Abenteuer Reportagefotografie – Podcast über visuelles Storytelling

Kai Behrmann: Visueller Storyteller und Fotograf

Mike Taylor: Watching People Watching Football In Pubs (Interview in English)

British photographer Mike Taylor discusses "The Beautiful Game", a series about people watching football in British pubs. He explains how it began during the 2018 World Cup and how he captures crowd reactions in dark, crowded spaces.

24.06.2026 59 min

Zusammenfassung & Show Notes

Mike Taylor photographs people watching football – not the match. His series The Beautiful Game captures fans in British pubs: their tension, their joy, their disappointment. The twist: Taylor isn't a football fan himself. That distance is exactly what makes the work possible.

It began by accident in 2018, on his 55th birthday, in a London pub. Seven years later the image won the Street Photography category at the CEWE Photo Award – and led to the solo exhibition at the "La Gacilly – Baden Photo" festival, where this conversation was recorded.

Taylor talks through his method, his late and self-taught path into photography, and the question of what an image actually has to make you feel in order to work.

More information, links and images in the shownote: https://www.abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de/podcast/mik-taylor-watching-people-watching-football-in-pubs

*** Interview in English ***

Mike Taylor fotografiert Menschen, die Fußball schauen – nicht das Spiel. Seine Serie The Beautiful Game zeigt Fans in britischen Pubs: ihre Anspannung, ihren Jubel, ihre Enttäuschung. Das Besondere: Taylor ist selbst kein Fußballfan. Genau diese Distanz macht seine Arbeit möglich.

Begonnen hat alles 2018 durch Zufall, an seinem 55. Geburtstag in einem Londoner Pub. Sieben Jahre später gewann das Bild die Kategorie Street Photography beim CEWE Photo Award – und führte zur Einzelausstellung beim Open-Air-Foto-Festival "La Gacilly – Baden Photo", wo dieses Gespräch entstand. 

Im Interview erklärt Taylor seine Methode, seinen späten, selbst beigebrachten Einstieg in die Fotografie und die Frage, was ein Bild eigentlich auslösen muss, damit es funktioniert.


⚽ "Amor Eterno" geht an den Start!

Nach vier Jahren Arbeit an meinem fotografischen Langzeitprojekt über die Fußballkultur in Argentinien startet jetzt die Kickstarter-Kampagne für das gleichnamige Fotobuch. Gemeinsam mit Thomas B. Jones spreche ich im YouTube-Live am Mittwoch, 10. Juni 2026, ab 20 Uhr über die Geschichten hinter den Bildern, die Entstehung des Projekts und den Weg vom ersten Foto bis zum Buch.

📺 Zum YouTube-Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1JItmKN7gM

📖 Mehr Informationen zu "Amor Eterno": https://www.abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de/amor-eterno

🚀 Direkt zur Kickstarter-Kampagne: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kai-behrmann/amor-eterno

🥁 Der Video-Trailer zum Projekt: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1198140137/06178b7212

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Dies ist der Podcast der interaktiven Lernplattform “Abenteuer Reportagefotografie”. Hier dreht sich alles um visuelles Storytelling in der Street- und Reportagefotografie.

