education

Some posts are “a bit Marmite”…

When I started to migrate my old blog over to WordPress I also began to watch the site statistics that are there to help you understand what kind of content on your blog is popular. Obviously announcing new posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn helps but the figures for days when you don’t do any plugging probably tell you more about what people search for and find.

Having shifted so many old postings (anything listed before December 8th 2011) I have been watching to see whether the ‘old’ stuff gets many viewings. The answer, sadly, is no. More interestingly, blog posts that aren’t about specific photographs don’t get a lot of viewings either.

British readers of this blog will be familiar with the concept of something being “a bit like Marmite” (or Vegimite if your are from the Antipodes). It means something you either love or hate, nobody is indifferent to it.

Drawing comparisons between a savoury spread and blog posts is probably a bit tenuous but I still like the idea! I think that there is some interesting material back there so I’ve decided to go through the viewing figures and publish links to some of my favourite and your least favourite oldies.

That’s half a dozen to be getting along with. I goes that they share a certain ‘wordiness’ but they are the kind of things that I want to to talk about and so I hope you give one or two of them a go.

Interviewing for September 2012 NCTJ Photojournalism course

It only seems like a few weeks ago that I was writing about how excited I was about being involved with the development of a new photojournalism course here in Bournemouth. It was actually well over a year ago and since then we have completed one cycle of the six month course and we are over half way through a second one. The course has already evolved and we are now in the process of recruiting people for the next course which begins in September 2012.

Photo of me playing the 'role' of a confused and lost motorist during a creative flash workshop. January 2012

The idea of the course is a simple one: to train people who already have a decent standard of photography to a level where they can start or improve their careers as editorial photographers. We cover news, features, portraiture, sport and several other sub-genres of photography as well as teaching about workflow, media law, video, caption writing and story development. At the end of the course, and all being well, our students have an NCTJ Preliminary Certificate in Photojournalism as well as a lot of business studies and market knowledge. It isn’t an easy course and it isn’t particularly cheap but it is highly focused on becoming a freelance photographer in today’s rapidly changing market place.

My own involvement averages out to one day per week during which I will bring all of my knowledge and experience into play as well as getting some of my contacts to come along to the course and give seminars and talks.

The course is run by Up To Speed Journalism, based in their offices at The Bournemouth Echo and is divided into two terms – one of which is very much theory and classroom based and the other is all about shooting portfolio pictures and arranging work placements. If you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch with Tom Hill at thill@uptospeedjournalism.com

Case studies on my website

When I went freelance again I decided to add a few case studies on my website so that prospective clients could see the kind of work that I do in greeter detail than they could on my folio pages. It’s going to be time to post some new ones soon and the first to be retired will be the oldest one: a case study about a mews feature shot for the TES in Finland.

The Brief:

Go go to Helsinki for two days with a reporter and try to establish why the Finnish education system consistently comes top of the European leagues for pupil achievement by interviewing various politicians, educators and educationalists and by visiting as many schools and institutions as we could.

Delivery:

This assignment was shot whilst I was a staff photographer working for the TES and my brief was to shoot some pictures to accompany this major feature but also to gather as much stock imagery for future stories relating to Finland and Scandinavia as possible. The final edit was over 200 images and was delivered in stages during and immediately after the trip.

See the rest here

Archive photo: Special needs school, March 1990

Following on from the March 1990 Conductive Education picture that I posted earlier in the week I remembered another special needs picture that I shot a short while later. As it turns out, exactly four weeks later. This shot isn’t as technically sound or as well composed as the previous picture but it does mean a lot to me – because there is a real story to go with it.

© Neil Turner | 30 March 1990 | Southampton

This boy had a target of learning to do up his own zip and was determined to succeed for the camera. I was touched by him and his determination and so I stayed with him whilst he kept trying. After nearly ten minutes he succeeded and I was very nearly in tears. One of the staff had been watching and she was in tears. I have never forgotten that moment.

For the geeks out there, the camera was a Nikon F3P, the lens was a 24mm f2 Nikkor and it was shot on Kodak Tri-X film.

Education… over on EPUK…

I write a lot for other websites and towards the end of last year the Editor of the Editorial Photographers UK site asked me to write something about photography education. It started like this:

What price your dream?

In Britain a staggering 1600 photography courses will be touting for students in 2012. Neil Turner, professional photographer and tutor on a new photojournalism course that starts in Bournemouth this month, asks whether enough of these courses actually prepare students for the harsh realities of professional photography today.

If you get a dozen professional photographers together and ask them about the state, standard and suitability of photographic education in this country you’ll get two dozen anecdotes about graduates who don’t know their arse from their f-stop, and a consensus that higher education is failing the students and the industry. Is this true? Are we missing something, or is the system getting it wrong big-time?

If you’d like to read the rest, you can go to THE EPUK WEBSITE

What they don’t teach you in college

This post was originally written in 2003. Things, sadly, haven’t really changed and so I thought that it deserved yet another airing.

