Karl Taylor - Advertising Photographer, Educator and Brand Ambassador

Steve and Nick are joined by Karl Taylor, a renowned advertising, fashion and beauty photographer with over 25 years experience of working with some of the leading global brands. From his studios in Guernsey, he specialises in precise and exquisite control of lighting. He is also the founder of Visual Education, an award winning on line education platform with over 1m followers and nearly 300,000 creatives who have participated on the courses. 

Karl also made his film directing debut in 2024 with the release of The Hunt for Lady Olive & The German Submarine, a four year project to search for the sunken wrecks of a WW1 British Boat and German U-Boat who sunk each other in the English Channel in 1917. 

Karl is an ambassador for Hasselblad and Broncolor. 

Karl Taylor Website https://karltaylor.com/

Visual Education https://visualeducation.com/

https://thehuntforthegermansubmarine.com/

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the photography pod. A photography podcast for both working professionals and enthusiast photographers alike. My name is Steve Vaughan. I'm a wedding photographer in North Oxfordshire and I'm here again with my good mate Nick Church who's also a wedding photographer down in the Bristol area as well as an educator and trainer. Nick, how are you, sir?

Nick Church (00:19)
I'm very well. Yeah, very good. finding the cold a bit annoying. it's just as we've stopped being quite so busy with weddings and so on. It means I can get out and we push bike a bit more, but it's absolutely blooming freezing. So yeah.

Steve Vaughan (00:29)
Yeah, it has gone cold hasn't it? Yeah, it's gone really

cold all of a sudden. Yeah, we had a wedding on Saturday actually and surprisingly the wedding was outside and I thought it was there with our winter woolies and thermals but actually it was alright, we got away with it. But no, it wasn't my choice clearly. It was the couple's choice.

Nick Church (00:40)
⁓ That's a bold choice for early October. No. Do you not have

say over where they have their ceremony then and what flowers they have?

Steve Vaughan (00:50)
Well, it's not in my contract. No, it's not in the contract that says we

must be in a place which is at least 25 degrees centigrade. Otherwise all my weddings will be in Barbados. I wish. And I wouldn't do better. So normally when we do this podcast, you and I witter on for about 10 or 15 minutes about various stuff before we introduce our guests. But today, Nick, I'm really keen that we get straight to our guest interview straight away because I think we've got somebody.

Nick Church (00:55)
You

Steve Vaughan (01:13)
that our listeners will find fascinating is a well-known photographer and educator, but I'll let you introduce our guest today.

Nick Church (01:19)
Yeah, good, good idea, Steve. So today we are thrilled to be joined by Karl Taylor. Karl's a photographer, educator and documentary director. His photography work is really varied. It covers fashion, beauty, commercial photography as well. And with some pretty high ticket brands also, which we'll, I'm sure we'll see later. But you'll have also heard of his education platform, is visualeducation.com, which is a fantastic platform for photographers looking, you know,

to enhance their skills in all areas of the, of the, of the industry. he's also director of BBC documentary, which I'm fascinated to hear more about, which is the hunt for lady olive and the German submarines. So we're like, we're going to hear more about that. So you can actually watch that right now. And I play, which I plan to do later this evening when I've got a glass of wine. So, Karl, yeah, I'm I think I have a Guinness in the fridge, actually. Karl, we're thrilled to have, have you with us.

Steve Vaughan (02:06)
Me too. Or even a guineas, which we'll come onto.

Karl Taylor (02:14)
Thank you. Thank you. Nice to be here.

Nick Church (02:15)
Welcome to the photography pod.

Steve Vaughan (02:18)
Thanks for being here, Karl.

Nick Church (02:20)
We usually start by, rather than me wittering on any more about your background, would you mind giving us a bit of a potted history of your career and life as a photographer and educator and director?

Karl Taylor (02:32)
Yep, so one of the things that comes up quite regularly is which university did I go to, what did I study and all of that and that's great because I didn't go to university. I left school at 16 with a background from school in art and design, that was an area that I was very strong in. I moved into a

design job, graphic design and interior design. And then I got fired from that job. And when I was about 17 years old, think I just by chance took a job in a camera store, just because I needed a job and I didn't know anything at all really about photography at that point.

Steve Vaughan (03:15)
Which was the store?

Karl Taylor (03:16)
Well, was actually at the store, it was a store here in St. Peterport in Guernsey. It eventually became a Jessup store. But prior to that, it was a privately owned camera shop. And it was quite a big one because a lot of tourists coming here and, you know, so was quite a busy store and it was selling, you know, everything, compact cameras. I nearly said DSLRs, but it was SLRs back in that day.

Steve Vaughan (03:22)
All right, okay.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Nick Church (03:39)
Yeah.

Karl Taylor (03:40)
And I got introduced to photography there and it was a real good team because they trained you in photography. They had a dark room. They gave you lessons. They gave you weekly assignments. They really wanted to get you involved in photography so you learned more about the equipment and lenses. And I just became fascinated by photography. And I, you know, I was very much into realism in my drawing and my artwork.

So when I discovered photography and how you could create realism so instantly and easily, and you could adjust it and adapt it with different lenses and lighting, well, I wasn't really using lighting that time, but you know, the whole process about it and the science of it just fascinated me. And I just became addicted to photography. I pretty much gave up my art and I moved solely into photography.

And over the next few years, I loads of time working several jobs. I mean, if people want to hear this, I worked as a painter and decorator. I worked in design. I worked in the camera store. I worked behind a bar. I even worked in a chip shop once. all of it was just working and working to save money because my...

goal was to travel with cameras and shoot images. Because when I was growing up, although I wasn't into photography, one of the things that I really loved and I took a lot of inspiration from was National Geographic magazine. So I think my dad maybe had a subscription to it or something. So I used to just read it all the time and fascinated by the pictures and the culture and everything else. So I set off traveling when I was about 20, 21.

Steve Vaughan (05:10)
Mm, chill.

Nick Church (05:10)
Yeah, same.

Karl Taylor (05:26)
for a couple of years with a mate of mine. went around the world for two years through Africa, through Asia, down into Australia, around across the Pacific into America. And I was shooting pictures and developing my photography skills along the way. And after that trip, I submitted lots of my work to different magazines and

Steve Vaughan (05:31)
Amazing.

Karl Taylor (05:48)
National Geographic. you know what? It's funny enough, National Geographic were kind enough to come back to me, the senior picture editor. And it was a big no, but they gave me a lot of tips and a lot of advice and said, you know, you need to focus more on the story. It's not just about the pictures. It's about the editorial, the whole package. And so I started studying and learning more. And then I did another set of another trip, but this time I focus more on Southeast Asia.

Steve Vaughan (05:57)
Hmm.

Karl Taylor (06:16)
And then I started getting published and I was working for different magazines, different newspapers, various freelancing workout magazines on the cultural stuff that I was shooting mostly in Indonesia, but also elsewhere in Southeast Asia. And I did that for a few years, dotting around job to job, never really making any money. And I got a little bit

tired and frustrated of sort of living out of a backpack and sort of hand-to-mouth existence. And then I just ended up in Australia and I took a job in a studio as an assistant, knew nothing about lighting or anything at that point. And that opened my eyes to this new magical world of lighting. And then that was that basically. ⁓ That was the end of the photojournalism reportage.

Steve Vaughan (06:48)
Sure.

Nick Church (06:48)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (07:06)
was the of the travel it was studio from then on.

Karl Taylor (07:11)
stuff, which was an incredible experience, but not a profitable one. ⁓

Nick Church (07:15)
Yeah. I think we've

Steve Vaughan (07:16)
You

Nick Church (07:17)
had, we've had photojournalists on the pod before and it does sound like a, I mean, physically grueling and emotionally grueling and not particularly lucrative. It's just really hard to, you know, and to actually make money, you spend more time sending emails and things and you do actually do the thing that you were there to do, which was to capture life that's going on.

