Neil Turner

I really love being a photographer – and I have been working professionally since 1986. These days I have bases in both London and Bournemouth from which I shoot commissions for a range of PR, commercial and editorial clients.

In 1964 I was born on the South Coast of England in Bournemouth. I grew up there and, after working in a camera store for just over a year, went to study an HND in Advertising and Editorial Photography at Medway College of Design in Kent (now the University for the Creative Arts). I graduated from college in June 1986 and moved to London.

After four months covering for a maternity leave as a photographer at Haymarket publishing, I freelanced for a while before joining with two college friends to start our own small agency in a basement in Central London in April 1987. Work started to pick up and before long we were shooting for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers. I really enjoyed my time at the agency, gaining an enormous amount of experience in what seemed like a very short space in time.

January 1994 was a big month in my career. I left the agency and joined the staff at the Times Supplements (now TSL Education). By August 2008, I had made over 3,500 visits to schools and colleges for the Times Educational Supplement – which must be something of a record!

In November 1998 after shooting thousands of rolls of colour negative and transparency film and endless hours with various scanners and Macs my first digital camera (Kodak DCS520) arrived and I really enjoyed the transition – becoming something of an advocate for the whole digital process. The challenge of shooting every day for the same publications brings it’s own disciplines and my photography became far more ‘focused’.

After fourteen and a half years, I left TSL in August 2008 and became a freelance photographer once again. My time didvides nicely between editorial and commercial photography and the range of types of work that I am doing is both fascinating and rewarding. From time to time I do some teaching, both in universities and colleges and with individuals and small groups.

It’s an exciting time to be a photographer with new challenges being presented every month and I am on record as saying that I am a very lucky man to be doing what I do.