The Durrus Cheese dairy is a little off the beaten track. One of those “left-at-the-crooked-tree-and-straight-on-until-you-meet-the-moonrise” kinda places.
Owner Jeffa Gill gives me simple directions over the phone. She tells me to find the post office in Durrus and pick up written instructions there.
The lady behind the post office counter doesn’t bat an eyelid when I arrive on a wet, stormy Thursday soon afterwards. Almost without looking, she reaches for a stack of stenciled directions, peels one off and slips it to me.
The instructions are straightforward enough. They take me along the narrowest of tracks, where I have to back up twice to allow someone heading in the opposite direction past. That sounds courteous. In reality, I have little choice in the matter. The vehicles heading towards me aren’t stopping – and they are bigger than me.
I’ve spent so much time looking at the interface of Adobe post-production software in the past two weeks, I’m starting to lose my sanity. The week ahead isn’t going to offer much respite. Lunacy beckons.
I shouldn’t complain. Much of the work that I’m doing now is laying the foundations for income in the near future. Once the post-production is complete, there will be products to sell.
In the case of my Lapland wedding images, there is an eager audience of wedding guests waiting to order prints.
Here are a few more samples photographs by way of an advance leak of a big blow-out post I’ll do next week sometime.
This arrived in my inbox this morning. It’s been a long time coming.
An invitation to the launch of my first recipe book.
Actually, that’s not accurate at all.
The book is written by Rachid Zaouia, who is the executive pastry chef at Fota Island Resort. The man’s a genius as far as I’m concerned – in the real sense of the word, not in the Apple sense. Simply Pastry is his work, his recipe book, his amazing pastries and desserts.
I’ve been sitting on a series of announcements for a while now. It’s been torture. I’m a blabbermouth by nature so the pressure has been unbearable. Finally, I can let a bit of it go.
Announcement 1: I’m offering seminars and workshops.
After literally some requests for workshops and seminars, I’ve decided to go for it.
It wasn’t a decision taken lightly. There is plenty of photography-related education and training out there. The last thing I want to do is to add to the noise with a “Me Too” range of products. There are, though, some gaps that I think I can fill very well.
Help Portrait is a wonderful initiative by US based photographer Jeremy Cowart that allows photographers to give back to their local community.
Here in Cork we’ve had support from photographers, make-up artists, hairdressers, magicians and any number of volunteers over the past two years. And we’ve brought a lot of smiles to a lot of faces that would otherwise have had little joy in the run up to Christmas.
This year, both Paul and I are unable to take a role in organizing Help Portrait Cork.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t go ahead.
If you’re based in Cork and would like to carry the initiative forward this year, let us know.
If it’s going to happen, now is the time to start. The most essential thing is for someone to decide within the next few days and drop us a line – so that we can meet you and answer any questions you may have.
You might notice a yellow rectangular patch on the left hand side of the blog for the next couple of days.
You may even wonder what it is.
Or you may have better things to concern yourself with.
If you are curious, the answer is straightforward. I’ve created a Google Adsense account. It wasn’t created specifically for use on this blog, rather for something else that isn’t live yet.
That said, to get an account up and running, you need to create a trial advert. This is by far the busiest blog I run, so it seemed the best place to get the ball rolling. Who knows, I may even leave it there if it proves successful.
The trial advert block is supposed to blend into the background, lurking there undetected while it beams its signal back to the Google mother ship.
I live in an alternate universe inhabited by odd socks, reverse connected hot and cold water taps, and an almost daily tussle with technology that refuses to do what it should. So it is no surprise that the blessed thing is not invisible as advertised.
In advertising nothing is as they say it is.
***UPDATE*** It occurred to me that as new posts go live, this post will drop further down the page. That means new readers might not see it and still wonder at the yellow block on the left. To get round this, I decided to put some Google Adsense code in this post and delete the ad on the left. But then I wondered whether that would set the clock back to zero on my application. So I left first ad block in situ. I hope Google gives me the green light soon. I’m making a bit of a mess of the blog design at the moment.
By the time you read this, I’ll be on the move and heading home.
I have just enough time to reflect on one of the cameras that I used for the wedding – the Canon 1D Mark III that was loaned to me by Neil McShane.
An unspeakable pile of …
The 1D Mk III is a controversial camera. When it was launched, it was lauded by the mainstream photography press. They cannot be trusted. Gear manufacturers are big advertisers.
It was left to bloggers to highlight a flaw in the camera. Reports surfaced that the 1D Mk III’s autofocus system was unreliable, particularly in bright conditions. The major player in this was Rob Galbraith, with whom Canon worked to figure out what was going on. A fix was eventually found, though I don’t know how effective it was. It doesn’t matter. The damage had already been done and the Mk III’s reputation never really recovered – at least, as far as I know, though I’m not an expert.
Yesterday I was in uncharted waters, far outside my comfort zone.
Lapland is a dim place this time of year. It is even dimmer when it’s overcast. And that dimness only lasts for six hours or so. Otherwise it is dark.
Inside, things are only marginally better. Lights are mostly of the low-power tungsten variety. They are intended to glow rather than illuminate.
For an ambient light photographer, that makes things tricky.
I was in a world of 1/20th at f/1.8.
And that at ISO3200 or 6400.
If you’re a photographer, you’ll know that those are numbers to make you go unstable at the knees. If you’re not a photographer, curl up in a ball on the floor and roll around for ten minutes whimpering, “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.” That’ll give you an idea of the horror those numbers represent.
The angels on my shoulder
A decade ago, I would have had to bite the bullet and photograph the wedding using flash.
