Editorial

Another look at editing on iOS mobile devices

Back in February 2018 I concluded that I had failed to develop a decent workflow for the iPad or iPhone and that if I had the time I’d come back and continue with the quest. Since then I’ve occasionally used versions of my previous workflow and have dabbled with new options as they have come to my attention. Some six and a half years later I bring good news if you shoot with Canon and don’t mind paying for useful applications on subscription.

With the help of Canon and Adobe I think that I have now got a usable and developing workflow for importing, editing, captioning and transmitting images from my iPhone. All of this is currently only possible on my phone because my iPad is a bit out of date and cannot load one of the key applications. Apple announced a new version of the iPad Mini this week which prompted me to post this update.

Let’s talk about what has changed to make me so positive about what’s now possible:

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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.

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Less is more… until it isn’t

Every photographer and every artist you will ever meet has opinions about composition. A mere thirty-eight years into my career and some forty-six years after picking up a decent camera for the first time I have some too. 

The other day I was involved in a very interesting conversation that was partly triggered by the recent portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo. The man that I had photographed and with whom I was chatting had a wonderful knowledge of painted and photographic portraits going back hundreds of years and we discussed what used to be included in portraits for symbolic reasons and what we now exclude from them for aesthetic ones. I’m sure that it has been around for years and has been claimed by many others but I came up with a phrase that sums up my approach to composing my work… 

Less is more… until it isn’t.

In almost all creative pursuits end results that appear to be simple have an elegance and a beauty that appeals to most people without them necessarily knowing (or caring) why. To create something complex that has impact takes a very different and very real skill.

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That brief…
PE lesson photograph from a school prospectus shoot in Hampshire. ©Neil Turner

I’ve called this post “that brief” because I will never forget an email that came to me from a regular client who simply gave me a name, address, date and time and the words “go do your thing”. That was pretty flattering – they trusted me and were comfortable with how I had worked for them before. I’ll never forget that brief but most of the time I think that I’d prefer a bit more to go on.

Every photograph that I have ever taken was dictated by things that can be controlled and things that can’t. The client’s brief is something that should be able to be negotiated and should always be realistic. In the “contact” section on my main website I say the following:

Commissioning a professional photographer can be a daunting business. My philosophy has always been to make it as painless and as uncomplicated as possible. I believe that this is best achieved by a proper dialogue between photographer and client. We both want the same thing – a set of pictures that achieve and even exceed their purpose. In my experience, the better defined that purpose is, the easier it is to get the photographs that the client needs.

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Light modifiers
When this was shot this was my favourite type of catchlight. The shoot through translucent umbrella partnered with an oblong light panel to reflect a bit of light back in. I have changed my mind a hundred times since then.

“What is your favourite light modifier?” A question from a photographer who has followed my blogs over the last twenty-plus years got me thinking. Spoiler alert – I probably don’t have a favourite but I do have a few that I use all of the time.

First things first, let’s define “light modifier”. As part of their explanation of modifier Wikipedia describes it as the following:

Tools or accessories employed in photography and videography to shape, control, or direct light emitted from a light source. These modifiers serve to alter the quality, direction, and intensity of light, thereby enabling photographers and videographers to achieve specific effects or moods in their images. Light modifiers come in various categories and types, each with its own unique characteristics and applications.

Seems simple enough but when you start to examine those different categories and types life can get pretty confusing. Thinking about it I realised just how many different soft boxes, umbrellas, reflectors, dishes and domes I own. In fact, the inventory doesn’t even end there because there are so many sub-sets and shapes that it could all get the tiniest bit confusing for me if I hadn’t used each and every one of them so often over the last forty or so years. The fact that I have sold a few here and there and thrown and given so many more just adds to my knowledge of what does and doesn’t work for me and the work that I do – which in itself changes over time.

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Juxtapose and exaggerate
Not the original note to self but I have added it to a lens wrap for old time’s sake

A few days ago I was at an event in Manchester run by Canon UK. While I was chatting with one of the many talented young photographers that they had invited I remembered something about my early career that I am pretty sure helped me more than I could have known at the time.

In the later 1980s and early 1990s I had a light grey Domke F1X camera bag. I loved that bag and I loved working from it. I also loved that every time I lifted the top flap there were two words written there with a marker pen:

  • Juxtapose
  • Exaggerate

They were written there because the legendary photographer Terence Donovan gave a talk at my college in either 1985 or 1986. When asked by one of my classmates about taking better pictures, he explained that by juxtaposing our subjects with backgrounds, secondary subjects and other compositional elements we could give our pictures a depth that told stories more effectively. By exaggerating things such as light, angles, perspective or even the contents of our images we could, again, tell those stories in different and possibly better ways. I scribbled down those two words in my almost brand new Filofax, underlining both multiple times.

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One month in with the Canon EL5 flash
The oldie but goodie 600 EXII RT on the left meets the EL5 on the right.

Many months ago I wrote about my experiences with the top-of-the-range Canon EL1 flash. It was heavy, bulky and expensive but in almost every other way I found it to be very, very good. At the time there was a rumour of a smaller, lighter and cheaper alternative coming from Canon but it took a while to come out and a good deal longer for me to get my hands on not just one but two of them.

EL1 versus 600 EXII RT wasn’t really a great comparison and I found myself matching the big Canon flash against my Elinchrom One which was only ever going to be a contest when using them on stands and with light modifiers because there really isn’t much out there that can be compared to the EL1. The EL5, on the other hand, is a much more direct match for the older 600 EXII. They are much the same size (the EL5 is fatter at the head and I’ll cover that in a bit) and the weight difference isn’t too great with the 600 EXII coming in a 555g with 4 x AA Eneloop batteries loaded and the EL5 tipping our kitchen scales at 601g complete with the same LP-EL battery that was so impressive in the EL1. Both work perfectly with my much-loved ST-E10 speedlite transmitters and that’s where the similarities end.

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Good light and the click-bait rabbit hole
An old favourite: Flash plus ambient – my favourite way to shoot. © Photo Neil Turner, May 2011

OK, I admit it – when the mood takes me I follow links on the internet and find myself down some pretty odd/infuriating/entertaining rabbit holes. The other day I was suckered-in by a full-on click-bait link on Facebook with the oh-so-inviting headline “Is this the biggest lie in photography?” It started out saying that photographers who believe that expensive lights give better light than cheap ones aren’t correct. It started out with all the hallmarks of something controversial but quickly fizzled out but not before I had started to compose a bit of a rant of a comment to add to the growing conversation on the Facebook page from a few others who hadn’t bothered to read to the end before getting on their hobby horses either.

Five minutes later, and having read the whole thing, I stopped, copied what I had agonised over writing, and pasted it into a note on my computer with the idea of doing exactly what I’m doing now; turn that rant into a blog post featuring better reasoning and more detail.

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