jon_IWTFY_photog

That's one of the entries where the words and picture work together the best.

One my favourite pieces of writing is 'The Arrivals Lounge'. I've often gone back and read through it when people die.

Do you have a photograph that you find yourself going back to?

It's funny because it's sad. Most of those 'damaged photographs' are me being not very good at loading 120 film (big floppy sheets of acetate) onto development reels... the white patches are areas which aren't developed because the film was touching.

That is certainly one approach, but it has been my conclusion that the "engagement" that you generate by taking it tends to be shallow.

One of the things that we've always tried to do with IWTFY is to keep the growth "organic". Which is to say, if readers are going to tell their friends about it, it should be because the made a genuine connection with the content. If you force things with SEO tricks, the users disappear as quickly as they came, and the activity was largely illusory.

Perhaps that's why it has taken 10 years to (quietly) succeed as a project?

There have been times when i've tried to game things - by sending shots to Iain with a specific sentiment in mind, but i can't actually think of a time where it has worked as expected!

During the period that the blog started i was getting back into photography, and the blog provided extra impetus for me to shoot. At the time i was living in Tokyo and in a particularly creative environment - surrounded by a group of people that took photography very seriously. My photographs from that period (2009/2010) are the ones where i felt that things were clicking for me artistically.

Here's another song.