All good things come to an end. So it is with this blog.

I’m consolidating my websites and blogs. I’m strictly a single guy from now on. One website. One blog.

From now on, I’ll be posting here: Blog@RogerOverall.net.

Come on over and have a look.

(c) Roger Overall 2009

This photograph was taken a couple of days ago on the coast near Union Hall, Co. Cork, while out on a shoot with Peter Cox, a leading landscaper here in Ireland.

It was also taken with one of Peter’s lenses. Most of my work is shot with a 24mm lens, which I’d left at home in favour of a 20mm, and it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d need anything longer on a landscape shoot. You know, it’s all about vistas this landscape stuff, yes?

No.

(c) Roger Overall 2009

See what I mean?

OK, it’s not dreadful, but it lacks impact. Maybe some foreground interest would help.

(c) Roger Overall 2009

Much better.

I also shot some film on a 1950s Agfa that produces 6×9 negs. I haven’t had a chance to drop the roll into my local lab yet, so it’ll be a while before I see the results. Besides with only 8 frames per roll, you choose what you shoot very carefully. The main drawback of digital is that there is no financial cost to going trigger happy and that can make you sloppy. In fact, I’m working hard to keep my shutter finger under control these days, concentrating more on getting better results with fewer frames.

A funny thing happened while we were scouting the location earlier in the evening. We strayed across a family setting up a barbecue, with the dad fishing for mackerel out on the rocks. Peter called over to see whether he’d had any luck. Turns out it was Calvin Jones, better know to me as calvin141170 over on Twitter. I’d never met him before, but had been following his tweets and we have several Twitter friends (twends?) in common. I recognized him from his avatar and we got chatting.

Calvin has an interest in photography, and can take a picture himself, so we got talking pictures and he called over a friend who was visiting from Spain. Turns out he shoots editorial work, including for El Pais and was just back from Afghanistan. So there’s four photographers talking shop while Calvin’s daughters are trying to get daddy back fishing. They’re like hungry. I think the kids were quite relieved when Peter and I moved on.

Nonetheless, it’s a small world and I can only marvel at the opportunities to make new friends that modern social networking allows us.

I can also only marvel at the incredible applications that Peter had on his iPhone that helped him to determine where and at what time the moon would rise. He also has an astronomy app that tells you which stars and planets you are looking at. And there’s a compass. I think it allows you to make phone calls as well. I badly want one, but can’t yet justify it for the business… Mind you… It does have a built-in camera.

***UPDATE***

Calvin wrote about our chance encounter here: Calvin’s Blog. Moreover, Calvin and Peter have been twittering.

And so a new friendship is born.

Don’t you just love modern social media? I can remember when you had to go down the pub to make new friends. Now any old piece of rock on the coast will do.

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

Location photography is great fun. All the challenges of a studio shoot, without the control. In the studio, I am king. On location, the gremlins rule.

Over the past ten days, I’ve photographed two managers on location in their workplaces (one for an editorial feature, the other for promotional use) and two food shoots on location with the producers. In all cases, I used off-camera flash, which at least helps me control the light. A couple of small strobes on stands and you can pretty much overcome any indoor lighting situation.

What you can’t do is control co-workers and the general public.

The editorial portrait above was taken at an outlet of The Perfume Shop in a shopping mall here in Cork city. Despite scheduling the shoot for the morning, the mall was still busy thanks to a farmer’s market outside. The shop also has two big glass fronts, so it was like shooting in a goldfish bowl. Plenty of gawkers. Nobody likes having their photograph taken at the best of times, but it’s even harder when Joe Public is watching.

So you try to keep things moving quickly, keep a steady flow of banter going with the subject and hope that they aren’t as fazed by all the attention as they could be.

In the case of store manager Helen (above), I got lucky. I’d say she could face a cavalry charge and still pull of a relaxed, confident smile.

The magazine had this to say about the final set of photographs: “The images look brilliant.”

At least part of the credit goes to Helen and her staff at shop.

For the Strobists among us, the lighting set up was very simple. The background is underexposed by about a stop and the camera white balance was set to tungsten (hence the blue). Helen was lit from camera right by a single flash and shoot through umbrella. I gelled the flash with a CTO gel to compensate for the blueness and give her skin a natural colour.

