Neil Danton

Sunday newspaper supplement: “Could you take a trip down to West Cork tomorrow?”

Me: “Sure, what do you need?”

Them: “A whale skeleton”

Me: (thinking): WTF?; (saying): “Oh,… OK. Um, no problem”

Very tricky lens selection as the whole thing is so long. Pic above is with a 15mm fish-eye. You know, fish, whale, fish-eye lens. Didn’t happen to have my whale-eye lens with me (and yes I do know a whale isn’t a fish!).

There’s also too much negative space in the image with a 24mm:

The feature the images (actually one in the end) were for was on community projects. Some time back the poor creature had been washed-up and stranded on the nearby beach and despite a lot of effort in trying to save it, had died there. The local community decided that rather than burying it, they would clean up the skeleton and create a marine artefact.

So I arrived at the location and very quickly started to hate the whale.

Poor creature hadn’t ever done me any harm, whales don’t tend to harm anyone really. OK so if you were a shark you might keep your distance, they’re not overly friendly to sharks, but that’s about all. Oh, and seals & penguins I suppose. They’re just unfortunate to be on the menu.

The reason for my dislike was purely the location. The skeleton had been placed into a concrete “bunker”, so shaded from above, and the way the sun was positioned, just creeping around a line of trees, the front third of the skeleton was in really strong sunlight and the middle and rear thirds in deep shadows. This is going to be a nightmare to light.

There’s only one way this was going to work and that’s kill-off all the ambient light and light the whole thing myself. Piece of cake when it’s just the skeleton, not so easy when there are people to light as well. Got away with it though:

Stayed with a 24mm lens for that image. Using a 15mm with 3 people, especially if they are anywhere near the edge of the frame would produce horrendous distortion. It’s not too bad to use though when it’s a younger person, and you can keep them near the centre of the frame:

In two of the images it’s possible (I now realise!) to spot one of my lights. Can you see them?

TTFN

…Imelda May!

Had a great laugh recently at a PR shoot for the Clarion Hotel in Cork. The hotel is closest to the venue for the Live at the Marquee concerts, which among many others will this year feature Elton John, Christy Moore and Imelda May, so what better than having the mad staff at the hotel dress up as the stars and check in:

“Imelda”, actually Kasia, was fairly sure I was joking when I asked her to lay on top of the piano. Oh how little you know me:

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and the winner is…

Oh, before I tell you that, this is how it was done. One essential item I always try to have around is my faithful assistant Tonto**

The problem with letting go a pile of stir-fry ingredients from a tray or bag is that the contents will spread out and not look like a column. It was Tonto** who originally suggested the idea of cutting the end off a 2 litre empty mineral (soda) bottle and filling with the veg.

We had tried actually tossing the contents from the wok, but the column wasn’t anywhere near high enough, and nowhere near enough of it for my liking either

While my subject was trying though, I’d made a mental note of roughly what position the wok was in at the top of the action, so just asking her to put it back in the same place, and a call for “action” and Tonto** released the veg. That’s it.

Still not sure how he got his hand from underneath the bottle, to on top of it, in the 1/250s that it took to get this frame. That’s the thing about Tonto**, he’s a mystery. A bit like a zen master combined with a ninja.

So the winner is Carla from CACM Accountants, and thanks Carla for your guess. I’ll be in touch to arrange to shoot your Facebook landing-page image. I already have an evil plan (or two) for you to consider *mwahaha*

TTFN

Tonto** is Margaret’s husband Alec

No, not Richard Wagner the composer. He died in 1883.

This Wagner is the one from X Factor who was in Cork recently:

Having arranged that I was going to shoot him the minute he arrived from the airport and decided where I was going to place him, he arrived. Never mind that I hadn’t tested my light and had just figured that a 135mm was too long and I’d change to an 85mm. I knew I’d only have a few minutes with him, no time to change a lens. The light, well when you shoot in manual, sometimes it takes a few tries to get it just right. Taking a punt on the light to subject distance and the time of day, I set the Quadra to less than a 1/4 power. I have the Quadra set to display in watt-seconds as I’m more comfortable with those numbers, so the range is 0-400. Well not 0, the lowest power is 25 I think(?!?). I went for 87.

Perfect first time. I’m either very good or very lucky, and they say it’s better to be lucky than good.

