work

Photographic policy

Just in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a photographer. I also teach a bit of photography and write about the subject too. The latest addition to my ‘portfolio career’ is what I can only describe as photographic consultancy. I have done a few corporate training sessions aimed at people who aren’t necessarily shooting pictures but who are handling them on behalf of their employer. It started off with some PR managers from a range of Universities a few years ago and has been a very small part of what I do ever since then.

This week, I did a bespoke session for an NGO talking about copyright, licensing, permissions, model release, photographing children and how to get PR pictures used in the media. All of that in less than one day meant that we didn’t get right down into the finer details. For some organisations the knowledge that they need to do more will be enough to get them going. A company wide photographic policy has to be a ‘must-have’ with the amount of images, websites, pamphlets, brochures, publications and social media in circulation (officially and otherwise).

We are in the Christmas party season and a good, well publicised policy telling staff what is and is not acceptable would be very useful. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the rest are public platforms and un-wisely placed images or video are bad news. It isn’t only about stopping bad stuff happening though; good pictures need to be licensed, captioned and stored properly. The quantity of pictures held on company systems seems to have expanded exponentially and it makes sense to have policies that make use of the good stuff whilst making that the bad, the off-message and the out of date images are never seen.

As a professional photographer it is really hard to see photographs sourced from keen amateurs, micro stock sites and crowd-sourcing as anything other than lost income but that is the way the world has gone and we need to learn to work with it. People like me, with a lot of experience in the industry, can help to form policies for small, medium and even large businesses based on our knowledge of the law, ethics and technical matters. It isn’t going to cost a fortune and any company who ignores the concept of a photography policy could end up regretting it.

Back on Memory Lane again

I don’t know about you but I can put my finger on exact dates and point to pictures that changed the way that I shoot pictures. Aside from the obvious ones such as the day that I used a digital SLR for the first time and the day that I bought my first medium format camera one very special day and one picture made me think really hard about the kind of lighting that I wanted to use.

Desmond Fennell QC. ©Neil Turner

This black and white portrait of Desmond Fennell OBE QC was taken in his chambers at one of London’s famous Inns of Court – The Temple. It was shot for a newspaper and it was during a time in my career that I was using a single Elinchrom 23 flash head with a soft box and a bit of cable connecting the camera to the flash. Nothing unusual there I hear you thinking… how did this change Neil’s life?

Cue anecdote: I was sent to shoot a portrait so I took my standard gear. When I was shown in to the eminent man’s office I started to look around for a power point to plug my Elinchrom into. He answered the phone at that moment (he was chairing a major public enquiry at the time) and so I looked at the desk lamp and followed the cable to the socket in the wall. The trouble is that it was the wrong kind of socket… the UK standard three pin plug has rectangular prongs and his only socket had round holes. Square pegs, round holes… ohhh c**p.

It wasn’t that I was incapable of shooting with either a speedlight or just using the ambient light it was just a bit of a shock. This was actually the second frame that I shot – Nikon FM2 with a 35mm f2 Nikkor, Kodak Tri-X film pushed to 800 ISO.

I like to think that I learn from my professional mistakes and I like to think that after a few days a shock turns into an eye-opener and I remember coming away from this shoot with two lessons learned. The first was to always shoot some ambient light because it often makes stunning pictures – especially at quiet, off-guard moments and the second was to buy some battery powered lights. In truth, that took about three years to accomplish properly and I invested in a lot of extension leads in the mean time. I recall the day that my first Lumedyne kit went into action – complete with a Wein infra-red trigger. No cables. I shot a portrait of another lawyer and left her office singing one of the songs from the Disney version of Pinocchio – “I got no strings to hold me down…”

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.

Colour calibrating digital camera bodies

When you work with one camera and you shoot RAW all of the time it really doesn’t matter if that camera has a tendency towards magenta, yellow or cyan – the shift will be consistent and you can cope with it very easily in post-production. If, on the other hand, you work with more than one camera and each of them has a subtle shift in a different direction then your workflow can be slowed down when you have to constantly colour correct images shot under identical lighting in different directions. Like all things in photography, there is more than one way to solve this problem.

