Neil Shearer – Special Guest – Podcast Episode 6

Joe Lenton
Welcome to the Focused Professional podcast. Today we’ve got a special guest on – Neil Shearer. Hi Neil.

Neil Shearer
Hi Joe how are you doing? Great to be here.

Joe Lenton
Yeah I’m good thank you very much. I got to know Neil from The Societies of Photographers and he has recently had some real success with them at the recent convention. He has achieved his fellowship and he’s also won a nice trophy as well. What was that trophy for then, Neil?

Neil Shearer
So that trophy was the advertising and commercial photographer of the year in the 2016 print competition, which was a total surprise, if I’m being honest.

Joe Lenton
Well that’s fantastic though. It’s lovely, especially when it is a surprise just to have something like that come out of nowhere. Fantastic year for you.

Neil Shearer
Yeah, it’s been a really good start to the year, honestly. The project that I’ve been shooting for about 18 months, obviously I put this in for my Fellowship and that was my main focus of the convention, was to come get this Fellowship in in a way that felt right to me and just see how it did, see how well it was received. And it turns out it was pretty well received.

Joe Lenton
Well, it passed. You can’t ask for more than that can you?

Neil Shearer
Exactly.

Joe Lenton
So what sort of thing are you normally photographing? I saw your winning image was a shoe. You do quite a few of those, don’t you?

Neil Shearer
I do. So shooting shoes especially, really started during lockdown, because the majority of my business as commercial photographer has been shooting athletes and sports and everything to do with sports. So it would be products, people, very little live action, which is what most people think of when you say you photograph sports. And obviously during lockdown, all the athletes went away, all the brands went away, and I was stuck with two children at home and not very much to photograph. And I’ve been into shoes for quite a long time. And then, yeah, I just started photographing them in lockdown. I did a 30 day project, 30 day personal project, where I’d shoot a different pair of shoes every day. So I would concept, create, output, and then post by the end of the day. And that’s kind of where it all came from. That’s where the love of photographing shoes came from. And slowly it’s built into people actually paying me to do this, which still doesn’t feel very real.

Joe Lenton
It’s wonderful when you get paid for doing something that you enjoy doing and you must have enjoyed it to do one every day for 30 days. It’s quite a discipline, and if it’s not something you’re interested in, I should think come day twelve or something, you’re thinking, why on earth did I choose to do this? How easy was it for you to keep yourself motivated?

Neil Shearer
It was actually quite easy because it was probably the first time in maybe three six months I’d actually picked up a camera and I had that excitement back. Every morning I would wake up and be like, okay, what am I going to shoot today? So I’d know which pair of shoes I was going to photograph, but I hadn’t done any prep work ahead of time. It’s like, right, I’m forcing myself to be creative within this maybe two or three hour window because I still had kids to take care of, my wife was working right the way through. So it’s like, I’ve got 3 hours, what am I going to do? What am I going to create? And yeah, this what I came up with. And some of them, I really kind of standby and still have in my portfolio now. Some of them just kind of shuffle off to the side, not my greatest, but as a creative exercise, it was really interesting.

Joe Lenton
Well, the thing is, it’s always a learning curve. And when you’re experimenting and doing something new, people sometimes think, well, if I don’t get what I want sort of straight away, oh, I’m not going to be able to do this and just sort of quit too easily. Whereas you clearly understand that the creative process is also accepting that you’re not going to get it all right.

Neil Shearer
Absolutely. It took me a long time to realise that. I’m not ashamed to admit it. When I first started out entering competitions, I would create an image, maybe even specifically for competition. I would put it in, it would get maybe a 77 and I would think, right, that was it. Rubbish. I’m never going to do anything like that again. Move on. I need to find something that is going to capture their attention and something that’s going to score into the 80s plus. And it took a long time for me to realise that every result that you get, you can learn from whether it wins best of the year, whether it wins photography of the year, or whether it gets, whether it scores 70. Every image you can learn from, you can look back at the images that didn’t do so well and go, okay, well, why didn’t it do so well? So I put three, three images. I only entered three images this year in the 20 by 16 competition because I ran out of time, honestly, and only one of the images was hanging. I think the other two scored 77 and 78. And at the time, again, I was really disappointed because I was like, these are really great images.

Neil Shearer
And since I’ve gone back and looked at them and gone, oh, actually, well, that one wasn’t so great because… The light was coming from the wrong angle.

Joe Lenton
Sure.

Neil Shearer
I was listening to your podcast with Hannah this morning, and she was talking about composites, and I’ve shot a lot of composites for a long time, predominantly photography based. So I’d shoot the background and shoot the athlete, but the ones I’ve started doing recently have been more building a background in CGI and then shooting the model in the studio. And I’d got so caught up with creating this really immersive environment that I had the light coming from a different direction to where the main light was hitting the athlete. And it’s like, that’s a rookie error when you’re talking about composites.

