photojournalism

Eight days in Rome and the South Caucasus
St Peter’s Basilica with three Cardinals and no crowds ahead of an Ecumenical Prayer Vigil in St Peter’s Square. Photo: Neil Turner for Lambeth Palace. 30 September 2023

A couple of days ago I returned from a bit of whirlwind tour to Rome, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia accompanying The Archbishop of Canterbury and his team on a trip where they met politicians, faith leaders, members of the Anglican Communion, internally displaced persons and refugees across those four different countries in a mere eight days. Lots of flights (six in total), lots of being driven around and a few opportunities to shoot meaningful images.

Inevitably a large percentage of my pictures were just recording who met who in which grand surroundings they happened to be in. We met His Holiness Pope Francis at The Vatican and then witnessed two very grand occasions in St Peter’s Square. We travelled to Baku in Azerbaijan where several meetings took place including one at the British Ambassador’s residence with a range of faith leaders. From there to Tbilisi in Georgia and a packed couple of days. The first was meetings with Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican leaders as well as visiting the Peace Cathedral with its adjoining Church, Synagogue and Mosque before going to Gori and the administrative boundary line between South Ossetia and the rest of Georgia.

(more…)

AI imaging for beginners
Should we be worried?

A few years ago I shot a nice picture of two of the younger members of the family jumping over small waves at the seaside. It’s a lovely picture showing the innocence and joy of youth and, though I say so myself, the photograph was perfectly timed with both children in the air at the same time. I guess that they would have been about four years old when it was taken and we have a print of it framed in the house. Fast-forward another three or four years and one of the kids in the picture asked me if it had been Photoshopped. I was taken aback and reminded him that this is what I do for a living; taking good photographs without the need to resort to fabrication. It then struck me that they have lived all of their lives in a world where pretty much every image they see is subjected to some sort of manipulation and that their trust in the accuracy of literally anything is pretty limited.

(more…)

Pile it high and sell it cheap? Please don’t.
Glenda Jackson, Labour Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate. 25 September 1991. Photo: Neil Turner

On the day that an image library licensed one of my historic pictures for just a little under $6 to a well known publisher for use in print and on-line in perpetuity I have been thinking about the value of photography.

We all take pictures on our phones on a daily basis. It’s easy, it’s somewhere between cheap and free and because of that very few of us truly value many pictures. We all have sentimental and meaningful photographs that we have taken and those that have been shot of and with us but do they even have a monetary value? Rarely.

The ability of pictures to influence and even directly alter our mood or play with our aesthetic sensibilities and emotional states is inarguable. It should be those things that make the images that we produce, view and consume on an industrial scale that that give them their true value. I’ve made a living, a pretty decent living, for almost thirty-seven years from photography and I have been lucky enough to find clients (and an employer) who largely understand what the right pictures are actually worth. I’ve been commissioned to shoot many interesting, funny, sad, dramatic, terrifying and downright mundane things and I hope that it is my ability to produce the most eye-catching, informative and memorable images from them that has a real value.

(more…)

Live pictures
This photograph of The Most Revd and Rt Hon Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury walking from Lambeth Palace to Westminster Abbey accompanied by another Archbishop and seven Bishops taking part in the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III was transmitted from the camera as I walked backwards over Lambeth Bridge. ©Neil Turner. 06 May 2023

Before I ask you to imagine a scene, I’d like to point out that (for the avoidance of any doubt) this has never actually happened. There’s a big group of clients and potential clients staging a demo with placards and a megaphone with the chant

“What do we want?”

“Great pictures!”

“When do we want them?”

“As fast as the technology will allow!”

News and sports photographers are all very well versed in supplying pictures really quickly. These days that mostly means transmitting directly from the camera or, as a fall back, moving images via their smartphone or tablet or even sticking cards into a laptop every few minutes during the event to upload from there. I’ve talked a lot about FTP from the camera and have even made a couple of tutorial videos about exactly how to do it with the various Canon cameras that I’ve used. Obviously the concept is exactly the same with Sony and Nikon as well as some of the latest Fujifilm bodies.

(more…)

Paying it forward

I don’t actually remember the first time that I heard the phrase “pay it forward” but I know that it accurately summed-up something that was there in my mind from quite a young age. I had two parents who both loved to explain how to do things and both of them took enormous pleasure in “paying it forward”. Both of my older brothers either consciously or subconsciously echoed our parents attitudes as well. In fact, if you look around, it’s happening all of the time and it is to be appreciated and celebrated.

I can remember watching a film actually called Pay It Forward which came out in 2000 and that, despite it’s rather cheesy nature, it definitely helped to put a name to what I had already been doing for many years.

(more…)

Thirty-plus year old memory
Sir John Cassels – Chair of a Government Inquiry into post-sixteen education. Photographed at his home in south-west London. May 1991. Photo: ©Neil Turner

When I published this May 1991 portrait on my Instagram feed a couple of years ago I was shocked by the clarity of my memories of shooting it. A year or so after publishing it I was giving a talk to a wonderful group of people at a camera club who had invited me to come and show some work and tell some anecdotes and, once again, I remembered so much detail about the day and the pictures. The power of still images to evoke a time and a place is a wonderful thing. I thought that it would be good to share those memories again here and this is what I wrote underneath the post on Instagram:

(more…)

Looking forward to 2022
Derwentwater, Christmas Eve 2021 © Neil Turner

After another year of COVID-19 restrictions and client hesitancy I just wanted to wish everyone a merry Christmas and to wish you all a happy, creative and prosperous new year.

I doubt that it has been easy for any of us so be safe, spend time with family and let’s all make sure that 2022 is better than either 2020 or 2021.

Adobe Camera RAW 14

I am a firm believer in keeping up with technology, learning new things and generally being ‘up-to-date’. The one thing that regularly makes me question that philosophy is the changes that Adobe make on a regular basis to their Camera RAW plug-in for Photoshop. This isn’t going to be my first blog post about what they’ve changed and how it effects my workflow. I was unhappy about what they did in Version 12.3 (but I got over it). I was pretty pleased with Version 13.0 and remained so throughout its lifespan. Now that I have had some time to digest what Version 14.0 has to offer I thought that I’d come back and share my impressions.

Before I get into this remarkably short post I’d like to mention one of the relevant things that I have learned over the years – to avoid commenting on change until I have given it a chance to grow on me.

(more…)