Editorial

Keeping it simple

The text books will all tell you that there are a number of rules for composing a photograph (or a painting for that matter) and it isn’t a bad idea to follow these rules 90% of the time. Working on a newspaper has taught me that simple compositions often work the best and that there are several ways of keeping it simple. One of my favourites is to work with a small depth of field. The human eye will always be drawn to the subject that is in sharp focus with a simple out of focus background. Usually this will mean that the background doesn’t contribute to the image, but every so often an out of focus background forms a really important part of the image.

©Neil Turner/TSL | Southampton | August 2001

This picture of three year old boy at a nursery school learning about some creatures that had been brought into the school is a perfect illustration of how throwing the background out of focus gives an enormous boost to the composition and helps to tell the story of the image. The chameleon is in focus, but because the lens (180mm on a 70-200 f2.8 zoom) was wide open at f2.8 the boy becomes an interesting blur. The added 1.6x focal length multiplication brought no change in the depth of field but narrowed the angle down to a 35mm equivalent of 288mm. On this particularly sunny day that meant a shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second on 200 ISO.

Techniques are there to be used, altered, modified and adapted. This one should become really useful to you once you have mastered it. When you are struggling to make an interesting composition it’s always worth considering narrowing your depth of field.

Folio photo #12: Vic Reeves, Kent, May 2006

©Neil Turner/TSL, May 2006

Comedian and writer Vic Reeves (aka Jim Moir) photographed in the back garden of his home in Kent on the day that he and his wife were moving out. We had to shoot in the garden because the house was full of removal men, boxes and the controlled chaos and stress that goes with moving house. He was the complete and consummate professional and I greatly enjoyed photographing him for a feature that was about his time at school. His biography of his early life was just being published as the feature came out.

Space makes you think

In general I am a fan of tighter compositions, but there are some subject matters that are just crying out for space. A large area of foreground or background can lend an enormous amount of emphasis to an image. Placing a small subject in a large space helps you to tell a story. If you place a person in one of the bottom corners you might suggest loneliness or vulnerability, whereas placing them at the top may well imply the opposite.

©Neil Turner | Bournemouth | January 2005

This photograph of a child playing on the beach in the winter suggests that he is really enjoying his freedom. The photograph was taken from quite a height (maybe 25 feet) to isolate the sand from the confusing background and the fact that he is nearer the right of the frame suggests that he has a lot more room to head into. The oldest rule about composition – the rule of thirds – is being observed.

If the space around the child in the photograph was full of details then the impact of the composition would be lost. You would inevitably give the image more than one subject and spoil the simplicity which is the real secret of the picture. Of course if the child’s mother was in another area of the otherwise empty frame then that would give another message altogether, the space would still be making you think – but differently.

Cluttered photographs are much harder to pull off, simple images are often more effective and this image proves that simple doesn’t necessarily mean tight.

Objects of desire

One of the great joys of being a photographer is the wonderful array of gear, technology and toys we get to use on a daily basis. It is also one of the curses of being in business. If I went out and bought every new camera, every new lens, every new application and every new computer that I fancied I would have no home, no car and no life.

That doesn’t stop me looking. The CES show in the USA has thrown up lots of new “I want one of those” moments and a quick calculation says that I would make a £20,000 hole in my finances if I went and bought it all. The serious point here is that for many photography is a hobby and buying new gear is a matter of “I want it, I’m going to have it”. For professional photographers there is a simpler test which asks “will that piece of kit pay for itself, pay my bills and work how it’s supposed to work?”

I’ve said many times that a lot of my clearest thinking comes from teaching and I’m currently updating my notes for teaching some business studies to my NCTJ Photojournalism group at Up To Speed Media in Bournemouth. In many ways the formula is simple: A. you need to take the cost of purchasing the item, insuring and servicing it and divide that by B. the number of days you work in an average year. Dividing A by B gives you C. To get the final figure D. You decide how many years the item might remain useful (longer for lenses, less time for camera bodies, computers and software).  Finally, you divide C by D and that figure is the cost of that piece of kit per working day.

An example: Telephoto zoom lens

  • A. price paid is £1,400 and it adds £20 a year to your insurance and a further £30 a year to service. That’s a total of £1,450
  • B . working 3 days a week on average over a 52 week year. That’s a total of 156 days
  • C. that’s 1,450 ÷ 156 = £9.29
  • D. lenses last on average 3 years

The final figure for owning that particular lens is £3.09 per working day IF you shoot for 468 days over three years. The cost goes down if you work more and it goes up if you work less. Of course one lens isn’t much use without the rest of the kit and so you can go through your whole stash of gear and do the same calculation for each. I tend to go for 2 years for camera bodies and computers, 3 years for heavy use lenses, 5 years for light use lenses and only 1 year for software including upgrades.

How depressing was that? Let’s end on a lighter note: objects of desire… well… the Canon G1X looks very, very cool, as does the limited edition all black Fujifilm X100. Of course the Canon EOS1DX has to go on the list and I’d love to give the Nikon D4 (and a kit of lenses) a spin. The list is actually a lot longer but nobody reads this far down… do they?