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Transkript

I've never followed a team. I've never been interested in football and friends have taken me to the terraces and said, I'll wait until you get to the terraces. You won't be able to resist the pull of the crowd. And it turns out I am. Absolutely. It's great being amongst tens of thousands of people screaming and cheering. But emotionally, it just doesn't do a thing for me. I must have some gene missing. I don't have the football geek at all.
Kai Behrmann
00:00:32
Hello and welcome to this special episode from the opening days of Europe's biggest open-air photo festival, La Gassili Badenfoto in Austria. This year's festival is titled So British and it runs in Baden near Vienna until October 11th, 2026. Together with my colleague Ulrike Schumann from Photo Podcast, I had the chance to sit down with British photographer Mike Taylor during the festival's media days. Mike is showing his project The Beautiful Game, a series about football fans watching major international matches in British pubs. What makes the work especially interesting is that Mike is not really a football fan himself. His focus is not the game, but the people watching it. Their faces, their emotions, their tension, their joy, their disappointment, and the strange collective energy that fills a room when everything seems to depend on a moment on a screen. In our conversation, we talk about football, street photography, preparation, access, instinct, and the challenge of photographing people when they are completely absorbed in what's happening around them. We also briefly mentioned my own photo book project called Amor Eterno. For those of you who are new to this podcast, Amor Eterno is a long-term photo book project about football culture in Argentina, not as a sports book, but as a visual story about love, identity, belonging, rituals, and the deep emotional bond between people and their clubs. The book is currently available to support and pre-order on Kickstarter. You will find the link in the show notes. Thank you very much for your support. And now let's dive into our conversation with Mike Taylor. Okay, let's get started. Thank you very much, Mike, for taking the time to sit down with us.
Mike Taylor
00:02:29
It's a pleasure. It's an absolute pleasure. My first podcast.
Kai Behrmann
00:02:32
Yeah, yeah. We talked about that. It's your first.
Ulrike Schumann
00:02:35
I'm losing my podcast virginity.
Kai Behrmann
00:02:38
Okay. And with us also Ulrike from PhotoPodcast. Hello.
Ulrike Schumann
00:02:46
We really enjoyed already a lot of talk and I'm really looking forward to this interview.
Kai Behrmann
00:02:53
Yeah, it kind of feels that we've done the interview already. We've talked so much last night and also today over breakfast. But Mike, now we have the recording device taping. We should have had the recorders with us last night. Yeah, we could have saved us the time. Yes but let's get it yes okay where where to start mike um you you told us that uh you have quite um an impressive career uh diverse career in journalism in in movie and in digital development and of course photography
Mike Taylor
00:03:43
Um yeah I've been very lucky very very lucky I mean it's um I was never never very good at school, um I had terribly bad eyesight so that makes um just everything quite hard I went to a very sporty school so, I was rubbish at sport because I couldn't see very well and I wasn't a great student. I mean, you know, but I left school, didn't go to university, didn't go to college, but I managed to land some work experience with my local paper. And the only thing I could do really was any good at was English, was writing. So I did two weeks work experience on my local paper in South London. And two weeks became two months, became six months. And then the union stepped in and said, either give this guy a proper job or get rid of him, which is more than fair. And so I ended up as a trainee journalist in local papers. Remember when local papers used to exist i don't know they do anymore um. So and i did that and and i really yeah i had a great journalism career for 20 odd years um it was an amazing time, we you know when i started in journalism newspapers were still set with hot metal, and through we went through the polymer photo makeup to computerization to full digital makeup So I sort of saw that and in my career as a journalist, I went into TV news. I worked at ITN and Sky News in the UK. I don't know if anyone knows those. And there it was... Seeing us move from film to videotape to digital you know so it's in both industries having seen this transformation um and and gone through it with everybody else i mean a lot of the time what history books never tell you is, you're making this up as you go along you know these technologies come along and you have to kind of the people involved have to shape them and use them and and transform things it's um no one gives you a rule book and says oh this is how you do it it's like there's no instruction manual you just make it up so uh so i did that and i, i i got very disillusioned with journalism in um in about 2001 and um i wasn't really sure what to do. Uh oh sorry um sorry i i got um i got disillusioned with journalism in about 2001 and um i really wasn't sure what to do i was working at sky in the uk which has news and in sports and movies. And my boss basically handed me, this golden opportunity to go across the sky movies and shape their digital, side their digital output um because i'm a huge movie fan and always have been and it was it really was again falling into something that wasn't planned and it turned out to be great it was a dream job um, and then I did that for 10 years um after that I did some uh some development work in uh, digital asset management and distribution on a global scale uh because people needed very big assets moved around um we looked at that and then my wife is a sommelier and so uh, we opened a wine shop and a wine bar in west london and we did that for 10 years so it's been a really interesting varied life yeah um but we probably want to talk about some photography.
Kai Behrmann
00:07:34
Yeah yeah what role did photography play all all along
Mike Taylor
00:07:39
Ah it's always been there in the background i i remember very very vividly um being six years old my first really kind of clear memory so about six years old, being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night in my Thunderbird pajamas. And we were staying at my grandparents' house because at the time, I don't think we had a TV. And so I was taken to this room with lots of people I didn't know. And they were all watching the TV. They're watching the moon landing in July 69, which is how I can pinpoint it. You know, I mean, I remember being dragged out of bed. That's the kind of thing. And we all sat around and watched this. And it struck me then, on the night, it struck me, that the first thing that Neil Armstrong did... On the moon was take a picture of his friend and it really kind of, astronaut i mean i was space mad as a kid but astronauts and spaceships you know, i was never going to be an astronaut i was never going to fly spaceships but we had a camera because it came out every christmas and every holiday and we've got, the albums that still got the pictures from then in there so it was something very relatable and about two weeks after that we were, uh on holiday in a caravan and uh my mum just handed me the camera and said why don't you have a go and I've still got that picture. On my desktop I look at it literally every day it's a it's a very banal terrible picture of my mum and my two grandmothers and one great-grandmother and my brother and a couple of uncles it's a terrible picture, but uh it's you know i look at it all the time it's one of those pictures that's just there because that's where it all started for me that's that was the the beginning um.