Joe Lenton
It’s such an easy mistake to make, unfortunately. Absolutely. And so often it’s one of the reasons why composites just don’t quite work. The brain looks at it and thinks something’s not quite right there. And it’s helpful when you can get someone who can really put their finger on what that is, because so often so many of us, we look at these images and we can’t quite tell why is that not quite there? And, yeah, the direction of light is such a big one. I suppose the good thing is with the CGI build is you’ve got the set there. You can redo it and move the light if you need to.

Neil Shearer
Absolutely. That is very lucky. I don’t need to go out and photograph anything else. If I was going to rework this image, it would be a very simple thing to just drag the light to the other side and everything would update accordingly, which is why it was so annoying that it was such a simple, such a simple thing to miss. But I’m definitely guilty of it. When I start working on an image, I’m 100% focused on this image, and it’s very easy to lose sort of the bigger picture. I’m looking at the micro details around and the macro from a distance. So when I can, when I get the opportunity, I always like to wait 24 hours before posting anything or before sending to my clients. So I’ll do all the edits, step away, leave it for a day, and then come back and go, okay, what have I missed? What could be improved? And obviously, you don’t always get that opportunity when you’re shooting for clients, but I try to do it when I can.

Joe Lenton
But for personal projects, it’s quite a good one. I’ve certainly had instances where I’ve posted something on social media and come and looked at it a couple of hours later and thought, “errr.. Ooops!” And you think, oh, I hope no one sees it. But then you look at your sort of contacts list on your social media and you think, oh, yes, there’s definitely a few people on there that are going to see that.

Neil Shearer
And they’re the ones that are absolutely going to notice that one single tiny mistake.

Joe Lenton
So you did this sort of personal project on trainers. Do you just like to collect them or do you occasionally use them as well?

Neil Shearer
All the trainers that I’ve got, I wear. I’m not one of these people that will get a pair of trainers and then keep them in a box for ten years and just look at them and take them out every now and again. Most of the trainers that I’ve got have come from clients. They’ve been… people have sent me shoes to photograph either for product or for creative work. And some of them I get to keep, some of them I have to send back. But I think I’ve got about 60 pairs at the moment. If my wife’s listening to this, it’s fewer than that.

Joe Lenton
Fewer than. Absolutely, yeah. Couldn’t possibly be more than about 20. So are they all sorts of different types or are they mainly for running?

Neil Shearer
No, I’ve got about four pairs of running trainers, but the ones that I guess I collect, they’re all just fashion. They’re predominantly Nike because they make the best shoes, in my opinion.

Joe Lenton
This programme is not sponsored by Nike, by the way.

Neil Shearer
And I have never worked for Nike, yet. Although if anyone from Nike has listened to this podcast, then you know where I am.

Joe Lenton
Subtle hint. We shall mention Neil’s website link later when we have the link on the podcast there will be a link to his website. So anybody from Nike who happens to be listening, who is not sponsoring this podcast in any way whatsoever, please do have a look and hire Neil. Yeah. So the running, do you get a lot of time to do that? Is that something that you find it good to make time for?

Neil Shearer
So running for me is a huge release. It’s when I get headspace, it’s when I get to just think about the things I want to think about and can just put everything else to one side and take an hour out of my day, an hour, 2 hours, sometimes more. And it does so much for me rather than just… it’s not just exercise, it’s not just keeping fit. If I’ve got problems that I need to solve either creatively, personally, anything else, I’ll spend a bit of time thinking about these things before I go out on a run, especially if I’ve got a creative brief that I just can’t quite get my head round. I’ll spend maybe half an hour brainstorming, mood boarding, really intense focus on this problem and then shut everything down, put it to one side and go out and run for 2 hours. And guaranteed at some point on that run, my brain is going to start firing and connections are going to be made. And more than once I’ve had to stop mid run and get my phone out and go, okay, let’s jot down these ideas.

Joe Lenton
Excellent.

Neil Shearer
And it’s something to start with once you get back. And so many times when I give myself that headspace away from a problem is when the ideas start coming and the solutions start presenting themselves. But no, running for me is huge. Again, this is something else. I started in lockdown. I’d never really run before lockdown. And this January, just gone. I think I managed to run 500 kilometres in January.

Joe Lenton
Wow.

Neil Shearer
As a little challenge for me.

Joe Lenton
Little challenge. Okay, yeah, that might take me about 500 days. I think that would probably take me.

Neil Shearer
Another thing about me is I’ve got quite an addictive personality. So when I do something, I’m either 100% in or I don’t bother. I can’t do it at all.

Joe Lenton
Fair enough. No half measures there.

Neil Shearer
Running has very much taken that form. So I quite often run ultramarathons, which is a marathon distance plus. So 50 miles is my distance.

Joe Lenton
Oh, gosh. That makes me feel tired thinking about it. So is that something that you do competitively or just sort of to relax?

