Neil Burnell
An amateur photographer from South West England, Neil began to take his hobby seriously a few years ago, and since then he’s won Wex Photographer of the Year twice, as well as a category of Landscape Photographer of the Year. Visit www.neilburnell.com NEIL Burnell is an award-winning fine art photographer who feels like he’s owned a DSLR ‘forever’, but only really developed a passion for capturing landscapes in 2016. In the same year he found he was leaning towards long exposures and mono or muted- colour seascapes. Neil owns a Nikon D810, and has recently swapped his Zeiss primes for Nikon zooms. ‘I now use 17-35mm, 2470mm and 70-200mm lenses,’ he explains. ‘I have sacrificed a tiny amount of image quality, but I have much more flexibility about what I can carry now.’ It’s just as well, because Neil’s kit bag also contains 3-, 6-, 10and 16-stop ND filters. ‘ When I’m using the ND filters my shutter speeds can vary from 0.5sec to six minutes depending on the look I’m after,’ he says. When he’s searching for a promising composition Neil handholds the camera and uses the viewfinder before switching to the LCD screen once it’s on a tripod and ready to go. ‘I use manual exposure mode and mostly Evaluative metering,’ he explains. ‘I tend to prefer my long exposures to have lighter tones, so I always use the histogram and expose to the right. Most of the time my ISO falls somewhere between 64 and 400.’