Regardless of the fact that I have a national photographic award for landscape photography, I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, consider myself to be a landscape photographer.

My shortcomings in this area became apparent yesterday evening when I spent four hours in the company of Peter Cox, one of Ireland’s leading landscape shooters – a man who very rightly has won national and international accolades for his landscape work.

I’ve known Peter for a couple of years through the Irish Professional Photographers Association (IPPA). We met one evening up in Dublin at the IPPA’s HQ during a picture judging, and chatted when we saw each other at other at subsequent IPPA events. Peter moved to Co Cork not so long ago, and we’ve been saying for months that we’d go on a shoot together – just two buddies, some 5Ds and whatever the weather and Cork landscape brought us.

It took a while, but yesterday it finally happened. We met at a petrol station just outside of Skibbereen. Peter has a bag full of ordnance survey maps and over the boot of his car picked a spot he thought would be a promising location for an evening shoot – a place called Sandy Cove.

Landscape photography is a business for Peter. For me, it’s a balm for the soul – a pursuit that soothes the pains that come with the life of a busy commercial photographer. A tonic. Consequently, I don’t mind not being very good at it. I was just happy to be out in the open, shooting nice pictures and passing the time with a friend.

I also enjoyed talking to Peter about his camera – a Canon 5D Mark II. Now, I use the same camera for my work, but such are the differences between how I earn a living and how Peter earns his, you would have thought from our conversations about the camera that we were talking about two different pieces of equipment. Seriously, you’d think he was shooting the camera equivalent of ebony, while I was over on the ivory side. He showed me things that I didn’t even know my camera could do – and I’ve READ the instruction manual.

So what sets a professional landscape photographer apart from the enthusiast (apart from having all the proper Lee filters)?

Here’s what I shot.

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

They’re not utterly horrible, sure – but I don’t see any of you rushing to get a framed 20×16 of any of them off me. (I’ll take any orders, though).

Here’s what Peter shot.

(c) Peter Cox 2009 - www.petercox.ie

WTF?!

I was standing NEXT to him when he took this and I’m not even sure we were even on the same continent when I see this picture. Stunning! Just breathtaking.

That’s why he’s a professional landscaper, and I’m not.

Mind you, he can’t take a portrait to save his life.

Me weaving the Jedi mind trick - (c) Peter Cox 2009 - www.petercox.ie

I, on the other hand, take fantastic environmental portraits full of drama, suspense and foam.

Peter Cox about to interface with mother nature - (c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

I can’t tell you how much fun I had with Peter out on the rocks. With a bit of luck, we’ll be out again this summer.

And if his photograph doesn’t pick up at least a diamond at the next IPPA judging, I may have to have words personally with the judges.

Great 24 hours up in Dublin.

Met with clients yesterday, and today was taken up with a lighting seminar given by Mick Quinn and Vinnie O’Byrne, two of Ireland’s best commercial photographers, at Mick’s studio and office complex.

Dublin back to Cork only took 2.5 hours, which will be cut even further once the motorway to (or from, depending on the direction you’re traveling and where your allegiances lie) the capital.

Arrived home to find that Anne had baked this:

The perfect homecoming - (c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

God, I love that woman.

Having spent the day learning new lighting techniques, including some food work, I could hardly resist the temptation to take a picture. The lighting scheme was very complicated.  I switched the kitchen light on.

The results for the latest IPPA/RSA National Photography Awards preliminary judging came through earlier in the week. Been so busy I haven’t been able to post about it.

You always hope that the judges will see sense and award your photographs the proper number of gold distinctions, none of this bronze and silver nonsense. Sometimes, they don’t. Sometimes they do. And, occasionally, one of your pictures gets pulled up for particular praise and you are given a diamond distinction. Diamond awards are as rare as hen’s teeth and only given to photographs that the judges agree are as close to perfection as is possible, with a minuscule margin of leeway – a hair being out of place, that sort of thing. Only two per cent of photographs entered for the judgings get diamond awards.

The image below taken during the recent shoot at Spa Lighting & Living in Co. Kerry was awarded a diamond distinction – my first for my commercial work. I also picked up three golds during the judging, so I’m a happy piggy.