Neil Shearer
I’m never going to be the fastest, never going to be the fastest runner, but I will always keep going. And the ultramarathons that I’ve done take me anywhere between 8 hours and 18 hours was the longest one. And just having that time, just knowing that you’re going to be out for a full day, you can walk if you need to, you can eat when you want to, chat to new people, make new friends, everyone’s in the same boat because you’re all a bunch of lunatics that are out running on mountains for 16 hours a day. So you’ve instantly got that something in common that you can look around and go, wow, look where we are. We’re so lucky to be here. We get to do this. So many people that run those kind of distances before they run those kind of distances, they have it in their head that it’s just suffering the whole time. And there’s only one race that I’ve done where I really felt like that. It really felt like, why do I put myself through this? The other times it’s been like, I choose to do this, I get to do this. I’m lucky that I have the opportunity to do this.

Joe Lenton
So how important would you say it is to have something outside of the photography to help with your mental health?

Neil Shearer
Honestly, if I didn’t have things outside of photography, I would probably have lost my mind by now. Because running your own business, as you know, can be quite insular. It can be quite lonely at times and having things that I can just sort of put the photography to one side and go, right, I’m going to go to the gym for an hour at lunchtime, see some friends, have a chat, come back afresh and just get that space. I’ve got a dog as well, so I always go running with my dog. And that is one of the most cathartic things I think I’ve ever done. And obviously I’ve got two kids as well, so they keep me pretty busy away from photography. In fact, it’s finding time to do the photography that can sometimes be a struggle.

Joe Lenton
It’s interesting because a lot of very successful photographers have all said the sort of same thing. I mean, they might enjoy the phoTography, it might be something they do because they like doing it, but at the same time, you need that extra something as well, where you can just escape. I mean, Scott Johnson was talking about a moment where he just sat in nature and it was just silent and just being able to let go a little bit from time to time. It’s easy to get kind of caught up in that cycle of I’ve got to keep churning stuff out because there’s social media out there that I’ve got to keep marketing myself. It’s not just client work, it’s constantly reminding everybody that you exist. And that kind of churn can take its toll.

Neil Shearer
Absolutely. I mean, for me, in the last week, I’ve been trying to be more focused on LinkedIn, because I’m on LinkedIn quite a lot. And I set myself a goal of posting on LinkedIn every day for a week, which was a huge step up for me because it had been previously maybe once every two to three weeks. And the way that I got around that is I kind of set aside 3 hours at the start of the week, and I was like, right, I’m going to batch. I was going to batch edit a bunch of ideas, and it was all around the theme of creativity. So I would just sit down on my computer and I was like, right, nothing is off limits. Just kind of have a brain dump about five, six, seven things that I want to say, and get these ideas down, move on to the next one, get the next one down, and then you kind of go back and flesh it out a little bit and you’ve got those 3 hours that are purely dedicated to content creation. And I found that worked really well for me. I was able to come up with these ideas and then I have a photograph in mind that would go with it. And then you create a little hook for LinkedIn and then schedule everything to post. And then that’s everything posted same time every day for a week. And that was really interesting for me. It’s not something I’m going to be doing every week. I’m not going to be one of these people that suddenly becomes a LinkedIn guru and is like, you must post every day and you must do this. But I wanted to see how it worked for me. It was really interesting because I got a lot of new conversations started, got a lot of new connections, quite a few new followers. So it’s definitely worth doing from time to time. I’m going to go back to posting, maybe if I can, twice a week, if I’ve got something interesting to say, something interesting to share. And it should really not just be about going, here’s my work, here’s what I do, this is me, please hire me. Because that gets tiring for people to hear.

Joe Lenton
It’s tiring to keep putting it out. It’s tiring to keep listening to it. There needs to be something that engages a bit more, doesn’t there?

Neil Shearer
Yeah, absolutely. And education and sharing ideas with other creatives, other photographers is really key to that, because like you say, everybody is, we’re all in this together, and you’re only really competing against yourself a lot of the time.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. And I often sort of think that if we can find something that really interests us, something that we’re passionate about, that it’s much better to use that for our marketing in many ways, because it comes from the heart. It’s something that we’re not likely to get bored of quickly. And therefore it also connects more with other people. Rather than trying to put out what we think they want to see if we can put out something which is genuine. It’s just when you connect with that, when you listen to that, when you read that, you find something that’s much more genuine, that’s much more sort of consistent. You come across the personality and actually it builds a brand. It’s not just about having to do business related posts and how I solve this problem and that problem that actually, if you can tap into your passion, then I’m convinced that others will see that and hear that and that that will actually help your brand.

