Commercial photography in Ireland 2016 - some of the work produced by Noel Hillis Photographer

During 2016, I was commissioned to produce corporate portraits for the covers of a number of business magazines. As always my gratitude goes to the editors who commissioned me . My favourites among the covers that I photographed were Aidan Cotter, CEO of An Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, who was photographed for Agri-Food Magazine, Eavann Murphy, Chief Commercial Officer at eir Business was photographed for the cover of Eolas and new CEO of Gaelectric, Barry Gavin was photographed for cover of Energy Ireland’s Renewable Energy Magazine.

Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure of photographing dozens of milk men for Glanbia’s award winning website mymilkman.ie. So it was nice to have my photographic glass "milk bottle” ceiling shattered during the summer, by photographing County Kildare milkman, Jennifer Daly.

 

One of my favourite photographic commissions is to produce commercial photography for annual reports. Among the Annual Reports in which my work appeared during the year were those for Greencore, LauraLynn Children’s Hospice and An Bord Pleanala . Pictured above are some tear sheets from each of them.

As an admirer of his environmental work, I had wanted to photograph His Excellency, Jean-Pierre Thébault, French Ambassador to Ireland, for some time and was delighted when I was commissioned to produce this editorial portrait by Eolas, at Environment Ireland in Croke Park.

Once again, it was a particularly busy year for conference and event photography and one of my favourite event moments was this spontaneous selfie setup, photographed at the very busy Social Media Dublin Conference, in Chartered Accountants House.

As in previous years, I have enjoyed working in a variety of beautiful venues over the past 12 months including photographing a number of events at Carton House in Co. Kildare. Such events often give me the opportunity to add value to my clients offering and allows me to polish my architectural photography and landscape photography skills as well.

Given my marketing background, Its nice to be involved in producing interesting PR photography. This image of SEAT brand ambassador, Anna Daly from TV3, was designed to highlight the new forecourt branding at the Enniscorthy Motor Company.

Of course, as a commercial photographer in Ireland, I still have to be able to photograph just about anything. For example I produced these editorial food photographs, in a contemporary style, to illustrate an article on winter and summer antipasti. As a bonus at the end of the shoot, I also got to taste some of the food and wine as well!

By producing personal photography, my creativity gets a shot of adrenalin which carries over into my commercial work. This year I have been experimenting a lot with “contre-jour” or photographing into the light. Have a look at my Instagram account here for more examples. This particular favourite was photographed at the end of November in Connemara, at the beautiful Trá an Dóilín, (the Coral Strand) just outside Carraroe, in County Galway. The amazing cloud formation, a forbearer of bad weather, was photographed looking west, towards America and offered a real sense of the calm before the storm.

During the long grey Irish summer, I was commissioned to produce photographs of a number of primary food producers for use as packaging and marketing material, for a national supermarket chain. They say that you should never work with animals, but these County Galway cattle were very cooperative, when I was photographing ecologically minded farmer Ulick Egan. And yes, my favourite image of the year, is literally, of a man who is out standing in his own field!

Thank you to everyone who commissioned, supported, looked at, enjoyed and/or benefitted from my photography over the past year. I am very grateful and hope to see you again in 2017