As you can see from the top row of images above – the three cameras that I use have different colour shifts with my slightly newer 5D MkII (codename yellow strap… because it has a yellow strap!) displaying quite a strong magenta shift whilst the 7D (codename blue strap, you can guess why) is a little cold and my oldest 5D MkII (red strap) is pretty neutral but maybe 1/3 of an f-stop brighter. I am going to use the red strap body as my basis for changing the colours on the other two a) because it is the most neutral to start with and b) because it has been serviced and cleaned by Canon quite recently.

Obviously these pictures were shot under controlled conditions using the same light source, the same lens on a tripod and have been converted from their RAW using no adjustments whatsoever. I shot multiple frames using each body as a sample just to make sure that there was no shift between frames on the same camera.

The second row of examples are the same RAW files with a white balance applied to exactly the same spot on the white box between Mickey and Minnie’s ears. As you can see this gets us a whole lot closer to matching the pictures for colour and this technique is fine when you have something in the frame which allows you to use the eye-dropper tool in Adobe Camera RAW (and in other similar raw conversion applications) and it is also fine when you only have a few images to process in this way. If you shoot an event where there are hundreds of frames, then you would spend an unnecessary amount of time balancing in this way.

The third row of examples utilises one of the cool features of the latest versions of Adobe Camera RAW in either Photoshop or Lightroom (and I’m sure that other software does this too) which allows you to set a default set of settings ranging from white balance to black levels, contrast, saturation to sharpening and noise control for each camera which the software detects from the serial number in the EXIF data as you bring it into the RAW conversion control pane. This is great for a lot of work and is a good option if you usually shoot on a fixed white balance.

These three techniques work for pretty much every digital camera and every scan. Some, more modern and more expensive, cameras allow you to go one crucial step further and that is to tell the camera to automatically shift by a fixed amount of colour for every frame – so that if your camera has a magenta shift like my yellow strap camera you can counterbalance that in camera and your images will show up as they should – no matter which white balance you are using at the time. The next few illustrations are based on a Canon 5D MkII using Canon’s own EOS Utility:

The illustration above top left of the three shows the home screen of the EOS Utility application and the “camera settings/remote shooting option is what you need.

This brings up the window on the top right which has an option marked WB shift that allows you to control the cross hairs and set an exact shift for the camera that is connected at the time. It is simple and very, very useful.

The illustration bottom left refers to the technique in Adobe Camera RAW (Photoshop CS4 in this case) in which you set a custom import for each camera and this is the preference pane that you need to find it.

It would be great if there was some software that allowed you to perform an exact “chip” calibration in the same way that you can calibrate a computer screen. Of course, the ability to calibrate the LCD on the back of a DSLR would be cool too but in the mean time here are three ways that you can use the combination of a good RAW converter and your camera’s built-in options to get all of your cameras working the same way as each other. It takes time, it’s fiddly but will save you a great deal of hassle over the course of a few weeks work.

Five levels of image manipulation

The Curve section of the EPUK website has always been a great source of information for photographers already working in editorial markets and for those who would like to do so in the future. I have written a few pieces for them over the years and my latest piece is about five different levels of image manipulation and how they should be used in newspapers and magazines.

As we celebrate the twentieth birthday of Photoshop we should take a few minutes to think about how the subject of image manipulation is regarded both inside and outside of our profession. In truth there is a sizeable majority of the population who think that every image that they see has been heavily retouched or altered.

Documentary, news and reportage photographers have a real battle to convince a sceptical world that their images tell the truth.

You might find it helps you to form your own thoughts on image manipulation by looking at these five categories of altering pictures and deciding for yourself which are appropriate for the kind of work that you do, and then using them to educate clients, friends and colleagues about how we as an industry view this very important subject.