Neil Shearer
Yeah, absolutely. Personal branding is huge, especially on LinkedIn, which is where I get a lot of my clients, a lot of my most interesting connections. There’s a woman on LinkedIn who I follow called Joe Bird, who is the lead creative at a place called Lounge, and she is posting all the time about personal branding and she’s got a workshop next week, which I’m going to all about personal branding and it’s all about being authentic and talking about the things that matter to you and the things that you can talk about, rather than having to come up with something that you think people want to hear and then going away and researching and just taking other people’s words and just regurgitating and putting the same thing out. It’s being authentic and having authentic stories and experiences that you can share with people. I think that’s what is the most important thing for me.

Joe Lenton
I think especially with small businesses, you’re not a big, faceless sort of corporate or something, hiding behind a logo or something. You’re a person, you’re an individual or in some cases a small team, and it’s a great opportunity to harness what’s unique about you and help people engage with it in that way.

Neil Shearer
Yeah, people buy from people. At the end of the day, whether that be business to customer, business to business. At the end of the day, it’s a person making a decision. So if you can connect with that person on more than just, this is my rate, this is what I do. If you can build a connection with them, then you’re halfway there.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. So I think that idea of sort of chunking together, doing various posts and things is quite a good idea because it’s that little bit of discipline that kind of takes some things that might not be quite so enjoyable and gets them out of the way, I suppose. In general, in your work, what do you find makes your work fun and what takes away from that fun for you?

Neil Shearer
So for me, the most fun part is creating and getting to create for clients.

Joe Lenton
Is that the shooting stage or the editing or is it both?

Neil Shearer
It’s both, really. It’s kind of having an idea at the start, sitting down with the client and then going, this is what we want. This is the end goal that we want. How can we get there? How can we solve this problem to get to this point? This is almost like, this is the story we want to tell – how can we do that with this series of images? And then the process of that, obviously the ideation that you go away and you come up with a bunch of ideas, mood board out. Okay, we’re going to use this model. We’re going to shoot in this location. The problem that we’ve got to overcome is XYZ. Quite often it’s budget. How can we get this location but for this budget? So you’re quite often creating things as composites or using CGI, using CGI elements anyway, to really set the scene and tell the story. And then once you’ve got that for me again, everything comes together in the edit. And I love Photoshop. I spend the majority of my time in Photoshop. I’m comfortable there and it scared me a lot. For a long time, before I knew how to use it, I’d see people at demonstrations just like clicking buttons and everything would change. And all of a sudden it’s like, oh my God, the colour of the background has changed. Obviously, that’s something that’s so simple to do. But to somebody who didn’t understand Photoshop at all, it was huge and it was like, whoa.

Joe Lenton
Getting the right workflow makes a huge difference, doesn’t it?

Neil Shearer
Absolutely. Just having your own way of doing things. And that’s why when I was down at the Society’s convention in January, I tried to attend as many Photoshop talks as I can because there are so many different ways to do the same things. And every Photoshop talk I’ve ever been to, every compositing talk, every retouching talk, I’ve always come away with, even if it’s only just like one little snippet of information that actually can improve my workflow, can speed things up, or is a totally new way of working. And, yeah, always got to, always got to keep learning, always improving.

Joe Lenton
So have you always kind of looked at this type of commercial image, these composites, and thought, that’s what I want to do, or have you evolved into doing that? When you started out with photography did you think you’d go the commercial route?

Neil Shearer
To be honest, when I first started out, I’ll try not to go too far back, but I got my first camera in 2004, which is obviously 20 years ago this year. And it was when I went to Brazil. So I had the opportunity to go to Brazil for six months. So I bought a film camera and I think I shot maybe 20 rolls of film while I was there, which is, let’s be generous and say, maybe 600 pictures in six months.

Joe Lenton
Okay.

Neil Shearer
I mean, I think I’ve shot, I usually shoot about 600 pictures now on an average, average client shoot in the space of a couple of hours. And I came back from there and I got all the photos processed and I think the entire time I never took the camera off auto. It was just capturing the sights, basically, the people, the locations. And I just completely fell in love with photography from that point on. And then I sort of just started photographing more sports because I was quite big into sports. And then I had some friends who were doing some modelling, so I tried a bit of that and then some friends who were getting married. So I started shooting some weddings. I never really found something that grabbed my interest and it was only really when I started taking it a bit more seriously. I joined Damien McGillicuddy’s Mentor Me on Steroids group about 14 years ago, I think, still there now. And that was kind of opened my eyes to the fact that you could be a photographer without having to be a wedding photographer or a family portrait photographer. Until that point, these were kind of the only two avenues that I thought this is what photographers do. I was very very naive at the time.

Joe Lenton
I think a lot of people just assume that. It’s like whenever I’ve been sort of to networking groups or whatever, and I kind of stopped saying I’m a photographer in a way and finding another way of putting it because people always assume weddings and portraits. It just seems to be the natural for everybody, really. I’ve never done a single wedding ever at all and I have no intention of ever doing one.

Neil Shearer
You’re very lucky!

Joe Lenton
So, yeah, it’s kind of interesting that even for you, that that was that kind of journey, thinking, oh, there are other ways of earning a living here.

