Neil Danton

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

…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