  1. Normal darkroom practices – correction of colour, tone, contrast and saturation to reflect the way the image should look. Light dodging and burning.
  2. Darkroom interpretation – changes limited to colour, heavier dodging and burning, unnatural saturation and contrast that make the image an interpretation of reality.
  3. Minor alterations – adding or removing elements to or from the image, other than by cropping, that do not change the essential message of the image.
  4. Major alterations – adding or removing elements to or from the image that heighten or change the essential message of the image.
  5. Image montage – using elements of more than one image to make a photograph that is no longer a genuine representation of the scene.

For the purposes of news I would say that 1 is OK, and that 2 might be.

By the time you get to 3 then I would say that was unacceptable for news – unless there is a label attached or there are good public interest reasons for the manipulation (such as preserving the anonymity of vulnerable people).

The real danger here is that much of the public assume everything we do is altered. It does us no favours for this assumption to go unchallenged. The real sadness is that so many photographers supplying news images ignore the ethical implications – largely because they know no better.

Image manipulation is a serious subject and one that should be addressed by every photographer every time they sit at their screen and every time they see their work in print

Teamwork

Great news photography doesn’t just stem from a good photographer. There is are a whole number of people that come together in the planning, execution and reproduction of top class images and the real downside of being a freelancer is that I miss being part of a really great team.

©Neil Turner/TSL | Weymouth, Dorset | December 2007

Being a photographer is usually part of a process. Images are commissioned, stories are bought and sold, edits are done and newspapers are printed. It’s a big and complicated jigsaw and being the person who operates the camera has to be the best part. There is no such thing as a run of the mill commission, but the process often goes like this;

  • The story is commissioned
  • The arrangements are made
  • The photographer is briefed
  • The photographs are taken
  • The edit is done
  • The pages are laid out
  • The newspaper/magazine is printed

There can be upwards of thirty people involved in the whole process and it’s important that the communication is good and that it goes in all directions. Some photographers aren’t as lucky as I am – this piece from the Sports Shooter site is a tongue in cheek rant against bad communications and poor commissioning. Unfortunately lot’s of photographers fail to live up to their obligations, indeed many don’t even recognise that they even have those obligations. It is up to us to talk to the picture editor, the journalist and ask the right questions. Getting the correct information from everyone else in the chain gives the photographer the best possible opportunity to shoot the right photographs and to tell the story in the best way possible. A failure to communicate ties the creative hands of the photographer and drastically reduces their chance of making a great set of pictures.

Sometimes the commissioning editor will forget an important detail, and at other times spelling mistakes and wrong addresses will get in the way of the pictures. Checking details, double checking spellings and discussing the story with the editorial staff will always prove to be time well spent:

  • It helps with the story under discussion
  • It improves your own relationship with the editorial team
  • It goes a little way to improving photographer editorial relations on a world scale!

Of course the picture desk need to do their bit in this vital piece of symbiosis because photographers really appreciate being given accurate information, input into the story and feedback after publication. Two way conversations work, and the industry needs more of them.

Dusk… my favourite time of day for shooting pictures

Bournemouth beach. ©Neil Turner, July 2009

Anyone who knows me or who has ever looked at my folio will know just how much I like being by the sea and that the beach is my single favourite location. I’m a lucky guy and I live on the south coast of England – in the same town in which I was born, Unimaginative, I know – but it’s a great place to live and take pictures. Shooting portraits against the background of a mean and moody sky at dusk is one of my favourite things to do and shooting those skies without people is almost as much of a joy.

Going on the beach as the sun goes away is also a great time to capture very saturated colours. The picture to the left of the breakwater (we call them groynes here in Dorset by the way) with the low angle sunshine is a great example of the clarity and beauty of the evening light when the sun actually shines in the UK. I have no other reason to post this picture than to show that every once in a while you get light so pure, so perfect that no amount of lighting can improve upon it.

Bournemouth beach. ©Neil Turner, July 2009

This picture of the sun going down over the cliff tops is another story. I was walking on my own and took an EOS50D along for the fun of it. I didn’t have anyone to photograph and my lights were back in the car anyway so I had to shoot the sky whilst wishing I had someone interesting in front of the camera!

