Dinny, a famous traditional fiddle player, invited us to his home in Buncrana, where he had agreed to be pictured for a millenium exhibition that I am contributing to, staged in the local arts centre.

Photography really can be a nice job, you know. It has its moments, and this was one of them. Over the years, my profession and my first love has shown me people and places I could not otherwise dream of meeting or visiting. After the tea and the craic, we got to work.

If you look very closely you will see a house on the hill that is visible in the distance through the open door. I will ask the printer to bring this out on the full-size colour print. As I was setting up and choosing an angle, Dinny mentioned that it was where his violin teacher had lived, and as a child he used to make the journey up there, sometimes in bare feet, to engage with his all-time passion of fiddle-playing.

The scan you see here was taken off the 5x4" Polaroid and a duotone applied in Photoshop. The film used was 5x4" colour negative, for exhibition print output. Dinny was lit with a snoot boomed over him to emulate the real room lighting, with another, bare, Quad head fired into the ceiling and walls for bounce fill. The lens was a wide angle 90mm Schneider, centred on the open doorway to lead the eye subtly out towards the house on the hill.