Steve Vaughan (07:28)
about money. Yeah.

Karl Taylor (07:29)
NUT. NUT.

Yeah, that sounds very

familiar. The sort of stuff I was doing as well was quite arduous. was traveling through jungles in Borneo and back in New Guinea and trying to reach remote tribes to photograph unique things. So it was quite difficult. Yeah, was hard work. I remember times pulling leeches off parts of my body that you don't know about and stuff like that.

Steve Vaughan (07:53)
It sounds glamorous, but it must have been really hard work. Yeah.

wow.

Karl Taylor (08:04)
but anyway, so I was introduced to the commercial world studio photography, studio lighting, assisted in this studio that was doing everything from cars to products and all sorts of stuff. And I just became fascinated by how they manipulated light and how everything was to do with lighting. You know, didn't, yes, they, you know, we were shooting with large format cameras, even 10 by eight inch Toyo cameras, sign R five, four film and stuff.

but it was more what you did with the lighting that made the image. And from that moment forth, I just became totally obsessed with lighting. And that's really where my sort of career went into commercial product photography here in the Channel Islands and then further afield. And, you know,

Steve Vaughan (08:31)
Gosh.

Nick Church (08:36)
Mm.

Karl Taylor (08:55)
I started my studio here in Guernsey in 97. And then over a few years of paying back loans to Barclays for the equipment that I bought, which was all Elinchrom at the time. And then my portfolio grew. I started working with more art directors, some UK brands, European brands, and...

Steve Vaughan (09:08)
Wow.

Karl Taylor (09:17)
the client list gradually got better and better, if you know what I mean. It wasn't an instant thing. It was just a case of, you you work with someone, you do a bit of networking. It's obviously quite different these days, but in those days, it was a lot more about, you know, meeting people, networking, do a good job here, and that might lead to a good job there.

Steve Vaughan (09:20)
Yep. Yep.

word of mouth and stuff. Yeah.

Nick Church (09:34)
Is this a good

time to call to share just a few of your, do you want to find share a couple of your images? ⁓

Karl Taylor (09:38)
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Nick Church (09:40)
So, I mean, we can see very clearly what you're saying about light and you clearly took that on board and because the lighting in all of these is just stunning. as someone that would claim to be a relatively expert in lighting, just some of these is just jaw dropping. So I can tell the amount of effort and study that's gone into sort of create some of these, some of these photos.

People on the YouTube channel will be able to see these, we will put them into the pod page as well. Of course. Yeah.

Karl Taylor (10:08)
Yeah, thank you.

Steve Vaughan (10:12)
And obviously they're on Karl's website as well for that matter. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So let's stop on that one. we mentioned a Guinness earlier. So I was on your Instagram channel earlier, Karl, and I read that this picture of a very inviting glass of Guinness, pint of Guinness took a day to set up. So talk us through that.

Karl Taylor (10:30)
Yeah, generally a shot

like that would take a day because there's a lot more work in that than just putting a couple of lights on it. Everything from the condensation droplets to the way the froth in the Guinness is moving around in there, sorry, the agitation in the glass, getting the head correct.

Steve Vaughan (10:55)
Yep. Yep.

Nick Church (10:55)
Mm-hmm.

Karl Taylor (10:58)
getting the glow behind the glass, getting the lighting on the brand and everything right. I mean, you know, that's not a single shot. So mostly in advertising photography, don't, you won't capture an image like that in one shot. So that shot probably is three images. So the main lighting and the body of the shot would look like that, but to get the agitation in the glass,

Nick Church (11:21)
Mm-hmm.

Karl Taylor (11:25)
it was not possible to get it that perfect with one take. So we actually in that one, we're stirring with a really long metal spoon to agitate the Guinness froth to get that, you know, that, that turbulence. Yeah. And, and you, wouldn't get it perfect within the whole area. So you take a few takes and it took like three takes to get the best bits if you like. And then you've got to get the head of the beer exactly at the right height.

Steve Vaughan (11:36)
Got you. Got you. ⁓

Nick Church (11:36)
Get it really lively.

Mm-hmm.

Karl Taylor (11:54)
which I think was actually not too problematic with Guinness. It's harder with lager. Yeah. And then things like the preparation of the glass. We use special coatings to put on the glass so that our condensation droplets form really nicely. The application of the condensation droplets so that they stay in position. The lighting, depth of field, the angle of view and everything. So yeah, there's about a day's work.

Nick Church (11:59)
Well, it spills over, yeah.

Karl Taylor (12:24)
in making an image like

Steve Vaughan (12:26)
Thank you.

Nick Church (12:26)
How are we avoiding

getting such harsh highlights where like anyone that's tried to photograph glass or anything with, with a reflective surface, you're getting really sort of clipped highlights. How, what's the approach to avoid that?

Karl Taylor (12:39)
Well, the main trick in advertising photography is diffusion material. So we use Lee Filters 216 diffusion, which is wide rolls of diffusion material, about 1.5 meters wide. And there's about seven meters in a roll. And we ⁓ make those into big light panels on wooden frames, or we use it on the roll. And then you put your lighting, say a soft box, in this case on the right was

actually just a standard reflector with a grid but it's shining through the diffusion material so you'll notice the reflection on the right is slightly more elliptical shape than the reflection on the left so the reflection on the left is actually from a vertical softbox so it's taking on more a vertical shape but it's also pointed upwards so that the majority of the lighting is at the level of the guinness brand and not at the lower part of the glass

Nick Church (13:19)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (13:36)
Of course, yeah.

Nick Church (13:36)
Gotcha.

Karl Taylor (13:37)
then there's an

additional light on the top of the ⁓ beer for the head and to pick up the agitation. So, plus a background light. So it's actually only a fourth.

Nick Church (13:49)
Yeah, which to be,

to be fair, back that this, because it's white, a wide screen shot, but we are missing the bottom probably what 20 % 25 % of the bottom. So

Karl Taylor (13:55)
Yeah, you're missing a little bit. Yeah. But there was

four lights used on on that set. But the trick is in diffusion material, any glossy materials, you tend to use diffusion material. And, you know, I'm very fascinated by the physics of lighting. One of the interesting thing with most product photography is most products that you buy if you think about it from

electronic equipment to cosmetics to phones, whatever. They usually contain a lot of glossy materials, even cars or motorbikes as well. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to control the lighting on those glossy materials. And a lot of people mistake the lighting for being the light they see on those objects. But actually what you're seeing is a reflection of the light source.

Steve Vaughan (14:31)
show.

Karl Taylor (14:52)
off of the gloss surface. So that's what we call image forming reflections. So if you have a high gloss subject, I don't know if you've got the one there of the Remy Martin XO.

Steve Vaughan (15:06)
I think we saw it as we went through. Yeah, there we go.

Karl Taylor (15:08)
Yeah,

there's a bit missing. I don't know why there's a few, but it looks like there's a bit missing there. But yeah, but if you think of all the reflections on the petals of that glass, those are reflections of the light source. So actually it took three lights from the left-hand side through diffusion material just to get those particular petals lit.

Steve Vaughan (15:12)
bit teared off the picture.

Nick Church (15:13)
Yeah, yeah,

that's PowerPoint.

Steve Vaughan (15:21)
Hmm.

Nick Church (15:21)
Mm-hmm.

Karl Taylor (15:36)
Now, if we had done that just with a soft box or just with a spotlight, you would see the shape of the soft box in those reflections, because it's an image forming reflection because it's glass. So you diffuse the light source to change the light source's reflection to be something that's more palatable and more desirable. ⁓ And you generally tend to feather it by pointing the light at an angle through the diffusion material. So it graduates away.

