work

Trying new things
The Sarum Lights exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral. November 2025. © Neil Turner

Whilst doodling around on the internet the other day I was looking at a few reels on Instagram. Now it probably won’t come as much of a surprise that that my Instagram feed is filled up with great photographers and so it will equally make sense that the all-powerful algorithm serves me up photography related content most of the time. One of the reels was from a relatively young and relatively inexperienced photographer proclaiming that he had discovered a new technique. It went on to show a technique that is, to me, as old as the hills. Dragging the shutter to create a deliberate blur.

I was just about to type something that gently and constructively pointed out that this wasn’t anything new and that an old hand like me rarely (if ever) sees anything that’s truly new when I decided to see what other viewers of the reel had commented first. Sure enough, there was a small number of constructive and supportive comments but the vast majority of them were not even remotely constructive and way too many were downright dismissive. I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I hadn’t been that person – the one who sought to boost their own sense of self-importance by squashing the joy and enthusiasm of someone who had discovered a potentially exciting technique that was new to them.

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RAMS for Photographers: Health and Safety Essentials
What would the risk assessment look like for this legal agricultural stubble burn? ©Neil Turner. August 1992

I doubt that I am being remotely controversial when I say that no photographer wants to do more paperwork than is absolutely necessary. Time spent filling out forms, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s feels wrong – especially when your work and your passion is all about the creative process.

The regularity with which I have to complete RAMS (Risk Assessment and Method Statement) forms and declarations has grown. Conversations with colleagues appear to confirm that this is happening right across the photography industry.

During my first spell as freelance photographer (1986-1994) most of my work was editorial and when I did one of the few advertising and corporate jobs that I was offered, the subject of RAMS was never mentioned. Back then nobody asked about public liabilities insurance either.

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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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High ISO fun and games
Some quick tests using different workflows with a low light high-ISO image. ©Neil Turner October 2023

For a very long time I have been an advocate of shooting RAW files and processing them through Adobe Camera RAW. Recently I have been shooting a lot of pictures in dark spaces with poor light and have been regularly using ISOs of 6400 and above. What has shocked me is that my normal workflows have been producing results that I find a bit grainy – even with the superb high-ISO capabilities of the latest Canon R series cameras.

Having edited some of the live jpegs transmitted during events it has become apparent to me that I need to get stuck into some of the latest noise reduction options as well as having a better look at what in-camera processing can do.

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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.

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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.

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No ‘perfect pictures’ here
©Neil Turner. Office worker on a lunch break. October 2008

A question for my fellow photographers:

When was the last time you finished a shoot, went through the edit and genuinely thought that you really couldn’t have done better?

My answer is that I cannot remember ever having that thought. I’ve come close and been really happy with what I have done many, many times but I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that ‘complete satisfaction’ hasn’t featured in my work.

I have never taken a perfect picture and I have certainly never made one in post-production – but I’m OK with that.

This question was triggered by listening to an artist being interviewed on a radio programme who said that she had gone through something of a crisis of confidence having finished a piece and in that moment thinking that it was perfect. She talked about coming very quickly to hate the idea that she might never achieve that level of mastery of her craft again and that she may well have reached a professional peak at a relatively young age. That was something which her passion for what she did led her to develop a form of depression.

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A downside of technology
© Photo Neil Turner.

Anyone who knows me and anyone who has read this blog would probably say that I am keen on technology. I would agree – I’m a geek. Despite my love of the whole digital process there’s one thing about the way that we work these days that I am not so keen on.

What’s that then? I hear one or two people asking. Put very simply, I don’t get to meet or even chat with editorial clients any more. I know that the whole COVID-19 pandemic has put a mighty spanner in the works but even accounting for that I was disappointed and a little bit shocked to realise that I have never actually met any of the folks who have commissioned me to shoot editorial work since well before we went into the first lockdown. Some of that can be explained away by my being based a hundred miles from London where a sizeable proportion of them live and work but even accounting for that I find it really sad that I haven’t got to have a coffee with any of them or even shake the odd hand here and there.

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