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

At the start of the year I made a commitment to myself that I was going to start a series of personal projects with the concept being A Day In The Life Of.

Much of the work I do on paid commissions and assignments is fairly formulaic, media publications have their own styles that have to be adhered to, images for PR press release need to be shot a certain way, etc. In particular with Editorial assignments, the publication is often going to use just one image, so I usually stop after 4 or 5. Never mind that with the massive fee they pay they actually deserve less than 1. Sometimes it’s a shame, because there is a lot more of a story to tell.

I also get more than a bit frustrated at seeing the same types of images used in publications over and over. A lot of which are, sorry to say it, complete and utter crap. You know the type of thing, the first sign of a bit of summer weather and we’re inundated with images of a kid eating an ice-cream, or people sitting in the park, or “social” images of er, people on the beach. Some publications use so many “social” images from events that they completely miss the real images that could be got. I fear that one day we’ll be seeing “social” images from the scene of a car crash.

It’s either the above, or a constant deluge of supposed “celebrities”, most of whom I couldn’t name, who never mind A-list would only just about be Z-list celebs at best, and are only “famous” for er, being famous.

So here’s the challenge I set myself at the start of the year. Once a month shoot a picture-story, photo-essay, documentary, call it what you will, of a REAL person, or event, or even a business.

Unlike my normal day-to-day shooting which is set-up and usually involves direction, lighting and instruction, these will be shot where at all possible with available light only. If that means high ISO’s, noise, grain or blur, then so be it. The intention is not to direct, but to record. Where appropriate they might be black & white, but some images just scream out to be used in colour so it will vary. There’s no rule that documentary images HAVE to be monochrome.

A selection will be posted on the main website, and a slideshow created from a larger selection which will be posted here on the blog and on that TubbyYou thingy.

So, from the start of the year until today, every month you’ve seen precisely, um, none of these. That’s been due to a fairly hectic schedule, and the fact they’ve taken a lot longer to organise than I thought they would.

However, a couple are complete, a couple more are half done, and a couple more arranged.

If I start catching up by posting one a week for the next few weeks I will I should I might be right back on schedule within a few weeks.

You have been warned. Look away now. Change channel. Un-subscribe. Emigrate.

They start tomorrow.

TTFN