Neil Shearer
Yeah, absolutely. So I first went down to the Society’s convention, I think, about twelve years ago, when Damian convinced me to do a Licentiate panel. He neglected to tell me that people don’t really do Licentiate panels printed at the convention. So I just rocked up with my 20 pictures, put them all up and everyone was like, oh, wow, goodness me, somebody’s very brave doing a Licentiate here in front of all these people. And I was like, sorry, what? In front of who? And then obviously there was a room full of people and it was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life. But after that panel, there was a guy called George Fairburn who came in and put his Fellowship panel in and it totally blew me away. It changed my opinion on what photography could be because it was all predominantly shots of bands. They’d shot for magazines, and so they were like super creative composites, people just in the most amazing, colourful photography, almost like some special effects going on, it was just like, it really blew my mind. And I was like, okay. And the cogs started whirring and I was like, okay, this is something I could get on board with. And that kind of changed my mindset of what actually you could achieve with photography. So that was a really big thing for me. And from there, it just kind of developed. I mean, I’ve always been into sport, ever since I was little. I’ve done football, rugby, I did capoeira for ten years, which is a Brazilian martial art. That’s what led me to going to Brazil. Now I do Crossfit for the last ten years. And so when it came to focusing in on one thing in particular, sport was the natural thing. And being from Manchester, which is obviously the greatest sporting city in the world. Tongue firmly in cheek there for those who live in London. It just seemed like a natural thing because there were so many opportunities for shooting sports and athletes around the Manchester area that it kind of seemed like a no brainer. And that was where I started my professional photography journey in that direction.

Joe Lenton
So it was kind of like your passions coming together then over a period of time. You knew you liked sport and then you found photography, and it gradually developed sort of from that, then. Sort of a combination of things that you’re already interested in, in a way. But, yeah, we can’t always necessarily see where these things lead. At the moment I’ve been seeing you’ve been posting a bit about sort of creativity. You’re very passionate about creativity, and it looks like, are you sort of trying to re-educate people a bit about that? I was reading one of your posts recently on LinkedIn and it seemed like maybe suggesting people have got the wrong end of the stick sometimes when it comes to being creative.

Neil Shearer
Absolutely. I mean I love, I love teaching, and I love teaching at the Society’s convention and I’ve done other workshops before. And as I said before, when I was posting on LinkedIn, I was focusing on creativity. And I think creativity is something that is definitely understood. But for me, creativity is freedom, really. I spent ten years working for a pharmaceutical company before I was a photographer. I’ve got a degree in chemistry, so my background before was science, and it was very process driven. Same thing, day in, day out. We were screening different drugs to see what effect they would have on the body. And now to have the creativity of someone saying, here’s a product, make something interesting. I’m lucky enough that I’m at the point now where people have seen my previous work either with shoes or with dancers, and they’ll say, they’ll come in and say, I’m a dancer. I want some creative pictures for my portfolio. What do you suggest? Go for it. Or someone saying, here’s a shoe that I want photographed to go up on my office wall. Create something. And having that freedom to just be like, wow, I can literally create anything here is fantastic. But it’s also a bit overwhelming.

Joe Lenton
Absolutely. Yeah, it can be. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I find if I can get the client to narrow things down in a brief, I don’t find that restricting. I actually find that helps with the creativity, because it’s more of a problem solving thing then rather than just trying to pluck ideas out of thin air.

Neil Shearer
Yeah. So when a client says to me, here’s something, go and create something in your style, it takes a long time to kind of narrow in exactly what it is that they want and what will be a good outcome for them. Because I could create something that I like, but it’s not what they had in mind. And often you need to have those conversations. You need to really drill down to find out what it is that they like so you can get the best outcome for everybody.

Joe Lenton
So other than sort of the brief like that, is there anything else that helps you to be creative? Do you need to be in a particular mindset when you start, or are you one of these people that can just pick something up and just start tinkering?

Neil Shearer
I think, as I said, I was listening to the podcast with Hannah. I’ve got so many creative ideas. I’ve got notebooks full of little threads, little things that kind of occur to me, little things that I’ve seen and go, okay, well, maybe that could turn into something one day. I’m not somebody who can just be creative at the drop of a hat on command. I need to have time to let an idea develop. And more often than not, if I’m sat on my computer editing or I’m driving somewhere, there’s always something at the back of my mind going, okay, well, how can we pull on this thread? And what will that turn into? So, like I said, I’ve got notebooks full, both digital and physical sketches. I’m probably the world’s worst actual artist when it comes to drawing and sketching. If you’ve ever been to any of my talks, I’m quite happy to share the behind the scenes pictures that I create when I first start. And they are… They’re abysmal, I’ll be honest. But it’s just getting the building blocks in place. And usually it’s a stick figure, if it’s a dancer with some lines coming out in the background, and then I show them the after picture and it’s like, how did we get from this to this?

