Neil Danton

So to kick off the second part of last year’s review I’ll start with something non-human and just as with photographing humans, it’s the focus on the eyes that counts. For July, from a PR photography commission meet Fudge, a 6-week old Tawny owl:

Another PR commission for August but more of an editorial feel to it. If you knew how long it took to match the t-shirt with the background…. It’s Ireland Olympic walker Robbie Heffernan:

For September meet my lovely assistant Claire Sands. Actually that should be “Claire’s hands”. Setting up during a commercial photography shoot at Dungarvan Brewing Company:

October’s choice is editorial food photography and chilli chow main with chicken:

November is editorial PR photography and features an image from a live performance in a Cork record store by The Coronas to launch their new album. While I had them there and signing stuff after the performance I could have bought their CD and got it signed. Far too complicated. I forgot and had to buy it later on iTunes. D’oh! It gets played a lot though

December’s choice is a bit of a cheat (it’s a 2 for 1 offer!) as it’s a combined image of chocolate-chip cookies from a commercial food photography shoot:

That’s it for 2011′s review then. If things go to plan there’ll be some very different images in next year’s review. Don’t be a stranger until then though. Subscribe to email updates below, join me on Twitter or follow on Facebook

Which of the images above would you give a thumbs-up to? Any favourite?

Please let me know in the comments below

TTFN

Ever start something and then get half way through and wish you hadn’t?

I had this “brilliant” idea of picking one image per month from last year to post as a summary of 2011. Oh boy. It turned out to be far harder than I imagined. Some months I really struggled to narrow down the selection to less than three, but with the aid of a brutal slash & burn technique I managed it and I now offer you the following as my choices:

For January I’m starting with an image from an editorial interiors shoot:

The home is a converted church in Co Kerry and this image of part of the kitchen makes the cut purely because I love the colours. It’s also a demonstration of how HDR can be used to create a “proper” image. HDR isn’t just to create landscapes with purple fields and green skies!

February’s image is again editorial for the home supplement of a Sunday newspaper. The main subject is at the piano, but it was my idea of including his daughter and allowing her dance away that allowed me create something I was really pleased with:

My choice for March is a switch to a commercial image and was actually one of the most fun images to create of the whole year and features Margaret Smith of Umnumnum cookery school and the “wok chuck”. First person to ask if it’s done with “photoshop” gets a slap. No it isn’t. It was created as a shot like that:

For April I’ve selected a commercial PR image and it features Diarmaid from Expresso Ads and the huge coffee cup that was included is the Irish version of the tv programme Dragon’s Den;

May was a difficult choice as there were a lot of contenders, however the historic visit by Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland and in particular Cork meant there was only going to be one winner:

Finishing up the first half of 2011 with June’s image which is PR photography again and features a legend of the silver screen, Maureen O’Hara:

That’s it for part 1. Part 2′s images from July to December coming along soon

Now it’s your turn – which of those is your favourite? (none is also a valid comment!). Share your choice in the comments below

TTFN

So here’s the second editorial food feature I’m bringing you and this one features Nash 19 restaurant which recently celebrated it’s 19th birthday

Starting with Roast cod on new season pumpkin with caper and sultana butter:

While I generally wouldn’t be taking images of “ingredients” I was just in the door of the restaurant when a delivery of fish arrived, fresh from the English Market (all of about 200m away) and I just couldn’t resist:

So a couple of Food In Prep images:

Portrait of Chef Pam Kelly:

A couple more Food In Prep images:

It was very difficult to pick the Sense Of Place image, but I went for this one in the end:

There are plenty more images from each shoot in the Irish Food Photography Features section of my website

Food In The Process Of Being Eaten is always a challenge, but I love images of activity with hands:

Last up, it was difficult to pick the “Hero” signature dish image, so I used the roast cod one at the top of the post as one choice, but the main contender is probably a Tapas plate which is the cornerstone of Nash 19′s menu, the Good Food Ireland producers’ plate:

So generally I will be posting about 5 images but I went to town a bit on this one

Here’s a slideshow of more of the shoot:

TTFN

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Can’t wait to start these off any longer as I’m swamped with draft blog posts here! The publication that is going to run them can catch up in its own good time.

Fresh Aki Tuna salad from Fresco Bistro which is located in the fabulous Lewis Glucksman Gallery in the grounds of University College Cork and is the first editorial food photography post I’m sharing with you

So my big blab has been:

1. It’s not just about the food
and
2. Shooting your dinner isn’t food photography, its photographing your dinner

so here’s what I mean:

Food in preparation:

Sometimes it’s little details that allow me decide if an image is a keeper or not. For this, it’s the order-slip in the hand:

Portrait of Chef Prakash Sivakumar (Kash):

Enjoying lunch (food in the process of being eaten):

Sense Of Place was a hard call on this one. In the end, instead of the inside of the restaurant and purely because the location is so beautiful, I went for a view of the outside, but retained a sense of place with the people in silhouette:

I hope you have time for dessert:

Flour-less chocolate cake with cream and raspberry coulis

Just to point out that only the chef’s portrait and the featured dishes are set up images. Everything else is strictly “as it happens”. All those years spent shooting news & sport gave me fairly good reactions, but more importantly good anticipation!

Would love to receive your comments here on the blog or via Facebook or Twitter (links on the sidebar) as I would really appreciate your feedback, so what do you think?

Here’s a quick slideshow of the whole shoot too:

TTFN

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I’ll never fit through THAT door!

