Professionalism 101 (or P101 for short)

©Neil Turner/TSL

The hardest part of the transition from good photographer to professional photographer is in understanding the difference between the two. I once wrote that the best definition of “professional” is someone who gets the shot 99.9% of the time and has a damned good excuse for the rest. Still true, but professionalism has another side to it – one that can be learned pretty easily.

Clients are used to dealing with professionals: Slick presentation, questions being answered before they are asked and great customer service. These are all things that we expect as consumers and in business we expect even more. As a professional, you are in a market place and you have to compete.

We work in an image-conscious business and we live in an increasingly image-conscious world. Even as self-employed freelancers we need to have corporate identities of our own. The vast majority of our clients have proper business cards and 99.9% of them have email addresses that tell you who they are and who they work for.

I am constantly amazed by the number of decent photographers who hand out slightly apologetic home-made inkjet printed cards and I’m shocked by the number of Yahoo and Hotmail accounts that people rely on. Webmail is useful but it does nothing to positively affirm you as a professional. Buying and running your own web domain is not difficult or expensive and it really helps to give potential customers the impression that you are in business and that you have been for some time. If your email address matches your portfolio website there is a certain synergy. If your on-line presence is a gallery on Flickr and your email is london-snapper@webmail.com then you really are missing a trick.

Keeping everything the same, presenting a corporate image and playing the game doesn’t detract from your photography. Quite the opposite; it removes a potential barrier to clients taking you seriously. Having a well-designed and easily navigated portfolio on the internet is almost as important as owning a camera. Being a member of at least one of the professional bodies that offer searchable freelance directories is also a very good idea.

Moving on in the story a little, you have met the client, they like your folio and they give you some work. Professionalism moves up a gear and this is your first job for them so you cannot make presentational mistakes now. Be clear when accepting the commission what the fees and expenses are, what rights you are selling them and what they are expecting from you. Get technical specifications, deadlines, delivery addresses (FTP, email or postal) sorted out and then go and do what you are there to do – shoot the pictures.

Let’s say, for arguments sake that the job requires a CD with twenty high-resolution, post-produced RGB JPEG files in the post. P101 says that the client will be used to proper presentation and so your CD should not be a PC World own brand disc with a few illegible words written in marker pen in a cracked plastic case. Printing proper CD labels is very cheap. Getting discs printed on an upmarket Inkjet printer isn’t expensive and having a few hundred professionally screen-printed will not break the bank. Slim CD cases are OK but softer plastic flexible cases are better and they will cope with the postal system far better. Of course the disc should be labelled with the date but the main impression should be that this came from Joe Bloggs – professional. The packaging should be professional, the label on the outside should be neat and tidy and you should have a properly printed compliment slip in there too.

None of this makes you a better photographer, none of this will actually impress the client. But none of this costs much money either. What it will do is not raise any negative thoughts. The hand written scrawl on the cheap disc stands a good chance of making a negative impression – yet hundreds of photographers still do it.

So what about what is actually on the disc. There are the pictures of course. It’s important to make sure that they meet any specification given to you by the client and it’s also vital to make sure that the client can open the disc on whatever system they use – but what else? Make space on the disc for a PDF file containing licensing information and a second PDF with the caption details (it’s amazing how many picture buyers still don’t understand or see the metadata that you embed in the images). For some clients a set of clearly marked low resolution, screen sized sRGB JPEGs can be useful too.

Going deeper still, think about the metadata that you attach to the files. Professionals have to add IPTC caption details. Who, what, why, when and where. No matter which imaging application you use you have to put into words what is in the picture – which balding middle aged man is which, where they were taken with a date and possibly a time. You also have to add your details. Stamp your identity right there in the metadata. Use the © symbol liberally so that everyone knows who owns the pictures. The tricky thing here is to know which box you put this information into. Many newspapers want you to put everything into the main caption/description box. Others only want the names and places in the main box. Most magazines and commercial clients don’t have a preference. If in doubt put it all in the main caption/description box and add it all in the other relevant boxes too.