Steve Vaughan (15:43)
Of course, yeah.

Nick Church (15:57)
Right.

Karl Taylor (16:06)
which just gives a more pleasing reflection. It's not often that you would put a soft box with a sharp edge or a bright spotlight directly on a product unless you had a specific reason for doing so. With matte finished objects or anything that's semi-matte leather or downwards, then you don't necessarily need to use diffusion material. You can light it in a traditional way.

But it's always been the sort of science of lighting, angles of reflectance, caustics, diffraction, refraction, all of those things that have always fascinated me with lighting. And I spent a long time studying that really.

Nick Church (16:44)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (16:47)
It reminds me of my A-level physics a long time ago. ⁓

Nick Church (16:48)
Cause I, it, well, if ever I

Karl Taylor (16:49)
Yeah, exactly.

Nick Church (16:52)
do, ⁓ products then, ⁓ because I've got a relatively small space here, the, tend to use a grid grids over my soft box to try and control the light and to stop spill. But then of course, like, as you say, that creates awful reflections on anything shiny. Cause you can just see a really clear soft box with a grid on it.

Karl Taylor (17:07)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, grids,

grids on soft boxes are a useful tool in a small space because like you say, it controls spill, but essentially they actually destroy the fundamental reason for using a soft box because they make the light harder. So, if you can use a soft box without a grid, is a more pleasing light. But like you say, sometimes you just need to avoid spill. So, they are necessary.

Steve Vaughan (17:24)
Of course, yeah.

I'm curious, Karl, so I mean, these are stunning images, really. I'm curious, obviously, you know, years of experience on your part, if I'm Diageo, whoever makes Guinness these days, if I come to you and say, look, we want you to do a product shot on Guinness, how much do they give you the lead and how much of this is just left to your creativity and your experience, really?

Karl Taylor (17:59)
Nothing,

nothing. So if you're working on a big brand shoot, ⁓ you're generally being given direction from an art director and the brief is worked out well in advance. I'll try and summarize the process. So if a big brand is going to run an advertising campaign,

Steve Vaughan (18:12)
Okay.

please.

Karl Taylor (18:26)
First of all, they do market research on their target audience, what they read, where the images will appear. Is it going to be billboards, train stations, print, web, digital, whatever. Then they look at the demographics of who their audience, their target audiences, what age group, you know, et cetera. And then they start to think about what type of imagery will appeal to that demographic.

So it's a very carefully thought out marketing process and sometimes involves market research well in advance. And then an art director will generally mock up some sketches of the layout of the advert based on the placement of where it's going, where the copy might fit in the advert. There might be multiple formats required, landscape, vertical, et cetera. And all of it is very carefully thought out.

And then they build usually a series of mood board images, references from other people's work and other images that just give the feeling that they're looking for. And then around about that stage, they'll speak to the photographer, have a meeting, discuss the project, and they'll start to get pricing from probably three photographers at that point. ⁓

Nick Church (19:27)
Mm-hmm.

Karl Taylor (19:43)
that they think could achieve the project because they'll look at different photographers and they'll say, right, you know, he's more specialist in liquids or he's more specialist in watches or, whatever that's the process. And then you'll put your quotation in, which will be for what we call pre-shoot, which is testing basically, so pre-light, ⁓ pre-production.

Steve Vaughan (19:54)
show.

Nick Church (20:08)
Mm-hmm.

Karl Taylor (20:11)
getting all the set together. Sometimes it might require a mini set to be built. All of the special effects stuff you might need to consider like the condensation droplets or whatever and backgrounds. And then will be the actual shoot. And usually an art director will be on the shoot with you because it's obviously campaign stuff. Then that shoot could be anything from one day to

Steve Vaughan (20:33)
Okay.

Karl Taylor (20:40)
three days if it's a really big project, it might be a series of images. And then there's the post-production, which either goes to a retoucher of their choice or whatever. Generally, I do my own retouching and then the images have to be signed off and approved. I mean, they're usually getting approved at the shooting stage as part of the process. ⁓ And then that's the end of the project.

Steve Vaughan (21:08)
And a point

that I know often confuses enthusiast photographers, so whose image is it at the end of all that? Is it yours, or is it the Guinness's, or both?

Karl Taylor (21:17)
Yeah, it's a tricky one actually, because essentially what happens is you license the usage of the image. You get paid for pre-production time. And in my case, I charge half of the day rate of the actual photo shoot for pre-production and I charge half rate for post-production. And then there's a day rate for use of the studio, my creative time, assistance and everything else.

And then there's usually a usage fee if it's a big campaign project. So you're, basically saying, right, we want to use the image for a year or two years, and we're going to pay a fee. And that fee is based on how much exposure the image is going to get. So whether it's just going to be in London or all of UK or all of Europe, et cetera, et cetera. Now, this is a little bit of, I suppose, you know, it's open to interpretation.

Big brands are used to paying usage fees ⁓ and they are happy to pay it based on the level of responsibility and the amount of exposure. Smaller brands will tell you to do one because they're like, well, we don't have the budget for that. We're only going to be advertising it in our local area or town. And you take that on board. So if it's a small company, you might not be charging any usage fees because the level of exposure is minimal.

So it just depends really on the size of the brand and the level of exposure. I mean, one of the things to keep in mind with this sort of work is that if it's a big brand, whatever they're paying the photographer, which might be a decent amount, but it's minuscule compared to the amount they're paying on the advertising space. you know, it's kind of almost like a level of responsibility based on the exposure that the work is going to be receiving or given.

Steve Vaughan (23:00)
I'm sure. Yeah.

Nick Church (23:01)
Sure.

Karl Taylor (23:12)
And then after the usage period is finished, sometimes they might say, well, you know, those images were really, really popular. We want to use them again. So you might re license them or they're finished with that project. They don't want to use it anymore. And they'll move on to another project at that point, technically the, if it's a brand specifically, then you can't really do anything with the images. can't, you know, the license wouldn't allow you to sell them as stock.

or to do anything with them. You can't sell one brand image to another brand because it's no use to anyone. So essentially they're not really any use to anyone to be honest. absolutely yeah there's no issues there.

Steve Vaughan (23:42)
now.

Really.

But they're okay on your website and on a podcast and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (23:57)
It's

absolutely fascinating to fascinating to be called the the the this the sort of negotiation that Steve goes through and I go through and every other photographer that works directly with ⁓ the consumer photography, typically kind of couples or families or whatever. I didn't really understand that the same things happen, that you're kind of quoting and they're looking for the cheapest photographer and you'd have thought that that would be less important.

Steve Vaughan (23:58)
It is.

Well, none of this over the cheapest I would have thought.

Nick Church (24:24)
Or

no, the cost of photography is an element that they factor into. Having worked with ⁓ photographers that I've worked with, mentoring through this process of pricing, how would you, let's say for a company like Guinness, obviously without going into any NDA details or anything, are they looking for a fixed price for that project or?

Steve Vaughan (24:27)
Yeah, of course.

Karl Taylor (24:30)
Yeah.

Nick Church (24:53)
⁓ is so, which means then you've got to do loads of upfront work on estimation of how long it's going to take, or, do they just trust that you're going to have the sort of relationship where you're just going to invoice sort of the time and everything else.

Karl Taylor (25:05)
No, they'll generally need to be an agreed quotation for the project, but you calculate the project obviously based on what you estimate the pre-production time to be and what you estimate the shoot day or days and post-production and then the usage. And then we use, know, most commercial photographers use the AOP.

Association of ⁓ Photographers' calculator, usage calculators, to determine what the usage fee should be. But that in itself is a little bit variable because you have to put what's called a base usage rate into the calculator to calculate what the usage fee will be. And the usage fees vary quite a lot. There's some flexibility and negotiation in that.

