It was great to shoot with Paudge Donaghy from DDFH&B again, this time a new campaign for Dublin City Council's anti dog fouling campaign. Last year we shot the boy with the poo eyes (illustration by Paudge Donaghy) which they have been running again this year.
After an exhaustive search for the robot, food stylist Sally Dunneloaned us a vintage robot that she has at home.
We made use of our poo model which was made last year by Ben Millar in London and to add softness to the surface texture we concocted a delicious mixture of Jamaican ginger cake, a double chocolate muffin and a dash of milk, which is why you see me licking my fingers !
Over the years Ive done lots of work for McCann, here in Dublin and more recently with art director Ray Swan. So when he commissioned me to shoot a charity ad for the Irish Cancer Society, we had a chance to catch up. The big news was that McCann Dublin had joined with Blue Cube to form McCann Blue.
Ray told me that he needed headshots for everyone in the new agency and we began to discuss ideas for what we could do. His brief was driven by the need to try and express the 2 agencies' and their different areas of expertise.
McCann is a long established global agency from the 'traditional' model and and Blue Cube is a digital agency so we thought it would be interesting to bring together 2 technologies representing each direction. One grass roots and one new era. And so was born....the Leaf Aptus II Biscuit tin Pinhole Camera !
All we needed to do now was to find a way to make it work! We needed to build a camera that didn't need a 2 hour exposure! I shoot with the LEAF back using my Mamiya RZ67 camera and lenses so I had already worked out that we would still need the camera and a lens to trigger the back and fire the flash. So the shoot set up required the pin hole camera attached to the LEAF via its leads and the camera on a separate tripod with a pocket wizard to fire the flash. The Pinhole was made in a piece of black wrap, (matt black tinfoil basically) and had an aperture of something like f200. A very small hole indeed so we needed a lot of light. I used my Profoto D2400 on full power. The light was a Pro Head and what we liked to call the 'Frankenstein'. This is the insane marriage of a Profoto disc reflector and the Bowens Supersoft 600 and sunlight reflectors riveted together to form a large round and very deep diffused reflector. The light is soft but directional, a little like a small octobox but with the contrast of a diffused beauty dish.
There is only one thing better than shooting food, and that's shooting food in close up !
So close in fact that, as you focus on a hazelnut or a piece of lemon rind, the delicious smell of the food becomes quite distracting, especially when Sally Dunne, food stylist, is the MC.
The art director is Ray Swan and he began this Dairygold campaign in London over a year ago. I'm happy to say has brought it all back home.
These 2 images have already run a few months back but watch out for the Christmas special !
They were shot using my Leaf Aptus 11 40mp back and the a Mamiya RZ 67 with extension tubes and a 250mm lens.
After many weeks of tracking down a selection of Irish Olympic qualifiers, Editor Fran Power lined up 6 competitors and manager Sonia O'Sullivan for photography. This was by no means easy as everyone was in the middle of many long hours of training in preparation for the games in summer.
I had an idea in my mind how the portraits could work but it wasn't really until we got to each of the locations that the final compositions presented themselves. I particularly like the training hall that we photographed Darren O'Neill at, in the National Stadium, but undeniably the most dramatic had to be the Military Road, where we shot Mark Kenneally. The trickiest, in terms of the shoot, was photographing Grainne Murphy as she had a busy training schedule. We hoped to do an underwater shot, but time was against us, and despite having managed to source the underwater equipment, we didn't get a chance to make it happen.
We are delighted to say that about 36 posters of these portraits will be displayed all around Terminal 2 in Dublin Airport, and in Heathrow all summer long to support the Irish Olympic team. More on this coming soon.
Following on from his successful TV ads for Dublin Bus, Stephen Rogers from Rothco commissioned me to shoot the outdoor campaign. Using the same cast we shot in Baggot street and Rathfarnham, with very mixed weather but got what we needed in the end. Everyone commented on how accommodating the South Dublin drivers were as we shot 'Purple Lightening' sitting in our self made traffic jam. "I can't imagine North Dublin drivers being so patient", said one commentator.
