Anyone that’s into photography or video editing these days will be familiar with the term ‘rendering’, as will builders and architects. However, it has a very different meaning for a certain line of work. My latest commercial industrial project started this week for a client specialising in industrial rendering plants for processing animal by-products into animal protein (My assignments just keep getting more and more glamorous don’t they.)
Chances are if you have a pampered pooch, or mollycoddled moggies, and you feed them quality pet food – these guys play a big part in rover/ tiddles’ diet…
My mission for this assignment is to capture various rendering processing plants around the North of England. Environmental character portraits (like the shot above), various ‘at work’ shots, huge (often scary) machinery, and a general sense and scale of this this little known industry at work . Below are just a fraction of stills from day one, and I’ll hopefully do some more detailed blog updates as the assignment progresses with some technical info, and challenges faced. As a quick prelude I can confidently say challenge number one to overcome was ‘smell’. More on that at a later date.

Quick snap showing part of the lighting setup for the opening portrait shot in this post. Alas, the smokey floor was not my doing, but a fortuitous run off from a huge piece of machinery’s cooling/ ice system (behind camera). Made for some great shots. Very Top ‘o the Pops. Now then.
by Dan Dunkley