photography

Working with Archbishops – act two
Cyril Kobina Ben-Smith, Primate of the Church of the Province of West Africa, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and Howard Gregory, Primate of the West Indies in one of the cells at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana used to hold enslaved people before they were loaded onto ships to be taken to the Americas. Photo: Neil Turner for ACO

Towards the end of the summer of 2022 I was lucky enough to be commissioned to spend two weeks photographing The Lambeth Conference. 650 Bishops, 450 of their spouses and a few hundred guests and staff in and around the University of Kent, Canterbury Cathedral and Lambeth Palace made for a fascinating experience and some very interesting pictures. That was act one.

The last eleven days have been act two. This time there are fewer Bishops, fewer Archbishops and a very different location. I’m writing this whilst still in Accra – the capital city of Ghana in West Africa – waiting to go to the airport to fly home. The difference between the locations is vast. It’s hot here and the humidity has been tough on me and almost as tough on my cameras. It’s a developing country with all of the colour, noise and atmosphere you’d expect but with so much more.

(more…)

Working with mirrorless – a problem solved…

Last summer I jumped into the world of Canon mirrorless cameras with a blend of caution and enthusiasm. I recognise that many of my colleagues made the DSLR to mirrorless switch way before I did but, being the anorak that I am, I was determined to make the swap work for me. Having used Canon SLRs and DSLRs for over twenty five years it was always going to be an interesting time and it has taken me five months to iron out all of the niggles. The funny thing is that 90% of the change was painless and happened in under a month. It has been the one part of my work that I was always well known for that has taken me an age to completely master.

Flash.

(more…)

2022 is almost done…

As 2022 comes to a close I just wanted to grab a few minutes to wish those who has visited my websites, clients past, present and yet to come as well as friends and colleagues a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

2023 looks like it might be pretty exciting and, like everyone else who works in the creative industries, I am hoping that it will bring new challenges, new opportunities and new people to work with.

All the best, Neil.

Bad marketing
© Neil Turner. December 2016

Like almost everyone else, I get a lot of suggestions on Facebook for products that I might like to buy. Some are worthwhile, a few are comical and a lot of them are pointless but the other day I had something pop up in my timeline that struck me as plain wrong.

The product in question was an application aimed, allegedly, at professional photographers and claiming to make big inroads into their post-production. As regular readers of this blog will understand – anything that can possibly improve my workflow has got my instant attention.

(more…)

I can’t imagine being without a fifty
©Neil Turner. October 2022. Canon RF 50mm f1.8 mounted on an R6 body

When I worked in a camera shop in the early 1980s we used to sell ninety percent of the camera bodies with a standard lens. Olympus, Pentax, Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Ricoh and a few others all came in a kit with a 50mm lens. By default almost every camera owner ended up with a decent quality pretty fast and actually very versatile bit of glass. Even before I took that job my second SLR (an Olympus OM10) came with a Zuiko 50mm f1.8 and I kept that lens as long as I had Olympus cameras. They were cheap and did the job at a time when very few people shot with zoom lenses.

Since then I have owned over a dozen other 50mm prime lenses as well as two different 55mm ones. At no point in the period from 1981 until today have I been without at least one 50mm optic. At one point I had no fewer than four Canon fifties: f1.0, f1.4 f1.8 and the f2.5 macro. I swapped the f1.0 for an f1.2 a few years ago and it was only comparatively recently that I culled my collection to the point that I “only” have three; the EF 50mm f1.2L, EF 50mm f1.4 USM and the relatively recent RF 50mm f1.8 STM. The two EF lenses will be going soon and it looks as if my collection of fifties will be down to a single lens for the first time since 1995.

(more…)

Paying it forward

I don’t actually remember the first time that I heard the phrase “pay it forward” but I know that it accurately summed-up something that was there in my mind from quite a young age. I had two parents who both loved to explain how to do things and both of them took enormous pleasure in “paying it forward”. Both of my older brothers either consciously or subconsciously echoed our parents attitudes as well. In fact, if you look around, it’s happening all of the time and it is to be appreciated and celebrated.

I can remember watching a film actually called Pay It Forward which came out in 2000 and that, despite it’s rather cheesy nature, it definitely helped to put a name to what I had already been doing for many years.

(more…)

An update on my mirrorless journey…

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about the changes that shooting with mirrorless cameras have made. In the absence of anything profound I think that I will start with something that has been said by others but which I need to express very strongly. So much so, I’m going to make it a quote:

“Canon got everything right when they introduced the EF to RF converter”

Why did I feel the need to say that in quite such strong terms? I hate changing systems. Back in the day (1995) when I swapped from Nikon F4S bodies to Canon EOS1Ns, and had to swap all of my lenses as well, it was tough. Nothing was familiar apart from the rolls of film I was slotting into them. Changing everything in one hit meant that I had to get my head around half a dozen different things all at once. This time around, swapping from Canon EF to RF I got to keep my familiar (and much loved) lenses whilst I got used to the new bodies and their wildly unfamiliar viewfinders. Eventually I will swap out all of the lenses too but there really is no hurry. The converters aren’t perfect but, looking back over the last few weeks, they have been such a help in making the transition.

(more…)

A Bishop called me “dude”…
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town, at the end of the Closing Service for the 2022 Lambeth Conference in Canterbury Cathedral in the United Kingdom. Photo: Neil Turner for The Lambeth Conference. Sunday 7th August 2022

The 2022 Lambeth Conference had been on my mind and/or hiding somewhere in the very depths of my consciousness for almost three years. Like so many things since the arrival of COVID-19, this exciting, intriguing and extended commission had been delayed. I had first discussed the job back in the late summer of 2019. At that point it was scheduled for July and August 2020. Before the first lockdown I had signed a contract and had been to a few meetings and site visits so the unwelcome delay was a huge professional disappointment to add just one more to the many we were all feeling back then.

Monday 25th July 2022 was the day that I finally I loaded the car with two weeks worth of clothing and pretty much every single item of photographic equipment that I could have conceivably needed before heading to Canterbury.

(more…)