To be a photographer you need many things - the ability to take good
photographs is just one of them, and if you look at the work of some
professionals you realise just how small a part of the job it can be. A good
business brain, energy, enthusiasm, determination and the backing of friends
and family are far more important - especially at the beginning.
- Neil Turner
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Portraiture is something that you either find easy or you don't. There are
things that you can learn to make the whole process less painful and there
are ways of shooting that eliminate risk (and creativity) if you really find
that saying something about your subject isn't what you were cut out to do
with your camera. My advice is to talk to your subject, look around the room
or the garden for something that they relate to and shoot a lot of frames.
- Neil Turner
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Professionalism isn't just about how much money we make. It has as much to
do with how we make it and with how our work is received.
- Neil Turner
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Advances in equipment and in technology have always made the impossible
merely difficult and the difficult little more than routine. The area that
we can all concentrate on now is being creative. I for one welcome
everything that helps me to make my work better, and technical gizmos that
free my thoughts from the boring mechanics of photography allowing me to be
more of an image creator than a picture taker are welcome additions to my
kit.
- Neil Turner
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No matter what you talk about in life there seems to be a scale: left to
right, top to bottom, right to wrong. I can now add a new one....journalism
to design. These are the two ends of the scale that I exist in as a
photographer. At one extreme my work is pure journalism and at the other
it's little more than eye candy.
- Neil Turner
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- Keep every receipt. Claim everything against tax and make sure you get paid.
- The business is full of sharks. You have been warned.
- Get a great portfolio, keep it up to date and never let it gather dust.
- It's good to know how to make beautiful prints, but only so you can tell your printer where he's going wrong.
- A distinctive style is good, just as long as it doesn't go out of fashion.
- Spend as much time looking at other people's work as you do fretting about your own.
- Only buy enough equipment to do the bread and butter jobs. Renting makes sense.
- Whilst it might seem a privilege to make your living in such a wonderful job, you still have to pay the bills.
- It's not good enough to take good photographs most of the time, you have to take great ones all of the time to survive
- Never take advice on photography from someone who tells you that there is only one way to do something!!
- Neil Turner
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My call goes out - Amateur photographers, wannabees and bored professionals everywhere... rise up, burn those backdrops, dump those videos and escape the cult now. There is a world of interesting, unique and occasionally truly original work to be done out there. Before you know where you are, that chant (ommmm-mainlight, filllight, hairlight, backlight-ommmm) will just be a distant and mildly embarrassing memory.
- Neil Turner
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