This kind of sky seems to be most common at the end of the summer and into early autumn. I’m looking forward to a few more and, with luck, I’ll get to shoot some portraits with them too.

Five people that I will never forget

Originally posted in July 2009, this was a very personal reflection on some very important people in my career.

I suspect that most professional photographers keep a pool of pictures that they use for promotional, exhibition and portfolio purposes. I have always had a folder full of my favourites and now that I am freelance one of my regular tasks is to update it. The death of Mr Henry Allingham who was, at the age of 113, the oldest surviving veteran of the First World War made me go through and think about some of the people that I have had the honour of meeting and photographing.

My folio folder had no fewer than five images of people who have died since being photographed by me. As a percentage, that’s not out of the ordinary and three of them were very elderly indeed. Each of the five people had a big effect on me for various reasons and I’d like to share some memories of them with you.

©Neil Turner/TSL

Dame Iris Murdoch was a brilliant novelist whose life story was made into a film “Iris” starring Dame Judy Dench. I photographed Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley in the garden of the home that they shared in Oxford where he was a professor of English. She was, by the time that this picture was taken in 1998, suffering from the latter stages of Alzheimers’ – which is a terrible disease that robs the intellect and then the personality of the sufferer and places a great strain on those who love and care for them.

Dr Bayley described her as being like “a very nice 3-year-old”. This picture was on the back cover of the book that he wrote about their life together.

The house had not been properly cleaned for a long time and there was a television in every room playing the same programme.

When I went to see the movie made of her life two women in the row behind me made comments about the house that they lived in and that she could not believe it could have been as bad as the film made out. The temptation to turn around and tell them that the film did not tell even half of the story was strong, but I resisted. She died in Oxford on February 8, 1999.

©Neil Turner/TSL

Sir Peter Ustinov was an actor, writer, director and raconteur. This picture was taken in his London hotel shortly before he died in 2004 aged 82. I’m not going to attempt to precis his life, but I’d like to tell my story about my time with him. I was searching for something to chat to him about and I used one of my “fallback” topics of what I had heard on the radio on my way to meet him.

Every morning BBC radio 4 has a news show called “The Today Programme” which that morning had a feature about the USA and communism. I mentioned Senator McCarthy and Sir Peter then delivered a wonderful and vitriolic soliloquy on the topic of McCarthyism – job done. I’m pretty sure that you would have had to pay a lot of money for a forty minute private performance from Sir Peter. I feel so privileged to have had it for free.

©Neil Turner/TSL

When I met and photographed Mr Henry Allingham he was already 112 years old. Despite his amazing age he was very coherent, had a very British sense of humour and was interested in everyone and everything around him.

I found meeting him very humbling and, when he died, I found myself counting the ways in which our world has changed during his lifetime. Cars, planes, computers, atomic bombs, heart-transplants have all become commonplace.

Queen Victoria was still on the throne of Great Britain when he was born and women did not get the vote until he was in his late twenties.

©Neil Turner/TSL

Leon Greenman OBE was the gentlest of men. Meeting him and being given a personal tour of the Holocaust Museum in London where there is a display featuring a large number of his personal possessions from before and during his time in the concentration camps had a profound and lasting effect on me.

His striped uniform with it’s Star of David, photographs of his wife and children who died in the camps, pictures of his life before the Nazis came and took the Jews away were there and he was there to talk about them in a factual but moving way.

I will never forget the day I met him and I hope that the amazing work he did to educate subsequent generations about the evils he witnessed goes on.

©Neil Turner/TSL

The death of people who have lived long and valuable lives is sad. The death of a child is far sadder. I met Fleur at a children’s hospice near Luton a few weeks before her untimely death. She was a sweet child who wanted to know all about everything.

Keech Cottage Children’s Hospice in Bedfordshire provides respite and terminal care for children with life limiting conditions. It is not a sad place. The children there are pretty much like any other children.

The families that I met had come to terms with the fact that they would lose the child that they loved and were making the most of their time together. I was welcomed, I was royally entertained and I would go back tomorrow if they’d have me.