Herald photographers revel in year as Blippers

It was my colleague Gordon Terris who got me into this, and when I found out more about it I thought it would be a fantastic challenge to do a full year of one picture a day. But I often found that by 11.59pm I’d be looking for a last-minute subject for the day.

My year was quite random – my pictures have no set style and in my opinion they range from good, bad and indifferent, but the great thing is it doesn’t matter.

When I look back through the whole 12 months it’s like looking at a diary of a year of my life. I mostly photographed the everyday things that feature in my daily life: Chester the dog, my brogue shoes, the Forth Railway Bridge. It didn’t matter if they didn’t work.

What distinguished this Blip project was the freedom it gave me. This is my 21st year as a working photographer, and it allowed me to look at random things again, which I think brought a freshness back into my work.

When you first start out, you’re looking at everything – shadows, cracks in pavements, that sort of thing, until you realise the bosses won’t be able to use it because it is too random.

But here I was, returning to that idea of the quick, spontaneous photograph. It was a very positive thing for me.

Marc Turner

For me, the Blipfoto project presented the opportunity to simply make observations of moments in time rather than big orchestrated statements. I found the idea of being part of a forum, where everyone’s trying out different ideas and forms of photography, quite irresistible. It was completely different from what I do in my day job, because the pictures I took were not related to a story. There was no brief to follow, which was very liberating.

It illustrated what the wider photographic community was looking at, which was photography itself. It is all about idea, technique and composition – a visual diary of what’s going on. Each photograph had to be of something that happened or a fleeting moment that you captured. For me this meant there was not too much sentiment; just little observations of Glasgow and the west coast.

The challenge, of course, was to remember to take a picture every day that was not related to a story for the paper. As a result, my Blipfotos – whether in black-and-white or colour, moving or still – reflect my ever-changing moods.

The best bit was the feedback. The Blipfoto community is very open and interactive. This project has reminded me of what a good picture is, looking to see how it was taken, and filling me with new ideas and inspiration.

Brodie Duncan

Herald Picture Editor

When my colleague Martin Shields told me about this in December last year [2011], initially I thought to myself, “This will be easy.” How wrong I was.

It’s no problem to get out and about at the weekend, but during the week, when I’m sat at my desk for 11 hours at a time, I found that every lunch hour was spent looking for the perfect Blip opportunity.

The best thing for me was that it opened my eyes to my surroundings, as you always had to see what your picture would be that day. Some days I’d have a selection to choose from, but on week days I had far fewer, and there were lots of city centre and street scenes. More often than not, I found myself late at night without a picture. Luckily my black lab Morar was always available.

Some of my best pictures have been taken at Loch Lomond, where we have a holiday home we go to most weekends. It’s a place dear to our hearts and The scenery is fantastic, with the ever-changing landscape of hills, clouds, watersports. I like those featuring my wife or my dog best, especially when they’re in the of rain, mist or damp. This made me aware of the need to have a camera with me at all times, whether it was my SLR professional or my pocket-sized iPhone.

Now that I’ve done the 366 days, I feel I deserve a break but I’ve not given up Blipping. Though I’ve decided just to upload when I think I have a real cracker of a picture.

Colin Templeton

This was a nice change from the day job. It got me out taking more pictures and thinking about them more. The thing I liked the best was that there was no pressure to work to a particular brief, and it was just sheer fun.

At the beginning I used colour, though as time went by I found myself doing less and less colour and going almost completely monochrome. There’s something pure about black-and-white; colour can be very distracting in a picture. I like the fact that black-and-white focuses on shape and form and texture. It’s like the way you used to develop photographs in a dark room.

My picture of boys playing at a water jet in the east end of Glasgow, because it’s monochrome, seems to me to emphasise its timelessness. It could be the 1950s or 1960s. Boys have been doing this sort of thing as soon as the sun makes an appearance for decades. And the flies you can see buzzing around the horse – which I saw out of the blue when on a property assignment – were actually in the process of jumping ship and coming over to me from him, so I had to be quick.

The commitment to come up with an image every day was definitely a challenge, but it was a nice challenge. If I didn’t have something by 8pm it would make me go out and get something. If I hadn’t been doing Blip I wouldn’t have these pictures.

Martin Shields

The thing I liked about this was the anonymity, which meant the comments you got were genuine. The Blip community spirit is very positive and there’s no negativity. I enjoyed the fact the brief is wide and roving, so we could take a picture purely for the sake of the picture, rather than because it was related to someone else’s story for the newspaper. I tend to take a lot of portraits of people for my professional work, but this is more about landscapes, just watching things quietly without having them posed or set up.

Through this project I’ve rediscovered the attractions of black-and-white photography, which takes me back to the early days when tones, shades of grey and shadows could impart information. That’s why I like my photograph of two seagulls; it’s almost monochrome although it’s colour. About two-thirds of my work has been taken with my iPhone, which is more spontaneous than my Canon EOS digital. My photo of Andy Murray seen through a fence on his walkabout with his Olympic gold medal wouldn’t have been used by the paper as it doesn’t show enough medal, but I love the hustle and bustle around him.

Some of these are photographs anyone could take. It’s all about keeping your eyes open.

Some people use the Blipfoto as an online diary but I tried not to make mine too personal, and to keep it light. I’m not stopping being a Blipper; I’m addicted to it.

Gordon Terris

When I first read about Blipfoto I thought posting a daily photo diary was a very interesting idea from a young Scottish company that reaches people all over the world, whether they’re professionals or amateur enthusiasts.

Its basic ethos of looking at things in a different way is actually the reason I went into photography in the first place. Taking photos professionally has its own restrictions, but a Blipfoto can be as abstract as you want it to be. It lets you think outside the box.

My photo of young Jack playing with a light pen in a pitch dark room was taken with a long exposure of 30 seconds. It took me quite a while to get it right.

I used black-and-white simply because I like it; I think it works better. In the Bass Rock picture with the gannets flying off it, the low sun was hitting it from the front, while a low dark cloud was behind; I used a long lens to foreshorten it to make it really look like a surreal moment in time.

Some days I’d easily have four or five images yet on others I’d be struggling to get just one. At 10pm some nights I’d realise I’d forgotten to take one and would end up snapping some fancy lampshade in the house or getting the kids up to get them to pull a funny face. But looking back over my Blipfoto year it’s nice to see them all and remember what I did on a particular day.

Mark Gibson

I initially liked this idea because it didn’t seem like a huge corporate venture. I’d seen other sites and didn’t want to put anything on them. When I was shown Blip’s simple premise of one photo a day I loved the idea of a new challenge.

When you’re doing professional photographs you have certain restrictions, but this turned out to be more about embracing the mundane, capturing images that didn’t have a back story. My picture of Glasgow rooftops, taken on my iPhone, was really about the repetition of the chimney stacks and wasn’t particularly unusual. But what makes it is the sky. It’s like a thick oil painting of waves breaking on the sea. Normally you always know what’s happening in a picture when you’re taking it for the paper – this threw up more suprises, and I really enjoyed it.

With Blipfoto anyone, wherever they are, can upload photographs, and people from around the world post comments on them within seconds – like the American architect who immediately responded to one of mine. It’s very democratic and I found it just fantastic. There’s a real friendliness and openness within the Blip community – none of the snobbishness that’s usualy attached to the photography world.

This project has completely restored my enthusiasm for photography. When people rave about a photograph of something you think is fairly ordinary, it gives you a real boost of confidence.

I also liked the word-of-mouth element of the the Blipfoto community, which is very happy and positive, and makes people want to take photographs.