Lake District, December 2011. ©Neil Turner
The motto of Christmas 2011… and post No.50!
Wordsworth fun picture, December 2011
UK
Fun pictures – Brain & Hart…
Like most working photographers I sometimes take pictures for the sheer joy of it. Sometimes I even get my iPhone out and do fun pictures. From time to time on this blog I hope to ad a few of the silly, odd and downright comical pictures that I sometimes see.
A lot of my favourites are actually not that good as pictures; I am often amused by wordplay in pictures – like this one…
©Neil Turner, October 2011
Folio photo #06: 10 Downing Street, November 2001.
©Neil Turner/TSL November 2001
Children from a Leicestershire nursery school try to hand in their petition against closure to No.10 Downing Street.
This was a very ordinary story about yet another petition being handed in at No.10 which became extraordinary when the Police Officer on duty allowed the two children to try to knock on the door and then stood back and laughed as they kept trying.
It was a very cute moment on a day where the world’s media were not watching and the reflection of the officer in the shiny black door makes this a favourite picture of mine. They never reached the door knocker and so the officer eventually helped them out by knocking it for them.
…and we’re off
©Neil Turner, March 2010
The sub heading of this blog is “me writing about photography because I want to” and that’s the truth. Post number 47 and it’s the start of month two.
2012 is underway and I’m planning to do quite a lot of blogging as the year goes by. I’m going to talk about education, press photography, photojournalism, light, technology, workflow, software, cameras and just about anything else that I come across in the day job.
If you read the blog and come up with any questions for me please let me have them. In the mean time, let’s hope that 2012 serves us all well.
Christmas at f1.4
Main Street, Hawkshead Village. ©Neil Turner
Whilst enjoying a few days away with the whole family in the Lake District over the holidays I shot a few pictures for my own pleasure and for the family album. For no other reason than “I wanted to” most of them were taken at the maximum aperture that the lens could manage – which, given that I mostly used a 50mm f1.4, was f1.4!!! It was great to be away from the big city for a while and take in the countryside and wander through some small towns and villages.
This was taken in Hawkshead Village – a large part of which was refreshingly closed…
Angry teacher portrait
©Neil Turner/TSL, April 2005
Back in April 2005 The TES had a great article written by a newly qualified teacher about how to avoid getting angry with pupils at an inner-city secondary school. It was clearly written from personal experience by a dedicated and keen young teacher working at a relatively tough school. He wanted to teach, he wanted to be good at it and he was working hard to achieve his goals.
When I arrived at the school it was the end of the day and both of us were a bit tired. We talked about how to illustrate the story and we decided that it would be great fun and have the desired amount of impact if he just stood there and yelled at me: full-on screaming. It was loud and, as it turned out, great therapy for him. All of the pent up emotion from the day came out is one long, loud and hilarious stream.
On my way home there was, coincidentally, a radio programme about anger management. None of the experts mentioned standing in an almost empty room screaming at a photographer while you had your picture taken. I couldn’t help thinking that they had missed out of an important therapy!
There’s nothing especially clever about the picture – a slightly desaturated image, lit simply an composed carefully but it had enormous impact on the page thanks to some brave and clever design.
Folio photo #05: CEO portrait with tungsten light, August 2006
©Neil Turner/TSL, August 2006
In 2006 Ian Smith was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Oracle the software company based in the City of London. This business portrait was actually taken for the Times higher Education Supplement who were running a piece about Oracle’s connections with the education industry. The portrait itself was shot in under two minutes but I had set up with a ‘stand-in’ who posed for some test pictures for fifteen minutes before Mr Smith was available.
The really interesting thing about this portrait is that it was shot with deliberately mixed lighting: tungsten gelled flash on the subject and daylight behind with the camera on a custom white balance which was only concerned with the flash. I use this set of pictures a lot when I am teaching my location lighting seminars.
Waiting for the light, June 2011
There’s good light, there’s bad light and there is the right light. Sometimes the right light isn’t the good light and so on and so on…
Beautiful pool of light in the Jubilee Place shopping mall at Canary Wharf. © Neil Turner
One day earlier this year I was waiting for the right light to shoot a picture of crowded shopping mall when the ‘good light’ turned up. I took a picture that the client had no use for but it amused me and kept me interested. Pools of ambient light in just the right place happen on the right day, in the right place at the right time – if the weather is right. The rest of the time, if your patience isn’t good enough or the parking meter is running out you have to shoot with whatever is there or provide your own light.
I have enough patience to get the shot that the client asked for and I had enough spare time to wait for someone to walk through this shot. I have twenty variations on it with sixteen different people walking through but I like the way that this man looks.
Neil Turner Photographer 