⁓ and you know, it's sometimes a bit like how long is a piece of string because obviously as a photographer, you want to get the best usage fee, but sometimes the budget isn't there because sometimes the client might come to you and say, look, we're looking at three potential photographers for this project. We've got a budget of blah, blah, blah. And you might look at it and you go, well, that's just impossible because I can't even do the shoot for that because.

Steve Vaughan (26:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karl Taylor (26:25)
Say for instance, you're doing a really big shoot where you've got to build a set. We've built in the studio sets here, which might look like a lounge or ⁓ an eye surgery for spec savers or whatever. You might have two or three days of set building, paying people to build that set. You've got your assistants out running around getting props and stuff. you've got all that kind of

And also then your studio is used you can't be used for anything else because you're busy using it for that and that's just the pre-production on a particular project then you've got the shoot day and Model fees makeup and all that sort of stuff potentially as well And then you've got post-production which is usually quite minimal to be honest because you do so much work on getting the shoot, right? So sometimes clients have unrealistic expectations most of the time the

Nick Church (26:58)
Of course.

Steve Vaughan (27:22)
Yeah, sure.

Karl Taylor (27:24)
the bigger, more experienced agencies and clients don't, they normally understand, yeah, they understand the process. And they'll have an idea. But of course, everyone, especially in recent years where budgets have been tighter, there is a little bit more, you know, arguing over figures and what the costs would be, or there's a little bit more discussions over what the usage fees might need to be, et cetera.

Steve Vaughan (27:27)
They understand the process. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Karl Taylor (27:53)
And then, you you're up against photographers, some of them that you're friends with, that you know, and, ⁓ you know, someone else might win the job, not necessarily always because of price, but sometimes it might just be they felt that their portfolio was stronger in the direction of that brief. Frustratingly, sometimes they throw you in for the pricing, even though they probably got no intention of using you.

Steve Vaughan (28:20)
It's the old three

quotes syndrome. regular, regular listeners will know that, um, you know, I, I, I run a sales trading business, which is where, know, my, my future is for the rest of my working life. Cause my background is in corporate sales. And, know, one of the things I teach people is when you get, you know, the phone call that says, Oh, we just need a price though. Uh, we don't need anything more. You're just being used as a, you know, as a benchmark for somebody else really. And in those situations lose fast and lose early. Yeah.

Karl Taylor (28:22)
Yeah.

It's

frustrating because sometimes you might think, well, I'm not really in the running for this because this is more orientated towards that photographer. And you know, you're pretty much there just as a benchmark for the pricing. I know, I'm not going to name names here, but friends of mine that are photographers in London and high profile ones, they've done work on pre-preparation of the treatment or the brief.

Steve Vaughan (28:53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karl Taylor (29:14)
presentation that might have taken even three or four days of work just to prepare and then you get nothing from it. And that can be quite frustrating if you do that over and over and then you miss out on quite a few big jobs. Yeah, but I I don't shoot as many big jobs as I used to now because I'm

Nick Church (29:28)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (29:31)
No prizes for coming second, is there? No.

Karl Taylor (29:40)
more focused in the education business and I work for a few agencies and clients directly that I've worked for for you know maybe 20 years now. So I've got a sort of client base that I regularly work with and know me and trust me and stuff. Occasionally you get some new projects come in that just came out of the blue from nowhere but yeah

Yeah, it just, it just depends. You never really know, but you know what it, you know, how long with experience, you know how long it takes to do. So if someone says, this is the shot we need to create. You can figure out how much pre-production time it's going to need, how much shoot time, how much post-production. that figures out that price. And then the second factor is, is it going to have a usage fee applied based on who the brand is and what the level of exposure might be.

Nick Church (30:20)
Hmm.

sure.

And

I suppose after you've done enough of these, then you know that, ⁓ visit on Portu is going to be about the same as, you know, based on that project spec as something else. So you can reuse the quotes that you've.

Karl Taylor (30:50)
Yeah, you would

get that indication of what ⁓ you get that experience of what they might expect. But as I say, a lot of the time now, know, clients will come to you with a set budget as well. And you might actually have to reverse engineer it and say, well, we can't do that for that price. would have to be this instead, you know.

Nick Church (31:12)
This and this, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (31:13)
Hmm.

Nick Church (31:14)
Just before we leave the commercial thing, I'll just get an area that I'm really interested in. In terms of those usage fees, how are you checking that there's not the airport in Chennai using the Tom Ford image? If you've like a team of the handles, all that side of that side, think to check things.

Karl Taylor (31:30)
I mean,

you sign contracts that are quite tight on a project. If a client was to break the terms of their contract, don't think that would be... It would be more accidental if anything, where they may be...

Steve Vaughan (31:43)
you'd never work with them again.

Nick Church (31:46)
Well, that's what I'm thinking about.

Steve Vaughan (31:46)
Hmm.

Nick Church (31:48)
I wouldn't imagine these brands are going to would knowingly do that. But, you know, when you've got 10,000 people that work in a company and it would just it's just a mistake. I could imagine happening relatively frequently.

Karl Taylor (31:59)
Yeah, it would happen more as a mistake. mean,

they've got legal teams that, you know, create and draft up all these contracts. And, you know, I've had images where they've used it for the UK and then they contact me a year later and say, we need to use it in Spain. So they're pretty on it. And then they'll say, right, we need a license fee for Spain now.

Steve Vaughan (32:19)
Yeah.

Nick Church (32:19)
Yeah,

right.

Karl Taylor (32:25)
or sometimes they might say we need it for all of Europe and then last minute because of budget whatever they drop some countries from it you know ⁓ so no I think it's all fairly tight I mean I haven't experienced any sort of negative you know ⁓ you know connotations with that sort of stuff

Steve Vaughan (32:39)
Good.

Nick Church (32:44)
Yeah, but you haven't been to the airport in Chennai. it may be that all of these images are being used and you wouldn't have a clue. Steve, carry on.

Steve Vaughan (32:44)
Karl, I'm keen to move on to... Not of I, no. Yeah, I'm

keen to move on to discussing your training business, Karl. But one question before we do that, what's the most unusual thing you've been asked to photograph? It's question I always ask everybody.

Nick Church (32:57)
Yeah, absolutely.

Karl Taylor (33:02)
⁓

most unusual thing I've been asked to photograph. Well, you know, this is a tricky one because I've been a photographer for... I tell you what, yeah. Okay, I had to take an image of a diamond, well, two diamonds. One was a pink diamond and one was a heart-shaped cut diamond. And they were a private...

photograph, I can tell you because this was many years ago now. But they were a ⁓ private part of a Sotheby's auction thing. And the diamonds came along with some security guys. And I held them in my hand, I had the clear heart shaped diamond in one hand, and I had the pink diamond in the other.

Steve Vaughan (33:47)
I'm not surprised.

Karl Taylor (33:59)
and in my two hands, in the palm of my hands, in both hands, was the value of about $35 million. Yeah. yeah. So, and it wasn't even a ⁓ very tricky photograph. What they actually needed was to show the diamond.

Steve Vaughan (34:09)
No way. Good grief. Yeah, if only.

Nick Church (34:12)
That's like Steve's camera collection.

Karl Taylor (34:25)
show it alongside a steel rule that showed the size and scale and depth and height and a couple of angles and just show the clarity and the sparkle and everything a bit. But it was actually for, I believe, Sotheby's auction brochure for a private, you know, some of this stuff doesn't even get private collector stuff, I guess. ⁓ Yeah, but I mean, I was like, I had this thing in my hand and I thought, wow.

Steve Vaughan (34:46)
5 million. Good grief.

