canon

BMX Rider: Contact Sheet
©Neil Turner. Ringwood, Hampshire. 2011

©Neil Turner. Ringwood, Hampshire. 2011

This was a set of pictures shot on location as part of a “how to do it” technique piece for Photography Monthly magazine. The idea was simple – use flash to make something very cool from some sort of active sport. I was put in contact with the tier, Keegan Walker, through a young photographer that assists me from time to time on commercial shoots and we arranged to shoot at the skatepark near where they both live which is about ten miles from my own home.

I used a couple of Canon EOS5D MkII cameras with 16-35 f2.8L, 24-70 f2.8L and 70-200 f2.8L IS lenses as well as the excellent Elinchrom Ranger Quadra flash system supplemented by a couple of Canon 580exII Speedlights with Elinchrom Skyport receivers triggering them. There were plenty of clamps, gels and light modifiers in use too – including my rather lovely modified beauty dish and the equally great Chimera 24″ x 32″ soft box.

The sky at dusk is my favourite backdrop for all kinds of shoots and the May evening sky provided us with something special to work with. Keegan is pretty good at what he does and I had to ask him several times to actually get less height from the ramps so that my pictures looked better! Two hours on a nice evening messing around and shooting pictures is a pretty good way to make a living. The unfortunate part of this particular commission was that I had to write the words that described exactly what I had done and how I had done it. One day I will get around to reproducing the whole piece for you.

Folio photo #15: Thoughtful businessman, London, April 2008

©Neil Turner/TSL. London, April 2008

This portrait of Swedish businessman Anders Hultin was taken during an interview for The Times Educational Supplement. He worked for a Swedish company Kunskapsskolan who were working in the UK and are hoping to take control of two Academies in the London Borough of Richmond-Upon-Thames.

The interview took place in a small office in west London and, although his English was first class, he took time to consider the answer to each question allowing me to get a great range of thoughtful expressions from just about every angle. I chose this profile frame because I liked the blue background and its simplicity. All of the other angles had complex and intrusive backdrops which I used a range of lighting styles to hide. The available light was very good for a short period and so this is one of a dozen pictures taken without flash.

When I chose this picture for my portfolio it was one of three business style portraits that all had strong blue backgrounds. I like to pace the pictures in my folio and by having a small group of images with a theme it seems to give them more strength and help with the pacing of the selection.

Geek stuff: The whole shoot was done with two Canon EOS1D MkII cameras and my trusty set of three L series Canon zooms: 16-35 f2.8, 24-70 f2.8 and 70-200 f2.8.

Portrait: Marsha Hunt, London, 2005

©Neil Turner/TSL, October 2005. London

Marsha Hunt is an actress, writer and model who shot to fame in 1969 when she was appearing in the musical “Hair”. She has a child with Mick Jagger and was famously photographed naked by Lord Lichfield. In the early part of the new century she had breast cancer and had a mastectomy. Her treatment became a documentary and she was photographed once more by Lord Lichfield. This set of pictures were taken for a feature in the TES Friday Magazine about her life and her memories of her own education at the London home of a close friend of hers.

This portrait was a lesson in letting the subject run the show. Marsha was lovely, as was our host. They were very old friends and chatted most of the way through the session. The wonderful thing was that she knew exactly when and how to look at me and at the camera. Models are good at this and actors, for my money, are better. It would seem that when someone has been successful as both an actor and a model they are better still. Some people are ultimately very comfortable in front of the camera and Marsha Hunt is in the top few percent of them. The shoot lasted a lot longer than it needed to – we chatted about all sorts of things and drank some rather good coffee too. It was a good day.

Geek stuff: In common with just about every other picture shot by me at the time, I was using a pair of Canon EOS1D MkII cameras with 16-35 f2.8L, 24-70 f2.8L and 70-200 f2.8L IS lenses. The lighting was Lumedyne Signature series packs and heads mixed with a fair amount of ambient light.

Reina Lewis – The contact sheet, June 2006

One of my favourite sets of portraits that I ever made was of a lady by the name of Reina Lewis who had just been appointed to a new post at The London College of Fashion to become Professor of Cultural Studies. The pictures were shot at her home and I could see when I got there that she was definitely aware of how important some good pictures in the right newspaper could be. We shot a range of images from some tight head and shoulders against a plain wall to some full-length sitting ones in one of the elegant chairs that she had.