From a country show in Ballyvourney, Co Cork. Once again it’s all about looking for the not-so-obvious image. I could see that something might happen here, but I had to wait about 15 minutes in the pouring rain before it actually did. I can’t remember much else about the event. I do remember the day was wet, damp, rainy, did I mention wet?

TTFN

So to carry on from the food photography teaser I posted recently, my idea was to shoot a few food features on restaurants and then approach some publications to see if I could get them picked-up and used. In the strange way that these things sometimes happen, I’d started on the project and an opportunity came my way for the features to be used on a regular basis, which I’ll expand on very soon (I promise)

Here though is my take on what food photography should be in an editorial sense:

* One or more signature dishes from the restaurant (ideally 2/3)

* Portrait of chef

* Food in preparation

* Food being eaten (but not going as far as food going into mouths!)

* A sense of place (the feel of the restaurant)

Usually it’s possible to do all of the above, but not always (getting my excuses in straight away)

What I mean by the list above will become apparent when you see the images I hope

So, I’m quite a way down the road with lots of food feature shoots already done, and I’ve waited (im)patiently for them to be published. Looks now as if that will start next week so I will then start to share them with you

I hope you like them!

TTFN

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Just thought I’d fire out a teaser on what’s upcoming soon, and it’s something I’m SUPER-STOKED about. I’m led to believe that’s an expression a person of the younger generation might use if they were frightfully excited about something

So, the reason I’ve been quieter than normal here on the blog is that as well as a nice increase in the normal commercial and editorial shoots, I’ve been working hard on something behind the scenes for the last few months and it’s to do with food photography

I think there is a fantastic and vibrant food scene in this country but I’m (naturally) particularly interested in what’s going on in Cork. Generally though, country-wide, food doesn’t get much of a push, apart from the usual round of “celebrity” chefs to promote, erm, themselves

What I don’t see much of is good editorial photography promoting food, and restaurants. Some restaurant reviews yes, but empty spaces with nicely laid-out tables is not good editorial IMHO

There is some good advertising photography, which can be quite over-stylised (it all seems a little too perfect for me)

There is also a huge volume of food blogs, but food blogger photography can sometimes, due to equipment and time constraints, leave a bit to be desired. That’s not knocking food bloggers, but food blogging and food photography are two very different animals as I’ll try to explain:

Shooting your dinner is not food photography, it’s photographing your dinner

That’s fine for a food blog. However, it’s my personal belief that if you can eat what you’ve shot it’s not food photography. I’ve shot a lot of food recently (and in years past) and I’ve very rarely eaten any of it. Blogging about a dish served-up in a restaurant is fine for what it is, food blogging, but in that situation there will rarely be time, and may not be the photographic expertise or equipment to portray the food at its best

Similarly blogging and photographing a recipe as it’s being prepared and cooked will usually be done by a cook. Most cooks are cooks because they are good cooks, but won’t necessarily be good photographers. The reverse applies of course which is why you won’t be seeing any of my “recipes” any time soon and just think yourself lucky you won’t have to taste any

Of course that’s not to say there are no good food photographs on food blogs, because there certainly are. Some of the images are incredibly good. Images of served-up dishes in a restaurant, or of step-by-step recipe instructions don’t have to be anything supersonic as long as it’s reasonably easy to identify what’s being portrayed

For me though, it’s not just about the food, that’s just one element of what I believe constitutes food photography and that’s where I come in. Image after image of dishes served in a restaurant just become visual fluff after a while. Recipe instructions are fine for people that are proud of what they do are and want to share on their personal blogs and that’s cool, although poor images used where the blog represents a business are not, again only IMHO

What I don’t see much of, and what I’ve been working on for the last few months, is editorial food photography which, given my background, I think I’m quite suited to. Having had, oh I don’t know, (some amount of) thousands of images published in newspapers and magazines I knew exactly the type of things I wanted to cover and bring to a wider audience

I had an idea, and it started out as a personal project to promote the fabulous food and restaurants we have. Initially this was to be for the blog but if I could get a publication to pick up on it and use it, great. Looks like something might happen on that score too in a short while (insert mysterious pause here)

What I mean by editorial food photography, if you don’t know, I’ll explain in a further post…

More to come…

TTFN

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You can’t park there sir:

TTFN

No compass required. That’s way too clever at the time of day I’m writing this post…

This Sextant isn’t the device used to navigate, primarily at sea, but a bar in Cork City

I was there to create some editorial business portraits of the owner for the biz-section of a Sunday newspaper:

I’d never actually been in the bar before. Listen, have you any idea how many bars Cork has? What a revelation. So many little nooks and crannies:

Really liked the little serving hatch out the back:

Didn’t have the opportunity to sample the beer, but I can tell you the coffee they serve is excellent!

Sampling the beer will definitely be on the agenda next time I’m around and not working, or driving…

TTFN

Actually, there’s more than one. The month and year for this month’s choice for One From The Archives were chosen by Facebook & Twitter friends respectively, and upon checking there were 4,905 images in that month. How on earth did I shoot that much in a month?

Just to clarify, that’s not the total amount of images I actually took. That was the final number of “selects” that were transmitted somewhere for use.

So not too much detail, but just a few I selected thrown in here for your delectation and delight. Or something.

There’s Sonia O’Sullivan launching the Cork City Sports, with Gary Ryan and Ailish McSweeney:

There’s a bit of stick fighting. Or club hurling to give it its proper name:

There’s a good looking guy:

and a good looking girl:

Last but not least, a business feature:

TTFN