It’s alright, but because of the position of the one-light and the obstruction of the piano lid, the light is too much from one side. I added a second fill light from the left (didn’t keep a copy of that test, DUH) and that was better, but the inside workings of the piano weren’t visible, so added a third with a snoot, just to light up the inside.

Here’s one of the resultant images, which I like because of the subject’s reflection on the piano lid:

and here’s a second that shows more of the lit piano interior, but less reflection:

Can’t make up my mind which I prefer. What’s your preference?

Either way, I got to listen to some fabulous piano solos while I was working

TTFN

Fortunately, we both managed to avoid a soaking, although I came pretty close to it.

A second look at the back-story to creating a fairly simple editorial image. Nothing remarkable in the image as such, pretty standard fare for an editorial feature in a sunday newspaper. Fairly shallow depth of field to focus on the “widget” (yep did the reverse image as well, with the subject in focus and the “widget” out of focus).

It’s the setting-up that I’m detailing…

The subject is an engineer and the “widget” is part of a system that assists visually impaired people with swimming. Anyway, the sunday newspaper in question really wanted a image taken in a swimming pool environment and a local leisure centre were happy to oblige us – but we could only have access before they opened for the day (no cameras or phones allowed in swimming pool areas nowadays).

OK fine then. “What time are you open to the public?”

“7am”

“and what time do the staff open-up?”

“06:30/06:40″

Now that in itself wouldn’t be a problem, nice early start, get shoot done, off for breakfast.

One small fly in the ointment – having experienced shooting swimming competitions, I know that generally it takes AT LEAST an hour, sometimes longer, for all the metal, glass and electronics in a camera to adjust to the very high humidity in an indoor pool area.

So three conditions then. Opening time (fixed), kicking us out time (fixed), camera equipment fogging up (hmmm, maybe a variable there).

I had to make a choice on equipment at 6am and stick to that choice. The gear was put into the passenger foot-well of the vehicle and I drove to the pool with the vehicle heater on full blast. Happened to be in a period of fairly warm & humid weather which rarely happens here. Brilliant, I’m wearing shorts & a t-shirt and the heater thinks it’s mid-winter.

Arrived at the pool, almost fell out of the vehicle which, even with the windows open, was like being in a greenhouse by then, left the heater on until the moment we gained access at 06:40, and then carried the gear inside wrapped in a fleece!

The pool area was fairly hot, but the actual pool is covered with a canvas overnight so the humidity wasn’t over-bearing. By the time the canvas had been reeled in we were set to go, 5 or 6 images and we were done, just as I could feel the humidity starting to rise from the water.

No fogging on camera or lens, and exited the leisure centre at 06:59

Above is my preferred image, but the paper used this one:

Think that’s the earliest I’ve done a shoot, done post-processing, transmitted to picture desk, had breakfast, and all by 8am!

TTFN

A couple of editorial portraits coming up on the blog this week, just to show a little of the back-story behind a seemingly simple portrait.

Some of the requests you get have your brain going around in circles. This portrait for a sunday newspaper was of a lady writing a thesis on mental health and the differences in how it relates to men & women.

Them: “We need something that depicts that ideally”

Me: “Oh OK (WTF?). Sure (WTF?). I’ll see what I can figure out (what the, what the, WTF?)”

Simple then. An image of something that’s not solid, or tangible or quantifiable.

I arranged with my subject that the best time for me to do the shoot was during the coffee-break at the conference she was at.

I had an hour to get there, set-up and dream up an image.

I took a couple of straight portraits as back-up (the safety shots) and then commissioned a couple of conference delegates for the background of just about the only thing I could dream up:

Not too sure what else I could have done! What do you think?

TTFN