©Neil Turner/TSL. London, June 2006.

All of the pictures that you see here are entirely uncropped. They were shot on a pair of Canon EOS1D MkII cameras with 24-70 f2.8L and 70-200 f2.8L lenses and lit using a single Lumedyne Signature series flash kit with a 24×32 inch Chimera soft box. The Canon CR2 RAW files were converted using Adobe Camera RAW in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Think Tank Hydrophobia

Ever since I managed to soak one of my Canon EOS5D MkII cameras at an outdoor event last summer where it rained hard and non-stop I have been meaning to get my hands on a Think Tank Hydrophobia rain cover. I finally managed to get around to it just as one of the longest dry spells (work and weather) hit but I have finally given it a run out. The job actually meant using a tripod quite a lot and, whilst the Hydrophobia wasn’t actually designed for this, it all worked out well.

As predicted, I got a proper soaking (cold, wet rain) and I got very cold but my camera stayed dry and kept on working. The version that I have is designed to be used with a 70-200 f2.8 sized lens and it has small sleeves for your hands to fit inside the cover. There’s an option to have a flash unit attached too on the version that I have and so this is a very well designed piece of kit.

A word of caution

Even the best designed kit has a few features that you need to be aware of. The Hydrophobia does a great job and it worked flawlessly but I’d love to see a big sign included in the package telling you to have a few practice goes at fitting the cover before trying to use it on a job in front of clients and/or other photographers. Fitting it for the first time was a fairly frustrating process. Happily I had the sense (too many bad days with soft boxes and tents) to try it first in the warm and dry confines of my kitchen. The second time was in the car and it was actually my third go at fitting the cover when I had to do it in the dark and the rain in front of others. I was still a little ham-fisted but fitting it for the fourth time today so that I had a few pictures to accompany this piece was a (relative) breeze. Practice does indeed make perfect.

What else you can actually say about a piece of kit that is essentially designed to keep your gear dry than “it kept my gear dry” is beyond me. If it came in a tin, it would do exactly what it said on that tin!

So… marks out of ten? For doing its job it gets 10 but for ease of use I’d give it a 5 out of the packaging rising to 7 after four uses and an even higher mark with lots of practice.

Training on Weymouth beach – an unusual portrait

Sometimes pictures come together without much effort and sometimes you almost kill yourself trying to get something just that little bit special. This portrait of a young athlete who was competing in the sport of Biathle for Great Britain at a junior level whilst studying at a college in Weymouth, Dorset definitely came along after a not insignificant struggle. Nothing to do with the subject – he was cooperative, willing and full of energy – I just tried to get pictures that didn’t seem to want to come off.

©Neil Turner/TSL. Weymouth Dorset, December 2007.

This frame was shot on a 16-35 f2.8L lens at its widest focal length on a Canon EOS1D MkII at 1/250th of a second at f22 and 200 ISO. I was using every joule of power from a Lumedyne Signature Series flash kit with no umbrella or soft box and I just had the power to get this. I have always liked the photo and I was always sad that the paper didn’t use this frame.

I guess that this picture is further proof that I love shooting beaches – especially Dorset beaches!

Fun picture – pigeons checking each other out, Bournemouth

©Neil Turner. February 2012. Bournemouth

I don’t know if spring is in the air but these two pigeons outside a supermarket in Dorset this morning look as if they were rehearsing for Valentines Day next week.

College Principal – the “contact sheet”

Within two hours of posting a portrait of College Principal Jane Rapley at Central St Martins on this blog, I’d had four emails asking to see the rest of the shoot. I can’t do that but I can share the rest of the edit.

©Neil Turner/TSL. London, July 2006

I’m not going to repeat everything that I wrote on the original blog posting but you can see that the image I selected to feature was very much the “odd one out”. I have always thought that this set represented a good selection of portraits from a single session but looking back five and a half years on I have realised how many uprights there are and how few horizontal compositions. I’d like to think that was because I knew that the newspaper wanted uprights but I’m not sure that’s the case. Anyway, to those of you who wanted to see this selection… I hope that you like them!