Karl Taylor (34:52)
Imagine if I had an identical fake one I could spot! Yeah, it was amazing!

Nick Church (34:55)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (34:55)
⁓ Here's what I prepared earlier. ⁓

Nick Church (34:58)
You could have gone for the, you could have gone Karl for

the classic wedding photographer trick of going in to shoot some canapes close up and then snaffle one as you move away, you know, just, just sort of take it in one fluid movement.

Karl Taylor (35:11)
I was just more fascinated by the fact that I could hold this thing between my fingers and think there's more money in between my fingers than I would ever see in you know 10 lifetimes you know what I mean it's just it's just insane and someone's just buying it as a ornament I guess

Nick Church (35:23)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (35:30)
Yeah.

Nick Church (35:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (35:33)
talk about your education platform because you've been an educator now for a number of years. just to listen a little bit about how that started and what it is that you offer there.

Karl Taylor (35:43)
⁓ Okay, so we started in education back in 2007.

And that was again, a bit of an accidental sort of thing. 2005, I switched to digital cameras after shooting film for many years. to, my main studio work was on the MIMIA RZ67 and Cynar 5-4. And then in 2005, I moved to the Hasselblad H1 system when they brought out their digital camera, because it was the first digital camera.

Steve Vaughan (36:04)
Remember those.

Karl Taylor (36:19)
that was capable of delivering images that were of the high enough quality for commercial purposes. It was only 22 megapixel back then, but it was in a what we call medium format now, but back in the day, that was a 645 format. And round about that period, 2005, 6, 7, Canon and Nikon and...

Olympus and everyone were bringing out digital cameras. And this is when the consumer market started a frenzy for photography. I always remember there used to be just like one or two camera magazines on the shelves back in the 90s. And then around mid 2000s upwards, there was about 20 different magazines on the shelves because people just went mad for photography.

Steve Vaughan (36:57)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓

Karl Taylor (37:02)
And what happened was that I just started getting loads of people saying, Oh, you know, I'm getting into photography. want to learn. I've just bought this digital camera and I need to, you know, and I was like, right. Okay. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to run a workshop, see, how it goes. I did, I put a workshop together and it sold out like almost instantly. And I think it was like for 30 people as well in my previous studio. And I thought, well, that was a good little learner.

I'll do another one. And that sold out and that sold out. And I thought, well, there's something in this. So I went to some business friends of mine that ran a small media company doing video production and they did data coding for DVDs and stuff and what have you. And I said, is there a way we can take this?

Nick Church (37:32)
Thank

Steve Vaughan (37:37)
Good.

Karl Taylor (37:57)
sort of education workshop thing and turn it into something that we could like scale. And they said, yeah. So I formed a new company with them and they're two guys, they're still directors in the education business now. So there's three of us that own the education business. And we just started filming shoots and then editing those shoots and

Steve Vaughan (38:03)
So, yeah.

Karl Taylor (38:23)
putting them onto DVD and started selling DVDs. The DVDs became really popular. We were selling them all over the world. It's an Australia in the shops in Dubai, duty free, Virgin mega stores add them. Then we got serialized on the cover of one of the big magazines in America. So they bought the first introduction to photography. Because we started off with the basics, know, beginner level stuff, introduction to photography.

Steve Vaughan (38:42)
Wow.

Nick Church (38:49)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (38:50)
which

you triangle and everything.

Karl Taylor (38:51)
Yeah.

And then, and then moving up and then that grew the following year, we started doing some sort of more, slightly more creative techniques with light painting and night photography. And then we moved into more stuff with lighting and it just got more and more advanced, I would say the training. then because of my background in studio photography, we didn't think there would be a market for that in the training sector because we thought that's just a real niche genre.

Steve Vaughan (39:19)
Mm.

Karl Taylor (39:20)
but it turned out there was quite a lot of people interested in lighting as well. So we expanded into that. And then of course, as you know, DVDs went out of fashion some years later, probably about the time when MacBooks took the DVD drive off of the computer. And we then switched to online downloads.

But the problem with online downloads was we're trying to sell them for the same price we're selling DVDs, but there's no physical package anymore and people don't really accept it as much. So we started to suffer a lot of problems with piracy of all of our training from DVD previously. So after a few years of that, we then moved to where we are now, which is an online membership model like Netflix, where you just pay a low monthly fee and you just get access to

everything we've ever made in the last 17 years. And we make new content all the time. And we also produce live shows every month, demonstrating techniques or interviewing other top photographers, etc. And it's just gone into that sort of model. And then what happened as well is it was always Karl Taylor education. But because we diversified into other areas like filmmaking, art,

CGI 3D modeling work

Nick Church (40:43)
it

even covers things like makeup artistry, right? And all areas that you would need.

Karl Taylor (40:46)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we tried to cover,

we tried to cover anything associated with visual arts. So that's why we went for the name visual education. We're not moving into quilt making or audio engineering or anything like that. It's all visual arts media only. And we've just recently introduced art and painting into the mix. We're going to get more artists.

Nick Church (41:03)
Yeah.

Karl Taylor (41:12)
planning to introduce graphic design at some point as well. Part of our sort of hesitancy at the moment is just what's going to happen with AI and where's it all going? Are people still going to want to be doing this? Our interpretation of it is that they are. We've actually got a good YouTube video we're putting out soon about our thoughts on AI and what's going on.

Steve Vaughan (41:23)
Yeah, of course.

Karl Taylor (41:39)
And we believe that there's still definitely a strength in the creative industries going forwards. ⁓

Steve Vaughan (41:47)
When you say AI,

is the concern that people won't need to know how to take pictures, they'll just create something in AI, or is it AI replicating what you're doing in training?

Karl Taylor (41:57)
⁓ no, we're not concerned about that. There would be some probably copyright issues if it was copying our exact training. it's more whether people are inclined to still want to do photography when you can create an image by putting in some prompts. But what we found is that people enjoy the process of doing, you know, not, not just.

Steve Vaughan (42:04)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Karl Taylor (42:22)
the fact that they can do it on computer, there's not a lot of pleasure can be gained from that. The actual process of going out and shooting a landscape, 90 % of that is the going out and doing it and the feeling of that. And also if the argument about AI was true, then people wouldn't still be painting pictures or drawing or sketching because...

Steve Vaughan (42:33)
Absolutely. Yeah. It's like why people play record rather than listen to downloads. Like me.

Yeah. Writing.

Karl Taylor (42:49)
Painting and art should have died out 200 years ago when photography came along because there's a complete, you you don't need art if you've got photography essentially, but art actually as a hobby is growing at the moment. You know, it's starting to go, it's almost the more manual it's become, the better it.

Steve Vaughan (42:53)
Absolutely.

Nick Church (42:54)
That's right.

Mm.

Well,

Steve Vaughan (43:06)
Yeah.

Nick Church (43:06)
it really took off during lockdown, it, through COVID? And I think it's really got itself in a really good place again. ⁓

Karl Taylor (43:08)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm really pleased to hear that.

mean, funnily enough, I even started doing some drawing and sketching again myself, which I've done for 20 odd years, just because the therapy factor of it, you know, and I think that's what people enjoy. And I think it's the same with photography. You know, of course people are going to experiment with AI and we might get an integration of AI with photography or AI being used for backgrounds instead of building a set and things like that. But

Nick Church (43:24)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (43:24)
Hmm.

Karl Taylor (43:40)
You know, certainly in the mid to top level in advertising photography, I don't think brands are going to want to rely on AI. You know, and like what you guys do, you're photographing real events and real memories. No one's going to want an AI version of that.

Steve Vaughan (43:47)
No way.

Nick Church (43:55)
Exactly.