Metadata has another face – EXIF. These are the shooting details that your camera will add to digital files. Some are useful – time, day and date. Others are annoying – which lens, shutter speed, white balance. Does the client need to know this stuff? Probably not – so delete it.

This is not rocket science 101. This is, however, a very competitive market. P101 says that you have to do everything that you can to give the client confidence that you are a pro and that you will deliver the goods. I was giving a talk on this very topic at a college when a very-self-assured young man told me that he wasn’t interested in any of this “plastic b******t” and that his clients would have to take him for what he was – an excellent photographer. This kind of approach might have worked twenty years ago but it doesn’t have a snowball-in-hell’s chance in the 21st Century.

Having a “USP” (unique selling point) is a great idea as a photographer, but being the one who eschews good presentation and good practice is a pointlessly high-risk strategy. If you want to take pictures for a living, you have to get people to pay you. Most of the people who control the market place wear suits and respond well to corporate image. It’s a game and you would be well advised to play it.

In my camera bag

Nothing much has changed with my kit for everyday jobs, so here is a refresher of what I use…

It seems to me that every web site about a photographer or photography has to feature a shot of the packed bag with an accompanying view of all of the kit laid out. I’m going halfway with the obligatory bag shot but you are going to have to settle for a bulleted list of the contents. We all know what an EOS 5d MkII looks like and I’m pretty sure that you can guess at what a pile of 8 Gb compact flash cards look like too. My old site has quite a bit of this stuff if you really need a fix!

©Neil Turner

So, what’s in your bag mister? (sorry Mr Lehman, I know that’s your line). The bag that I’m using most of the time is a Lowe Pro Stealth Reporter 650AW, and from the left the main items are:

  • Two Canon EOS 5D MkII bodies
  • Two Canon 580exII flash units
  • Canon 16-35 f2.8L sitting above a Canon 1.4x extender
  • Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS
  • Canon 24-70 f2.8L sitting on an ST-E2 flash transmitter

The back section is able to hold an Apple Macbook Pro 15.4 and the various cables will go into one of the front pockets if I need to pack a whole kit into the bag for travelling. There are plenty of bits and pieces in the bag:

  • Think Tank pixel pocket rocket CF card holder with 8 x Sandisk 8Gb CF cards
  • Notebook, pens, business cards
  • 16 x 2700 MaH AA rechargeable batteries
  • 2 x Spare Canon LP-E6 batteries
  • 2 x Honl Photo Speed Straps
  • 1 x Honl Photo Speed Gobo
  • 1 x Honl Photo Speed Snoot
  • Canon RS-80N3 Remote Switch
  • Various bits of coloured gel (red, green, blue, Full and 1/2 CTO orange, 1/2 CTO blue, purple)

Added together, this is one heavy bag. If it has the laptop and all of the computer accesories as well it is barely portable. If I’m travelling on the London Underground or having to do a lot of walking for a job I will try to cut things down and even spread the load in two bags. I’ve written before about the search for the perfect bag and all I can say is that the search continues.

Sometimes I use a nice small Domke J3 bag with two EOS5D MkIIs and some prime lenses – 28mm f1.8, 50mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.8 but most of the time I rely on zoom lenses.

Shooting in less than favourable weather.

Another re-posting; this time posted in April 2009 but from a job that I shot in 2006…

One of the best things about being a photographer is that you get to do some pretty odd things. Sometimes you climb to the top of a tall building and have a look at the view. At other times you get to meet interesting and amazing people and take their pictures. At other times you have to get up early on a bleak winter’s day, go to the beach, wade into the water just after dawn to get the tide and the picture. It all adds to the fun of the job.

©Neil Turner/TSL

I shot this commission a while ago and I have been meaning to write it up since then. The story was about a school head teacher who owns a horse that she keeps in stables near the sea. She refers to her horse as her “work life balance” – something that we all need, but few of us have quite such a visible symbol of it!

Being a teacher, she is at school most days. During the holidays she gets away to the coast and rides whenever she can and if the tide is right she can ride on the beach. It was an October morning and we met at dawn in the car park near the stables. My brief was to get a double page spread for a magazine which showed her enjoying herself.

