That brief…
PE lesson photograph from a school prospectus shoot in Hampshire. ©Neil Turner

I’ve called this post “that brief” because I will never forget an email that came to me from a regular client who simply gave me a name, address, date and time and the words “go do your thing”. That was pretty flattering – they trusted me and were comfortable with how I had worked for them before. I’ll never forget that brief but most of the time I think that I’d prefer a bit more to go on.

Every photograph that I have ever taken was dictated by things that can be controlled and things that can’t. The client’s brief is something that should be able to be negotiated and should always be realistic. In the “contact” section on my main website I say the following:

Commissioning a professional photographer can be a daunting business. My philosophy has always been to make it as painless and as uncomplicated as possible. I believe that this is best achieved by a proper dialogue between photographer and client. We both want the same thing – a set of pictures that achieve and even exceed their purpose. In my experience, the better defined that purpose is, the easier it is to get the photographs that the client needs.

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Light modifiers
When this was shot this was my favourite type of catchlight. The shoot through translucent umbrella partnered with an oblong light panel to reflect a bit of light back in. I have changed my mind a hundred times since then.

“What is your favourite light modifier?” A question from a photographer who has followed my blogs over the last twenty-plus years got me thinking. Spoiler alert – I probably don’t have a favourite but I do have a few that I use all of the time.

First things first, let’s define “light modifier”. As part of their explanation of modifier Wikipedia describes it as the following:

Tools or accessories employed in photography and videography to shape, control, or direct light emitted from a light source. These modifiers serve to alter the quality, direction, and intensity of light, thereby enabling photographers and videographers to achieve specific effects or moods in their images. Light modifiers come in various categories and types, each with its own unique characteristics and applications.

Seems simple enough but when you start to examine those different categories and types life can get pretty confusing. Thinking about it I realised just how many different soft boxes, umbrellas, reflectors, dishes and domes I own. In fact, the inventory doesn’t even end there because there are so many sub-sets and shapes that it could all get the tiniest bit confusing for me if I hadn’t used each and every one of them so often over the last forty or so years. The fact that I have sold a few here and there and thrown and given so many more just adds to my knowledge of what does and doesn’t work for me and the work that I do – which in itself changes over time.

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Juxtapose and exaggerate
Not the original note to self but I have added it to a lens wrap for old time’s sake

A few days ago I was at an event in Manchester run by Canon UK. While I was chatting with one of the many talented young photographers that they had invited I remembered something about my early career that I am pretty sure helped me more than I could have known at the time.

In the later 1980s and early 1990s I had a light grey Domke F1X camera bag. I loved that bag and I loved working from it. I also loved that every time I lifted the top flap there were two words written there with a marker pen:

  • Juxtapose
  • Exaggerate

They were written there because the legendary photographer Terence Donovan gave a talk at my college in either 1985 or 1986. When asked by one of my classmates about taking better pictures, he explained that by juxtaposing our subjects with backgrounds, secondary subjects and other compositional elements we could give our pictures a depth that told stories more effectively. By exaggerating things such as light, angles, perspective or even the contents of our images we could, again, tell those stories in different and possibly better ways. I scribbled down those two words in my almost brand new Filofax, underlining both multiple times.

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One month in with the Canon EL5 flash
The oldie but goodie 600 EXII RT on the left meets the EL5 on the right.

Many months ago I wrote about my experiences with the top-of-the-range Canon EL1 flash. It was heavy, bulky and expensive but in almost every other way I found it to be very, very good. At the time there was a rumour of a smaller, lighter and cheaper alternative coming from Canon but it took a while to come out and a good deal longer for me to get my hands on not just one but two of them.

EL1 versus 600 EXII RT wasn’t really a great comparison and I found myself matching the big Canon flash against my Elinchrom One which was only ever going to be a contest when using them on stands and with light modifiers because there really isn’t much out there that can be compared to the EL1. The EL5, on the other hand, is a much more direct match for the older 600 EXII. They are much the same size (the EL5 is fatter at the head and I’ll cover that in a bit) and the weight difference isn’t too great with the 600 EXII coming in a 555g with 4 x AA Eneloop batteries loaded and the EL5 tipping our kitchen scales at 601g complete with the same LP-EL battery that was so impressive in the EL1. Both work perfectly with my much-loved ST-E10 speedlite transmitters and that’s where the similarities end.

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You can’t beat the power of a couple of candles
A group of Archbishops and Bishops on a candlelit pilgrimage tour of Canterbury Cathedral. ©Neil Turner for IARCCUM. 26 January 2024

After a week of travelling to Rome and Canterbury with a group of well over fifty Archbishops, Bishops and a Cardinal I thought that I’d share one of my favourite pictures from the job. The summit and pilgrimage was organised by IARCCUM (International Anglican–Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission) where the Bishops in their pairs were commissioned by Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin Welby to work together to forge greater understanding and cooperation between the two churches in their respective diocese.

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Another year almost over
A knitted Bishop is one of the decorations on the Christmas tree at the Lambeth Palace Library . ©Neil Turner. December 2023

As 2023 draws to a close I just wanted to look back at what has been a great year for me professionally. Since badly damaging my spine in 2017 and being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2020 I have been spending as much time working as a photo editor as I have taking pictures but the latter half of 2022 and the whole of 2023 have changed all of that. I am fitter than I was and the cancer appears to have been soundly defeated and I have been able to take on way more work as a photographer than I have done for many years. On top of that, it has been nice work to do and so I’m a happy chap. I have no intention of ditching the editing work and so I am just a lot busier.

Back in December 2013 I wrote my last blog post of that year looking forward to a family Christmas and commenting on how my year had gone. I offered up my selections of “best of the year” for want of a better title. I’m not going to list the best of 2013 here but here’s a link if you want to go and have a look for yourself. Borrowing much the same categories, here is the best of 2023:

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Good light and the click-bait rabbit hole
An old favourite: Flash plus ambient – my favourite way to shoot. © Photo Neil Turner, May 2011

OK, I admit it – when the mood takes me I follow links on the internet and find myself down some pretty odd/infuriating/entertaining rabbit holes. The other day I was suckered-in by a full-on click-bait link on Facebook with the oh-so-inviting headline “Is this the biggest lie in photography?” It started out saying that photographers who believe that expensive lights give better light than cheap ones aren’t correct. It started out with all the hallmarks of something controversial but quickly fizzled out but not before I had started to compose a bit of a rant of a comment to add to the growing conversation on the Facebook page from a few others who hadn’t bothered to read to the end before getting on their hobby horses either.

Five minutes later, and having read the whole thing, I stopped, copied what I had agonised over writing, and pasted it into a note on my computer with the idea of doing exactly what I’m doing now; turn that rant into a blog post featuring better reasoning and more detail.

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On holiday with a (new) compact camera
Crowds on the Rialto Bridge in Venice at dusk. © Neil Turner. Friday 24 November 2023

A little over five years ago I bought a new compact camera. I like compact cameras and I’ve never been a great lover of using my phone as my walk-about medium for taking pictures. Spoiler alert: I prefer the control that you have with a camera rather than having to jump through hoops to get the same from a mobile. I wrote about the compact on this blog and it was a Canon Powershot G7X MkII. To save you from reading that post (unless you want to) my main conclusion was:

The bottom line is that this is a truly capable, highly affordable and genuinely compact compact digital camera. A while ago I wrote that using a different compact camera just made me smile and I’m starting to develop a grin when using this new one too. That’s a good sign and I’m pretty sure that it will lead to some pictures that will make me smile too.

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