Supervalu Quality Campaign

Supervalu Quality Campaign from Trevor Hart on Vimeo.

Food styling by Sally Dunne Agency DDFH&B for Supervalu Quality Campaign

http://trevorhart.com

Dublin City Council dog fouling campaign

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 Dunne loaned 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 !

http://trevorhart.com

Bare

So far I've photographed 14 women and the plan is to exhibit in early 2014. I've been working with Jim Butler at Inspirational Arts who has made 20 stunning large format prints. I will also publish a book which is being designed by Aidan Grennell in Image Now. I am currently looking for a corporate sponsor for the book so that the proceeds can go entirely to a charity.

http://trevorhart.com

Pinhole headshots for McCann Blue

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.

Check McCann Blue's blog about it here. 

http://trevorhart.com

Dairygold Baking Block

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.


http://trevorhart.com

Fujifilm X Pro 1

They say there's no such thing as a perfect camera but that doesnt stop me or anyone else looking for it. My latest find try is the X Pro 1 from Fuji. About a year ago, I dipped my toe in the Fuji camera pool and bought the Fuji X10, which I've enjoyed using and has been in my pocket on many trips. If sometimes I get lucky with an image that I want to submit to the library I work with (more about that to come in another blog being planned), I cant because the files really aren't big enough.

So I bought the X Pro 1 with a 35mm 1.4 lens (50mm equivalent), along with a FREE 18mm (equivalent to 35mm) and I took it with me on a recent trip to France to shoot some food and some landscapes. I went with my friend photographer Jonathan Lovekin and made this portrait of him on a walk one afternoon.

I'm not much of a technoid so I'm not going to talk about the specs here, there are other people around doing those kinds of reviews very well so I'll just be talking about what the experience of using it to take pictures. It has a lovely feel and is very simply laid out, so easy to use quickly and instinctively. I like having the exposure compensation dial right by my thumb.  I also like having the choice between the optical viewfinder and the more accurate digital viewfinder. It reminds me a lot of the Contax G2, except that the auto focus on the X pro is more reliable. There's no question about the quality (over 16mp) - Oh and it's certainly lighter than my Nikon D3X! 

The images are sharp and with lovely tonal range and when Sometimes I feel like not having to make decisions about lenses, camera bodies filters etc etc and just concentrate on looking around me, the Fuji feels like the kind of camera that will just work. I suppose rather like the idea of picking up a Leica and a 35mm lens, it allows the simplicity of looking, composing in either viewfinder and then 'click'. 

When the mood takes you to photograph, the first thing to engage is a sense of wonder at the possibilities for photographs everywhere. A sure fire way to inhibit this is to start packing camera equipment just in case!  My recommendation for a good 'sense-of-aesthetics' work-out and a sharpening of the composing 'eye' is to decide on one camera and a prime lens and work with that. Making decisions about WHAT to photograph rather than HOW.

The one techinical thing I would like to mention is this. I had some issues when I came back processing the RAW files. I started in CS5 Camera RAW in Bridge and found a uniform dot pattern all over the images so we upgraded to CS6 for full compatibility in the hope that this might help.

 Once processed in Camera Raw CS6, the resulting tiffs had been given a mosaic or painterly effect. Many people we found online also had the same problem, so we got in touch with Fuji.  They advised us to download Silkypix from the CD (or online). To work on a RAW file in Photoshop, you need to open them IN Silkypix. The interface is quite basic but its generally quite disappointing to have to get used to a new piece of software just to process RAW files just from this camera. The files are converted into either Tiff or Jpeg, you can't convert them into a more standard raw file, which is a pity. In my opinion his first stage of the editing process is a time consuming and doesn't allow for the full RAW capability of the files. I will keep on using this until Adobe come up with something better.

A few negative points.

The battery is not as good as anything I've used from Canon or Nikon but is much better than the X10. I would recommend you buy a spare if you are going to use this camera to shoot continually for several hours. I wouldn't recommend this camera if shooting video is important to you either.

http://trevorhart.com

Converse Chuckies

5 or six years ago I photographed my sons slightly faded blue Converse Chuckies. I loved how the worn canvas looked and they seem to morph into each other lying on the floor. I photographed them exactly as I found them. 

I submitted the image as part of the 50x50 print sale in Habitat and it sold out in a week. Since then I've seen it in on walls in interiors magazines and it crops up in conversation with people who either bought it or know someone who did. 

So when my son came in wearing his current worn out pair I did a deal. 'Sell me those and you can buy a new pair.'

Deal done and I brought them into the studio. These are far more battered than the last pair and I can only put that down to wear and tear being harsher when you're 17 years old as compared to 11.

These were shot using the  Zeiss 50mm F2 macro planar on a Nikon D3X 

Im going to produce a large format limited edition of prints to take advantage of the amazing detail. 

Anyone interested get in touch.


http://trevorhart.com

Dublin Business School portraits

The first of a series of ads that I shot with Ian McFarlane from ICAN for Dublin Business School have appeared on the street at last. We cast over 140 people in the studio and I was very happy with the final 9 people. They all worked really hard and did a great job representing the target market for DBS. I enjoyed working with our cast to get those authentic 'looks' between the poses. In particular I thought Shauna from Frasers, was great. She looked fresh, full of energy and really got her personality across, which is what we wanted.

Here's a selection from her shoot.

 Looking forward to seeing the next images as they are published.
Thanks to Jane Gribbin for the make-up and grooming.

For the technically minded, we shot using a Nikon D3x with the Zeiss 85mm 1.4 (which is super sharp!) and 2 Profoto XL silver umbrellas, one with diffusion, which I really love. The combination of the 2 helped create the daylight feel.

http://trevorhart.com

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

Prints for Ely Wine Bar, Ely Place

Ely Wine bar in ELY place have recently redesigned the upstairs room in their beautiful Georgian building. To decorate the walls owner Erik asked Francis Curran and I to look at some of the Burren images originally commissioned for the international award winning ELY book. I re graded them to
make a series of warm tone black and white prints, and asked Jim at Inspirational Arts to make the prints. I'm very pleased with the results and Erik and Michelle have them all up on walls already!

http://trevorhart.com