For better or for worse, the vast majority of people entering the photographic profession are coming from college courses. I have no problem with that, I came from one myself and so did a lot of my favourite photographers. But…

I’ve been a working photographer since 1986 and based on a few things I have picked up since then I have come up with a list of things that they should have taught us that were not on the syllabus. A whole range of vital skills that go a long way to marking out the complete professional from the aspiring “not there yet”.

Obviously when it comes to choosing which lens to use, or selecting backgrounds and props – only experience and familiarity with your kit and brief will do, and colleges are good at telling their students that. There are, however, some skills that are never even mentioned that are vital.

  • People skills: The ability to handle anyone that you are either photographing, who have influence over those being photographed or who are just getting in the way.
  • More people skills: You need to be able to charm the ‘jobsworth’ security man and persuade the reluctant PR and to do it all without breaking into a fit of temper until such times as all else has failed and you have no other option
  • Even more people skills: As a news photographer you need to be able to communicate with anyone from a starving refugee to a pampered celebrity in a meaningful and constructive way – often on the same day! You have to get them to trust you, to do what you want them to do and achieve all of this with dignity and respect.
  • Advanced people skills: As a portraitist you have to have the ability to talk to absolutely anyone and to keep the conversation going at a light but interesting level whilst setting up equipment, making vital technical decisions and shooting the job.
  • Extended people skills: You need to have a sense of your own place in the scheme of things. It’s no use throwing a prima donna tantrum if you are not getting what you want and are never going to get it. It gets even worse when the person you are arguing with is a close personal friend of the editor. Know when to give in, to make another plan and get your shot anyway.

You are probably getting my drift by now. Once you have acquired all of the technical skills and bought all of the kit that you need all that’s required is to learn how to conduct yourself. I often refer to the photographer as the “Social Chameleon”, changing colours and attitude to suit their surroundings. This should be both physical – dressing appropriately so as not antagonize the people that you are dealing with, and mental – adopting the right attitude – be it meek or aggressive, as friendly or confrontational as the situation requires.

Maybe photographers should all adopt some of the techniques used by the best sales people and mix them with skills more common in the diplomatic service. I have watched charity workers running soup kitchens and marvelled at their ability to be both understanding and firm, and I have watched police officers and been stunned by the way that they get the information that they want whilst conducting an otherwise friendly conversation.

My biggest tip on this subject is to find some common ground with whoever you are talking to and work it. It might be sport, it might be the weather or the journey that you both had to get where you have met. If I’m in someone’s home I will often talk about a piece of art or furniture on display or their pet cat or dog. It doesn’t matter what you chat about, you are chatting and barriers are coming down. Avoid contentious subjects unless you are really sure of yourself.

So there you are, what they don’t teach you in college is how to handle people. It’s not just a skill needed by photographers – it’s a life skill. I think that’s why a lot of the greatest photographers have come from other careers where they have learned about people and use those skills in their new profession.

Six feet up is bad?
©Neil Turner, October 2000. Oxford.

©Neil Turner, October 2000. Oxford.

This was first published in the Autumn of 2000 on the DP Review website as a follow-up to a review I did of the original Canon G1 Powershot

It is very easy to hold the camera to your eye and take a picture. Good photography requires us all to think about where we are taking the picture from as well as what we are taking. The best photographs are made when the photographer chooses a vantage point to suit the subject, and it is surprising how few subjects are suited by the height of a human standing at their full five to six feet. This is compounded by the fact that when someone views the image they will see pretty much what they themselves would have taken because they haven’t been told about bending your knees or climbing a ladder to shoot better pictures.

It is no accident that many of the world’s best photographers wear denims most of the time, and I take pride in the fact that I spend so much of my time kneeling that I have “housemaids knee”. Sooner or later I will end up flat on my face or up on a chair to give something extra to a composition – namely a point of view that the person looking at the image would not have seen themself.

This image was shot in the beautiful University City of Oxford on a Canon G1 using the swivel LCD to get the camera at ground level without having to lie in the dirt myself. The lens was less that two inches from the cobble stones and this ultra low angle gives the image a dynamic quality that would have been missing had I been standing at my full five foot ten inches. The photograph is different from most pictures taken of this tourist magnet and I’m sure that my antics were the reason for the puzzled look on the passer by’s face.

My point is that when you get your camera out think about the height of the lens. If you end up shooting from a standing position, well that’s OK – but I will lay good money that 90% of pictures are better when taken from below four feet or over seven.

Developing a new course

Several months ago I had a conversation with a man called Tom Hill who runs a private journalism school called Up To Speed Journalism in my home town of Bournemouth. We were looking at the options of expanding the range of courses on offer to include one for news photographers. A few weeks ago we started looking very seriously at the idea and Tom has now decided to start accepting applications for the first course which runs from January 2011.

I am delighted to have been involved in the development of the course and I will be teaching some of the elements of the course. The big tasks now are to attract the right students and to make sure that we bring the industry along with us at a time when there are very few jobs out there for new entrants to the profession. The idea is simple: to give those who come on the course the information, skills and techniques that they will need to start out on their careers as news photographers. It’s all very exciting and if you want to know more, go to the Up To Speed website where there is quite a bit of information and where you can ask questions about the course.