The position that I was coming in for was originally social marketing. I was handling all of our social content and being the voice to the community. We were just starting out, and as more and more responsibilities were put on my plate, handling special projects and things like that, we decided it would make more sense for me to have a different title. I was working with a lot of the big corporations and they needed something that they could relate to. We went with VP of Fun, but then that implied that there was someone more fun than me, and we know that\u2019s not real! (Laughs). So then we went to Director of Fun, as a great icebreaker, an easy way to talk to somebody, and it handled everything that was more related to marketing and that wasn\u2019t part of building the app \u2014 that\u2019s the gist of what Director of Fun means. When we first started, we felt like that was a really important way of showcasing the work that was coming out of our community, and we still do them when we can. However, the problem was that at these art galleries, no one was taking pictures. So, we wanted to complement that experience by doing other events that inspired people to take pictures. So, we started doing more things that involved music, like SXSW, where we were putting on brunch events, giving you opportunities to take pictures and be part of a physical community of people taking pictures, which has been really great.<\/p>\n We do some events here at the Haus, where we\u2019ll bring in bands. We\u2019ve done some gallery events as well, although we haven\u2019t done one in a while. But we plan to do at least one social event a month, whether that\u2019s a pop up dinner or a music event, and then one gallery. The last event we were part of was the launch of the Lumia in New York.<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_1_placeholder<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t want to get rid of the gallery events, it was more that we wanted to add more social events, and give opportunities for people to take pictures. We\u2019re still showcasing a lot of artists and the last show that we did here was with\u00a0Rick Rocamora<\/strong>. Before that we had\u00a0Travis Jensen<\/strong>, we did a contest with Win Initiative out of New York, and\u00a0Anton Kawasaki<\/strong>\u00a0won, so we did his work, and we\u2019re printing his pictures in 30x30 inch-format; they\u2019re just beautiful, beautiful prints. Now, with some of the other means of printing \u2014 our print line with wood, metal and canvas \u2014 we did a show with\u00a0Lisa Bentinck<\/strong>. She did a whole gallery on Ethiopia, some of those images were in the magazine, but we printed them on wood and they were stunningly beautiful! We did an exhibition of metal prints for Travis\u2019s black and whites, because the black and whites just look so beautiful on metal, and there\u2019s this really great archival gloss layer that goes on top of it. They\u2019re just amazing.<\/p>\n A lot of the galleries, too, we\u2019ll do a projector show, so that we can incorporate more images. We used to do live events where you\u2019d be able to contribute to a gallery live from anywhere in the world, you just uploaded your images to one of these contests, and they were streamed live, and that was really cool to see.<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_2_placeholder<\/p>\n I\u2019m half unicorn! Just kidding.\u00a0Lucas<\/strong>,\u00a0Ryan<\/strong>\u00a0and I all went to school in Wisconsin doing graphic design. We knew we wanted to work together in some kind of a design studio environment, but they were going to stay in the Midwest, and I was focused on moving out to New York. So they started their design studio, and I went out to New York where I thought I was going to be a waiter or a photographer. I got a gig with MTV to shoot events, so I had 3 months before that gig went into effect. This was when I\u2019d just graduated and I really thought that photography was a better career choice for me because I like people, and as a graphic designer you spend your entire day behind a computer. I ended up taking on the MTV-job, and it turned out to be mainly events photography, which I hated; I mean, I wanted to have fun, too!<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_3_placeholderWhen I got to New York, I went to work as a graphic designer at Bloomingdale\u2019s. I was designing shopping bags, gift cards, all of their private label packaging, chocolates, a bunch of different really great things that I was so excited to be working on, but I really missed photography. I started moving more into their editorial team and working on creating some of the big catalogues, working with photographers and models and casting. This made it really exciting again, because I really love photography.<\/p>\n After a while, I kind of got over the whole corporate thing, so I decided to leave. And Lucas found out, the day I quit, and was like, \"Hey, I want you on my team,<\/em>\" and I was like, \"Awesome!<\/em>\" So, then I started working out of New York three days later doing our social stuff.