Of course photographers rarely get to choose the weather and it was raining with a reasonably strong wind. The tide was just right (we checked the tables in advance) and so we started to shoot some pictures of her riding on the sand. It’s a stretch of coast that I know well and I knew that there was a high chance of poor weather. There’s nothing that you can do when the deadline is tight except to shoot the best pictures that you can.

The picture above was taken towards the end of the session and by this time it was getting lighter. The exposure was up to 1/500th of a second at f3.5 on a 24-70 f2.8L lens. We had started at 1/125th at f2.8 and the light was doubling every twenty minutes or so. Unusually for me I shot this job without lights, without flash – just good old ambient. Had there been any sunshine, there would have been the complicating factor of having to shoot almost directly into the sun if I wanted to stay on the beach.

Most of the pictures were taken on a 70-200 f2.8L lens and I made use of a monopod whilst the light was low. I shoot on beaches quite a lot and I always take a large piece of plastic to sit my camera bag and anything else that I put down onto. If the plastic sheet is big enough, you can also use it to wrap everything but sand still gets in and salt still seems to coat everything.

©Neil Turner/TSL

I always try to give picture editors a lot of choice and to give them small “drop-in” pictures to use if they need a second or third image for an article. The wider the variety of magazines and papers that I work for, the more I find that the drop-in picture gets used in unusual and creative ways. Magazine clients appreciate choice.

©Neil Turner/TSL

The reason that I wanted to mention this job was the combination of the early start, the poor light, the wind, the rain and getting absolutely soaking wet wading knee deep into the sea. Maybe it was because of all of these factors that I enjoyed it – who knows.

I wrote a while ago about my addiction to Timberland boots and I was very grateful for them on this job. My jeans were wet but my feet stayed dry.

Drop-in pictures.

This one was first published in April 2009…

We are in the middle of a recession – a pretty big one at that. Sensible professional photographers all over the world are looking at their business models, talking to their clients and trying to give themselves an edge. A few are trying to compete on price which might work in some markets but will almost certainly destroy others. The rest of us are just looking at what we do and how we do it in the hope that we can raise our collective game.

One thing that I have always done is to give picture editors what they have asked for and then give them something that they might well be able to use but hadn’t asked for. Current fashions in mainstream magazine design seem to call for a range of what we call “drop-in” pictures. Small supporting details that help to break up the copy and also tell the story.

©Neil Turner

This example of a basket of wine corks came from a commission to shoot a conference which featured a full scale banquet in the very splendid surroundings of one of the Oxford Colleges. It’s not an exciting picture but it really helps to tell the story. It can be used large or small or not at all. It took a minute to shoot, another minute to edit and forty five seconds to transmit. It helped to break up a set of images of middle aged men in black suits eating by candlelight and stands out in the clients image browsing software as “different”.

©Neil Turner

Same client, very different project. This was a story about an ecologically managed office complex where they were still making improvements. A simple shot of the builder’s muddy boots helps the story along. They didn’t use this frame but it was submitted in much the same way that the image of the corks was and almost certainly had the same effect on screen.

©Neil Turner

This final example, shot for an education magazine, had an entirely different effect. Shot as a supporting image – the designer saw it and decided to base the entire layout around it. The story was about using Makaton, a relatively simple sign language, to help teach primary school pupils a broad range of things. They ran headlines and copy over the pale background in a very imaginative way – a use for a very simple picture that I had never envisaged.

To sum up: when you shoot the kind of editorial work that I do it takes no time at all to add these simple images to an edit. They will be useful in years to come as stock images and they give designers and picture editors options that they hadn’t asked for. Some people might say that I’m giving “my edge” away here but I hope that I offer clients a package deal with at least four edges. I always tell students to whom I give talks about the job that I do that they need to think beyond simply what they have been asked for. It is a given that you give the client what they asked for but I have never heard one complain that you have given them something more.