I hate flash for documentary work. It produces photographs that bear no resemblance to what things looked like.
This was a dark wedding. The photographs had to show that.
Digital camera technology has progressed dramatically, though. While I can’t say the three cameras I had available to me are entirely comfortable at ISO3200, they did their job. In one instance, beyond what I felt was possible. That’s a post for another day. For now, it is enough to say that as yesterday’s murkiness enveloped me I was in good company.
Here is a quick selection of files that I worked on last night while backing up all of the files on to two separate drives. They are rough cuts and there is an imbalance in the coverage of the day. I’ll post a more complete set when I get back to Ireland. For now, these will give you a flavour of the day.
First a snow update. Still none, but we awoke to overcast skies this morning. Nothing has fallen, but there is a chance – a slim one, but a chance nonetheless.
From my point of view, if it isn’t going to snow, I’d prefer clear skies so that we at least get that amazing golden light I saw yesterday.
Preparation
I’ve spent most of today scouting the locations for the wedding and deciding how to distribute my camera gear.
One of the challenges is condensation on lenses when you go from cold to warm (outside to inside). I spent an hour outside earlier and then timed how long it took the condensation on the lens to clear when I came back in. It took 15 minutes, quicker than I thought, but longer than is practical.
In truth, there is only one point during the day when this will be an issue: during the ceremony itself, when I can’t risk missing anything due to a fogged lens. My solution is to leave a camera and lens in the glass tipi ceremony venue in the morning, ready to go when things start in the afternoon.
Other than that, I’ll be shuttling between venues that are in close proximity to each other, so I don’t think that the other cameras I’ll be using will have time to get very cold, especially if I keep them under my coat while walking between cabins. Even if they do, I can wait a few minutes for them to clear up.
I’m using three camera bodies for the shoot: my own Canon 5DII and 1DsII, along with a Canon 1DIII that my friend Neil McShane has kindly loaned me. Neil’s camera was originally planned as a back-up, but after looking at the logistics, having a spare allows me to stow one in the ceremony venue while still leaving me with my usual two-camera set up.
The 5DII will be paired with a Sigma 20mm f/1.8 and that will be the combination that will live in the glass tipi for the morning. I don’t use the 20mm a lot, but the tipi is a tight space. The wider my primary lens here the better.
My usual lenses are a Canon 24mm f/1.4 and a Canon 50mm f/1.4. These will be paired with the 1 series bodies for the day. I’ll also have a 135mm f/2.0, but I don’t see that getting much of a run out.
I have about 50+ gigabytes of card space with me and a portable 500GB drive. I’ll back everything up on to my laptop and the external drive.
Schedule
I’ll be shooting from 9am to midnight – 15 hours, which is going to be punishing. For me, it will be important to build in regular five or ten minute breaks every hour or so, particularly during the second half of the day.
There won’t be a blog post tomorrow, so check back on Saturday for a write-up of the wedding day itself.
Apparently, the Finns have 40 words for snow. That’s as may be, but at the moment there isn’t any. Not a flake. And none is forecast before the end of the week either.
The locals are scratching their heads. At this time of year, there should be a thick layer. Nor are the rivers frozen over, which is hampering efforts to catch reindeer. Doubtless the reindeer aren’t fussed. For me, the absence of snow will severely impact on the commercial value of the photographs I take. As you can imagine, the bride is less than delighted as well.
Setback, challenge or disaster?
The financial return on my time investment will now be rather restricted. While it is undoubtedly nice to be here, the success of the whole enterprise hinges on its success in cold, hard business terms – not on how much fun I have.
When I was first approached about the assignment and the suggested terms, my reaction was to turn it down. But the bride spoke passionately about photography and I could see potential commercial revenue from the photographs. I checked the weather. Snow was pretty much guaranteed. I’m not a betting man, but it looked as close to a certainty as you could find. The combination of the emotion of a wedding and such a unique, snow-coated location proved too tempting. Surely, the resulting photographs would appeal to outlets including tourist boards, magazines and gear manufacturers?
I’m still sure that they would.
If they had snow in them.
I’m not saying Finland is an ugly place that needs a dusting of snow to make it pretty. Quite the opposite. From a commercial point of view, though, I need it.
Options
From where I’m sitting right now, my choices are limited to one option: get on with it.
First and foremost, I must do the best job I can on Friday for the bride and groom. It is not their fault that there is no snow. After all their planning, they are extremely disappointed at this unexpected glitch.
Secondly, there is no shortage of photographs to be taken. A catalogue of images will accompany me back on Sunday, regardless.
Lastly, only months from now will I know for definite if the trip was a total bust commercially. Right now, sitting behind a beer, that isn’t a foregone conclusion. Life is peculiar. The fact that there is no snow here right now is evidence of that.
Fate doesn’t exist
I don’t believe in fate. Fate is attributed in retrospect, once things have played themselves out. Crediting fate for your success or failure takes your own actions out of the equation, leaving you powerless. Sure, you and your plans can be overwhelmed by circumstances outside your control (a rotten economy, for instance), but fate doesn’t decide what happens as a consequence. You have a say in that. Not for the full 100 per cent, because the decisions and actions of others impact on you too. But you are rarely solely the plaything of their whim.
In this particular instance of a no snow show, how things turn out from this point onwards is up to me.
This post is more philosophical than intended, but that’s how my thoughts developed as I was writing it. Feedback in the comments section is welcome as always.
Don’t forget you can follow along on Twitter as well, either in the side bar or using your favourite Twitter platform with the hashtag #LaplandWedding.
Meanwhile, here are some photographs and an AudioBoo.
