Cottage Life Magazine is all about summer! It’s sunny days from morning ’til night, cicadas buzzing by mirror-like lakes, and bathing suits drying on the line– but the shoots happen rain or shine so it’s up to me to bring a little kiss of summer inside, even when it’s the dampest darkest day of the year.
Lucky me, I had two cottage shoots in a row where menacing clouds rolled across the skies. Every last ray of natural sunshine was reserved for the outdoor shots, and when indoors on the ground floor– out came trusty Mr. Sun.
Mr. Sun: the well-loved and often used reflector dish I first met while assisting the great interior photographer Ted Yarwood. It’s nothing really that special– mine is a beat up old sports reflector dish mounted to a regular strobe head, and in the case of cottage shoots, I hook it up to a Speedotron battery pack. If there’s a light rain outside I can put a garbage bag over it to protect it, or if I’m really lucky there’s a porch to keep it from the elements.
Here’s a few examples of my trusty friend in action.
During this kitchen shot, it was pouring buckets outside. I mean POURING, so Mr. Sun was tucked safely under the highest part of the porch. You can tell by the angle of the sunny bits on the wall going up that this sun isn’t real.
Below here, it was a dull day outside and the small narrow room prevented me from putting any lights in it. There was a window to the left of the sink and since it was on the first floor, a landing outside I could safely put Mr. Sun. A softbox over the camera provided a little extra fill in the foreground and subject.
The next three were all at the same cottage the same morning. A little drizzle outside was no problem at all. A hard-light look in the living room here and detail, and for the kitchen shot I simply skimmed a little sun to add direction to the shadows.
The theme was East End Icons, and the public was invited to nominate and vote for men that represented the spirit of Riverdale for a fundraising calendar– the brainchild of Rachel Conduit and Bruce Dawson, owners of local watering hole The Avro.
The votes came in, the winners decided, and scheduling of photo shoots began in early fall. We had only a couple of weeks to shoot 15 locations with often only minutes of our winners time. We knew that several shots would be at night or in dark spaces, so for control and to add a touch of toughness, I decided to bring the hard light kit. We had no budget for photo assistants to help shlep tho, so I packed as light as one could of my own hefty gear, and at a strapping 6ft-something Bruce acted as my trusty Sherpa and art director throughout. Bruce man, you rock.
We worked fast and hard and I even managed to lose my voice during the whole thing. Here they are.
Geeking out on science has finally paid off! This summer I was hired by design firm Hambly & Woolley to photograph doctors and scientists for U of T’s School of Medicine annual report. Typical of any portrait shoot, I’m looking to include some type of information that speaks to who the person being photographed is about (this may include props or clothes specific to their work). Often, all we have is a time and place to meet our subject with just a few minutes to get a photo — and this was one of those times.
On this occasion, art director Dominic Ayre and I arrived at the Donnelly Centre on College Street to photograph Peter Zandstra, a professor at U of T’s institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. While killing a few minutes outside, we flipped through the brief and found that Peter’s expertise was in stem cell research, while looking over Dom’s shoulder it struck me that the Health Sciences Building across the street resembled a DNA chart, especially as it was a bright day and many of the blinds were partly down on every floor — that was science-y enough for me and would make for a nice graphic background! A quick test shot to convince Dom, and inside to the second floor of the Donnelly Centre where the floor-to-ceiling windows would afford us the best view. A further advantage with an indoor exposure is that it’s several stops darker than outside, so once I exposed for Peter the background became wildly overexposed and the final shot was born.
Pretty cool stuff!
And here’s the exposure for outside, where you can see the trees, building and a couple of streetlights in the bottom corner.
Welcome to the new home of Margaret Mulligan– Toronto photographer of people, interiors, food and a little bit of everything else!
Have a look around, and be sure to come back again soon as there will be fresh work and stories coming along regularly!