Mike Taylor

The award-winning photographer has just published a book about how to succeed in the medium.

- Niall Hampton finds out more

Having gained global recognition for his photo of France football fans cheering on their team in a televised World Cup match in a London pub, Mike Taylor has just become an author. Available as a Kindle e-book from Amazon, Click! The $10 Book That’ll Make You A Better Photographer And Save You A Fortune has a title that describes itself.

Over 120 pages, Mike celebrates photographs and photography and offers some hints, tips and insights that have turned out well for him. Before 2018, Mike enjoyed taking photographs, but felt that chasing the photo ‘gear dragon’ and acquiring new kit wasn’t making him better as a photographer. So he went back to basics, drastically slimming down his setup and drawing up a philosophy that would change his approach to making pictures. Since then, he has enjoyed a successful career as a working professional and is the proud owner of a trophy from the world’s largest photography competition.

So what’s Mike’s secret sauce? You’ll have to buy the e-book to find out, but in the meantime, he gives us a few pointers...

You write about having an epiphany that changed your approach to the medium in 2018. What actually happened?
We were on holiday in Vietnam and I hadn’t picked up a proper camera in a decade – ever since we were given iPhones at work. I took a picture with it that made me realise that I’d probably just wasted 10 years of my creative life. It almost broke my heart. So I had a mini-midlife crisis before pulling myself together and getting back on the photography horse with a vengeance.

I threw myself back into it, but with the accrued wisdom and perspective of a few years, plus the fire in the belly of someone who’d just realised the awful mistake they had made. I started really looking at what I was doing with photography – and how and why I was doing it.