Neil Danton

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

A lot of business people don’t have much time available for a portrait session. More time might be allocated if it was for their own corporate or commercial use, but when it’s an editorial shoot for a Sunday newspaper you have to work fast.

This was for the Business section of a Sunday newspaper and the feature usually calls for an upright (portrait) image so that’s what I shot, but I also shot each image horizontal (landscape) as well. Requirements have a habit of changing.

Subject was the Chairman of a company that produces bed-side medical gizmo thingamajigs and fortunately the company have a mock-up hospital room with the device.

Slightly tricky lighting for this, as the “monitor” didn’t show up very well in the very bright ambient light level in the room, so for once too much light was the problem.

The solution was to kill-off all the room lights and set the exposure so that some detail was visible on the display. The rest of the scene is completely lit by a small amount of light coming through the blinds-fitted window, and an Ezybox softbox.

Total time from walking my gear in the door was 20 minutes to set-up, shoot and dismantle. That gave me 7 different images in 3 different locations. If I go any faster I’ll have the job done before I get there – and I can just sit at home all day drinking coffee.

TTFN

…and other light modifiers.

This post is pretty long as it seemed to grow legs of it’s own and get bigger and bigger as I wrote it, so grab yourself a coffee or your preferred choice of alcoholic beverage and sit down and relax for a while…

I’ve been getting quite a lot of hits on this-here blog from search terms that refer to umbrellas or white umbrellas or shoot-through umbrellas or combinations of the above.

So, if the whole idea of using umbrellas is confusing you, I’ll try and give you the idiot’s guide to using them (the idiot being the person giving the guide, not you) and in the process try and cover as many of the queries as I can.

Our cousins across the water may need to substitute “flash” for “strobe” from here-on as that’s the term they generally use for a hot-shoe flash.

First up I need to explain that if your camera has one of those green-spot settings – otherwise known as “use this setting and let’s all hope the camera will work out WTF I’m shooting and give me incredible images” – then I probably can’t help you, because you need to start taking control.

Similarly if you are using flash in ETTL mode (that’s the Canon term, not sure about Nikon or others) or automatic flash control, some of this stuff won’t work either. From what I can gather, the Nikon auto-flash seems better than the Canon, but I’m not changing brands now, and I rarely use auto-flash anyway. That’s just me, old fashioned. OK just old.

Using flash, whether it’s the hot-shoe type or the bigger studio type, is all about you controlling the light you want for your subject, rather than letting the light control you. When I use lights everything is in manual mode. The camera’s exposure, and the flash output, but not usually the camera focus, although I do revert to that on occasion.

An umbrella is just a light modifier and the circumstances in which you use light modifiers are so varied and diverse that it’s more than I can cover in a single post, I’d need to write a book *ding – lightbulb moment*.

There are however some generalisations. Mostly there’s hard light and soft light (and you use modifiers to get the “soft” bit). Then there’s directional modifiers, basically converging or concentrating, and the opposite of diverging or spreading.

Umbrellas generally fall into the spreading and softening category, although it’s not always as simple as that. There are shoot-through umbrellas (usually white), and reflective umbrellas (usually white, silver or gold). My preference is white shoot-through, for a couple of reasons:

Haven’t written so much for a long time without throwing in some images, so here goes:

This is a reflective silver umbrella. It’s a very small one, for head-shots or half-length portraits:

and with the flash firing:

Same thing, but the gold version:

and with the flash firing:

White shoot-through umbrella opened ready for action:

and with the flash firing:

There are also many other light modifiers of course. The ones I use are a couple of different soft-boxes, one a tiny Lumiquest mini soft-box that fits on a 580EX flash, and a 60cm (2ft) Ezybox soft-box that fits into the front pocket of my gear roller-bag. Bigger is nearly always better, but not when you always work on location and are 99% of the time on your own without an assistant. I also (occasionally) use a snoot, which is a cone-like device to really concentrate the light into a small area, often used by glamour or fashion photographers behind and to the side of a subject, just to light the hair. Not what I use it for!

Here’s a few examples of different light modifying…

First up, outside, no light modifier:

Outside with a 60cm soft-box:

and outside with 2 white shoot-through umbrellas:

Moving inside, shot with a mini beauty dish (hard light):

Inside with a softbox (soft but quite concentrated light):

and inside with 2 white shoot-through umbrellas (softened light and sprayed everywhere!):

and again:

No I haven’t suddenly started doing family portraits, that was shot for the Money section of a Sunday newspaper!

I mentioned a snoot earlier, this is one that’s designed for small flash instead of studio lights:

and can be fitted with a grid to concentrate light even more:

Here’s an example of an image shot with a snoot:

and one shot with a snoot fitted with a grid:

So back to the original “hit list” of search terms by which people came to my blog, and some answers:

TTFN

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

…including completely flooding the basement of the prestigious Lewis Glucksman Gallery in University College Cork. Kind-of created a bit of a problem, as that’s where artworks are stored when an exhibition finishes, before being returned to their source.

