folio photo

Celebrating 40 years as a working photographer
A snippet from my 1986 Filofax diary showing the details of the job that went on to be my first colour magazine front page.

This snippet from my 1986 Filofax diary reminds me of a few things about my early career as a photographer:

  1. I didn’t copy many of the details from the written job sheets into my diary. Mistake
  2. I didn’t keep a stock of film to hand and had to pop into the office to collect some rolls of transparency (trannie) film. Another mistake
  3. Trying to get paid was a regular note in the diary for that year and most of 1987. This note referred to a job I had shot for a law firm a month previously
  4. I have no memory of who Bill Piper is or was

I left college with a Higher National Diploma in Advertising and Editorial Photography in June 1986 and I had worked as an assistant for a couple of photographers whilst on the course. I continued to get the odd few days work from them until early September 1986 when I landed a three month contract to cover for one of the staff photographers at Haymarket Publishing who was off on maternity leave. For all sorts of reasons I also got to spend quite a bit of time working in the darkroom there but that was also fine because there was no better way to learn than printing the pictures of more experienced colleagues.

On Tuesday 16th of September 1986 I was sent to take some specific photographs at the London Stock Exchange. It was shortly before the “Big Bang” – the historic day when a high percentage of the share trades done moved from the iconic trading floor to electronic systems. My brief was to get a general view of the trading floor in colour from an observation window overlooking a section of it.

(more…)

Recent portrait work: The Bishop of Salisbury


A couple of weeks ago I shot some portraits of The Bishop of Salisbury, Rt Revd Stephen Lake, in the grounds of Salisbury Cathedral. The first few frames were for part of a release to the press along with an extended caption explaining a conference he had hosted that was exploring the relationship between the Church of England and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. I also shot some of the outdoor activities that went along with the event.

The rest of the images of The Bishop were for stock and I really enjoyed shooting them. He and I had met before, we are almost exactly the same age and grew up just a couple of miles from one another and so it is no surprise that we got on pretty well. As we chatted I shot pictures. What you see above is fifteen of the edited frames including a much needed headshot but as I carried on shooting I got closer and closer to what I really wanted to achieve – which is the frame below.
(more…)

A moment in time that I doubt I will ever forget
Photo: © Neil Turner for Lambeth Palace.

For well over two years I have been carrying out assignments for various institutions within the worldwide Anglican Communion. I have blogged before about a couple of the events and trips but mostly I have been carrying out the work quietly and very much enjoying it. I’ve lost count of the plane journeys taken, countries visited and extraordinary people that I have worked with and met but it was a simple service earlier this month that might just be the one that remains in my memory for the longest.

(more…)

Johnny Ball – the contact sheet

When I posted a frame from this set on my Instagram feed it attracted a few comments and an email from a colleague asking to see the contact sheet for it. I’m only too happy to oblige so here it is – a sixteen image edit from the job. The words that I posted with it on Instagram were these:

I cannot remember photographing anyone who was more accommodating, nicer to be around and generally more cheerful than television presenter and educator Johnny Ball. In January 2008 when I photographed him in his back garden in Farnham Common, Berkshire it was cold and a little bit damp but we both wanted to work outside and so, after a brief tour of the garden, we chose two spots to shoot pictures. This location was crying out for a big shadow so I used a single battery power flash to light him and create the shadow. He was laughing and chatting right through the twenty or so minutes we were shooting pictures before retreating indoors for coffee and warmth. (more…)

Dennis Healey – the contact sheet

Lord Dennis Healey taking a photograph of the photographer. ©Neil Turner/TSL

When I have been posting archive portraits on Instagram and Facebook I have been including a few memories of each job. On more than one occasion I have commented that it was a tough job picking a single frame from a shoot and one of my colleagues contacted me when I posted  a frame of the late Dennis Healey to ask me to post a wider selection from that job. I thought that it would be best to show the whole edit as it was sent to the magazine in the form of a ‘contact sheet’. (more…)

Archive Portraits on Instagram

Vivienne Westwood, fashion designer, photographed in her London studio after she had been celebrating with her team having won yet another design award. October 1990. Photo ©Neil Turner

Over the last few months I have been devoting an awful lot of my time to building up an archive of my professional work from when I left college in 1986. There are plenty of gaps and there have been lots of surprises – images and commissions that I had long forgotten and it occurred to me that my Instagram feed was looking a bit sorry for itself and so I started to add portraits that had something of a back story. That was a couple of weeks ago and there will be photographs on that feed that regular readers of this blog will recognise but, equally, there will be some very unfamiliar portraits that haven’t seen the light of day in many, many years. (more…)

Tinkering with my folio

I spent a long time working as a photographer specialising in education and I spent as long as the rest of you in full-time education as a pupil and a student too. I think that those two facts combine to make me feel that “new year feeling” in September as the kids go back to school and the not-so-young ones go away to university. January is the new year of course and April sees the beginning of the financial year but September feels like to ‘work new year’ to me.

And it is at this time of year I start to think about getting out there with my folio looking for new and interesting work and, at the same time, I like to have at least a minor refresh with my on-line folio too. (more…)

Instagram… finally!

Gates to a disused Royal Mail sorting office, Christchurch, Dorset. ©Neil Turner. November 2013

I’m not actually sure why but I have avoided Instagram since it was launched. I am aware that it can be used as a good shop window for photographers and I am equally aware that it can suck hours from your day. The thing that finally made me sign up and dive in was when a third picture editor informed me that they didn’t look at portfolios unless they’d seen an Instagram feed first.

When it happened for the first time I wrote it off as the narrow silliness of a very young picture editor. The second time made me think that the whole industry was going nuts but when it happened a third time I decided that I had to move with the times. Now this isn’t the first time that I have been (too) late to a party. I used Flickr when it first came out but deleted my account fairly promptly before getting back in the saddle a couple of years later. I had perviously used EyeEm as a mini-folio but that appeared to be a waste of effort after several months of putting effort into it. Could Instagram be the answer for me? (more…)