Blog Birthday:
My first blog post ever was on an old blogspot blog on May 28, 2004 entitled “Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection” and read:
“This is the first post to Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection. This blog will showcase art created by Thomas Hawk as well as discuss all things having to do with digital media.
There will be occasional side ramblings having to do with wine, computers, web publishing, media, photography, contemporary art, Microsoft and mylifebits. Remember, the only thing more important than sarcasm is love.”
Why do you blog?
I’ve always enjoyed publishing. In high school I edited my school yearbook. In college I edited my college newspaper. Being able to write for an audience and share my photographs gives me great personal satisfaction. Before blogging this was not economically feasible to do on a wide scale. Now with blogging bringing down the cost of publishing, it is much easier.
I also like the interaction of it all a great deal and it’s great fun meeting new people and making new friends through blogging.
What do you talk about?
Lots of things really. Whatever happens to be on my mind at any given time. I blog about photography quite a bit as it has been a huge passion of mine for many years. I blog about digital media. I blog about art and culture. I write about software and online communities.
But my blog is more free form than tied to any specific subject.
I’ve blogged about Hunter S. Thompson and Ween and the late Reverend Gene Scott and how DRM sucks and Media Center and TiVo and lots and lots and lots about Flickr and Zooomr of course. I’ve blogged about how I’d rather take photos of Marilyn Monroe than have sex with her. About how a camera store in Brooklyn almost ripped me off. About the occasional run ins with cops and security guards while out shooting about the San Francisco Bay Area. I blog a ton of my photos of course. I’ve written about 4,000 posts since I started blogging.
What don’t you talk about? Why?
There is nothing I won’t talk about really. Nothing specifically off limits. I hate sports and so I rarely blog about sports. I don’t blog much about traditional Dem/Republican type politics (but I will get into more personal political areas like art, culture, and why the hell we won’t have wi-fi in San Francisco by the end of the year). If I don’t talk about something it’s only because it’s something in life that doesn’t interest me… yet.
Worst/best experience regarding something you wrote in your blog or put out on the net?
My best experience was probably getting PriceRitePhoto, a sleazy bait and switch camera dealer in Brooklyn shut down.
My worst experience was probably calling Tim O’Reilly an asshole without really thinking and without talking to him and getting his side of a story when his company sent a cease and desist letter of the phrase “Web 2.0”. I apologized to him publicly on my blog.
Favorite/worst thing about living where you live?
San Francisco is one of the most beautiful urban canvases in the world. The rich detail of urban life that can be photographed here is amazing. I love all cities for photography really but San Francisco certainly is one of the most photogenic.
The worst thing about where I’m living is the cost of living. It’s outrageously expensive to live here. I don’t know how people do it, myself included.
If you were president of the US:
I’d try to restrict initial copyrights to 5 years, allowing one additional 5 year extension by filling an application with a $1 fee. I’d have everything go into the public domain after that.
I’d push for an estate tax of at least 95% on anything over $3 million in an estate.
I’d try to abolish the speed limit on freeways. Legalize marijuana. Roll out free wi-fi everywhere I could. Double bridge tolls and gasoline taxes and make public transportation free.
I’d push to allow cruel and unusual punishment for people who kill kids as administered by surviving family members with a baseball bat. I’d fine each person caught in a child predator sting $100,000 even if it meant selling their house or pushing them into bankruptcy and use the money to fund more online stings.
I’d offer free birth control to anyone who couldn’t afford it everywhere. Free condoms, free birth control pills, Norplant, whatever.
I’d allow people to invest their social security money in stock index funds.
I’d let people on the West Coast watch East Coast feeds for their TV.
Of course I don’t think I’ll ever be elected President. I’ve got lots of other crazy ideas as well.
Tell me about Zooomr. What inspired you? How is it working out? What feedback are you getting?
Zooomr is a universal photo sharing platform designed to allow people all over the world the ability share photos with each other. At present we are localized in over 18 languages and have great geotagging tools which use Google Maps. Zooomr is about getting at what is in a photograph — its context, its metadata, audio annotation, portals, events, relationships, etc.
Zooomr is also a social network with many new social tools which will be coming in the weeks ahead. Groups and forums, more introductions and recommendations for contacts, more ways to connect people online with each other offline. More ways for private groups of people to interact with each other, etc.
Additionally we are building Zooomr to be a place where the advanced amateur photographer will be able to monetize their photography. At present we believe that there is a gap in the stock photography market between the Getty’s and the Corbis’ of the world and the microstock sites like iStockphoto. We think that there is a whole world where great photographers can make money with their work by offering their images for sale for stock, printing fine art books, selling fine art prints, etc. We want to empower the advanced amateur and especially the individual who is looking to find an on ramp to a career in photography but isn’t quite ready yet to quite their day job.
