Neil Danton

Fortunately, we both managed to avoid a soaking, although I came pretty close to it.

A second look at the back-story to creating a fairly simple editorial image. Nothing remarkable in the image as such, pretty standard fare for an editorial feature in a sunday newspaper. Fairly shallow depth of field to focus on the “widget” (yep did the reverse image as well, with the subject in focus and the “widget” out of focus).

It’s the setting-up that I’m detailing…

The subject is an engineer and the “widget” is part of a system that assists visually impaired people with swimming. Anyway, the sunday newspaper in question really wanted a image taken in a swimming pool environment and a local leisure centre were happy to oblige us – but we could only have access before they opened for the day (no cameras or phones allowed in swimming pool areas nowadays).

OK fine then. “What time are you open to the public?”

“7am”

“and what time do the staff open-up?”

“06:30/06:40″

Now that in itself wouldn’t be a problem, nice early start, get shoot done, off for breakfast.

One small fly in the ointment – having experienced shooting swimming competitions, I know that generally it takes AT LEAST an hour, sometimes longer, for all the metal, glass and electronics in a camera to adjust to the very high humidity in an indoor pool area.

So three conditions then. Opening time (fixed), kicking us out time (fixed), camera equipment fogging up (hmmm, maybe a variable there).

I had to make a choice on equipment at 6am and stick to that choice. The gear was put into the passenger foot-well of the vehicle and I drove to the pool with the vehicle heater on full blast. Happened to be in a period of fairly warm & humid weather which rarely happens here. Brilliant, I’m wearing shorts & a t-shirt and the heater thinks it’s mid-winter.

Arrived at the pool, almost fell out of the vehicle which, even with the windows open, was like being in a greenhouse by then, left the heater on until the moment we gained access at 06:40, and then carried the gear inside wrapped in a fleece!

The pool area was fairly hot, but the actual pool is covered with a canvas overnight so the humidity wasn’t over-bearing. By the time the canvas had been reeled in we were set to go, 5 or 6 images and we were done, just as I could feel the humidity starting to rise from the water.

No fogging on camera or lens, and exited the leisure centre at 06:59

Above is my preferred image, but the paper used this one:

Think that’s the earliest I’ve done a shoot, done post-processing, transmitted to picture desk, had breakfast, and all by 8am!

TTFN

It was a lot trickier to line up all 4 eyes than you might imagine!

TTFN

…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.

TTFN

…appreciate the things you take for granted, when suddenly you have to do without one of them.

Few people even think about the “normal” things that are always “just there” like electricity, running-water, cable or satellite TV and nowadays of course internet access. I recently had to struggle along for a week without broadband, as the average life expectancy for a Netopia modem that Eircom supply seems to be about six months (I’m now on my third).

The latest “doing without” is running water, as a result of the pumping station that supplies half of Cork City being under several metres of water. Why it was located in a place that to my certain knowledge floods on average once a year I don’t know. OK, so it’s never flooded that much before, but in a country where it rains so much, it comes as a surprise to me that it comes as a surprise to others that sometimes … it rains a lot.

The waffling excuses valid explanations being uttered so far, such as “unprecedented” and “once in a lifetime occurrence” aren’t bringing much comfort to the 100,000 people that are struggling along at the moment. Of course there are lots of politicians, public authorities and utilities helping to put things right by scoring points off each other in the media as to whose fault it all is, but right now they’d be appreciated a lot more if they offered someone the use of their showers.

The fact that the government has now got involved and set-up a “task-force” fills me with lots of confidence of course, and so I now expect things should be resolved by 2025 (and I don’t mean almost half-past eight).

So anyway, last week I needed to get an image of a chef with an “alternative Christmas lunch” and the dish was salmon, which I thought was appropriate. Salmon – fish – water – get it? Oh c’mon, I know it’s a pretty tenuous link but I’m doing my best under difficult circumstances. I’ve had to reduce my coffee intake by 50% due to lack of water.