Kai Behrmann
00:09:33
But that's what photography does. I mean, the picture doesn't have to be perfect in terms of whatever composition, but if it brings back memories and anchors a certain moment, then it's a valuable.
Mike Taylor
00:09:47
And then of course you fast forward sort of 60 years and i'm reading roland bars and he's talking about his picture of his mother which he never shows us, and i i don't think that picture of his mother ever really existed i think it was a a conceptual picture of his mother looking perfect and and, as he remembers her but i've actually got this picture on my desktop and i do look at it all the time yeah it's it's kind of just there it's um, you know i've used it in various things now so it comes up in in work but um, and talking about photography so um but it is always there it's it's a it's a it's a permanent thing you know it's.
Ulrike Schumann
00:10:29
So um at home i i scrolled through the editions on the website and i saw your pictures and i thought of kai publishing his first book about soccer and i thought perhaps it would be nice to talk to you too and now it turns out it's really funny with you two so much
Mike Taylor
00:10:50
Similarities it's it's an amazing coincidence i mean it was great work last night because you know the football stuff that i produce is in black and white uh and yours is in this vivid, bright in your face color which i think is is great um, and and I mean there's so much that's different between what we do yet, so it's the left and right foot of the same thing it's it's uh it's great it's really nice to meet you and really nice to see your work and I definitely want to buy a copy of your book get it out stop talking about it do it, stop doing this podcasty stuff go and finish the book.
Kai Behrmann
00:11:30
Get it printed thank you very much my Yeah, I also enjoyed your perspective on football. And what I find amazing is that first looking at your pictures, not knowing anything about you, I thought that, yeah, you might be interested in the game itself too. But then you said that you couldn't care less about the game.
Mike Taylor
00:11:56
I don't ever use the phrase, I couldn't care less, because I think it's a very.
Ulrike Schumann
00:11:59
Very brutal phrase.
Mike Taylor
00:12:03
But i i i almost use it about football i know nothing about football i grew up in a house where we didn't do any we weren't interested in any sport at all my family are not sporting um, so i don't i've never followed a team i've never been interested in football and and and, you know friends have taken me to the terraces and said i'll wait until you get to the terraces you won't be able to resist the pull of the crowd and it turns out I am absolutely, it's great being it's great being amongst thousands tens of thousands of people screaming and cheering, but emotionally it just doesn't do anything for me I'm really I must have some gene missing I don't I don't have the football gene at all I really or the sports gene I, I can't understand what the fuss is about it's a it's great i think people, i'm over the moon that people get so much out of football i'm not anti-football i just think it's just not for me yeah.
Ulrike Schumann
00:13:08
But that you have in common
Mike Taylor
00:13:12
To to be interested in the people yes yeah the people watching football i mean um so i, In 2018, I've stumbled across a bunch of people watching football in a pub quite randomly. I mean, really randomly. And that was the, it turns out that was the picture that won the Siwi Street Photography category last year. So that's the one that I think made me realise that day, made me realise that here, it made me realise that although I have nothing in common with football, I don't take part in football at all, here is a fantastic subject for photography I think it's it just opened up like a flower it just bloomed and since then every year, for five or six nights every year I'll go and find a pub that's got fans in it that are really really up for it and then uh and just photograph them and if I get, if I get one or two pictures out of any game that's a good night that's that's great so yeah it's um it's fun.
Kai Behrmann
00:14:22
The disadvantage is that we are recording a podcast and we're talking about pictures so the listeners can see your your images uh we link to your website and and to places where yeah people can have a look at the the images uh what i found very interesting you touched on it you said that uh this picture when you stumbled across a bunch of people watching football in the pub. You took that picture, and out of that came the series and your topic. This is something I think many photographers can relate to. You take pictures kind of randomly, maybe on the street, but they don't connect in a way. What was it that made it click in this moment and that you realized, okay, this could develop into a series or a topic to follow over a long period of time.
Mike Taylor
00:15:15
It's, It was just that at the time I was in my head and in my bank balance, I was saving up to, do a trip to America to maybe or to shoot some church congregations in the South. I really wanted to do, I was slightly obsessed with this idea of people losing it for whatever reason. And I was saving up to do that. And so we were both working in the business and it was hard. I didn't have a lot of time for photography. But at this moment, this happened, this chance afternoon of walking into a pub full of World Cup fans. And the pub was packed and the only seat in the pub was the one that couldn't see the screen because that was. And in fact, in any pub on any World Cup game, there is always a seat that has no view of the screen, which is always free. So it felt like it felt like this was here is something. The universe is just presenting something, you know, so all I had to do. So I did it and I did it again. That World Cup, the 2018 World Cup, I did it a couple of times. And some of my favorite images are from those first few times um hopefully since then i've got better at it i think that's uh, that's you know you hope that i've certainly learned more about crowds and and and working with people who maybe have been drinking for three or four hours you know so there is a kind of handling, this you have to go through um and but on on on the whole people are so generous and so kind of into it and they they might question, you know why why why aren't you just watching the football why you know why are you here with i don't and then the game starts and you're invisible.
Ulrike Schumann
00:17:08
And do you ask
Mike Taylor
00:17:11