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p.s. Here’s a little choon for you from the other Wagner, the Richard one. It’s The Ride of the Valkyries, probably best known for its use in the film Apocalypse Now:

Leaf nothing to chance. Yew need willow power to get to the root of the problem

OK I’ll stop now

Quick post about a quick editorial shoot for the business section of a “Sunday”. Treemetrics provide 3D scanning of forests and the software to maximise the yield from it. Saves wastage, saves trees. *Obviously* the pic ed wanted something with a tree in then

Fortunately the guys knew a suitable location and the tree in this shot would have been just a tiny bit spooky later in the day or at night. Looks like something in a Harry Potter film or a cartoon where a tree comes to life (I know, I need to get out more)

TTFN

Alternate post titles:

a) How to shoot to a tight spec
b) How to shoot something creative with the same amount of frames as a roll of film
c) How to shoot something the old-fashioned way, without resorting to Photoshop to help you out

This is Margaret Smith who runs a small cookery school under her business name – Umnumnum (take it slow: Um num num). Margaret talked to me about shooting some images for her website (more tc on that later maybe) but specifically something eye-catching for the Umnumnum Facebook landing-page.

This is where a) above: “How to shoot to a tight spec” comes in. Margaret wanted some type of image where “something” was lined-up with the “Like” button on the FB page. It might have taken all of ten minutes before I suggested maybe using a wok and throwing the contents up in the air towards the Like button. Not just a normal amount of content though (hey it is me, you expect normal? You’re in the wrong place). I wanted a RIDICULOUS amount of content that couldn’t possibly really fit in the wok and be cooked, just to add to the fun of the image.

Even though she is a friend, Margaret in this case was also the client, and *sigh* if only I had more clients that were as game-for-a-laugh as she is. There was no hesitation in agreeing to my dastardly plan, so we arranged the shoot day.

This is where b) above: “How to shoot something creative with the same amount of frames as a roll of film” comes in (can you see a theme developing here?)

The whole shoot took just 37 frames (I counted them when I did the post-production). 30 of those frames were light-tests. OK, so that’s a little dig about photographers who use a camera like a digital-Uzi and can’t seem to lift the finger-pressure off the shutter button. The “spray and pray” merchants, or the “shotgun principle”. Dig over

Here’s the lighting set-up:

Four lights: two Elinchrom d-lites with softboxes on the background, one 580EX into an Ezybox softbox for the subject, and another 580EX with a snoot behind the subject, similar principle to a hair light, but just to darken the chef’s hat the tiniest fraction by putting it into shadow, so as to allow it stand out a little from the background (a lot of white floating around).

The image was shot against white-seamless, one because I just l-u-r-v-e white-seamless and two because the landing-page is white. Oh yes, and three, because there’s a little trick you can pull-off when using white, or black, or indeed any solid colour as a backdrop – you can add space around the image afterwards using Photoshop (or as I do, using Pixelmator), so SHOOT TIGHT. Pointless adding the white around the image as you shoot and wasting all that space. I can do a run-through on that if anyone would like to find out how, but you’ll have to let me know via the comments section here on the blog, or on my facebook page, or on The Twitter of course.

Lastly, this is where c) above: “How to shoot something the old-fashioned way, without resorting to Photoshop to help you out” comes in. The food is really there for the shot. ALL the food. None has been added or cloned in. I’m old-school enough to believe that I should be able to create something “in-camera”. I’m not a graphic designer and that’s who Photoshop is for. Either that, or it’s used to get-out-of-jail by being lazy, or shooting crap, and hoping to fix the problem afterwards.

I’m not saying there was no post-production on the image. There was. The white had to be tweaked from around 240 to 255 (the white point). A small amount of white had to be added to the left of the image as I shot a little too tight to the left margin to line up with the Like button.

I won’t go into the half-dozen variations of the image that I had to produce in post-production, including flipping the image from left-facing to right-facing before flipping back, just because the frigging Like button moves, depending on whether or not you’re already a fan of a page. That would make another blog all on its own.

Finally then, a little fun:

If you have a Facebook business/fan page and would like your own personalised custom image, here’s your opportunity.

I’ll shoot an image for you for free, anything within reason, and licence it to you for use on your FB landing page. The catch? It’s a competition. The restrictions? You have to be in the Republic of Ireland (unless you’re willing to pay travel expenses. Then I’d be delighted to come to the Bahamas).

Here it is then: the first person to tell me EXACTLY how I shot the food detail of the image wins. Answers in the comments here, or on my Facebook page (the link’s over there on the right). No twitter entries, only because I might miss the winning answer in the stream. Final decision on the winner will be decided by Margaret, myself and one other person. There are a few people who know how it was done, but we know who they are, and naturally they’re excluded.