No, I can't say, I can't see many areas of photography that are really at danger other than the ones that are already being hit by AI, is stock photography where lower end publications are just going to use AI to create imagery. High end magazines even, think we're still, you know, I think the more ubiquitous it becomes to have AI images, then people are going to be looking for some way to elevate the product they've got. And that the only way to do that is with,

Steve Vaughan (43:57)
Hopefully not, no.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Nick Church (44:24)
real photography and AI will then become a tool that we all use, which we already do the same way that we use digital over film. ⁓

Steve Vaughan (44:28)
Yeah. Yeah. And you're so

right about the creative process. You know, I like doing street photography and I'll go to London in the winter and I'll walk around London and might do 10 miles and I might come back with a load of garbage, but I've enjoyed the process of being out in the fresh air and well, London air and some exercise. So yeah, you're totally right.

Karl Taylor (44:41)
Yeah. Exactly.

Nick Church (44:45)
Well, and besides,

you, as, you know, consists, as Karl says, if, it was true that AI is going to take over that type of photography, then it would have gone already. Cause you could just go on Google street view and just go to that place in London and just screenshot the photo, know, but it's B it's being there and seeing the light working and capturing it yourself. And that's part of the whole, the whole process.

Karl Taylor (44:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we've got

an interesting YouTube video coming up. And actually it's looking at one of the things that's just starting to become apparent about AI. And that is that it's an economic time bomb bubble at the moment, because I think it was OpenAI lost $5 billion last year. And many of the AI companies are just propping up each other.

and a lot of the apps that you get for making a great headshot, know, they're all reliant on this current model, which isn't economically viable. And that something's going to give sooner or later from an economic point of view. Yeah, exactly. So, so it could be a similar thing to that, which we'll have to wait and see. But this is the problem, the difference I think with AI.

Steve Vaughan (45:40)
It's like the dot com boom 20 years ago, isn't it? Yeah. Or 25 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Karl Taylor (45:51)
is that it's evolved so quickly in such, you know, that short space of time that no one's really been able to get their head around what to do with it or what's going to happen with it because it hasn't evolved slowly like other technologies, like say digital photography was a slower evolution. know obviously these days things do evolve more quickly with technology, but usually humans sort of evolve with it and the process.

in terms of the economic process of it, kind of evens itself out a little bit like when stock libraries came along or things like that. with AI, it's all been so rapid from creating very basic images to higher resolution images to then video to, it's just escalated and multiplied. So I think it's just too early to say. I would say let's...

It'd be interesting to see where everything lands in 12 to 24 months from now. And there's also a lot of lawsuits in place. know, you've got Disney, Getty Images, New York Times, Authors Guild. They've all got, you know, multi-billion dollar lawsuits against the AI companies sitting there, which is another headache for the AI companies because of plagiarism. Yeah. Yeah. I've got friends of mine.

Steve Vaughan (46:48)
Mm.

I think that's a good observation, certainly.

Yeah. Well, ripping off people's content. Yeah.

Nick Church (47:07)
from from all of the creators

or where they've scraped people's portfolios effectively to.

Karl Taylor (47:15)
well-known photographers that have actually got together as a collective to afford the lawyer fees as a group to put in suits against the AI companies because they've got evidence that their very own work has been used because you can actually feed their name into it and say, make me an image that looks like so-and-so's and it will spit one out. So obviously the AI learned from that photographer's work.

Steve Vaughan (47:27)
Good for them.

Karl Taylor (47:44)
technically illegally. So there's a lot of potential headaches for the AI companies in how to handle all of this as well.

Steve Vaughan (47:50)
Absolutely.

And as always, the lawyers make money.

Nick Church (47:52)
There's a way you can check, isn't there? There's a website

somewhere on one of these photographers that you're probably one of the ones you're talking about. There was a panel on the photography show a couple of years ago that was discussed in this whole area. Scott Kelby was on there. But yeah, there was a link that they shared, which I'll put in the notes, where you can check whether your images have been used. You can put in your website to see whether it appears in any of the metadata in these kind of seed images that these AI engines are using.

Steve Vaughan (48:15)
interesting.

Karl Taylor (48:15)
Yeah,

that'd be useful, Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (48:18)
Karl I think we could chat all day but there's one topic we haven't explored with you yet and I'm fascinated to find out more. how does somebody with a studio photography experience 25 years and an educator for getting on for 20 years, how does that person end up becoming a director of a TV program and a film that's appeared on the BBC? How did that come about?

Karl Taylor (48:39)
Yeah, well, it was a documentary film, true story, obviously, and this was just off of the back of my passion for ⁓ diving and a specific area of diving called technical diving, where we dive to deeper depths to explore shipwrecks and ⁓

I started to enjoy the process of filming shipwrecks underwater because I didn't want to take still images because that's what I do as a day job. So I wanted a different medium to work with. And there's something hauntingly beautiful about shipwrecks in that real low light, sort of twilight, greeny, bluey light. And you have to use some, you know, very

Steve Vaughan (49:21)
Mm.

Karl Taylor (49:32)
good high ISO cameras that can film in low light. And I wanted to bring the experience of what it's like down there onto video. So I just started, I bought some of the kit and the housings and everything. And I just started taking it with me while we were doing these dives that myself and the team I dive with, explore different wrecks around the Channel Islands.

And it was more of a hobby thing, really. But then we started seriously looking for a shipwreck that no one had been able to find. And I set about putting a team together of divers that I knew could make the dives and trusted and et cetera. And I thought, well, I've got the team here at the studio in terms of video editors, camera people, and what have you.

And I thought, you know, if we're going to look for this missing German submarine and this Royal Navy ship, then we might as well try and film it in case we find the things. I thought it might take us a year to two years to do it, but it ended up taking four years because the reps were a long way away from where they were meant to be. So we basically had this

Steve Vaughan (50:45)
Wow.

Nick Church (50:51)
The search areas

are massive, aren't they? you've, you, you have to try and is it the case that you kind of work out the probability of where it most likely is based on currents and everything else?

Karl Taylor (51:02)
Yeah, well, pretty much. mean, we start off with the history books of where the history books said they were. And there was meant to be this battle between a Royal Navy Q ship and a German submarine in World War One, where they both sank each other. And it's the only known naval battle where the two ships fighting each other, both a submarine was sunk and a ship was sunk, Navy ship. So therefore, if they sunk each other, they shouldn't be too far apart.

Steve Vaughan (51:22)
Is that right?

Nick Church (51:24)
wow.

Karl Taylor (51:31)
Although the Royal Navy ship did float for longer than the submarine. then also there was a lot of rumors that well, because no one had ever found the submarine, there was a lot of rumors that maybe the submarine escaped and it went away 50 miles and then maybe it sank somewhere else because it was damaged, et cetera. So no one really knew. And there was all this speculation and theories throughout the history books right from

since the end of the First World War. So we said, right, let's put in a real earnest effort to try and find them. And we started off scanning with sonar. It's basically like a torpedo that you drag underwater, side scan sonar that sends out an image, sound waves to the seabed. And we started exploring wrecks that were either on the charts, but

Nick Church (52:17)
Mm-hmm.

