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

Had an editorial shoot recently where I was asked to photograph a music student, at a piano. Nothing remarkable in the shoot, except it took me 3 lights to get the effect I wanted, and I’m not sure what I wanted was what the publication wanted, because the article didn’t run in the end! Oh well, my vision for portraits doesn’t always coincide with the poorly-lit cheesy-grin portraits that seem to be used in abundance.

We had access to the CIT Cork School of Music, where they have a large quantity of Steinway pianos (so many in fact, they have a Steinway engineer permanently on site to ensure they are tuned to perfection). A Steinway is a work of art in itself and I wanted to capture some of the beauty of it in the portrait.

Here is my first test shot with a one-light set-up. I was quite surprised at the result, mainly as I had forgotten that the previous day I was shooting in Monochrome mode!

In all honesty, if it was my publication I would probably have used that image. However, it’s not my publication, so…

Here’s the same thing when I switched back to colour:

It’s alright, but because of the position of the one-light and the obstruction of the piano lid, the light is too much from one side. I added a second fill light from the left (didn’t keep a copy of that test, DUH) and that was better, but the inside workings of the piano weren’t visible, so added a third with a snoot, just to light up the inside.

Here’s one of the resultant images, which I like because of the subject’s reflection on the piano lid:

and here’s a second that shows more of the lit piano interior, but less reflection:

Can’t make up my mind which I prefer. What’s your preference?

Either way, I got to listen to some fabulous piano solos while I was working

TTFN