Diamond photograph - (c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

It was the best assignment that I ever had.

The client flew me to Italy, along with the art director, and we stayed three nights at a wine estate about 20 miles south of Genoa. The flights were business class, of course.

The plan was to spend two days shooting an advertising photograph of a new salad dressing the client was releasing into the Irish market. The estate was the ideal setting, as the client was keen to get a picture with lots of sunshine in a Mediterranean outdoor location.

Into the bargain, we were able to use some of the estate’s superb Italian Chablis in the photograph. And once opened, the bottle had to be finished. That’s the rule.

The client …

Sorry?

“20 miles south of Genoa?”

Er … well … y’know …

“Chablis” in Italy?

Erm … It was a progressive vineyard?

Okay, you got me.

It never happened.

The picture above was taken inside a delicatessen in Rathcormac, Co. Cork, on a wet Monday afternoon.

Here’s the proof:

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

So, what’s going on here?

First there’s the set up. The furniture is usually outside the delicatessen (Posh Nosh), but stowed inside as it was Monday, when the shop is closed.

The flowers behind the table there are in fact one of the shop’s hanging baskets, plucked from the wall outside. All the other bits and pieces, including the lettuce, bread and wine were culled from the shop’s inventory.

Here’s how we built it up from scratch.

The bare bones:

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

Bringing in the hanging basket in the background:

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

Time to look at the lighting.

The lighting scheme was very simple. Two lights. One bounced off the ceiling to give a general ambient. The other coming in from the left with an orange gel on it to suggest golden sunlight.

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

This doesn’t work at all. The low light suggests evening rather than lunch time, a more appropriate salad time of day. So we shifted the light up higher.

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

A bit better directionally, but far too warm for a lunch time sun. Using the camera’s white balance setting, I cooled the image somewhat.

At this stage we also dressed the set up a bit more:

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

The next step was to rig a “tree” using gaffer tape and tissue to cast shadows across the table, as if it were set up in the shade.

And as a last tweak, I put up a reflector to the right to fill in the shadow side of the bottle.

Final result:

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

I was back at Spa Lighting in Co. Kerry today for some follow-up shots, including general interior photographs. Before I post any of those photographs, there is still plenty from the first shoot ten days ago.

Sometimes it is hard to figure out a picture. You just can’t think of a way of presenting a subject in an interesting way.

Sometimes the solution is so obvious everybody can see it, and everyone knows what it is without even saying so.

This picture comes under the second heading.

The light bulb went on in everyone’s head at the same time when we saw the lamp.

The lighting set-up was straightforward. An off-camera strobe with an umbrella just out of shot to the left of Edel.

By the way, this lamp is pricey. A couple of grand. And you wouldn’t want to break a bulb. Like, erm, kinda happened today.

Nothing to do with me.

Honest.

Anyway, other than a bit of cropping and colour correction, this is pretty much how the file came out of the camera.

Eureka! - (c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net

Over at Spa Lighting in Co. Kerry the other week we needed a head-and-shoulders shot of the owner of the business, David Cahill.

Thing is, when you’re photographing someone who sells light, you want to do something a bit special. You also don’t want to eat too much into their time, even if they are as accommodating as David.

I’d played around with a long exposure before using some Christmas tree lights on a personal shoot some while ago, and while the results didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped I learned a lot. Enough to make a stab at something interesting for David, any road.

We found a large illuminated bookcase in the shop to use as a background and built the picture from there.

The idea was to shoot with a long shutter speed that would allow my assistant to swing a light bulb on a cord around David, leaving a trail of light. Dave himself is part lit by the bulb and part by a burst of flash from an off-camera flash just to camera right. The final exposure was 2.5 seconds at an aperture of f/18.

More from this shoot to come.

(c) Roger Overall - www.rogeroverall.net

I did a shoot last week at Spa Lighting and Living’s new showroom in Co. Kerry. Exhausting and great fun.

Here’s a taster picture, which has just been sent to a magazine for the client. More to come in a few days when I catch up with myself.

(c) Roger Overall 2009 - www.rogeroverall.net