Karl Taylor (52:29)
weren't known or there were wreck marks that fishermen gave us some information where they'd hooked or snagged metal because when they pull up their nets, they can see if there's rust. So it's good evidence they snag some metal. But then sometimes it's not a shipwreck or it's flattened or it's just a bit of metal or whatever. And it just became a very arduous process of working bit by bit.

section by section of the ocean, trying to discover and the wrecks were nowhere near where they were meant to be. And then finally, after doing a lot of research, going through historical records, the best clue we got was, I don't want to spoil the film for anyone who watches it, but the best clue we got was we started to look at a French Navy ship that rescued the crew.

from the Royal Navy ship, because the crew from the Royal Navy ship all survived the battle and they bailed into lifeboats, rowing boats. And they spent 36 hours rowing towards the coast of France and they were picked up by a French destroyer called Le Dunois. And the information we got from the French archives on that rescue led us to some documentation and log books from the captain of that ship.

that gave us an indication of where they rescued that crew. And then we realized that that was so far away from where the alleged battle took place that the battle couldn't have happened where we thought it was. So we started scanning new areas and looking at new wrecks. And then we got some tip offs from fishermen of some wrecks that, you know, weren't, were on the charts or in different positions to on the charts, et cetera.

And then finally, we were fortunate enough to find and discover the submarine. And then we had to go about the process of diving it, you know, a dozen times to try and identify it. And these are deep dives.

Steve Vaughan (54:20)
I think.

Nick Church (54:26)
And you dive yourself,

Karl, don't you? So that was you as well doing that.

Karl Taylor (54:30)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we're down, I'm down there filming, you know, the guys. There's a team of five of us were diving, and they're pretty deep dives, they're technical dives. So we're breathing a mixture of helium, ⁓ oxygen and nitrogen to avoid the problems you get with narcosis. So the deeper you go on air, the more drunk you start to feel from narcosis from nitrogen.

So what you do in technical diving is you remove the nitrogen from your air and you swap a large proportion of it with helium because helium doesn't give you a narcosis effect. So you end up diving with a mix of gas that is maybe 55 % helium, 15 % or 16 % oxygen, and then the rest is nitrogen. And then you can sort of dive at these depths with a clear head. ⁓

Steve Vaughan (55:18)
as much as that. Gosh, yeah. ⁓

Karl Taylor (55:28)
but you build up these long decompression penalties from doing deep diving. So you have to do a 20, 25 minute dive and then you might be doing a decompression schedule that will take over an hour before you can come back to the surface. Well, on this project, was 76 meters was the deepest ones. And then I've got the added difficulty that I've got a

Nick Church (55:42)
right.

Steve Vaughan (55:43)
Wow. So what kind of depths are we talking about? How far down are we?

Karl Taylor (55:56)
a DPV, which is a dive propulsion vehicle. So it looks like a torpedo with a propeller and a lever, but I have to mount my camera and housing on top of that so that I can film smoothly. And then you can rotate the camera left and right. So you can film dolly shots along the side of the Rex as well. And then what I do is I just rely on the low light level capabilities of camera because it's pretty much pitch black down there. There's just a little glimmer of light once your eyes.

Steve Vaughan (55:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Karl Taylor (56:24)
adjust after five, 10 minutes. And then I just rely on the lighting from the other divers torches. And it gives it that really eerie sort of ethereal quality.

Steve Vaughan (56:32)
green sort of effect.

Nick Church (56:33)
It is eerie.

And I think, you know, I'm far from, ⁓ a diver, but I do love snorkeling and things on holiday. So if you like it, if you want any tips, just let me know the, but when you see, when you see something large, it's unexpected. It is a really ⁓ unsettling feeling underwater. And when it's dark and deep and something of that size, it just must be out as well to see that.

Steve Vaughan (56:43)
Hahaha.

Karl Taylor (56:43)
Yeah.

It is,

it's sometimes an overwhelming feeling. I remember the first time that I approached the submarine out, we dropped the shot line, which is an anchor going to a rope going to the surface that we descend down. And it wasn't right next to the submarine. So we arrived at the bottom of the shot line at the seabed and there was no visible wreck, but we could see fish and fish are always a good sign because they're around the wreck.

And we knew also from the way the current was running when we dropped the shot that it should be in that direction. So we moved forwards and then you see this submarine come out of the glume and the visibility is actually quite good. So you could see pretty much half the length of the submarine. You could see the gun was still in position, the conning tower. You know, we explored the props and different dives, et cetera. But that first time experience of it was really quite overwhelming.

wow, you you've been looking for this thing for four years and people have been looking for it for like nearly a hundred years. So it was quite a powerful moment.

Steve Vaughan (57:59)
incredible.

Nick Church (58:06)
And people will

be on board still, right? mean, so the people lost would have been on that.

Karl Taylor (58:09)
Oh, yeah, yeah. mean, that submarine

went down with 28 crew. I think the some of the history books say that a couple of them managed to bail at the surface and then drowned. But probably 26 submariners went down with UC 18 to the seabed and they would still be inside it. As a matter of fact, when we poked a camera around inside the submarine to look at the engine rooms and bits and pieces within the control room, we could see the submarine was

Steve Vaughan (58:14)
So it's a tomb,

Karl Taylor (58:39)
half full of sand and silt, so probably most of the bodies are buried under that. But we did see some clothing, so we saw some boots and stuff. it really brings it home, you're thinking, you know, this is a war grave. And we notified the authorities and the German authorities were very grateful for all the information. And it was a fantastic story as well, because we had people come to us and thank us that were, you

Nick Church (58:53)
⁓ yes.

Steve Vaughan (58:53)
Yeah. This

is a tomb.

Karl Taylor (59:08)
grandchildren of the crew and you know they were saying you know thanking us really heartwarming thanks for finally knowing where their relatives were at rest because no one knew where on the map they were and and and you know things things like that came out of the stories they were

Steve Vaughan (59:23)
Yeah. Yes. Amazing.

Nick Church (59:23)
Hmm.

Karl Taylor (59:30)
people from the Royal Navy crew, relatives and descendants of the Royal Navy crew that said, yeah, my great grandpa or my grandpa or my great uncle was a crew member on that. He was the radio operator. And I remember the stories and we've got the diaries and all this extra information came in after the thing. And it was fascinating to see. And I've put that on the website. There's a website, thehuntforthegemansubmarine.com. And we put some of the additional info on there. But basically,

I set about thinking, right, this is a fascinating story, fascinating project, so let's film it. So we started filming right from day one. And I thought, wow, this will be a year to two years, but it just took longer and longer. And it was getting just more and more work, more and more time. And I started to think, God, we're never going to find this thing, you know? It escaped and it got away. I was almost certain we'd find the Lady Olive Navy ship, but we actually ended up finding the submarine first in the end, which, but I...

Nick Church (1:00:24)
Hmm.

did you?

Karl Taylor (1:00:29)
I thought we weren't going to. So it was a fascinating end to the story. And luckily the whole thing, we documented it, filmed it, did some great interviews with different experts. We edited it, put it all together. We presented it to ⁓ Channel 4 and the BBC. Channel 4 were very keen to take it. In the end, the BBC took it. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, so.

Steve Vaughan (1:00:52)
Incredible. And do you see yourself

making more movies? More documentaries?

Karl Taylor (1:00:58)
I don't know, because I think I can only really make documentaries on things that I'm passionate about. So diving would be one, but this sort of project is so complicated. There is another shipwreck that we would love to find. There's a very old, ⁓ French galleon that's still not been found, which would make a fascinating story, but it would be a lot more difficult even potentially to find that wreck. And then

Steve Vaughan (1:01:12)
such a commitment.

Karl Taylor (1:01:26)
just thinking about the whole process and would this take two years, four years? Probably not at this stage because I'm only a year off of that one being aired and I've kind of like think, right, I'm taking a break from that for a bit while. Never know, I I enjoyed the process of making a documentary, the filming, the editing, working with the team and Ben.

Nick Church (1:01:42)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (1:01:43)
But you never know what might be around the corner, I guess, really. Yeah, yeah.

Incredible,

Karl Taylor (1:01:53)
My editor who works here at the company was the editor on the documentary. And I enjoyed working on the editing process with him as well. I obviously love the underwater filming aspect. Ben did a lot of the top side filming. We had another cameraman as well working on it. It's a fascinating process, but it's a very different experience to stills photography because it's very much more about storytelling rather than just imagery.

