The Conversation - Episode 1

Flick vs. Joe


Which 3 photographers have had the biggest influence on you?

Andreas Gursky, Martin Parr and my mum.

You are obviously a good photographer both technically and creatively. Have you had any formal training?

The only semi-related formal training I've had is a one year course in film and television at the tender age of 18. It was mostly technical, but the basic principles of composition, lighting, exposure, depth of field and colour are universal, so it's something I've always referred back to. Once the course finished, I was offered a technician's post in the same department (my first proper job) and spent the next three years with free access to the most amazing equipment, helping other students through their own learning. That proved to be a great way of continuing to develop my own skills.

This was in the early nineties, around about the time Photoshop was emerging as something which might make digital imaging much more accessible - before then you'd have had to invest the value of a respectably-sized family home in Quantel Paintbox to do even the most basic retouching electronically.

I'd been heavily involved in using, teaching and experimenting with Photoshop at the college, so I was unique at that time as someone with experience of using it at quite an advanced level. Recognising this, a forward-thinking fashion photographer poached me to work for him full time and I quickly found myself involved in a whirlwind of drum scanners, dye-sublimation printers and supermodels. (I think I can confidently boast being part of the first generation to touch up Kate Moss.)

I've always come at photography from the technical / computer end of things, but working with these people at the very beginning of my career taught me a huge amount about the creative and aesthetic aspects - that's probably given me a better education and much better career opportunities than I could have hoped for through a more traditional academic route.

The one thing I regret is never having a chance to properly immerse myself in the art side of photography. That's why I'm going to go to back college one day and study it properly, from the beginning.

Why did you opt for Canon as opposed to say Nikon? Do you have any regrets?

I bought my first proper camera in the early nineties - an EOS 100. I really can't say why I went for a Canon, I probably just liked the look of it.

Once you've chosen your brand and bought a few peripherals it's a big step to change path, so I never have. I've no regrets at all and I'm not at all anti-anyotherbrand - Canon make some of the finest cameras and lenses in the world and I'm very lucky to own more than my fair share of them.

Do you prefer digital or film?

Digital - 100%. Film is an expensive, dirty, smelly, slow process most of us are much better off without.

But one of the reasons I like digital so much is the very reason many film fanatics don't. The best digital cameras strive to give you a clean, even, accurate and unprocessed image - it's up to you to decide what to do with it stylistically. With film, on the other hand, once you've chosen a type of film to stick in your camera, you've already made that decision.

Neither way is right or wrong - I just prefer capturing the maximum amount of malleable data then sitting down in front of it with a nice cup of tea and seeing what I can come up with.

On Blipfoto which 10 entries have stayed with you the most and the reasons why?

Gordon Bennet, that's a seriously tough one. These are genuinely all from the depths of my own memory - no browsing involved...

Jan Berghuis' Riding High, because it's just an incredible, National Geographic quality shot. His is one of my favourite journals, appealing to my love of inane detail about obscure technical things.

Kamran's 200th, because he must have spent a very long day on this, and the residents of those houses must have thought he was a complete lunatic. What devotion!

Jens' grandfather's final resting place, because it's a stark and sobering reminder for us all.

Scintilla's Blipmobile, because if you'd told me when we launched Blipfoto that someone on the other side of the world would register their car in its name, I'd have said you were mad.

LL Cool Jim's Jacob's Ladder, because it's just the most brilliant and preposterous assignment entry ever.

Life of Lauren's Dan the Man, Because Lauren churns out incredible pictures of her gang of unnaturally beautiful friends, but this is one of the few in which they don't feature.

Laurhina's Friday night in Dunfermline, because it's pure Scottish class.

Brickmaker's Nativity 2007, because hahahahahahaha!

Sho Shots' Me and the Girls, because this is the coolest man in the known universe. Where did he go? The planet cool?

Jim Happy Again's Old Moon, because I love the effect Blipfoto has on otherwise respectable people.

Which of your entries (up to 10) have you a particular fondness for and the reasons why?

It would've been easy to choose my ten best photographs, but for me Blipfoto's never been about that. The best - and most important - thing is the personal memories behind the images.

These are all entries relating to significant events in the last four years and, for that reason, images that I'll always treasure. In chronological order...

The first Blip in the world ever - it didn't seem at all significant on the day, but it does now.

The day I found out I was going to be a dad - there's nothing in the entry to indicate that, but I vividly remember the whole day and this picture reminds me of it. (It's a nuclear power station - analyse that...)

Blip the commune - the day I stopped being the only Blipper.

The Dudley Diplomat - the day we got the keys to our new house. (The Diplomat is still in daily use.)

Rest In Pure - the last ever night of a club which meant a lot to me in my early twenties, and without which Layla and I probably would never have met.

Bella's birth - need I say more?

Grey day - not a particularly fond memory, but a strong one nonetheless. We found out a very closes friend's husband had died in the middle of the night.