Words of wisdom

Back in 2004 I was pretty prolific. I was writing technique and opinion pieces on my website at least once a month, if not more. Times have changed, I’ve become less prolific and I have a lot less spare time on my hands too. Going back through some of the gems (and some of the cringe-making stuff) I am re-posting (and re-re-posting others) because they still represent what I think. As I say, from 2004…

It has happened again. I have had a letter from a student of photography asking me a really simple question, and I have spent so much time over-complicating the reply that it has ended up here on my web site.

“…so” said the innocuous e-mailed question “what is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you about either being a professional or about photography in general”.

Innocent question? No! I have spent ages formulating my reply, and I’m still not sure that I’ve cracked it…but, for what it’s worth, here is my reply. The answer is in the last sentence.

 There is a stage in your career where you learn so fast that your head spins at 6,400 rpm at the end of every day. Slowly your learning rate goes down, but the quality of the newly found knowledge probably goes up. Similarly, when you are a real “newbie” there seems to be a queue forming right around the block to deposit sage truths right into your knowledge bank. (I am mixing my metaphors here, but I think it make sense anyway). Once you have been around a while it takes more courage on the part of the “old hand” to dish out the advice until one day you find yourself imparting more gems of truth than you will ever receive again. Sadly I’ve been at that latter stage for so long now that I really should get myself a Gandalf beard, but I do remember a time when I did qualify for the advice soup kitchen.

In chronological order here a few of the more choice bits of advice that I received before my career got going and I hope that you are either informed or amused by them.

  • There’s no money in photography – school careers counselor 1980
  • Never shoot wider than f8 – manager of the camera shop where I was working 1983
  • There’ll always be a market for pictures of nude women – sleazy shop customer 1983
  • My career will be over long before newspapers shoot colour – local newspaper photographer 1983 (still working)
  • Nobody will offer you a place at college with a folio like this – admissions tutor 1984

Early advice and comment fell way wide of the mark. There was plenty more to be had, but it was all as bad. Once I had been accepted onto a college photography course, the quality of the advice picked up and the staff lecturers were full of wisdom, the best example of which I still remember…”Don’t listen to anything I say, but hang on every word of the visiting professionals we bring in to talk to you”. My peers and I did listen to the wise words that came our way, and we quickly worked out which were worth obeying, which needed to be stored for later and which could be safely forgotten. Some of our visiting tutors gave great practical tips…

  • Keep every receipt. Claim everything against tax and make sure you get paid.
  • The business is full of sharks. You have been warned.
  • Get a great portfolio, keep it up to date and never let it gather dust.
  • It’s good to know how to make beautiful prints, but only so you can tell your printer where he’s going wrong.
  • A distinctive style is good, just as long as it doesn’t go out of fashion.
  • Spend as much time looking at other people’s work as you do fretting about your own.
  • Only buy enough equipment to do the bread and butter jobs. Renting makes sense.

I’ve lost count of the photographers who told me which developer to process my Tri-x in, or which pro lab did the best job on transparency film. Valuable though these things can be, they aren’t going to get you noticed. The people whose advice did the most were those who took the time to look through my folio and be constructive, those who would show you their work and talk candidly about it and those who would have a drink with you and tell anecdotes. Stories give context to advice, real life situations add relevance. Photographers who can tell you which picture editor likes what and who can advise you who to talk to are saints, but some of the best advice came from my peers. People at roughly the same stage in their careers as me were always worth listening to and my respect for the whole concept of “peer learning” is huge.

These days it seems that we are constantly forging new paths and breaking new ground. The whole digital experience has taught me that there is somebody somewhere who has just worked through the problem that you are currently experiencing. Sure, you need to work out who is a reliable source and who is full of BS but the information is out there.

Now for the one piece of advice, well the best three. In reverse order they are.

  • Whilst it might seem a privilege to make your living in such a wonderful job, you still have to pay the bills.
  • Its not good enough to take good photographs most of the time, you have to take great ones all of the time to survive
  • Never take advice on photography from someone who tells you that there is only one way to do something!!!

Why dg28?