Most of all we want to make the world a more beautiful place by promoting the sharing of the most amazing images in the world. We are passionate about the future of digital photography and believe that the best photographs in the world have yet to be taken.
I was inspired to pursue Zooomr when I felt like other photo sharing sites on the internet were not innovating fast enough or often enough. My first desire in working with Zooomr was to be able to implement many of the features that I wanted to see the most but that are missing from other photo social sharing sites. I know there are things that people want in a photo sharing community and working with Kristopher Tate who is a brilliant software designer and engineer is giving me the ability to see many great new ideas in photo sharing to become reality.
Zooomr is tough. Right now we are just two guys. An 18 year old kid and a photographer. We have some angel financing but are also self funded. We will probably raise some additional angel money here shortly and then within the next 6 months to a year try to get the company to profitability.
Zooomr is hard work. It’s not easy for sure. We stay up late into the night and don’t have the budgets of a big company behind us. But we are truly very, very passionate about photography, about our users and about building something that people will really take joy in. And Kristopher is the most talented software developer I’ve ever met. It is truly amazing watching that kid work.
In general I’ve been blown away at how incredibly giving and supportive our community is. Volunteers are the ones translating the site for us. Even when we’ve had some unfortunate glitches and downtime our users have stood by us and have been just amazing.
What actor would play you in the movie of your life?
Probably Carrot Top. No, just kidding. I’m not sure who I’d want to play me. Sean Penn would certainly would be up there and is an actor I’ve admired for a long time. Alec Baldwin would probably be another. I’m not sure my life would be interesting enough for a movie of course.
What do you do to stay sane and healthy?
Well I’ve got to work on this. Certainly out shooting photographs nearly every single day I’ll walk miles. This helps. I used to try to swim but lately there just has not been time. Typically I get less than four hours of sleep a night and unfortunately tend to supplement with caffeine. Once we get Zooomr off the ground more I’ll probably try to get back to a more regular routine for exercise and sleep.
How do you feel in retrospect about the controversy surrounding the crying-child photos and your participation in bringing more attention to it? Would you change anything you said/wrote/did?
It’s interesting. I’m not particularly pleased about the fact that the attention probably did more to build Jill Greenberg‘s celebrity than anything. At the same time I feel pretty strongly that children ought to be respected and promoted and encouraged and loved and that to deliberately aggravate them for the purposes of political statement renders the statement invalid and certainly unethical.
As a father of four I can’t imagine ever subjecting my children, or any child, to purposeful emotional distress. I think we won’t know what effect these photographs will have had on these children until years later. The celebrity of these photos very well may be badly experienced by these children latter in life and these project very well may end up haunting the parents whose children were involved.
I never expected the story to get as big as it did. After the Los Angeles Times wrote what I felt was a incredibly biased piece on the show (and it’s no wonder as she had photographed for the Times in the past), I didn’t feel that further media attention would be helpful and stopped talking to the press and returning calls. I had radio stations contact me and the folks from Inside Edition and it was at that point that I figured all of the publicity was doing more to help her than anything.
It may have been a mistake being a catalyst for people to rail and react against her work. I’m not sure. It was hard for me to sit by though and not call her out on something that I really felt and thought was awful.
Irrespective of my opinion or her opinion regarding her photography I do think her and her husband behaved terribly. I found it especially ironic that as an artist she would try to use political pressure to silence me. Artists of all people should see the value of free speech. When her husband objected to my article I gave him space in the same article to express his opinion. I felt a responsibility to allow a spirited discourse on the controversy at hand — they on the other hand just wanted to shut me down. They told lies about me. They said that I targeted their kids websites and linked to them when I never did.
It was overall a pretty miserable experience for me but it was something that I felt and still do feel strongly about. I don’t think I’d change anything that I wrote.
I’d love a parenting tip.
Ok, hug and kiss your kids every single day. Tell them that you love them and are proud of them every single day. Get them involved with the things that you do even when you need to devote time and attention elsewhere (my sons come with me a lot when I shoot and love shooting the 10D and learning more about it while I shoot the 5D). Give them a rattle or a toy when you change their diaper. Talk to them about how their day was. Read to/with them. Take them to the internet and ask them what they would like to see photos of and then find them photos of whatever they would like to see.
Favorite color:
Favorite food:
Unfortunately too many things that are bad for me but let’s go with a Tommy’s cheeseburger. No, make that a double Tommy’s cheeseburger.
I thought I read somewhere that you hold a record for the most photos uploaded to Flickr. Is that true?
