Tim Flach & Karl Taylor Photography Workshop: A Visual Journey

Flach will undertake an equine and alternative animal shoot as well as (for the first time) reveal his post-production techniques on some of his most iconic images. Taylor will also take participants through two advertising style product shoots and a beauty shoot where he will employ his exquisite control of light. Following this, Taylor will also reveal his best practise techniques for retouching.

Flach and Taylor are both industry leaders in their respective genres and are renowned for their ability to seamlessly combine light and color in the most aesthetically pleasing ways. Although they work with vastly different subjects, there is one particular technique they both employ in all of their images:  the science of human visual perception.

The human eye consists of cone cells and rod cells, but our vision works through what you might call ‘two visual systems’, each with its own characteristics of perception. With the ability to differentiate between approximately 10 million different colors our eyes react very differently to each of them, depending on factors such as contrast, luminosity and opposing hues. The science behind this has led Flach, and more recently Taylor, to create images that apply this knowledge and thus deliver more impactful and engaging imagery.

In order to fully understand how we perceive color, it is necessary that we understand the science behind the human visual system. Flach and Taylor will be exploring examples such as this, examining famous photographers and artists work, breaking them down to understand why they are so effective.

They will then be applying these various concepts to their practical demonstrations throughout the course of the workshop, providing clear and relatable examples of why understanding human visual perception is imperative to their own photography.

The above images demonstrate color adaptation. Although the two circles are the exact same in both pictures, the top circle in the left picture appears less yellow than the bottom circle. The cells that are sensitive to colour become excited and fatigued, slightly suppressing the visual spectrum you’ve been staring at and thus enhancing the opposing (complementary) colour. In this case blue versus yellow.

For the photographer this means complimentary colours are especially dynamic as they play off of one another’s intensity as demonstrated in Karl’s exploding paint image as seen earlier in this post. Your eye wants to see that explosive pop of orange against the deep blue since they simultaneously stimulate different parts of the eye.

In addition colours with equal luminosity values can enhance three-dimensionality and Flach and Taylor also use this and other depth perception techniques to enhance their imagery, making it feel more hyper-realistic but without the need for unnatural post processing effects.

The above illusion, also known as the Lilac Chaser, is a well known illusion. The moving gap we see is caused by perceived motion, caused by a succession of still images. This is known as phi phenomenon. The moving gap is then replaced by a green disk due to the science of complimentary colors. When the retina is stimulated with a certain color, the cones of the eye react to a loss of stimulus by activating the complimentary color. In this case, the disappearance of the magenta disk means our eye replace that space with the opposite color - in this case green, despite there not actually being any green present in the image. The disappearance of the magenta disks, which occurs when you focus on the centre target, is due to the low contrast of the image - because there is nothing to stimulate the eye, the magenta disks appear to disappear but the green remains. This is known as Troxler's fading.

Once we understand how and why we perceive particular colors, contrast and luminosity values it allows us to take our image creation a huge step further. This, essentially, is the difference between taking or making a photo.