Uh before no i don't ask i mean i don't ask the crowds are you now one thing i've learned to do is find a pub, that isn't just run by someone who you know likes can see what we're doing is willing to say yes i now actively seek out pubs or in fact they seek me out saying i'd love you to come to our pub and shoot that shoot here we'd love you to do it you know we'd love to see some of your pictures shot in our pub so it's kind of, self-selecting and and the opportunities open up by doing the work so um, but i don't think this is answering your question about, how it became from one shot to a series. I mean, it really was a chance photograph. And I shot, I think, about 800 frames that day. When I realized there was something there. About 800 frames and going through them in light room it's like yeah there's not good there's not you know an interesting interest and then there's one that just jumps out at you it literally leapt off the screen, and i almost couldn't believe it it was a uh a real milestone moment um because before this um, as i uh i think i said well you know i've always had a camera and taken pictures been a happy amateur and i've always had a camera i enjoyed it but never taken photography seriously, and about three months before this picture I had changed the way I photographed I'd really committed to photography, in the same way that if someone's a little unfit and overweight they say I'm gonna I am gonna go to the gym I am going to, do it and I'm gonna do it regularly and and kind of religiously and see where I am in three months or six months or a year and see if I can make a difference. And that worked perfectly with photography.
Kai Behrmann
00:19:04
The image that won you the Seve Award, was that one of the first pictures you took?
Mike Taylor
00:19:12
Yeah, that was that day. That was that day. So, yes, pull forward a few years, and, I entered that and a few other pictures into the Seve Award. I don't have a printer at home. I don't have a photo printer. So I use the seaweed machines in Boots the Chemist at home, to print 7x5s just for friends or to say thank you for dinner or just as test prints, just before you get something printed large, you know, just to kind of see how it looks. Because it's cheap and it's affordable, it's easy, and it's somewhere I walk every day. So, and they advertised this, the screen advertised this competition, the photo award. And then when I got back on Instagram, something that was like, oh, the CWI Photo Award again, you know, you don't notice it and then you notice it a lot. And I thought, well, I've got 12 images that I prepared for something else. And I thought, well, I'll just enter them because they're sitting there on my desktop. It's no effort to, and the CWI Photo Award is free. You know it's easy to do you don't have to, create some great subscription and and you know it's very easy they could not make it easier just drag and drop your photos in and it's really simple um and then also there was that thing i noticed that apart from the fact it was free um, it also generates every picture uploaded generates a charitable donation so i thought well what do when i can upload 12 you know because they're sitting there um, and uh actually there is a funny story about that in that the 12 pictures that were on my desktop um were for um, a competition in kent someone has said oh i'm a member of the local camera club, and they said oh you should your works we like your work you should prepare some pictures and we'll, submit them to the best of kent you know award and i thought okay so so i did them and processed them and printed them out digitally um and, uh and they were they were entered and not one of them was accepted. So Kent very roundly said no to my pitch. I thought, well, maybe Seaweed will say yes. And the nice thing was of the 12 pitches I think I entered, one won its category. Another a separate different one won its category in the uk for street photography and i think two others were sort of shortlisted it's like okay well maybe kent were wrong you know, maybe all the photographers in kent were sort of maybe they they just didn't get it you know i. Um i was talking to some guys from austrian tv yesterday and i'll be honest i there was a tear I mean, I've never seen my work printed that big, arranged. I've never had an exhibition. So it's very emotional, very, very emotional. And then you're looking at them and then people walk past. And then you engage with people, you know, looking at your work and you chat to them. And that was, I mean, I'm tearing up now. That was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. This whole festival is amazing for that. This this it's just i can't think of anything else like it uh that i certainly that i've been involved with it's uh amazing um, what were we saying i'm sorry what was the quest what was the question sorry. Yes, that's right. We did. And as I say, I've got better at it. I realise now that there is a kind of formula for doing it. There is a kind of way that you approach it. And it's knowing that people always move forward when the action happens. So if you're opening up to 1.7, because it's a very dark room, and some of the pictures I've got exhibited, some of the pictures that I take were during the World Cup that was in Qatar in the winter. So they were in pubs at night with all the lights turned off. And the only light on the crowd is from the TV screen. So shooting conditions are not ideal. You know, people are moving. You've got using 30th, 60th per second. At 1.7 and 12,000 ISO. So it's, you're never going to, they're never going to be art prints.
Ulrike Schumann
00:23:51
They're not studio prints at all.
Mike Taylor
00:23:53
They're grainy, contrasty. There's blur. I'm sure the people, the judges in Kent would hate them. You know.
Kai Behrmann
00:24:03
Yeah, different things that the jury looks at depending on the kind of competition or the contest. Yeah but uh the emotion that's the the important thing to to capture this enthusiasm or the kind of this uh yeah when people or fans are um yeah cheering for their team and going through some tough moments and to capture all that in your images i think that is what makes them so special take us a little bit into the process you said that you learned a lot about managing a crowd and to move as a photographer in this environment then how do you go about that there
Mike Taylor
00:24:44
