the Aer Lingus series

Having spent the last 20 years flying whenever possible with Aer Lingus, it was great to be rewarded earlier in the year with a great series of ads commissioned by Paddy Gerraghty at Irish International (and they say there's no such thing as Karma!) 

The last time I shot a campaign for Aer Lingus it was completed about a month before 9/11 and the campaign was pulled without ever running.

Portrait of Laurent mellet

AD: Kevin Leahy, Irish International 

So we were eager to get to work and I called in Paddy Daly at Yoke Productions to produce the shoot and Stefano Cherubini from Happyfinish in London worked on the retouching. 

The Batman cowl was sourced and finished by Ben Millar models in London from a replica of the original piece.

If I had a €1 for every time someone said 'I see you've bought your seats for France this year!

(Aer Lingus flies direct to Toulouse Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday throughout the summer! folks for all the best deals go to www.aerlingus.com) 

Speaking of Kevin Leahy (art director - Irish International) we shot two transatlantic business class ads for him recently and this time.

I shared the retouching with Kevin Brookes at Irish International. I completed the effects and grading. I'm very happy with the final ads despite not being allowed to take any pictures over chicago, NYC, Paris and London !

http://trevorhart.com

Trevor Hart - Irish Rugby series in Cara April/May

Fran Power, editor of the Aer Lingus magazine CARA asked me to shoot a series of portraits for a story about the people behind Irish Rugby for the April / May issue. As many of my friends already know, I'm not a huge sports fan but I know enough to be grateful to Jonathan Sexton for making it to the shoot less than 24 hours after the re-scheduled Paris match. Despite having a stomach bug and feeling generally battered from the match he arrived and  performed magnificently.


A big thanks to Mark Jones at the ERC and everyone who gave us their time, especially Claire Seale who co-ordinated the shoot on behalf of the Aviva Stadium and gave us access to this amazing facility. I also want to thank Jane Gribbin and Christine Lucignano for make up.

http://trevorhart.com

Mary Byrne album cover

I was delighted to be commissioned by Universal Music to photograph Mary Byrne for her new album. Produced by Phil Coulter, it's a collection of classic love songs and one or two originals by Phil himself.

We shot a number of looks over the course of the day and Mary was a true pro. Billy Orr did hair and make up and Catherine Condell did Mary's styling. It was great to finally work with Catherine ( I've been trying to for years!)

Thanks to everyone for all their hard work and especially to Mary for giving us such a great shoot.

http://www.trevorhart.com

Cara Magazine Musicians

This is our second shoot for Cara, the Aer Lingus in-flight magazine. It was shot over 2 days at Odessa in Dublin city centre. Lauren McCreery was the stylist and Brown Sugar did hair & make-up. I did my own colour grade and retouching for this shoot. Odessa is a great location but quite difficult to light so we used all the 7b's and used a little bit of daylight also. It was great to meet all the artists and to talk to Lisa Hannigan a little bit about her new album. A big thank you to Lisa and the other artists, Matthew Jacobson, Claudia Boyle, Padraic Keane, Bressie and Jennifer Walshe for their patience and time.

http://www.trevorhart.com

Karsh

I was researching for an upcoming project recently and found some work by the late Yousuf Karsh that I hadn't seen before. I particularly liked these portraits, despite both being made in 1936, I was surprised how modern they look, especially 'Grey Owl'. He was, and I quote from the official website, 'The English gentleman Archie Belaney (who) became so obsessed with the culture of Native Americans that he transformed himself into Grey Owl. He lived as a tribesman, taking an Indian wife and described vividly the life and everyday struggle on the Indian reservation'.

The image must have been even more striking in 1936 than it is now when you consider the the style and formality of the lighting that was the norm at the time. Perhaps Karsh himself liked to shake things up from time to time and shoot from the hip.

http://www.trevorhart.com

Paul Fusco's "RFK" photobook

I was fascinated by the Channel 4 documentary, 'Bobby Kennedy: The Last Journey' about the photographs taken by Paul Fusco from a train carrying the body of Robert F Kennedy to his final resting place in Washington. The train travelled through miles of waiting people hoping to pay their respects and as the train passed,  Fusco photographed the people with a 35mm camera using Kodachrome film. The images have the wonderful colour that you would expect and a little motion blur which also adds a point of focus and stillness to the faces of all those people. The photographs tell the story of that day but also of that time and it was inevitable then that the documentary film makers tracked down and interviewed some of the people waiting to see the train that day in June 1968. The book has been beautifully produced with really great scans of the original slides. If I can find a place where the documentary can be seen I'll post a link.

Aer Lingus TV

After having won a recent pitch for Aer Lingus, Irish International art director Paddy Geraghty asked me to shoot a portrait of Aer Lingus cabin crew and pilot for a TV ad he was working on. We cast the crew from Aer Lingus staff and shot in the glass walk way at the new terminal 2 at Dublin airport.

The retouching was completed by Jeff bennett. For the techies among you, we shot on a Nikon D3X using the 14-24mm 2.8 lens and Profoto lighting.

http://www.trevorhart.com