The Blacksmiths
My name is Dan Bannister, and I’m a commercial photographer based in Toronto, Canada. My day to day photography work is mostly advertising and fashion for retail brands but I like to add variety to my photography and exercise my creative muscles by pursuing personal projects alongside my commercial work as much as I can.
A couple of years ago, I was having lunch with a good friend who works at an ad agency in Toronto and she mentioned that blacksmithing was something she enjoyed as a hobby and she knew people who did it for a living. I was very interested and asked her if she could arrange for me to meet and photograph one of them. She ended up introducing me to a man named Lloyd Johnston, who has this incredible resume as a blacksmith, including being the person responsible for the historically accurate restoration of the iron gates on Canada’s Parliament Buildings.
This eventually led me to meeting other blacksmiths and photographing a number of them as well as making a mini documentary of Lloyd working in his shop which you can see here:
In most places, especially in North America, if you want (for example) a beautiful, well-made coat rack for your home, you’ll have a hard time finding one that’s not mass produced in a developing country and frankly, it won’t likely be something that you’ll be proud to own in 10 years time. The idea of finding a local craftsperson to custom make one for you is a bit foreign now but, at one time, people like blacksmiths were a staple of a local economy and you could go to them, have something made specifically for you and it would last a lifetime or longer. Now, for the most part, we seek out the cheapest solution and toss it away when it falls apart or goes out of style in a year or two.
I originally thought I’d render the images in black and white, and I actually have some large prints in my home of these images as black and whites (which I love), but, in terms of presenting them more publicly, I decided that showing the trade of blacksmithing in black and white would be too “old fashioned” and might prevent it’s wider appeal so, I decided to process and present the project with a more modern treatment that still accentuates the work and draws attention to the products they are making.
The project was shot in a somewhat simple fashion as many of the locations were somewhat limited for space. As well, I didn’t want the subjects to be intimidated by setting up a lot of large complex lighting like I might for a commercial shoot so, I kept it simple by using one beauty dish.
You can find the entire set of photos from this project in this online gallery on my website.
About the author: Dan Bannister is a commercial photographer and director based in Toronto, Canada. You can find more of his work on his website.