Is definitely a process and it kind of breaks down into, First, you need to find your mojo. You have to get your head straight. You have to want to do it. And it helps, as we've said before, it really helps if you're not a football fan. So you have to kind of want to do it because standing in front of. You know, a couple of hundred drunk football fans is not everyone's idea of fun. So you've got to want to do it, first of all. And you've got to realize that you can't watch the game. You can't really concentrate. You've got to concentrate on the crowd. And then as i said you find a pub and i'm lucky now that, because of the work pubs find me which is which is great um, and every year there is a world cup or euros whether men's or women's so it means every year there is some sort of tournament that everyone in that country is getting behind their national team so that's that's great and then um, then it's about finding the position and i think it you know i'll walk into a pub i've never been to before you look at the screen and i mean i'm shooting on uh, next wednesday uh in a sports bar in piccadilly um which has 32 screens, and can take 700 people so you know until we actually until i actually i've wrecked it but until i actually get there i won't know really what 700 people in a small space, with 32 screens actually looks like you know so it's a bit up in the air but you arrive early and you find your spot and, You kind of see people getting together and you see clumps of people, groups of people. And so you kind of pick a spot. And I think you have to kind of, it's not a sort of photography where you're thinking in five minutes, oh, I'll move over there and then I'll, you have to kind of make your decision. Sometimes you pick the wrong spot and you realise, you know, but you're not going to be getting up, blocking the screen and walking across a busy pub, annoying everybody in the middle of a game. So you just have to sit there sometimes. I think half times were invented to allow photographers to move. That's what it was. But and then and every crowd, because you're, I mean, I shoot on a 28 mil lens, which is, you know, quite wide. And you have to get close to people. So, you know, you're as close as we are now. And you're holding a camera up in their faces, really. um so um you need to pick your little big sometimes group of people um and then in that group there will always be two people that you really um, you really want to identify it's whoever the ringleader is whoever the hero is you know you find your hero um in that crowd he's he's always the person that um that. Uh sort of galvanizes holds that group together you can the kind of ringleader mentality leader of the pack you know kind of in there and and so that becomes your your central subject if you like he becomes your um, yeah he becomes your subject he leads that group and then finally um, and this is really important there i've learned uh that there is always someone in that group, who will react half a second to a second before everybody else so it's almost like they're they're ahead of the game and they are happy to be happy to be wrong if it turns out it's not a goal but they're always the first person to move and that gives you, that fantastic half a second you need to just decide, to press to press the shutter i mean it's david hearn always said, always says um that you know photography is about two things it's about knowing where to stand and when to press the shutter and if you've picked your spot, and you've sort of pre-focused where they're all moving to and you've got someone who's going to warn you about they're all about to do something you know when to press the shutter so i think that's why some of the pictures, kind of work quite well but i mean these are not one-off pictures i do take hundreds of pictures and there's only one or two out of an evening that might be, good enough you know um so that's the process if anyone wants to do it that is exactly how you.
Ulrike Schumann
00:29:06
Go and do it
Mike Taylor
00:29:07
And i can't i suppose i can't understand why more people aren't doing it why aren't you're doing it with what you're doing you're doing in color with uh you know and that's brilliant but you know i really do think that I can't believe I'm the first person ever to think of doing this. You know, I'm sure it's not an original idea, but, you know, we were talking earlier about it becoming a series. It was just a picture. And then I looked at that picture and thought, hang on, there's something here. This is really good, you know. And, you know, it sounds really immodest, but I did look at it and think, this is really good, you know. Maybe I can get another one. Maybe I can do it again. Maybe lightning can strike twice and then you try it again and hundreds more pictures. Maybe there's another one that just pops out and it's different, similar but different. And coming back to what you were saying about the emotion, that is what it's all about. It is about... Trying to capture that wanton emotion that that that un, uninhibited kind of they're not they don't care what people think they look they just want to scream for their team you know and you just want to capture that or if you're an English fan there's all the screaming and then they score and it's fantastic everyone celebrates and then they lose and everyone you know has got their head in their hands so that that's another rhythm to the whole game that you know very rarely does it actually work out as everyone planned but um, but yeah but that the picture that the picture that won the seaweed award was french football fans, and so there was a language barrier as well because they all spoke french everyone in that pub was french and i don't speak french and, um so so it was kind of like me just smiling and and i'm sure they can speak english they work in london but um but. There was a real um yeah they didn't care that i was there i was just happy to be there and happy to have done it and i've been trying to find that guy, i've been using social media and i approached a, couple of big french football websites saying you know can we find this guy i'd love to give him a print because the print that picture has done so much for me as a photographer, and it's everyone loves it and I just think it would be nice to give him a print of that picture so if anyone knows him you know let me know I'd happily send him a print of that.
Kai Behrmann
00:31:32
Something I'm curious about is that when I take my pictures, I have the advantage to wear this official jersey as a photographer and being close to the fence. Like the distance is the same that I take my pictures, but I don't have to do any explaining to the fans because they see I'm an official photographer. And as you mentioned, there's a fence between me and the fence. You don't have the fence.
Mike Taylor
00:32:04
I usually do I've learnt to get a beer, always go and get a pint of Guinness or something and just put it there and have it there even if you don't really plan to drink it it's just it just kind of you know it blend in a bit more and and um yeah, as I as I've said before you know the nice thing is that I've never had any trouble, even with the drunkest football fans I mean really you know a couple of pubs I've shot at they have been really out there and really drunk and not maybe not just drunk I mean really, you know out there and but no animosity no, no aggression you know yeah.
Kai Behrmann
00:32:43
But you you are just there you don't introduce yourself and say i'm the guy with the camera you just try to be as
Ulrike Schumann
00:32:50
I i will just
Mike Taylor
00:32:51
Sort of say to people very casually yeah i just i'm you know i'm doing it for the pub doing it for the landlord you know just i'm just here ignore me carry on and people will ask oh oh, you know, and then you show them some pictures. And usually that's the moment when you show them something. Oh, hang on, we could look like that. Yes, you could. You know, say, okay, yeah, that's fine. You know, yeah, do that. You know, so, but yeah, it's, I've never been thrown out of a pub, never been a, no, there's never been any animosity at all. It's always been really quite good-natured. I think they just can't understand why anyone would want to do this. It's a kind of bizarre like why okay whatever and then the game starts and then you become invisible so it's great I love it I love doing it.
