When did you first get into photography? How old were you?
Um when I was about 6 or 7 years old, back in the day of what I remember more normal 35 mm film with a built in light metre that you had to put the needle in the little zero. I had an old practeeker MTL5 their great cameras. Yeah I took some great pictures, some great ones. Had a zoom lens and everything!
When you were 6?
Yeah 6 - 7 years old I was really into it! I stole it from my brother he’s 5 years older than me, but yeah in my juvenile years.
Did you ever do any photography courses?
Not when I was 6 no! (laughs) but no I don’t have one qualification to my name and Im kinda proud of that really cus I could rattle off here my feeling about this and that is I think a photography degree, can I say this? I think a photography degree along with many other degrees is a complete waste of time, because io think the only this a photography degree is going to get you is first of all access to your tutors and peers where if their good, you’ll get a lot from them and access to equipment. But to be honest the actual technique of photography you really don’t need to be shown how to do that, you really don’t need to be shown that, you could read it out of a manual or from a book or online, everything you need to know about photography is all online, you don’t need someone to tell you how to do it.
So you’re totally self-taught?
Oh yeah as are most of the best photographers to be honest. I think a lot of student learning in photography is far too and much too aimed at concepts and abstract photography and experimental photography and moving photography forward but I mean I think a lot of students need to learn how to just take a good picture, and I think that Im waiting to see that, what about just taking a good picture rather than trying to be over the top and arty and clever, just learn how to take a good picture. Just do that!
How did smile on the tiles come about? Because you discovered it right?
Yeah I created it, there are other concepts of smile on the tiles around like tilllate.com there’s dontstayin and there’s a number of others which I wasn’t aware of at the time when we started smile on the tiles, it was created by a clear need for photography in bars and clubs, it was invented on accident, it wasn’t thought of at all, what happened was I was in a club helping my friend who had just opened up a new nightclub in Plymouth and he needed some photographs, he wanted some of the daytime of the bar and also of the evening so I popped in there having already done the day time and started taking photographs of the clubbers and what was happening was that the clubbers were all jumping in front of the camera, posing you know so immediately I thought alright were onto something here so very quickly got in contact with a number of other bars I had contacts with so we managed to pick up on ride, that was one of the first ones, we got revaluation the day it opened because that was only just being fitted, we got vue 2 was the main club we originally had and the bac bar, so we had about 4-5 clubs we were like going in and out on the street and then that expanded so by the beginning of December, December 9th 2009 we went into the herald and have been ever since, so it discovery was made on accident. Im in an extremely fortunate position that I can do this which is why I think its managed to continue.
Did you ever think it would be so popular?
No, no of course not, you never know until you do it and Plymouth has gone ballistic with this, they pose like crazy all the time everywhere, even when people see me out on the street during the day they’ll pose even when I don’t have my camera and Ive been forced to use my camera phone to take their picture and this is during the bloody day! You know what I mean it s crazy stuff. People find it bizarre when I don’t have my camera around my neck! Yes I do have a life!
Smile on the tiles have taken over 1 million images?
Yeah we have taken a million images, which is great! We did the official millionth photo which was taken of a group of people outside lavish on the barbican on that day, it was a really great moment I really enjoyed that actually it was brilliant, it was a nice picture because the girls and guys we got in the photo were not regulars either they were a fairly fresh bunch of people, we had all kinds of ideas how to do the millionth photo, it would’ve been difficult to achieve, I wanted to get the whole of Plymouth, to saturate un ion street with every clubber in town and get them all on union street all over the place in one big mother of all photos, I would’ve gone up onto the theatre royal or got hold of a cherry picker to take it, I would’ve figured something out but I think the police probably wouldn’t have liked it, but it would’ve been funny, but yeah it never happened. But it was okay it was still done in the vain of smile on the tiles, that picture, were now 8 months on from that now and were now on about 100 thousand beyond 1 million now, its about 100,000 every 8 months, although its much less that what it used to be, I used to take ten thousand a week, easy, now im doing about 3, about 3000. Only because I don’t go out every night now, its too much work! There are some demographics that don’t use smile on the tiles but no problem.
How do you manage your time?