Competition is open until another blog post appears here, which should be next Thursday, 21st April.

Best of luck. Get guessing!

TTFN

…not the mythical ones that breathe fire, but the ones that have (different) TV series in the UK & Ireland – Dragon’s Den

If you’re not familiar, the shows feature people with an idea or concept that try to get funding from a panel of “Dragons”, venture capital for an equity share in the business

I got to create some publicity images for Diarmaid Twomey from Cork whose company Expresso Ads was the last to receive backing from two of the Dragons in the last programme of the Irish series

The big coffee cup prop was made by Made in Hollywood. It’s nice to have a great prop for a shoot

Curious onlookers at the early morning part of the shoot:

The first part of the shoot featured one of the Dragons who backed the idea – Bobby Kerr, who is the Chairman of the Insomnia coffee chain:

Well done to Diarmaid on getting his funding, and best of luck for the future:

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They’re either a bunch of grubby layabouts, or nerdy geeks, right?

Obviously the graduate of the year (female) from a major university is going to be a mousey, nerdy geek. Would that be a reasonable assumption?

Wrong:

Not content with graduating in Law, she then graduated in Medicine as well. Or the other way around. It hurts my brain just thinking about it.

TTFN

I wandered down to beautiful West Cork recently to do a shoot for the home supplement of a Sunday newspaper. The story was centred around what B&Bs are doing to add value to the B&B experience. In this case it was providing different courses while enjoying a stay, and in particular this one was song-writing in the company of a musician. A guitar playing, piano playing, drummer in fact. The list of who he’s worked with is a bit like a who’s-who of the music world, but includes being tour drummer with Ronnie Wood.

I started off with a few general views of the interior & exterior of the property:

Then it was down to the more interesting but slightly difficult concept of how to convey music, peace & tranquility and anything else I could throw into the mix. A bit awkward when’s there’s no sound in a still image!

The location of the property was right on a cliff edge, and I mean right on the edge, so that was a natural place for an image:

The main room where the course will be run was another:

I was still missing something though, even if I wasn’t too sure what it was. I wanted something extra to add to an image. Then I remembered a “prop” I’d met earlier.

My musician’s daughter is Summer by name and summer by nature and after a quick check that it was OK to include her in an image, I asked her if she liked to dance and let her off to do her own thing while her father played:

It took about 3 frames to get the right shot with enough movement in the dress to show it’s not posed:

I just love that image.

TTFN

In the portion of my life where I still shoot as an Editorial Photographer, I’m often shooting business people, mostly for a couple of sunday newspapers.

It’s always a challenge to avoid the man-in-suit-with-laptop, or man-with-folded-arms type portraits, which need to be saved up for emergencies, as sometimes they really are just about the only thing it’s possible to do! However, I try my damnedest to avoid them.

So here’s a quick business portrait shoot where I managed to create a couple of images without using the “last resort”.

This CEO has a business, which although based in deepest, wildest West Cork is a global operation and there are clocks on the wall showing the various time-zones with some of the countries where they operate, so the first image I wanted to create was going to include those.

This was the starting point light-wise at the aperture, ISO & shutter speed combo I wanted to shoot at:

First thing to fix is the light on the background. Nothing too directional, just a 580EX flash firing into a white shoot-through umbrella, camera right (probably around 1/4 to 1/2 power, sorry, I’m a bit like a chef that cooks “by taste”, there’s not too many rules!).

That takes the background from this:

To this:

Next is to light the subject. This would be a 60cm (2ft) Ezybox soft-box, again with a 580EX fired through it, camera left:

In order to get the right perspective I used an 85mm lens, which meant I was pretty much jammed up against a wall, on my knees, but using any wider-angle lens would have “lost” the clocks.

Here’s a very approximate lighting diagram:

Still trying to avoid the “last resort” we managed to find another location for a 2nd image. Just the soft-box for this one. Get it back far enough and it’s going to light plenty of the general area as well:

Nice and relaxed. Nothing worse than business portraits that are too stuffy, or where the subject looks wooden (usually because they’re scared stiff of having their portrait taken!).

Oh, I didn’t leave the CEO sitting there all the time while I set up lights. The first image wasn’t actually shot first. It was a misfire from the Pocket Wizard on-camera when I started shooting for real.

*That’s because you hadn’t switched it on Neil*

Sshhhh

TTFN