Archive photo: Inner London Education Authority, April 1990

When the Conservative Government finally abolished the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) which had shared County Hall with the Greater London Council (GLC) Mrs Thatcher could finally look out of the House of Commons and not be reminded of the opposition that her party had faced from across the river. I was sent to shoot a picture of one of the last people still working at ILEA who had done an interview for the Times Educational Supplement about his work wrapping up the affairs of London’s last unitary body (until the Labour government reestablished a London Mayor’s office in May 2000).

I went equipped with a notional headline of “will the last person to leave County Hall please turn out the lights” and I was very pleased when it turned out that the desk where he was working was in a windowless room in the basement of the beautiful if tatty building. I was even more pleased when I had processed my film and had a look at my pictures.

©Neil Turner. September 1990

For the camera geeks: Nikon F3P with 85mm f1.4 Nikkor and Kodak Tri-X film

Two portraits, one poet and a fifteen year gap…

Working as a photographer you often shoot pictures of people before they become famous and then get to shoot them again once they have “made it”. I don’t know if you can really categorise a poet as ‘famous’ but the British Poet Laureate is about as famous as you can get for poetry. In 2008 and towards the end of his term as Laureate, I photographed Andrew Motion at his London home but this wasn’t my first “one-to-one” with him. Back in 1992 when he was already established as a poet, and just ahead of the publication of his biography of Phillip Larkin, I had taken pictures of him at a different London home.

©Neil Turner/Insight | London | 14th September 1992

A lot of people are a lot more accommodating and easier to photograph before they become famous. They are often friendlier, more likely to offer you a cup of tea and are generally easier to work with. That wasn’t the case with Mr Motion. Back in 1992 I had caught him on a bad day – or at least a day when he had far more pressing matters to attend to than getting his picture taken whereas fifteen and a half years later he was well used to being photographed and had developed an easy manner when dealing with people like me. It could be that I was also fifteen and a half years older and more able to handle myself but whatever the reasons, shooting him in 2008 was a lot easier.

©Neil Turner/TSL | London | 28th March 2008

Of course the technology had moved on: in 1992 I was shooting with Nikon F4S cameras and some lumpy f2.8 Nikkor zoom lenses (35-70 f2.8 and 80-200 f2.8) on black and white film. By 2008 I was onto Canon EOS1D MkII and 20D cameras with some lovely L series Canon lenses and shooting digitally. The quality difference is also very noticeable and I wouldn’t want to shoot film on a job like this again.

Archive photo: Student demo, London, November 1988

On the day that I got my very first mobile phone I was sent to photograph a student anti-loans demonstration in London. Nobody was expecting anything other than a march by angry students on a very grey day in London. Part of the way through the march there was a large break away group that decided to head for Parliament – which was not on the agreed route. By the time they had broken away and reached the west side of Westminster Bridge the Metropolitan Police already had a cordon across with vans, horses and a large number of officers. Scuffles, charges and fights ensued but the police line held and the students never made it to Parliament – less than 200 metres away.

Photo: © Neil Turner | 24 November 1988

Contrast this photo with the student riots of 2011: the police are wearing no special clothing, no high visibility jackets, no shields and there was no overt photographing or filming of the students either. No buildings were ransacked, damaged or invaded and the whole thing felt relatively civilised. It did feel weird to be able to talk to reporters, other photographers and even the picture desk on the phone in the middle of a mini-riot: my phone was a Motorola 8000s which was known as the “City Brick” because it was so big and bulky.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t have a happy ending (apart from two front pages and a ‘congratulations’ from the editor). A few years before, I had broken a toe playing cricket and during the demo I had the same toe re-broken when a police horse moved backwards and trapped me between it and a van, crushing my toe. As a freelance, I couldn’t afford any time off so I limped from job to job over the following three or four weeks to Christmas. I also had a lens damaged and wasn’t properly insured so my old 35mm f2.8 Nikkor was replaced with a newer 35mm f2.

The camera and lens combo here was a Nikon FM with a 35mm f2.8 Nikkor using Kodak Tri-X film.

Folio photo #11: Sir Paul Stephenson, February 2009

Sir Paul Stephenson at New Scotland Yard. ©Neil Turner, February 2009

This portrait was made when Sir Paul Stephenson had been in post as the Commissioner of The Metropolitan Police for less than two hours. He had been acting Commissioner but this was taken when he was actually given the job. This frame was right at the end of the session where I had already shot quite a wide variety of pictures in the time allotted. Having packed 90% of my gear away I was told that I still had a couple of minutes and so I did this picture with a press officer holding a Canon Speedlite off to my left with the head zoomed in to create this pool of light effect. Sir Paul has now left the post but this picture is staying in my folio. Shot using a Canon EOS5D MkII with a Canon 24-70 f2.8L lens and a single 580exII flash triggered by a Canon ST-E2 transmitter.