The Geekosphere - the moment I finished the last major piece of work on the house, and re-instated my cave. It's where I'm sitting typing this now, much to Layla's dismay.

My thousandth - it took me weeks to figure out how to achieve this in a day, and I didn't know until the very end if it would work. It did, and I still regularly return to wonder at my own genius.

Bella's first birthday - when the 'one year ago' feature came into its own.

What was the last photography book you read? and what did you think of it?

I'm a serial purchaser and non-reader of photography books. I have piles of the things. I can't even remember buying half of them, let alone ever looking at them.

There is one I did mostly read, though - The Genius of Photography, which accompanied the BBC series of the same name. Very good, concise and not-too-arsey history of photography.

If I had to recommend one book on photography though (yes I know that wasn't the question) it would be the National Geographic Photography Field Guide - a brilliant, concise guide to just about everything you need to know about taking pictures.

Do you have a favourite quote? ...err what is it?

I'm terrible at remembering what I've said, let alone anyone else, so here's one I heard recently that I thought was particularly pertinent, both to Blip and photography in general...

"Tell me a story"
~ every child

Can you give a little potted history about the origins of Blipfoto?

In October 2004, I bought a little pocket-sized Lumix FX7 and spent a couple of evenings building a simple website which would let me upload just one picture a day, and visitors leave comments. (Thanks to the wonder of the interweb, you can still see a page of that original version here.)

I didn't tell anyone about it for a couple of weeks, fully expecting to get bored and move on to something else. But to my surprise I didn't - it quickly got under my skin. When I did start telling others about it, they got hooked too and before long complete strangers were emailing asking if they could copy my website to do it themselves.

Within a year, I'd decided that creating a version which anyone could use should become a project for my design company and in January 2006 that's exactly what we set about doing. Seven months later, the daily photo journal for everyone was born.

To me it seems that Blipfoto plopped out perfectly formed but obviously this is an illusion!

Remember those yellow and black flashing animated gifs you used to get, with a workmen digging next to a big sign saying 'WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION'? Have you noticed you never see them any more? That's because the internet eventually realised that any good website is always under construction (and animated gifs were wack).

Blipfoto has been in a constant state of development since day one. Some of this, like the forums, subscriptions or EXIF driven uploads are visible to everyone, but loads also goes on behind the scenes which most people never notice. We're constantly tinkering to make things run better - something there's going to be a much greater need for as the site continues to grow.

So yes, it is an illusion, but one we work very hard to maintain.

What has surprised you most about your development on Blipfoto?

That I'm still here, doing it every day, and that it's become as much a part of my day as getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. That I can't imagine ever not doing it.

I don't think my approach has developed or changed tremendously since day one, but just about everyone in every corner of my life now looks at (or contributes to) Blip every day, so I have to be a little more family-friendly than I used to be!

What has surprised you the most about Blipfoto's development?

Probably how hooked other people have become - I really never anticipated that. Even those who stop contributing rarely leave and most of the people who've ever posted an image still lurk around the site. I'm sure Blipfoto is what the Eagles were singing about thirty years ago - "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

What's important to you about Blipfoto?

That it exists at all, both for me and for the thousands of others who've invested so many of their memories in the site and get so much pleasure out of it every day.

From a creative point of view, where would you like to see Blipfoto heading in the next 5 years?

Although there's loads of new stuff in the pipeline, we can never lose focus of the one thing which brings us all together: taking one photo a day. It's a really simple idea which grabs people, and has to remain at the core of everything we do.

For that reason, I don't see the fundamental aspects of the site changing at all. I want to keep improving the way things work and begin rolling out very well thought-out new features which enhance and compliment what's already here.

What ambitions do you have for Blipfoto?

At the most rudimentary level, Blipfoto is a website which lots of people enjoy spending lots of time on. My main ambition is to make it a place where more people are able to spend more time - nothing more complicated than that.

If we don't take steps to accommodate even the natural growth we're experiencing now, we're going to have to start picking and choosing who uses the site and for me that destroys the whole ethos.

Over and above that, I'd love for me and some of the incredibly talented people already working with me on the site to be able to devote much more of their time to it. That's why the decisions we made before Christmas and the subsequent response from the community have been so important and encouraging.

The future's bright. The future's a carefully-chosen neutral grey.

What makes Blipfoto unique in the on-line world of Photo blogs?

Three things: we don't let you show everyone every picture you've ever taken, every picture you see is inextricably linked to a specific point in time, and you've got a captive audience from the moment you post your first entry.

Put these in order of preference: horse, cow, tiger, sheep, pig

Moo, neigh, roar, baa, snort.

One word to descibe each of the following: dog, cat, rat, coffee, sea

Smelly, smelly, smelly, smelly, smelly.


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Thanks, Flick - a lot of work all round, but a wonderful idea.

Now I get to choose my own victim....