Steve Vaughan (1:02:16)
show.

Nick Church (1:02:22)
And the storytelling

itself is out of your control, isn't it? You just don't know what's going to happen.

Karl Taylor (1:02:25)
Yeah,

exactly. And in this instance, yeah, we weren't sure what the outcome would be. So it was a little bit of a risk, but the film was really well received. We did some cinema screenings with it that sold out and huge ⁓ cheers from the audiences at the end. And it was well received by some of the TV critics gave it good reviews as well. So it was really...

Steve Vaughan (1:02:46)
Well done.

Karl Taylor (1:02:53)
a pleasing outcome and I'm really glad that we did the project. But would I do another one right now? Probably not. Would I do something that might be a little bit easier as a documentary but on a different topic? Maybe in the future because I do love documentaries. I love the real stories, real life stories.

Steve Vaughan (1:03:10)
Yeah, me too.

Yeah,

completely, completely.

Nick Church (1:03:17)
I wish they

got you onto the ⁓ project to find Shackleton's endurance. I was reading ⁓ Manson Bowne's book on that. I have got a feeling of how complicated and how low and drawn out and the risk of not finding anything. I don't think they had filmmakers on that project. Is that right?

Karl Taylor (1:03:24)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (1:03:34)
Mm.

Karl Taylor (1:03:37)
They filmed it under, it's under the ice, isn't it? Yeah, I've seen some footage from it and I think there's been some documentary since that has utilized that footage. But what might happen in that process is it's almost like reverse engineered. So someone's found it, discovered it, managed to get an ROV and filming, and then they build a story around that reverse engineer. Whereas what we did was real time.

Nick Church (1:03:40)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (1:03:40)
Yeah.

Nick Church (1:03:49)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (1:04:01)
backwards. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (1:04:02)
Yeah.

Sure. ⁓

Karl Taylor (1:04:06)
we filmed

from day one going forwards to the out.

Steve Vaughan (1:04:10)
You could have ended

up with no outcome. You could have ended up with, we can't find it. The end of story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, yeah.

Karl Taylor (1:04:13)
Yeah, yeah, and that would have been really disappointing. mean,

halfway through the project, that is what I was thinking. So, you you can imagine the elation from the team and myself and everyone involved, you know, it wasn't just me, everyone involved was, you know, working really hard on research, archives, know, historical accounts, the diving team as well. You know, it's, it's,

Nick Church (1:04:19)
Mmm.

Karl Taylor (1:04:43)
It's technically risky diving as well. So the team were putting in a lot of work to get the project done.

Steve Vaughan (1:04:54)
it's been fascinating listening to you today and thank you so much for your time. You've been very generous with your time. One question we always ask people at the end of the chats is, where do you see yourself in five years time? So let me ask that question to yourself really. Where do you see your business, your career, your life, I guess, really, if that's not too holistic. ⁓

Karl Taylor (1:04:59)
Thank you.

⁓

What age are we meant to retire? That's the thing. I think the problem for me is that I love photography, filmmaking. I love actually educating. I love producing content. I love the process so much that I don't think I would want to stop.

Steve Vaughan (1:05:17)
Don't ask my wife because she says no in my case, but I'm...

Karl Taylor (1:05:37)
doing it, but I think you've got to, at a certain point, be realistic about it as well. I'm 56 years old now, so in five years time, I'd be 61. I would like to say that I've got...

Steve Vaughan (1:05:49)
Nothing wrong with being 61, let me tell you that now.

Nick Church (1:05:52)
You

Karl Taylor (1:05:56)
10 more years of doing this properly. whether that leads me to doing more documentary work or doing other things, don't know. Where the education business goes is largely dependent on where the market goes and what happens there. Who knows? But for me, it's always been about creating the image and telling the story. And that's what I love. And lighting in particular is the thing that I'm really

Steve Vaughan (1:05:57)
I'm sure. Yeah.

Karl Taylor (1:06:26)
keen on. People say to me what's your favourite image and it's often some of the most recent ones I've shot because every new thing, new project is you know you get excited and you get passionate about it and I suppose as long as I've still got that passion for it then I will just keep doing it for as long as I can. mean you look

Steve Vaughan (1:06:39)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Nick Church (1:06:46)
Yeah, I feel

Steve Vaughan (1:06:47)
And why

not? Yeah.

Nick Church (1:06:47)
the same. feel the same. think if you're always producing stuff, we think, wow, that's one of the best things I've ever done. And you're still enjoying it and you feel like you're still adding value to whatever, know, whether it's my training business or photography, then I also can't see myself stopping doing it. It's physically unable to, or I get to a point where, do you know what? don't think that I'm producing work that's, that's up there anymore. But, but you know, so far that hasn't happened. So hopefully, hopefully that continues to be the case.

Karl Taylor (1:07:13)
You

Steve Vaughan (1:07:14)
I

think listening to you tonight, Karl, I don't think somehow you're the kind of guy who'd be potting around the garden shed for your retirement. think you'd be... No, don't think you are.

Karl Taylor (1:07:20)
No, no, I'm not, I'm not that sort of person.

I'm off on a motorbike trip across France on Friday for a week. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ I've got two, ⁓ I've got an Aprilia RS 660 sports bike and I've got an Aprilia Tuareg rally bike. So I'm taking the rally bike and doing some, doing some off-road stuff as well. Sorry.

Nick Church (1:07:24)
crime bowls.

Steve Vaughan (1:07:27)
Fantastic.

Nick Church (1:07:29)
What's your bike of choice, Karl? What's your most bike of choice?

Mm.

Taking a rally, yeah. Don't be driving a sports bike for a week. Well,

you don't be riding that sports bike for a week, you're back at me.

Karl Taylor (1:07:47)
No, not at my

age, because I ride it for an hour and then I get too stiff and whatever, it's just more for a bit of fun. But no, I like a bit of off-roading as well. So I'm going to be doing a bit of that.

Nick Church (1:07:57)
That's something that

I've, I've is on my list to do. So I've got a ⁓ 1200 GS adventure, but I ride it very cautiously around roads and I have been off road once, but it was pretty hairy and I feel this, I need a bit of instruction to do so I can do a bit more confidently. So I would like to do that at some point.

Karl Taylor (1:08:03)
Nice!

Yeah. Well, the only advice I

can give you is, ⁓ the J because the GS is a big bike. if, you ride off road, just start with, you know, more of a scrambler 250 size bike, off road bike first to get familiar with riding off road. And then you can ride a GS off road, but you wouldn't want to be doing it without the experience of riding in a smaller bike off road first.

Nick Church (1:08:18)
Mmm, really big.

Mm.

Yeah.

Or you either that or go to one of those Academy, you know, one of the schools or tours where you're using someone else's bike and it doesn't matter if I drop it.

Karl Taylor (1:08:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, those things can be great. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (1:08:48)
Hey, at

my age, I'm happy if I can stay on my own two feet off road these days, on a motorbike. So Karl, thank you ever so much again for your time today. It's been great finding out more about yourself and obviously we'll link to all the various things we've talked about in the show notes as well. if you have enjoyed today's episode, dear list, and then don't forget to give us a review on Spotify or Apple or whatever podcast app you use. just give us a lot of help in lots of weird and wonderful ways. Nick and I will be back again in a couple of weeks time with another

Nick Church (1:08:51)
You

Karl Taylor (1:08:51)
Hahaha!

Thanks guys.

Nick Church (1:08:56)
Absolutely it has.

Steve Vaughan (1:09:16)
show but in the meantime happy photography out there and we'll talk to you soon.

Nick Church (1:09:19)
Goodbye.