Kai Behrmann
00:33:38
And how much attention do you pay to the commentators, to the sound from the TV? Is that something that you have in your ear to know when to?
Mike Taylor
00:33:50
More about, yeah, it's the tone of the pitch that goes up. You know, commentators like to get more excited. So, yeah, so you do listen and you're looking at your canary, who's, you know, if they're about to get excited.
Ulrike Schumann
00:34:04
And I mean, yeah, exactly.
Mike Taylor
00:34:06
I couldn't think of a better word, but it is that canary moment where, you know, if it looks like they're going to go and the commentator's going up, then yes. It's, you know, as I hear David Hearn in my head saying, press the button now. So now's a good time to press the button. But it's, yeah, I do listen to, I mean, I don't pay any attention to it. It's just more the pitch of the commentary. But it helps. It definitely helps.
Kai Behrmann
00:34:34
Maybe a very german question uh i when i teach workshops uh street photography there's always the concern are you allowed to take the picture of people and i can hear the the question coming up because you're so close and in germany it's a big discussion with photographers photographing in the public they're very worried about taking pictures of where a person is clearly uh yeah shown uh in the uk that's not an issue as i
Mike Taylor
00:35:09
It's not i mean it is an issue in the sense that uh yeah the people that you know people can quite rightly, say i don't want my picture taken i was in um some of your listeners might know king's cross in london it's a big station and there's a canal that runs past and in the summer, uh they've got these kind of big concrete seats on one side and they show the tennis and the football on a big jumbo screen and i was standing next to the jumbo screen looking at people watching the tennis, and um i realized this really aggressive guy kind of got up from his, you know in a crowd of hundreds of people, you know sitting in the sunshine watching the tennis kind of made his way up across the back over the bridge between us and came over and was really why are you taking pictures of me it's like, i'm not taking pictures of you i'm taking pictures of several hundred people watching the tennis but he was very specific from his point of view, someone was taking a picture of him and and yeah i think you have to be aware of people um I have a bigger problem, actually, than shooting people. I mean, I don't have any problem with shooting people in the street. And if someone says, I don't want my picture taken, of course you're not going to take the picture. In a pub, it's slightly different, because if the landlord has given you permission. And he wants you to do it, then they can either go along with that or they can drink elsewhere. Out in the street, I get it. I would never, ever just... You know i mean bruce gilden's pictures i find very hard very very hard to look at and i know that he does what he does and why he does it and this idea of you know untapped beauty and, beauty and being in the eye of the beholder and things but i just find those those pictures quite hard and i i wouldn't ever be that sort of, photographer i couldn't ever do that it's just not me as a photographer but the bigger problem i have and this is something i think is probably happening everywhere it's certainly happening in london is these pseudo public spaces, so somewhere that has been streets and you know park maybe or or whatever river walks, you know there's some redevelopment happens and then you bring your camera out and someone in a high-vis vest turns up and says you can't photograph here it's like well why can't it's not public space And it's pretending to be public space. The public can walk through it. And most of London now, certainly all of the city of London, is a pseudo-public space. And there are parks and open spaces and town squares and all sorts of things all over central London. Yeah. Anyone who brings out a camera is going to get jumped on very quickly by people in high-vis vests saying, I'll call the police if you carry on photographing here. You simply are not allowed. We own this space. My bosses own this space and there is no photography. And it happens so often now, so many cases where you see a nice reflection on a window, there's a nice silhouette of a head moving through a highlight, and you kind of think, that is great. I'll just wait here, just wait for the right person to walk through. And sometimes it's just seconds, you know, where you're surrounded by security. And I find the creeping privatisation of public spaces really, really worrying. You know, for me, that's a much bigger problem. But I just pretend, if they do, I just pretend I'm a stupid old man. Also, the other thing is, they don't mind people, you know, they've got outside restaurants and they've got everyone on their phone taking pictures but you bring a camera out and and you know suddenly you're breaking the law and i find that, that quite hard but but being older and having white hair means you can just pretend to be someone's granddad and they're not gonna they're not gonna call the police on someone's granddad are they i mean really unlikely yes, but it's crazy yeah where.
Ulrike Schumann
00:39:14
Phones do good pictures you can see a lot yeah
Mike Taylor
00:39:21
You know it's funny a friend was telling me the other day that um, He works at the American Embassy in London. You know, this amazing building. It's a very sculptural, very architectural building. And he said, yeah, they built it in Vauxhall in London and they built loads of flats around it. And yeah, it's high security. You can't just whip out your camera. And I mean, obviously people do take pictures of it but you can't get too close and, you know, because it's high security. And all the flats around it have been bought up pretty much en masse by Chinese people. Many of them, many of them are spies and they know this, but they literally can see into the embassy. You know, kind of, it's really kind of, there's a weird dissonance there between, this is the most secure spot in London. Well, hang on, we'll build flats around it and then China will just buy all of the flats because it can. And it has, it's surrounded, literally surrounded. It's a really very weird situation. And again there's another place you don't want to whip out your camera because those men haven't got just high vis vests they've got guns so yeah you know. I remember actually during the pandemic there's a restaurant just across from the embassy and, It was during the pandemic. It was when restaurants were closed and we drove down there to pick up some. They were doing a special, you know, takeaway thing. And while they said, yeah, it'll be just two minutes. And I just had my camera with me and wandered over to the embassy, you know, and just thought, that's a really nice shot. You know, there's no people about. And it was silent and it was empty. And I did pull out my camera. And you've never seen four men with guns appear so quickly out of nowhere.
Ulrike Schumann
00:41:06
It's amazing.
Mike Taylor
00:41:08
It's like a a magic act they just pop up and um but yeah so i i don't yeah don't don't don't do that with a camera.
Ulrike Schumann
00:41:17
It's a top tip don't do that
