Connection

Another milestone and, as is now traditional, the yellow crew wanted in on the act. There was some initial confusion over the reading of the plan but they fixed it in the end (extra).

BTW the three figures on the left are themselves a connection to something we saw on our Indigo Girls road trip - do you recognise the reference?
 
Rather than a look back over the blips since my last milestone (think I'll save that for my next Blipday in July), or picking out favourites from the 5000 (I more or less did that on my last Blipday), I thought I'd reflect on Blipfoto and Connection.
 
So many things we do that give us pleasure are about connection and belonging and Blipfoto is no different. The site that Joe Tree started for his own personal record has become a thriving global community. There have been some bumps along the way but thanks are due to Joe, the 'Fab Four' that established the CIC and all the other staff and volunteers that have kept the site going over the years.
 
In many ways the most important connection that Blip provides me is with myself, allowing me to document my life and the things that make me, 'me'. Images and accompanying text document my interests, like football and other sport, birdwatching and nature, politics, theatre and cinema. All through the camera lens.

As for many people, football gives me a sense of belonging, following my team, or rather teams, as in addition to my home town United (Dundee) I also support an English United (Leeds). In both cases I wonder about my authenticity as a fan, never having had a season ticket for either team and only attending a few games a season. A lot of my football-related blips are thoughts from afar.
 
Still, I have blipped many United games, including another cup final disappointment, penalty shoot-outs against both of Edinburgh's big teams, as well as trips back to Dundee and over to Fife.
 
Not surprisingly my support of Leeds is more long-distance and frequently only makes it onto my blips as a comment on their latest result. I did mark the occasion of their promotion back to the top flight with a football-selfie. And I have seen them play live a couple of times in the past 5000 days - a friendly against my other United and another friendly up in Edinburgh.
 
More recently I have been following a third team - Edinburgh's Spartans - whom I saw in cup ties when they were still in the Lowland League, winning the Lowland League and finally in the SPFL.
 
There is also my Monday night football, now at Portobello High School but for many years at the old Meadowbank. While I have never photographed a game while playing, the journey there or back often prompts a blip and a bit of post-match commentary.

Birdwatching, and nature more generally, often gives a good blip subject, whether it's in the back garden, a short walk away or down at the beach. Now we live in Portobello seabirds feature quite a lot!
 
Blip has also documented my politics. I’m not one for a balanced report - I am unashamedly on the left and view the world through that lens. It doesn’t mean I can’t change my opinions, though, as I did in 2014 during the IndyRef campaign when I went from a No who thought that nationalism was the enemy of socialism to a Yes who believed in self-determination.

I have enjoyed a lot of theatre over the years, both as a participant and in the audience, and the same can be said of film, although the opportunities for making film have been much fewer than my trips to the cinema!

So Blipfoto gives me an opportunity to document who I am and send it out into the world. It also documents the lives of those around me, family and friends.

L features in a good number of blips as we share our lives together, encouraging each other in our creative endeavours. Looking back on blips of my parents is more poignant now, since my Mum died in 2015. After her death I back-blipped the days between her passing and her funeral. Since then I have shared photos of my father and my uncle, but not so many of my sister as she isn’t keen on her image being online.

L’s sisters on the other hand quite often feature in my blips (and one of them is now a blipper herself) and numerous birthday parties have been documented over the years as children and grandchildren have grown up.

I like taking pictures of people and so there are plenty of blips of friends, whether they are people I have known for decades or more recent friends. Sadly some are no longer with us. Others are also blippers, or have been blippers for a while before pausing. I see people returning to blip after years away so maybe everyone who stops is merely ‘pausing’.

Which brings me to the community that is Blipfoto itself - a place to connect with people based on other shared interests or simply an interest in photography. There are people I have ‘met’ online through Blipfoto whom I have gone on to meet in person and others I continue to interact with regularly but have still to meet ‘in real life’.

Hard to pick out individuals but I feel I should mention A (SeaUrchin), who was an early blipper and was the one that first introduced me to the site while we were both photography students at Stevenson College. Sadly she is a ‘paused blipper’ these days, having not blipped in a decade, and we have lost touch. I am still in touch with several others from our year, at least one of whom is a blipper herself (and her 3000th blip is imminent).

Although she is a sporadic blipper these days, Gunnlaug from Iceland is another connection of note. Commenting on her blips of her home town, Akureyri, which I remembered visiting in the early 1980s, we became online friends. We met when she and her family visited Edinburgh but the best connection was when we organised a photography exhibition linking Portobello and Akureyri during the pandemic in 2020. The images were simultaneously exhibited outdoors in the two places and received some media interest in both countries.

With my love of portraiture I was drawn to the work of jkj10 and we also developed an online connection. We met in person in London in 2013 and frequently share images outwith blip, commiserating with each other as another unsuccessful Taylor Wessing Portrait Competition rolls around. J is another ‘paused blipper’ but maybe she’ll be back one day.

So too might my Swiss friend S, although she is another person I seem to have lost touch with. In the same way that A introduced me to Blipfoto, so I introduced S to it. I liked the feature there used to be in Blipfoto where you could trace your ‘blip genealogy’, linking people to the blipper that introduced you to the site, potentially right back to Joe Tree.

Another introduction, after a chance meeting on the Clifton Suspension Bridge, was Rob from Bristol who now has three Blip accounts, all going strong with almost 2500 entries each.

A shared interest, in this case Leeds, led to a connection with AMS1 in Yorkshire. Her commitment to the team - more than two and a half decades a season ticket holder - makes mine pale in comparison but her blips are a great way to follow the team from a distance.

Just as blips let me see McJax’s travels, IainC’s allotment, AndrewDBurns walking adventures, Anth’s new life as a smallholder in Fife, Miranda1008’s latest bird spots, Hanulli's tiny figures and all the other glimpses of people’s lives that Blipfoto provides me with every day. 

In lockdown Blipfoto provided a sense of connection despite the isolated existences we were all experiencing. At the peak of the restrictions the yellow figures provided a great distraction and a daily indoor project. One of the series was picked out by the Blip Community account.
 
During Blipfoto's travails in 2015 I was in the midst of a project taking pictures of the sea and sky every day for a hundred days. On the day that had been picked for a community day of connection I created a compromise image - sea and sky PLUS myself reaching out to fellow blippers.
 
All those blippers creating images, connecting to each other, typifies the wonderful community that Blipfoto is and long may it continue.

PS That reference mentioned at the top of the post, if you are interested.