I don’t think so. I almost have 8,000 photos up on Flickr. I think I have another 40,000 or so, if memory serves correct, in a private account that I’ve let lapse. I think there are people with more photos uploaded to Flickr than me. I know Billy Warhol has quite a few and there are others.
When you were 10, what did you want to do when you grew up?
A fireman.
What do you hate?
I hate bigotry. I hate stagnation. I hate religious intolerance. I hate it when technology doesn’t work right.
What do you love?
I love innovation. I love art. I love beautiful and unique photographs. I love kids — especially my kids, my family and my wife. Friends. I love photography and taking photographs. I love music. Photowalking with Robert Scoble, I love discovering new places. I love cities. I love meeting new and interesting people. Technology when it works right. I love the internet. I love social websites. I love Zooomr. I love blogging. I love Tommy’s cheeseburgers (as previously mentioned), meat pie and chicken with black bean sauce from Henry’s Hunan, artichokes, cherry pie, burritos from La Taqueria, Cafe Americanos, great wine, walking, freedom, challenging and intense people, creative people, smart people, giant monitors, HDTV, fast lenses, fast computers, fast internet connections, time shifting television, neon, pop culture, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, London. Art museums. Sexy women. Places where you are allowed to take photos. Cool weather and rain.
What do you do that you get the most satisfaction from doing?
Taking photographs.
What do you want to tell other bloggers, if anything?
Be true to yourself. Don’t limit what you say because you worry about how people react. Take risks. Make mistakes. Apologize for your mistakes. Always link back when you can.
Astounding facts about you:
I road my bicycle from Oregon to Delaware when I was 15. I shaved my head in high school. I have over four terabytes of personal storage at home which houses about 160,000 photographs and about 100,000 mp3s — most of which were ripped by me. I digitize everything and have an amazing library of .pdfs of just about every piece of paper that has ever touched my life, bills, college papers, owners manuals, elementary school report cards, books, etc.
I hope to have 100,000 finished processed fine art photographs by the time I die. I hope to one day build giant massive collages of 8×10 photographs of various themes. Of consumerism and marketing. Of neon signs. Of black and white prints. Of shots of people. etc. Collages with thousands of 8×10 prints stitched together on giant sheets of connected plywood making fantastic public art displays. I want to walk across America taking photographs every day and then publish a book of the best of those photographs.
Are you Windows or Mac? Why?
Windows. I used a Mac from 1986-1991 then switched. I got a job working for a bank and that was the end of the mac. I decided that rather than use two systems I’d be more efficient and effective learning one better. I got into Microsoft’s Media Center Edition PC and that kind of trapped me more into the Windows world about 5 years ago. Lately I’ve been thinking about abandoning Windows though and moving over to Macs. I’m tired of things not working correctly with Windows.
How would your family describe you?
Too busy.
What is one of your favorite memories?
When each of my children were born.
Do you cook?
Very poorly.
What are you working on right now?
I’m answering questions for your interview. Before that I was faving shots on Zooomr.
Any application/program that has made a difference in your life?
Photoshop. It’s amazing to me how much can be done with the RAW material of my photographs. Flickr. Zooomr. Windows Media Center.
Your own favorite post? And/or your favorite post of someone else?
Wow. My own favorite post of my own would probably be one I wrote thinking about ideas that I had for innovating in the photosharing space back in early 2005.
My favorite post from someone else would probably be Arrington’s post which kind of jumpstarted Zooomr back in March of this year.
What will you being doing next year?
Hopefully continuing to make Zooomr Zoom and taking lots and lots of photographs.
Tell me a secret?
I once got kicked out of Bible College, which was not the place for me. I fell deeply in love with this woman Kimberly Stepp there who broke my heart in about a million places.
What do you wish I had asked you that I didn’t?
Who my favorite artists are: Bob Dylan, Mary Lou Lord, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, Liz Phair, Edward Weston, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Johnny Cash, Drive By Truckers, Roy Lichtenstein, Chris Smither, John Currin, Mel Ramos, Robert Bechtle, Hunter S. Thompson, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Joseph Heller, Josh Ritter, Angelo Rizzuto, Woody Allen, Wim Wenders, Bob Schneider, Andreas Gursky, John Prine, Gerhard Richter, Banksy, Aqui-Ali, Chris Mills, Lyle Lovett, Gregory Crewdson, Sam Bloomberg-Rissman, Dr. Seuss, Cole Rise, Azure Ray, Bonnie Prince Billy, Eels, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Slobberbone, Ween, Jasper Johns, Willie Nelson, Richard Misrach, Social Distortion, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Dorothea Lange, Larry Sultan, Tom Waits, Todd Snider, Richard Estes, The Velvet Underground, Sean Penn, John Coltrane, and Richard Avedon, to name a few.