Kai Behrmann
00:41:20
Yes we're leaving aside all the the dangers that might be there uh photography or the wonderful thing about photography is that uh almost uh anybody can do it these days pick up a camera have a creative idea and and and go about it uh And what I find very interesting is also how you decided at one point you wanted to take your photography to the next level. You said that you really and you put in effort to study photographers. You went on YouTube, you watched tutorials. And this is accessible to anybody. So everybody can do that. Tell us a little bit about how how you did that and and what did you take away from these? Photographers you studied to kind of bring to your own photography Okay,
Mike Taylor
00:42:12
Um, it's again. It's a bit of a story. We were so so back in back working at sky movies 2009 we were given iPhones and. I think I actually remember the day I picked up the iPhone and played with it played with the camera and thought oh, That was the day I put my Canon down. You know, I never picked it up again. It's like, why do I need to? I've got effectively a Polaroid in my pocket. You know, it takes nice little square pictures. Oh, hang on. You can share them now. And, you know, you can print them and, you know, easy. Why would anyone worry about having a camera when you've got this kind of low resolution, easy thing? And so I had about, we were in Vietnam in 2018. And for my first time there it was fantastic had a most amazing trip and um and i took a picture just, sticks in a lake kind of thing and got back to the hotel room and i looked at it and i suddenly thought oh that's what i've been missing, you know i've been missing for the last two weeks i've been missing having a camera i can't i felt i've failed to capture my emotion my feelings about Vietnam because the pictures are nice on the phone but, I really missed having a camera and I've wasted two weeks and actually the truth was I hadn't wasted two weeks at all I had wasted 10 years and it really felt that really absolutely like it was a gut punch. I almost burst into tears. It was like kind of like, oh, hang on. You know, you could actually, you know, if you look, if I look at this picture of the lake in Vietnam now, I can almost hear the gods of photography laughing, going, yeah, 10 wasted years, mate. You had your chance. You had a camera. You could have been doing it, you know, and you chose to just use your phone. And it really was. It was a, it was a, I was 55. It was a complete midlife crisis. Yeah, it really was that kind of, oh, I've just wasted 10 years. And so I thought, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to really have a go and see if I can take my fairly nice pictures. And take them to another level, if I can really make them worth looking at. And it might not work, but let's have a go. And I did it. I had a think. And looking back at, you know, all the different jobs I've done, you learn things along the way. You work with people who are inspirational and clever, and they teach you things. And you kind of just squirrel them away in the back of your head. And then so I thought, right, okay, you know, I started watching Ted Forbes on the art of photography. And he did an interview with an American photographer John Free who said no more easy shots shoot within 10 if it's an easy shot don't take it you know just don't bother no more easy shots work for them so okay that seems like a good advice, and then I also thought, only show your best work anywhere and to anyone on instagram, you know everyone is sharing way too much i don't want to see 15 shots of the same thing and then be asked about whether should it be black and white or color you know make that decision that's your decision you're the photographer you know but only show your very best work even just, on instagram or on facebook or whatever you use just you know and then also, i think i decided that you know i had to kind of apply myself to Don't give myself any back doors or easy way out, you know, so apply myself. So I did. And I thought, and I actually had those three things written on yellow sticky pads. I'd written lots of things down. And one by one, I'd kind of binned them until I was left with these three things. That seems like a plan, you know. And so I thought, okay, right, that's a start. Um and then i thought well let's, i'd read something about creative limitations you know instead of photography these days, gives us so much choice pick up any camera and you have, unbelievable choices all the time and this idea that maybe it would be my pictures would be better if i restrict the choices so i decided just the one camera i've got a leica q, 28mm so one camera and one lens I've never felt comfortable shooting in portrait, so I just thought well let's just do landscape and it's 3x2 so, I like that three by two landscape aspect. It works for me. And so, okay, so that's the camera and the lens sorted and three by two landscape, maybe a little bit of cropping, you know, but, and then I was using Lightroom not to edit pictures just to store them because I wanted to store. And I think I got Lightroom because I wanted to store some family, you know, some of my wife's family pictures. Her father was a massive photographer, thousands of slides. You need to organize them and so i got it for that so i thought well, maybe i can learn a bit of editing you know playing with them so that's that's i kind of went forward and thought well let's do this and i kind of made it, a bit like going to the gym you know it's that kind of you know let's see if i do it a little bit every day a little bit every week. Um and at the same time throw myself into what i call youtube university you know it's just just, uh look at everything find the people find the voices that you, really that really resonate with you and with me it was ted forbes at the art of photography you know this very educated man a very good teacher who had obviously that you know he's a career in education and and so i just. Started burning my way through these videos about composition you know things i kind of sort of innately knew but never really thought about i never went to art school and never did any kind of, graphics training or design or anything it's just you know kind of things that you sort of learn but you don't know that you know it's kind of um so i did that so i um read everything i could david campney, is a brilliant writer um i've never met any of these people never had any to do with these people but they are just iban exparello david campney ted forbes, um you know i just absorbed All of this, all of this David Dushman as well. I like I like the way again all of these people and, I think they write brilliantly about photography. And they were the voices that kind of resonated. So I just deep dived on those and tried to put into practice everything that I was learning. It was, you know, for someone at 55 who'd never been to university, who'd never done any real studying after they left school at 16, 17, 18, whatever. It was, you know, it was quite rigorous. and also having been through work, you know you kind of you you teach yourself to you know you treat as a project you have to focus you have to apply yourself and do that you have to do the work, you actually have to do the work you know it's that great quote about you know 50 of photography is is owning a camera the other 50 of is actually using the camera.