Neil Shearer
But in my head, that’s kind of what the picture looks like. There’s no way I would ever be able to sketch it out properly. Yeah, but it’s just starting with something and then iterate. Try it. Put it out there, get the feedback. If it fails, great, you’ve learned something. Why did it fail? Change it. Go back, put it out there, change it. And it’s quite often, it’s an iterative process. It’s very rare that I will put a piece of work out there and people will go, wow, this is amazing. This is so creative. This is brilliant. It will quite often come back with feedback. Whether it’s feedback you’ve asked for or feedback that’s just been freely given by the general public… It’s all taken on board.

Joe Lenton
So do you find that actually you’ve kind of left the sort of scientific approach behind, or do you find that you actually do bring aspects of like a scientific workflow into how you now work as a photographer? I appreciate the creativity as being sort of a slightly different aspect, but that kind of methodical approach to iterating what you’re doing, is that still for you? Do you still feel that it’s scientific in that sort of way?

Neil Shearer
I think there’s definitely still some elements of that. And we talked earlier about how important it is to have a workflow. And when I get into Photoshop, whether I’m editing people or products, my workflow always starts out the same. I will cut out the person or the product, I will soften the edges, I will change the background, I will change the colours. I’ll mask out each individual part that I know I need to edit. If it’s shoes, quite often you will need to mask out each individual part of the shoe so you can straighten the lines. If it’s a person, you need to cut out the hair. So you can change hair colours if you need to, or if you need to change the colour of a pair of trousers, you’ll mask out those individually. And that is always the same process. And it involves quite a hefty file structure. So my files are quite often like four or 5GB, really, before I’ve even started getting into the creative side of things, if that’s creating a background or changing the colours on a shoe or changing the colours of clothes, I’m very process driven in that I will get to that point and it’s like, right, okay. Everything is separated into its constituent parts. I know I’ve got total control over this image, over this person, over the colours in this shoe. And then that allows me to be more creative and it allows me to go forward from there, because I know that if I put a background in, it’s like, actually, well, these colours don’t match with the colours in the image. It’s like, well, we can change colours in the background or the colours in the image to be something that’s more cohesive. So, I think having a science background has taught me a lot about having a process and rigidity, rigidly sticking to that process until you get to a point where you’re like, right, now I’ve got the freedom to be more creative.

Joe Lenton
Yes. That little bit of discipline that you put in first, but actually then gives you much more flexibility afterwards, I think, doesn’t it? So that kind of workflow also has the business impact of meaning you can estimate how long it’s going to take you to do something more easily. It’s easier to be able to make a little bit more of your time, because if you’re wasting too much time on a forever changing workflow, you’re not earning as much as you could be if you’ve got something consistent that’s repeatable.

Neil Shearer
Absolutely. I mean, when I’m editing my own pictures, I’m pretty terrible at just constantly going back and constantly making little changes. Maybe leave it a couple of days and then, oh, no, I’ll change this, I’ll tinker with this, I’ll change that, I’ll change this. But when I’m editing for clients, I am far more strict. I know roughly how long it will take to edit, say, eight pictures from a shoot. And I will budget in maybe two days of retouching for that shoot, if that’s how long I think it’s going to take. If it’s heavy composite work, then maybe two days isn’t enough. But they will always be in, they will always be charged separately so that I can update the clients after two days and say, okay, so we’ve got to this point, we’re going to need another day of editing. That’s an additional charge. And it’s having these conversations ahead of time. And so they know how much time I am prepared to spend on each image. And I know how much time I’ve got to spend on each image. So I’m not going in and making the tiniest little micro adjustments to something that no one’s ever going to see. Because ultimately it might be a picture in a magazine, or it might be, more often than not, it’s a 2000 pixel image that’s going to be seen on an iPhone screen. So you don’t need to be zoomed into 400% and making the tiniest little adjustments. But on my own images, I will spend hours and hours and hours doing that.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, sometimes that process of educating the client, when I get some new clients come to me and you sort of say, well, what size are you going to be using at the image at in the end? Is it going to be just going on the web or is it going to be printed as a big advert somewhere? “What does that matter? You’ve still got to edit it anyway.” And you think, yeah, but I can leave a lot of stuff because you’re not going to see it if it’s only 1000 pixels on a website, but if it’s going to be blown up to a six foot poster, you’ll see everything. So there’s a big difference. And it’s managing those expectations and having the flexibility in your own processes that you can do what is needed for the job like that.