Originally posted on my pre-blog in 2009 but I still get so many people asking why that I thought I’d post it again…

Why would a photographer whose initials are NT call his website dg28? It’s a question that I get asked with amazing regularity and, for the eight years I have had the site, I have always enjoyed the mystique. I did a seminar last week for some London Strobists and the first question that I was asked was “why dg28?” Every time I tell the story it gets less exciting – unlike most anecdotes which seem to get longer, more interesting, more adventurous and even more heroic. I have finally decided to tell all. Right here, right now..

It all started back in 2000. I had a site hosted by AOL which had a domain name longer than anything you could properly remember and content which was attracting quite a bit of attention. I had written a couple of short pieces for Phil Askey at DPReview and sitting in a London bar he advised me to get some proper hosting and a snappy domain name. Good advice from someone who knows a thing or two about photography websites I thought.

A couple of days later I was doing one of my visiting lecturer appearances with some highly motivated post-graduate photojournalists telling them all about the digital process – something that I was already used to but few of them could get their heads around. It was a successful lecture and we ended up in another bar for a couple of drinks. We talked about photography, photographers and photojournalism for quite a while before the topic turned to the old chestnut of “what was the first record that you ever bought?”

I always like this one because I have a very good answer. One member of my family who has otherwise excellent taste started his collection with “Ernie and the fastest milk cart in the west” by Benny Hill – something which still embarrasses him. Being proud of my record I spoke first and told the students that I had bought Metal Guru by Marc Bolan and T-Rex at which point one of them (a young Canadian guy) said “that’s great. You bought Metal Guru and now you are our Digital Guru…” Cue light bulb moment… digitalguru would be a brilliant domain name.

The next day I got onto a registration website only to find that it was gone. As were several variations. Then I remembered Phil Askey saying that short is good so I tried variations on DG and finally settled on dg28.com because the dg bit is for digital guru and the 28 is for the day each month (the 28th) when I used to post updates.

You see what I mean, it’s not actually that interesting but it makes for a decent story – one which I hope to be telling less often in future.

Photographic policy

Just in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a photographer. I also teach a bit of photography and write about the subject too. The latest addition to my ‘portfolio career’ is what I can only describe as photographic consultancy. I have done a few corporate training sessions aimed at people who aren’t necessarily shooting pictures but who are handling them on behalf of their employer. It started off with some PR managers from a range of Universities a few years ago and has been a very small part of what I do ever since then.

This week, I did a bespoke session for an NGO talking about copyright, licensing, permissions, model release, photographing children and how to get PR pictures used in the media. All of that in less than one day meant that we didn’t get right down into the finer details. For some organisations the knowledge that they need to do more will be enough to get them going. A company wide photographic policy has to be a ‘must-have’ with the amount of images, websites, pamphlets, brochures, publications and social media in circulation (officially and otherwise).

We are in the Christmas party season and a good, well publicised policy telling staff what is and is not acceptable would be very useful. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the rest are public platforms and un-wisely placed images or video are bad news. It isn’t only about stopping bad stuff happening though; good pictures need to be licensed, captioned and stored properly. The quantity of pictures held on company systems seems to have expanded exponentially and it makes sense to have policies that make use of the good stuff whilst making that the bad, the off-message and the out of date images are never seen.

As a professional photographer it is really hard to see photographs sourced from keen amateurs, micro stock sites and crowd-sourcing as anything other than lost income but that is the way the world has gone and we need to learn to work with it. People like me, with a lot of experience in the industry, can help to form policies for small, medium and even large businesses based on our knowledge of the law, ethics and technical matters. It isn’t going to cost a fortune and any company who ignores the concept of a photography policy could end up regretting it.

Welcome to the new Blog…

I have finally done it. The pre-blog was intended to last about six months and it made it past three years. I have finally found the time to migrate a lot of the newer posts to this shiny new WordPress version with all of the bells and whistles that you’d expect from a templated site.

When I get time, I will migrate even more of the old content over to here so that it can be better indexed, more easily searched for and release some space on my main dg28 site. To those of you who have followed the blog patiently checking back from time to time I’d like to say ‘thank you for your patience’ and to let you know that the RSS feed is up and running.