recommended

Old dog, new tricks

Photo ©Neil Turner, February 2023

Hands up if you read the release notes when you go to update a piece of software. Anyone? Just me?

My actual answer is “occasionally moving towards regularly”. In photographic terms I am most definitely an old dog and whilst I wouldn’t say that I enjoy learning new tricks I definitely benefit from quite a few of them. I write about them on here from time-to-time as well.

This blog post was triggered because I actually took the time to read the blurb for the two main bits of software that I use day in and day out: Photo Mechanic and Adobe Camera RAW within Adobe Photoshop. Neither update was spectacular but my rabbit hole tendencies made me go back and see what else I had missed in previous updates and I think that I found one or two gems that will be very useful going forward. I’m not going to go through and list everything but I thought that it would be useful to mention a few.

(more…)

Workflow… again

Having just finished three weeks editing other people’s pictures at Wimbledon and a further six days doing the same for the Open Championship golf the topic of workflow and getting pictures to look good, be accurately captioned and delivered efficiently wasn’t too far from my mind when a conversation with another photographer prompted me to write this. In the last month (and in the last eleven or so years that I’ve edited other people’s work) I’ve edited files from all of the professional cameras from Canon, Nikon and Sony. On a less intensive basis I’ve edited pictures shot on Leica, Fujifilm and Hasselblad and probably a few others that I can’t recall right now and so anything I say is based on the notion that a good workflow isn’t all that dependent on what types of files you have.

I’ve said it before and I will, no doubt say it again but having a good workflow is absolutely central to the business of photography. In fact, when I speak to colleagues and friends most will excitedly tell me that their personal workflow is as good as it gets and surprisingly few will openly accept that they might just be able to do it that little bit better with a bit of training and practice. Personally I lean the other way; spending way too much time looking at different software, trying different techniques and generally trying to get my workflow a few percentage points better.

(more…)

#REALPHOTO

© Neil Turner. 2025

I have been toying with all sorts of social media for quite a while and my presence on any of them would best be categorised as “modest”. For the first time in my career I have been asked to actively engage with Instagram on behalf of a client and we have been discussing what sorts of hashtags should accompany any pictures that I post. I have been very keen to use something that makes it clear that mine are real pictures. Not adulterated, filtered, AI generated or in any other way the product of anything that would make a responsible photojournalist unhappy or even uncomfortable.

I did quite a bit of web-surfing before going onto a closed Facebook group made up of my peers and professionals whose opinions I respect and asking the question “what do other people do about marking their work out as AI FREE on social media posts?” There was a short but interesting discussion and one or two of my colleagues advised against my initial thought of #AIFREE on the grounds that it could be interpreted as being AI generated and/or free to use. The general consensus was to avoid the letters A and I altogether.

(more…)

The ultimate compromise lens?


That’s a dramatic headline but, never before having had a lens like this, it’s the most accurate way that I could think of to sum it up. Canon’s RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 L IS USM is something of a conundrum. It covers a range of focal lengths that I find extremely useful in a lot of the work that I currently do and, paired with the RF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM, it is a valuable item in my travelling kit bag. I have shot pictures with it that I would simply not have been able to without hauling some incredibly heavy (and expensive) lenses around the world.

Do I love this lens? No. Do I appreciate it? Yes… with bells on.

(more…)

An upgrade already

It was only last summer that I made the jump to using Canon EOS R6 bodies for the majority of my work and now I’ve swapped to the R6 MkIIs. I had listened to my own wisdom for a few months and calculated that I couldn’t make the business case for going for an upgrade so soon. Then I got to play with a MkII and I changed my mind.

There wasn’t one thing that made me make the swap – it was a list of little upgrades here and there that made my mind up for me.

(more…)