Neil Shearer
Absolutely. I think one of the best examples of that is about six years ago, I was commissioned by Ford to take some pictures of their racing drivers. And initially they said, oh, they’re just going to go in the programme, so maybe like maybe two, three inches tall. I was like, okay, great, that’s fine. And they were very simply shot. So drivers shot against a black background in black and white, looking super moody. It was a really great project to be involved with. And then halfway through the project they said, we love how these pictures are turning out. What we actually want to do now is blow them up to two metres tall and have them printed on acrylics in the hospitality area at Le Mans. So people are going to be walking past them maybe four or 5ft away. I was like, right, okay, that’s going to need some additional retouching. And it did. And it was. Luckily, I’d shot it on medium format, so we had the file size and we could easily blow them up to that size. But when you know your work is going to be seen by hundreds and hundreds of people who are going to be looking really closely at it, it changes the retouching needs quite substantially. So that was probably another whole week of retouching twelve portraits to the absolute nth degree. And they were some huge files as well, but ultimately the pictures turned out brilliantly. And there’s pictures of, I think, Keanu Reeves was there, Brad Pitt was there, stood next to these pictures, smiling and laughing.

Joe Lenton
Excellent.

Neil Shearer
And nobody picked up on any of the little mistakes that I spotted afterwards, which is excellent.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, that is the thing. Sometimes a client can say they want one thing and then suddenly realise they want something else. And being able to shoot with these things in mind, I suppose medium format is one of those kind of slight fall-backs, if you like, when a client suddenly decides they want something bigger. If you’ve got that bigger file in the first place. It’s like I’ve had people say suddenly, do you know, I’d really like a banner crop here of the middle bit of that image. And you’re thinking, yeah, so we’re going down from like 45 megapixels to about 8-10 or something for the bit that they decided they want a strip of. And could we print that at four foot wide? And you think, oh my goodness, here we go. So, yeah, having those kind of like fall-backs in place, just in case, can be quite useful.

Neil Shearer
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the majority of my clients are never going to print stuff to two metres high, and if they are, they’re going to tell me about that beforehand. I’ve shot a couple of adverts before that have been used on the Tube, on the Tube platforms, just on the electronic boards. And again, those have been quite retouch intensive. But the majority of my work is for web and socials. Occasionally I’ll go into print magazines, but again, that’s quite rare these days.

Joe Lenton
So, I mean, as part of your toolbox, you obviously use CGI and that’s kind of, in a way, I suppose, how we started to get to know each other, because we were both experimenting with it for our product photography, to create sets and so on, especially during lockdown, when you just couldn’t get out and shop and get hold of things, really. So, I mean, that’s something that we’re both still using. I suppose a lot of people are kind of wondering about the developments with AI and so on, whether that’s something that can be used to help creativity or others are thinking, no, it’s just killing it. It’s taking the fun bit away, it’s taking the creativity away, it’s just giving it over to machines so it can be done cheaply. What do you think about that? Is it a tool that you would consider embracing for your creativity or is it something that you’re worried about?

Neil Shearer
So I can totally see it from both sides. The AI discussion is only going to rage on and on, especially now with the text to video coming out. Using AI – I do use AI a lot. I use chat GPT a lot more than Midjourney in my business. I use Midjourney occasionally for ideation and just again, starting those creative ideas flowing out. Quite often if I’ve got an idea of something in my head which I can’t sketch out, then I will throw some words into Midjourney and see what it comes up with and maybe I’ll take that idea and change something, throw it back in, get it to describe the image, throw it back in. And then maybe I’ve got maybe 16, 20-40 images that you can look at and go, okay, well, I like that element of this and I like that part of this. And then in my head maybe I’m starting to put those together in a more unique way. And then maybe it’s something I’ll take over into Photoshop and I’ll use CGI to create those elements myself. And what a lot of photographers actually don’t necessarily understand is the difference between CGI and AI. And so that’s something I’ve really had to start to educate people on, especially photographers when I’m teaching. CGI and AI are two very different things.

Joe Lenton
Absolutely.

Neil Shearer
And obviously, if you’re using CGI, you can use that in your own images and you can then put those into competitions and qualifications. But obviously AI is very much not allowed.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, I’ve seen some competitions as well that are now not allowing CGI even. And you think, well, I just wonder whether there’s just this everything’s been lumped into one pot and they just think if it’s generated by a computer, well, it’s artificial intelligence, it’s generated by a computer. There you go. Can’t use that… Not quite the same thing.

Neil Shearer
I can see why they would do that because I can see that some people might want to keep the traditional method of photography alive and have everything shot by a person, by a camera. I totally see that. That’s totally fair. But for me, I can create things that cannot be created just by using the camera. And if I can do that, then I know my work can stand out. And I know in the advertising industry there are so many people that are using CGI, more so than you would think, actually. A lot of the advertising images that you see there will be CGI elements to it and you might not even notice. And that’s kind of the point. Obviously, those things like that I create the dance images that I shot recently. Some of those are very obviously CGI, but some of the product work that I’ve done where I’ve built a set and then photographed a bottle and then placed it in this set, people haven’t even noticed that it’s been CGI.