Ulrike Schumann
00:49:45
You know so
Mike Taylor
00:49:46
You know it's it's it's half of photography and i think there are lots of photographers who could be so much better, if they stopped reading reviews of lenses and started looking at other photographers started also started looking at their own work that was the other thing i did so that was the other major thing so after, after i took the picture that won the seawee award so the first football picture i thought this is a, picture so I literally googled how do you criticize your own photographs and you know a few things came up and I settled on this, simple way of like being able to take my pictures apart in the same way that I would take anyone's pictures apart in a kind of conscious you know what do I see what do I think what do I feel it's a it's out there on the internet has been forever it's not I didn't discover it it was just to me it just made perfect sense of you can look at any picture and you can go okay what do i see and you can make a an inventory of the elements in that picture and then what do i think it's like well technically and aesthetically what do i think and then, most importantly what do i feel what does this picture make me feel and the problem with so much photography as i can see it is people produce pictures that don't make us feel anything there are so much you know and then when you do. You do make a picture that makes you feel something or makes people feel something it is game changing that's the that's the real decisive moment in photography someone finds, you know an authentic visual voice induces something that creates an emotion in in the viewer, that is the decisive moment in photography that that's when it the magic really happens. And I was very lucky in that that picture for me kicked off that process. And there's a reason that I don't show any pictures from before, very few pictures from before 2018, because you look at them now and they're not, they're just not good enough. You know, I took lots of pictures of trips and, Arizona and the Grand Canyon and America and Vietnam the second time we went. They're fine, but they're not good. They're not good enough. They're really not good enough for me to want to show them to anyone. And so that's why it's kind of post-2018. So I think I am the world's oldest emerging photographer.
Ulrike Schumann
00:52:08
Officially.
Mike Taylor
00:52:09
We should get the Guinness Book of Records in and see if that's true.
Ulrike Schumann
00:52:13
But it feels like that.
Mike Taylor
00:52:15
I feel I have an awful lot in common, it feels like, with people who are so much younger, who, when we're having conversations, and they're kind of going through exactly the same thing that I went through at 55, 60, you know, and they're going through at 18 to 25, you know, it's the same thought processes, you know, coming from a different place, because I'm older, so, you know, you've just been around more. So, you know, I find that really encouraging, really enthusiastic about that, about chatting with photographers at any age who are on that kind of journey thinking, I just, you know, I just want to be better at this. I want to make work that is better than this. You know, how good can I be? We were listening to Don McCullen last night. He wants to be the best landscape photographer. He wanted to be the best war photographer. You know, he wanted to push himself. And I think in any great photographer, I'm not saying I'm a great photographer, but in the work we're looking at this weekend in the exhibition and the work we see from great photographers, they've pushed themselves. It's more. They've gone the distance and then gone that bit further. You know, it's more. You know, it's more. And if you I think if you really push yourself. Like that you will produce work that is more and those are the pictures i really want to look at there that's the work i want to see like your pictures of football fans you know that i want to see this book.
Kai Behrmann
00:53:43
It's coming it's coming that's great practical advice uh and uh i it really resonates uh with me your way how you develop your photography and i think yeah that's true like we always or like as humans we we strive beyond what what we have what we are capable of and just to explore our potential and see what we can make of it um well not not having like a specific goal in mind but like just be to go on that journey and and see what where you can get
Mike Taylor
00:54:18
The journey is definitely the important bit i mean it's that it's that journey i had no specific goal I didn't want to win an award. I didn't think, I mean, even when I entered the CWI award, I didn't think I would win. It was just the pictures are sitting there on my hard drive and they were on my desktop. And it was like, well, this is really easy. Why not do it? And yeah, it was laziness, I suppose. And, you know, the CWI award is open again now. Everyone who has taken any picture they've ever looked at and thought, that's quite good, should upload it. Honestly, I know it's easy to say because, you know, they picked me as a winner last year. But honestly, it is so easy and the prizes are great. But more importantly... The exposure i would not have been in this exhibition if i hadn't won the seaweed award you know lois approached approached me at the end of the award ceremony and said i'd really like your work, to join this exhibition we have a britishness and um and it you know so it's it's it's less the prizes and the awards it's more about just the connections you make with people i've met so many great people this weekend, uh it's so interesting the conversations we're having are just great They're not about the nuts and bolts necessarily of photography. It's about thinking about how we see things and how we feel about things and conversations like this about, I mean, I had no idea there was a problem, you know, a conversation going on in Germany about street photography. I mean, it's just opening up your eyes and sharing that experience is great.
Ulrike Schumann
00:55:54
I think it's easy to take part in the scene, but the hardest part will be to choose.
Mike Taylor
00:56:00
Yes. editing your own work is yeah i mean it's easy to say only show your best work but it really needs to be your best work and you know those five pictures you're going to put on instagram here's an idea how about just post one or two maybe two but just just, don't let don't spray paint them everywhere just be selective and be sure, that you're sure in your own head why you're doing it, you know, be, you know, it's not just photographing with its intent, it's showing your work with that intent, you know, it's, it is hard, editing your own work is hard.
Kai Behrmann
00:56:40
Well thank you very much mike it's been a pleasure talking uh with you about photography and and uh yeah so many other things uh and uh
Mike Taylor
00:56:49
Yeah thank you so much for having me this is my first time i've done a podcast this is great this is really a premiere podcast absolutely um, it's been a really enjoyable experience and i'm sure we will carry this conversation on this afternoon.
Ulrike Schumann
00:57:05
On the walk
Mike Taylor
00:57:06
Thank you.