It rains a lot in Cork of course, but this was ever so slightly over-the-top rain. It was like India in monsoon season this past winter, and so when an already just-about-breaking-it’s-banks river had a gazillion tons of water released into it from the dam up-river, the city ended up like Venice on a bad day (and I know Venice on a bad day, I lived near it for some time).

A couple of months later and I was assigned by one of the “Sundays” to create some images for one of their magazine supplements. This was to be a “How is it now?” type feature after most of the art that was damaged has undergone a conservation process. Not much to be done on images showing the actual conservation, but some of the work was back on display, and that would do me. Of course I’d need to add a yooman-been into the images as well, as that’s what I mostly do, make images with yoomans in them (well apart from wedding images of course, I’d rather eat a bucket of s…..).

So, luckily for me the Director of the gallery was available to be photographed. Pause for a moment now, while you imagine some kind of mad-professor type (like astronomer Patrick Moore) wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches.

Fortunately, SHE is nothing like that. There is one problem with her though (it’s OK F, don’t panic), she wears glasses (eyeglasses for U.S. readers). Very nice they look too, BUT, glasses as with anything reflective, can create a problem when using flash lighting. I want to see my subjects eyes, not a big flare from the glass, so particular care is needed when making images with a subject wearing glasses.

So here’s a little look at how I lit this assignment. For once I kept quite a few of the setting-up and testing shots to give me enough ammunition for this post.

So here’s one of the images (the one that was used in the magazine btw):

Looks simple enough right?

Except, this was the starting point at the aperture & shutter speed I wanted to work at:

I started off with half an idea that I was going to try and get away with the one-light approach, but in reducing the flare on the painting, I was starting to get too much of a side-lit portrait. That’s not too bad if the subject is a man and you want dramatic lighting, but for a lady? I don’t think so. There was too much “fall-off” to the right side of the painting as well:

I really needed to get some separation as well. No, not as in “Six Degrees of Separation”, I just needed one degree, subject – separation – painting. The separation is basically just getting some light behind the subject in order to “lift” them away from the backdrop, so they don’t merge into too much of a “flat” image.

So, I was going to keep the one-light (Ezybox softbox) as the key from left, but add a second light as the fill from the right. Hmm, small problem, there’s a wall in the way.

Time I think for the famous napkin lighting-diagram, except I can’t find a white paper napkin, so it’ll have to be kitchen roll:

As is customary with extremely accurate and highly complex Technical Plans & Drawings, I offer the following warnings:
Not to scale.
Double-check all measurements.
If in doubt ask.

That gave me just about what I wanted:

And the final image again:

The umbrella just put some nice soft light between subject and painting. If you want to see it larger it’s on my website in the Editorial section. Can’t put a permalink to the specific image as I move things around in the portfolio, but it won’t be far from the start. I think the image really “pops”.

I then went for something slightly different, and put subject and a part-restored piece on the floor, softbox on subject, and umbrella into ceiling bouncing back for art-piece. Shame it still needed to be covered as part of the conservation, but we rotated it until there was enough clarity to see what it was:

In between those two images, I made another one, but I saved it until last, as it’s my favourite.

There was a wall where there was some descriptive text regarding the conservation. This was the ambient light that I had to work with:

Similar lighting problem to image-one there though. Too much direct flash and the writing would disappear. Not enough and it would be too dark to see that any writing was there at all. Solution was similar to the first image, except softbox and umbrella reversed like this:

And the resultant image:

So there it is.

The Glucksman Gallery is a fabulous place to visit if you happen to have some time when in Cork. Wonderful location, fabulous (award winning) building, great exhibitions and ADMISSION IS FREE!! (make a donation though, it’ll cost you less than a couple of cappuccini). Open every day except Mondays. No-one gets in on Mondays, unless you happen to be a photographer on assignment .

TTFN

…no not that type of playing the field. Get your mind out of the gutter.

This is more like playing ON the field. I was assigned the other day / week / can’t remember exactly, to get a few portraits of one of the Cork Gaelic footballers, or is it Cork Hurlers?

Actually it’s both, as he’s going to be playing both codes this season. That used to be not uncommon, but with the increase in training and match schedules, in the last few years nearly everyone has opted to declare for one or the other. Even the legend that is Seán Óg decided that Hurling would be it, rather than continue with both.

Bear in mind, for those not of the Irish persuasion, that Gaelic Games is an amateur sport. These guys aren’t professional athletes. They have to work full-time, in addition to all the training for their chosen sport.

So the time for the assignment was set, and the journo was due to interview him at around the same time, which (at this time of year) was fast approaching dusk. As usual, journo had a ready-made excuse as to why he needed to go first (sorry Michael, couldn’t resist ), so it meant I’d be shooting in near darkness outside by the time he’d finished the interrogation.

The location was a hotel, which, in common with most modern hotels, is a bit restrictive in terms of backgrounds. Still, no worries, it was going to be pitch fricking dark anyway for the outside shots. At least said hotel has a little bit of a garden that I could probably make use of.