Joe Lenton
You know, you look at films these days and even the weirdest kind of fantasy and Sci-Fi stuff can look very realistic and think, well, that’s exactly what you can then do with a still image. You can produce something that does look very real. And I think even if competitions don’t choose to allow it for obvious reasons and so on, I think if you’re going to be working in the advertising world, and particularly in the product world, if you don’t have any access to CGI and you’re relying on building stuff by hand all the time, set building, it’s going to be getting harder and harder to compete. Building a set is expensive and once you’ve built it and shot the stuff, if you have to then take it down to build your next set, well, if they want something moved or changed, it’s tricky. Whereas with CGI you can have it all sitting there, you can tweak it and come back to it, and it saves an awful lot of waste as well. From an environmental point of view, you’re not chucking out blocks of MDF and so on that you’ve been painting. So from a personal point of view, I see it hard to imagine commercial, especially product kind of work without CGI being an element in the future.

Neil Shearer
Yeah, I’ve got clients that. Not necessarily clients, but companies that I’ve approached and said I can do some photography work, we can incorporate some CGI. And they’ve gone, actually, we’ve just recently outsourced it all to CGI. So they’re having their products created as 3d renders and then they’re just dropping them into 3d backgrounds. And for them that works because they’re just simple products, they’re very easy to create. And once they’ve done that, they’ve got those products, they can change the colours at the drop of a hat. They can put them into simple still life backgrounds and it’s like, okay, that’s fair enough. And the automotive industry has obviously been going that way for quite a while. Quite often you’ll have full 3d renders of cars that are then put into photograph backgrounds or vice versa. You’ll quite often have a CGI background and photograph an actual car and pop it in that way. So, it is out there.

Joe Lenton
Oh, absolutely. And if anybody has ever tried photographing a car, then they’ll know that one of the reasons why is reflections. Trying to get nice, clean reflections in a car or anything that’s totally shiny like that can be an absolute headache. So, yeah, when you see these beautifully clean car images. Yeah. Some of them are still photographed and retouched, some of them aren’t.

Neil Shearer
That’s the good thing I love about trainers, is they’re very rarely reflective.

Joe Lenton
Good point. Yeah. A lot of matte surfaces there. Absolutely.

Neil Shearer
But for me, AI is a tool. It’s like anything else. But the joy of making an image for me is the process is the creation is the starting from something, taking however many hours, however many days, and getting something at the end that you can say, I created this. I put my heart and soul into this and I made the mistakes and I made the changes, and I am happy with how it’s come out. There’s a little piece of me in this image, whereas if I just type in a shoe on a sculpture, click a button and it’s like, oh, here’s four examples. Oh, great. Done. Brilliant. Move on to something else. No, the joy is in the creation for me.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. So these piles of notebooks with ideas that you’ve got in there, then, is there anything that you think you might be bringing out of there in the coming months, anything that we can look forward to that you’ve already sort of earmarked for? Yeah, I’m going to develop that idea now.

Neil Shearer
So when I passed my fellowship in January, within about ten minutes of me walking out of that room, someone had said, oh, well done, what’s next? And it just sent my mind spiralling. I was like, what’s next? I’ve spent five years working towards getting to this point. What’s next? I don’t know what’s next? I have no clue. But then, within a couple more hours, I was like, well, what is next? So it kind of started me thinking. And, yeah, there are definitely some ideas, some things I want to develop this year. I’ve had a series of images in my head for ages now about sort of mental health and more storytelling and awareness around the mental health side of things. I’m going to be pursuing more dance images, more sort of location based dance images, still incorporating, again, CGI and storytelling, but taking it out of the studio onto location. So there’s always a lot of things floating around my head and actually a new, big new project that I’m starting this year is I’m going to be starting to sell art prints based off sneakers. So the image of mine that won advertising photography of the year, that is going to be the first of a limited edition release of prints. I’m building a new website as we speak. And yeah, that’s going to be a pretty big thing this year, building a community of sneaker heads who like to collect art. It’s a very niche area, but I know there’s a huge market out there for it.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, I’m judging by the price of some of those custom trainers. You think? Yeah, there’s some people with some cash out there with it as well. So where’s the best place to sort of follow you with this? Is it your website? Will we see some of your developments there or on social? Would you perhaps you’d just like to give the listeners sort of key places to follow your work from?

Neil Shearer
Yeah, absolutely. So my creative website is just neilshearer.com. That is basically more of a portfolio site. So that’s where all my newest shiny images go. You can find me on Instagram – neilshearer_photography – again that’s where most of my work will be seen and anything that gets released will get released onto Instagram and it will be linked back from there to all the other places.

Joe Lenton
Excellent. Well I’ll put links to these on the page with the podcast when that goes live. Thank you very much Neil for taking the time out to talk to us today and thank you everybody for listening. Neil, it has been great getting to know a little bit more of your story and to hear a bit more about what gets you passionate and what lies behind your work. Thanks very much for coming on.

Neil Shearer
Fantastic Joe. Really appreciate the chance to get to chat about this.

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