Neil Danton

Not the Pelican Brief which was a movie, and it’s not called the Pelican Run, it’s called the Cheetah Run. (This post follows on from a recent one about last year’s run entitled Runners in the Park).

It’s a road-race through Fota Wildlife Park, but I wasn’t going into the Cheetah area to create an image, so I chose Pelicans instead, as they don’t have claws. Like the title of the movie though, I’ll be brief, so here it is:

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Had great fun last week at the launching of a couple of Currachs. A curragh is a traditionally built wooden framed Irish boat, usually covered in canvas nowadays although animal skins or hide were used in the past.

When I say launch, I mean literally:

That was the smaller of the two, a Boyne Curragh, sometimes referred to as a Coracle. They are paddled from the front with an action I can only describe as similar to stirring a giant pot of paint:

The larger Owey Island Curragh was a bit heavier so had a slightly more sedate launch. The moment of truth as it entered the water:

The boats were built by students at the Crawford College of Art & Design under the guidance of the good folks at Meitheal Mara and in particular Pádraig Ó Duinnín. Meitheal Mara (ma-hal ma-ra) translates roughly as Workers of the Sea, and is an organisation that build boats in the traditional way and also trains people to do the same.

Will it might have made an interesting image if one or the other had sunk on it’s maiden voyage, I’m glad to report neither did:

The only danger in sinking would have been from filling up with the incessant rain that we had that day.

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Fota Wildlife Park to be exact.

I’ve a busy day with four shoots and the last one will be to cover the Cheetah Run, a 4 mile road-race through the park, so here’s a couple of images from last year’s event.

Now any dope can photograph a mass-start, or a race finish, but it takes a special kind of dope to think up something different. Fortunate then that I was available:

Or as one of the newspapers that used this image titled it:

Caution: zebra crossing

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…even the ash cloud.

Pedro and Mo are finally united in love after the ash cloud banjaxed their plans to be together.

Pedro moved to Cork from France and Mo was supposed to join him seven weeks later from England, but flight cancellations caused by THAT volcano’s ash cloud over Europe meant she couldn’t get out via Heathrow.

Two weeks after she was supposed to join him, they are finally together.

Pedro and Mo are…….. Black Howler Monkeys:

The Black Howler Monkeys are the first new species to arrive at Fota Wildlife Park in 2010 and live on a island opposite the penguins in the park.

The Black Howler Monkey is one of six species of Howler Monkey, who can be found in central South American bush savannah, deciduous and semi-deciduous forests. The male is black, while the female is brown or gold.

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Latest new arrival at Fota Wildlife Park. When I shot this for my client it (gender undetermined as yet) was only four days old at the time.

Took a lot more time & effort than you might imagine due a stroppy male Oryx (antelope) which kept chasing the zebra herd in the opposite direction to wherever I was.

It would have been a very pleasant walk if I wasn’t carrying 2 cameras, 16-35mm, 70-200mm, 400mm, 600mm and 2 monopods. Only used the 600mm f4 in the end, but I had to take the other equipment, you never know…

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A bit of Friday fun – this image is several years old now, but I was driving down the same stretch of road yesterday and was reminded of this road-sign.

It’s genuine, no image manipulation whatsoever. I was assigned to shoot it by a newspaper that had received a report about it. It took me a few moments to figure out what the interest in it was.

It had me laughing all the way back home to think of someone going to all the secretive effort it must have taken, just to amuse themselves and others.

If you still can’t see-for-looking, check the available recreational facilities carefully…

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…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.

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…again.

See the previous Monkeying around here at On Safari

This time it was a newly born lion-tailed Macaque that I needed to capture for a press-release.

It took ages to find it though. Firstly it was pretty small, and a long way away as the Macaque community live on an island in the wildlife park. Plus, the mother was being pretty protective.

Finally though I got a glimpse of it (I say it, as the sex is as yet undetermined).

Fairly sure it was the mother at left, and the father at right, although it was a little hard to tell, as in a way that’s typical of a lot of primates, the whole clan seemed to get involved in baby-sitting.

The peek-a-boo moment below though was definitely with the mother.

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…one of these very often

It’s a double-headed, double-ended, push-me pull-you:

I wasn’t out and about looking for genetically modified animals, I just spotted this while on an un-related commission for my client.

The animals are Oryx, a type of Antelope.

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