Did a couple of shots inside, a half-length:

and then a close-up:

There were also a couple outside:

and the stand-out image for me:

All images were the old favourite – one-light. The half-length was using a 24mm lens, the close-up a 135mm and the 2 outside using what is increasingly becoming my favourite lens – a 50mm. All those years of going round and round in circles with different lenses, going from wide-angle to wider-angle, and I’m now back where I was donkeys years ago, shooting a full-frame camera with a 50mm lens. Technology, PAH.

So which one was published? None of those above. No, as usual they published the only one I didn’t really like which I haven’t shown. Typical.

Lady readers please stop drooling before you go to work.

TTFN

…or is that artefacts?

I love it when a plan comes together (where have I heard that before?).

Was commissioned last week to cover the launch of the UCC Library online guide to the archive of Murphy’s Brewery*. Worrying thing about PR Photography and anything that mentions “online” is you can end up with “Man in Suit with Laptop” images, and as they are sometimes the only thing available as a very very very last resort for a business portrait, I didn’t want to use up any of my very’s on this occasion.

*Murphy’s is a beer, actually it’s a porter (stout). There are 3 made in Ireland, the most well know worldwide is probably Guinness, made in Dublin, so we won’t talk about that any more (they do great tv ads though). The other 2 are made in Cork, Murphy’s and Beamish, both now owned by Heineken, makers of the yellow stuff. Murphy’s started producing the famous black stuff in 1856 when James J, and his 4 brothers built a purpose designed brewery. Photography and now history lessons, I’m starting to spoil you.

So I could have done the launch, and it would probably have been OK, but this is where I get that “go the extra mile” itch that I’ve mentioned before. Fortunately the client knows me well, and it didn’t take much pitching from me before we decided that creating some images featuring some of the artefacts beforehand would be a nice addition to the actual launch.

My client arranged access for me to the Library and the Brewery and I’m glad we did it, because it was fascinating stuff. Lots and lots of records as you might imagine (no, not LP’s and singles, written recorded information).

Note for younger readers: LP’s and singles were what the old folks used to listen to before you listened to your music by sticking those plastic bits in your ears, and annoying everyone around you by cranking up the volume so that everyone around you on the same bus / train was plagued by two hours of listening to Chnnk Chnnk Chnnk Chnnk Chnnk Chnnk.

Made a few images of the Librarian and Library Archivist with Tenant Agreements and a Register of Workmen from 1913 – 1914:

I then did some detail on some of the register entries. In the image below, entry 129 shows a man employed as a Watchman, earning 3s/5d and 74 years old! It’s not entirely clear whether the 3s/5d is per day / per week etc., but I did some digging around on the interwebthingy and as best as I can figure out, it’s per day. Could be wildly wrong there of course, so if you’re a historian (get real Neil, why would a historian be reading your blog), or know a historian and can enlighten me I’d be interested to find out.

3s/5d is old pound (Sterling) currency of course and equates to about 19 pence / 21 Euro cents (29c U.S. ish). I could find out by digging around (isn’t the interwebthingy wonderful – sometimes) that that would be around £60 nowadays, that’s about €68 / $90, so it wouldn’t seem wildly inaccurate (as if I’d know about accurate, I’m a photographer not an actuary).

I just love the flowery writing.

Note for younger readers: Writing is how the old folks used to communicate with each other b4 evry1 sttd txtng n twtrng.

The next two images show another man aged 41 employed in the Tun Room (entry 102).

The interesting part is the entry from the right-hand page of the register, where it says “Volunteered. To be re-instated if returns” and “Volunteered for active service 18/8/14″:

It’s the “to be re-instated if returns” part that intrigues me. Did he manage to return from volunteering to fight in the first world war? Or did he end up, as so many did, dying in a field in France somewhere? I have an urge to find out more now. I might make it a bit of a project to try and find out.

That’s it then. Client was delighted with the media coverage we received. Anything else I need to tell you? Oh yes, the lighting. The images with the humans were all one-light, using an Ezybox softbox, and the detail images were with 2 flashes (strobes), no light-modifiers but just pulling out the wide-angle diffuser on the 580EX to soften the light a touch. No the paper doesn’t look white (I could have made it white by adjusting the colour correction) but that’s because it’s not white. It’s from 1914 after all. You’ll probably look a bit faded when you’re 96 years old as well.

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

…tough in the Editorial world, and publications are trying to keep an eye on expenses, but reducing travel fees by assigning me to shoot an editorial portrait of someone that lives in the SAME STREET as me is surely as far as it can go!

So anyway, that was the 2nd portrait I was assigned to shoot that day, and maybe a story for another time, but first up I had an assignment for one of the “Sundays”.

My subject was a doctor, and we were to meet at the University. The story related to medicines, or pills, or drugs or something (must pay more attention to what picture editors say) and we had a handily located display cabinet of old medicine paraphernalia nearby, so went with that as a prop for one image.

There was also a plain white wall, well it was the underside of a staircase actually, and I felt I wanted to get an image of some kind there as well. Problem was, when I say plain white, I mean it was very plain, and very boring, but something was drawing me there to make an image.

So I went to the local hardware store and bought some paint, and painted some shapes onto the white wall for effect:

OK then, I didn’t paint the wall at all in truth. Put a strobe on the floor and fired through the handily located foliage to create the shadow pattern.

TTFN