Interesting question actually, I don’t manage my time in the same way as any other person I know, and that is you don’t have a pattern, one of the quotes I think it was sir Alan Sugar… he said that people who are successful don’t sleep, and that’s true! I don’t think that’s entirely in a literal sense, you know but work has to be done! You have to get on with stuff and if your sleeping you cant achieve that, I used to think of it as a 27- 30 hour day, sometimes a 40 hour day that kind of think but what I do is I sleep when I need to sleep, and that will be anywhere between 2 and 5 hours in a 25 – 30 hour period, but it depends really what Im doing, if I gotta be up at a certain time to do something, ill change my sleep pattern to do that, it’s a much, much better way to exist, much better way! People who have 9 – 5, working 8 hours 9 hours solid is absolutely ridiculous way to exist, there’s no need to do that I think, I think to work as and when you need to work or when your inspired to work is a much better way to live and its better for you, I know somebody who said he’s gotta get 12 hours sleep a day! That’s absolute nonsense! Lying down asleep for that period of time is not good for you! And its more fun because your awake for longer so you see more things its good, it’s the way you should exist, everyone should live like that! Everyone are too money orientated.
What about your personal work?
Yeah the bathtub was good fun, altogether we did 35 different girl images, some girls did 3 or 4 different images, one girl did laying in a bath full of goldfish, another one when she was in alcohol the WKD blue drink, which im still in talks with beverage brands who own WKD to sort out the licensing because they want to use it for their international market which is great, its really exciting having an image actually be used instead of just looked at, which is great fun. That was established through networking. Networking! That’s what people need to do, that’s what you need to learn when you do a degree is how to network, how to market yourself, how to run a business, not how to operate a camera, operating a camera is a piece of piss, its what you do with it that counts! You have to know how to network, how to talk to people, how to use the phone, how to write a letter, how to generate things and how to push things forward and get funding, money and talk to the bank, that’s what you should be learning, seriously! The art is easy the art should be part of you already that’s what you should be doing anyway in your own way, not hoe your conformed to do it
Any new projects on the go at the moment?
Ohh yeah I do actually but unfortunaly I cant tell you what they are though, their confidential, Ive got a few ideas though, any photographer is always striving for that new idea, that’s what makes a photographer stand out from the rest, is doing something no-one else has done, or what other cant do, you go to a location and you know it frustrates me when I put images online and people ask ow were is that were is that?? And you just think ow god just go and find your own one you know this is mine, just a bit frustrating when that happens but not always maybe a year or 2 down the line ill tell people how I done certain things
Who’s your biggest influences, were do you get your inspiration?
People around me. I mean I admire a lot of photographers I mean there’s some incredible work that goes out there not necessarily by big names but unknowns too just go on deviant art, go look on purestorm the modelling site, even some work on modernmayhem, looking at the armatures on flikr, armature photographers are incredible, better that the big names in my opinion Im not that fussed to be honest there are a number of photographers I think Im in more admiration of what they’ve managed to create, like, Anne Lebovitz, who Im sure you’ve come across, she did all the big sort of rolling stones magazine and that, but why she was successful wasn’t because of, I don’t think entirely because of her skill as a photographer, I think she made it because she got in with the right people, and she managed to get the job that she did if she didn’t do that she would be an unknown, taking pictures of famous people is one of the best things you could ever do because its not all about the photography it s about the famous person in the picture, and to be honest if you look at a lot of her work its pretty straight forward stuff there’s nothing that clever about it, its okay but nothing a first year degree student couldn’t do in ten minutes, in my opinion, Im not being pompous about that but its true, one photographer I really do admire is a man called Andre Preto whose superb, he’s uses brilliant concepts, fantastic photography. He knows his shit, really knows his shit, and there’s a lot of good photographers around, a lot of really good one you know, good stuff, I don’t consider myself that good I recon Im okay, techniqually im okay.
What camera do you use?
My main camera is a canon 5D mark 2 that’s the camera I use for all the creative work, but for smile on the tiles I use a canon 40D which is just the best camera in the world it really is its just fantastic, its brilliant, its even better than canons latest cameras, I’ve used the latest one the 7D and its not a patch on the 40D, no way.
Thank you for speaking with me.
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