This was going to be a real quick image. Chefs are always busy, so I only had a few minutes with Paul, the head-chef at Actons Hotel in Kinsale. Easiest thing was to kill-off the ambient light and distracting background by under-exposing the scene by around 4EV, and lighting him solely with lighting I have control over.

I always keep one flash in my bag that is set to slave mode and manual power which works nicely with an ST-E2 transmitter. It’s a struggle sometimes if used outdoors, as the infra-red transmitter doesn’t always fire the flash, but indoors I’ve never had a problem. Used a mini-softbox on the flash, 3 test shots to get the exposure correct, half a dozen shots of different angles and poses and job done:

I then took a different dish with a different subject (thanks Tania), and then one of the two of them together and all done. 15 minutes, start to finish.

If only the engineers could get the water supply back on that quickly.

TTFN

…as opposed to wind in the willows.

So I’m having a nice day off, when I get a panic call mid-morning from a Sunday newspaper, because someone (no naming, no shaming) forgot to book a commission, for 2pm, 120km away.

Leapt into the nearest phone-box, did a quick twirl and re-emerged with my cape on, and underpants outside my trousers, and launched myself westwards.

I believe I may have caused a bit of a scare to the Ryanair flight that was leaving Cork Airport at the moment I flew past, but hey, they frighten the crap out of me when I fly with them, so fair’s fair.

Said commission was to photograph someone who is installing one of those whirlygigywhatsits. I think the correct term is wind turbine or generator, or something. Anyway it whirls around in the air when the wind is blowing, and generates a bit of power. Rewind. It whirls around when the wind is blowing, which you think would be a safe bet in Ireland 360 days a year, except on the day I need the wind to blow and whirl the thingy around.

OK, so no wind, and the top of the thing is at least 10m or 3 storeys in the air. So how to get picture of small man (well not that small, but 2m and not 10m) in the same frame as a 10m tall mast.

As always, I like to go for the simple solution. So in this case, we simply dug a huge hole in the ground, and moved the mast, and the bungalow that happened to be next to it, into the hole.

Et voila:

Of course, you can also make an image from the bottom of the mast looking up, with the whirly thingy whirling around really fast in a blur. Or, big thanks to the lack of wind, in this case, not:

Also, if you really plan it well, in trying to bend over far enough, to get low enough, you can release your reading glasses from the protection of the shirt pocket they were in, and aim them straight for the cow-pat on the ground next to you.

I bet if I tried to be that accurate again, 99% of the time I’d miss. This time though – bulls-eye.

I think finances will stretch to a new pair.

TTFN

…ahh the old ideas still work when you need them. A fall-back when there’s not much else to liven up an event is the old standby – the jump for joy.

I can remember back, waaay back, reading articles by Victor… someone** who used to write a column in Amateur Photographer. The jump for joy was one of his favourites, when static images looked like the only thing available otherwise.

**It was Blackman, Victor Blackman. It was way back in.. actually I’m not going to tell you when it was, but it was a LONG time ago. Victor was a staffer on the Daily Express and his tales of the daily exploits of a newspaper smudger used to fascinate me. That and drooling over the hundreds of pages of advertisements for camera gear that I couldn’t afford. Regretfully I believe he has now passed on, which is a shame really because otherwise I could catch up with him and berate him for starting me off with this strange desire to be a pro-photographer. That and creating my interest in my first pro camera – the Olympus OM1. What a camera that was, and still is – I still have one – I can see it now across the room. Must run a roll of that strange stuff called film through it. You may have heard of the stuff.

So back to the commission, announcement of college places for the unemployed. Needs something to jazz up what could turn out very boring otherwise. Light-bulb moment – a jump for joy.

It was a fairly gloomy location (and pouring with rain outside), so used one flash on the main subject and a second on the laydees. I wasn’t going back the car to get a light-stand, so how do you hold a 1Ds in one hand, a flash in the other, and the second flash in… Simples. Use the Very Important Head of Something that you have just finished photographing, and he can hold it. Well if you don’t ask…

TTFN