<\/p>\n My relationship was with all these fashion photographers, so I started bringing them in to create looks for\u00a0Hipstamatic<\/strong>. I didn\u2019t know that so many people in the tech industry, or even in photography, were paying much attention to fashion photography, but now, if you look even at the iPad ads, they\u2019re dedicating stuff just to fashion. We were one of the first companies that really started embracing fashion as a means of being creative in the tech industry; it was more by default of where we were coming from. We realized quickly that that was actually an industry that would be really fun to embrace and bring on board. It\u2019s just crazy now to see so many different tech industry people embracing fashion. It\u2019s awesome!<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_4_placeholder<\/p>\n Over 400,000 per month. It was one of those things that we launched as a side project. We were really excited about finding a more permanent home for all the content that people were creating. They were sending it to us and we were putting it on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr, and the life expectancy of any of these posts, is like 24hrs, so we thought, \"What if there was something more permanent?\" Lucas had worked at a magazine before, and I had been working at a catalogue, so the idea of creating a magazine wasn\u2019t completely crazy, we were like, \"why don\u2019t we just do it?\" We had no idea how well it would be received, how it would continue to grow, or how important it would become as an inspirational tool for our community. It\u2019s become a really cool project, but yeah, it\u2019s still growing, and we\u2019re still looking at ways to continue to grow it, and working with really great people to contribute. It\u2019s a fun project that has started to demand a lot of time, and possibly also one of the reasons we probably do fewer events. On a monthly basis we would draw in two to three hundred people at any given event, versus 400,000 people on a magazine.<\/p>\n We do, and it\u2019s just\u00a0Molli<\/strong>\u00a0and I who work on the magazine full time. So, we had to bring on (editorial assistant)\u00a0Rheanna Martinez<\/strong>\u00a0to start helping sort through a lot of that. Filtering through some of the content, requesting more content. There are a lot of organic submissions that come in, some times it\u2019s a beautiful story, sometimes it\u2019s a one-off, which is why we created those \u2018Moments Captured\u2019. One of the important things, possibly of anything that we\u2019ve ever done in terms of social - and I\u2019m considering the magazine to be one of the ways that we\u2019re working on being more social or involving our community - is that we want to showcase some of the great talent in our community. Ideally, we\u2019d love to give them the celebrity status that they deserve for creating such beautiful work. In that sense, giving them a story in\u00a0Snap<\/strong>, or just featuring one image that they\u2019ve taken that\u2019s really beautiful\u2026 that\u2019s kind of where we\u2019ve always wanted to be. There are a few reasons for that. Primarily, we\u2019re storytellers. There\u2019s a story behind every photograph. In showcasing it, I become the storyteller, and we crop into different moments in the story that you may not have noticed as the artist. It\u2019s become more of a point of view, but it\u2019s still storytelling. Cropping photos has always been one of those things\u2026 maybe it\u2019s just that I worked on magazines and catalogues for so long, where there were different things that you could bring out. I like the limitations that are given by using this other dimension, especially with square photos and figuring out how that story is retold in a different format. Then there are two different stories; photos are still being shared on other networks, but it becomes almost like a narrative to me on how that story\u2019s told. I\u2018m ok with cropping photos!<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_6_placeholderIt\u2019s very rare that we do that, and only in very specific circumstances.\u00a0If I can get the original\u00a0Hipstamatic<\/strong>\u00a0photo for a photo story, I will always go for that. As an artist myself, I want to keep the integrity of our\u00a0Hipstamatic<\/strong>\u00a0photographers and artists. However, if the story needs some form of editing to increase the focal point or darken a shadow to shift direction, as much as I don\u2019t like doing it, I\u2019ll do it every so often. But, then it becomes hard for people to tell which lens and film combination was used to create it, and I want people to be able to recreate it on their own images and be inspired through the magazine. So, sometimes you just have to allow a story to exist. So overall, I always prefer to have the original image.<\/p>\n I would never post a non-Hipstamatic image on any of our social channels. And with\u00a0Snap<\/strong>, as it\u2019s grown and gotten more popular, it\u2019s become more of a photography inspiration tool. I want people to be inspired, I almost want the photography to be more important than the tool that was used. Obviously, I\u2019m going to always try and get the\u00a0Hipstamatic<\/strong>\u00a0image, but I do think for\u00a0Snap<\/strong>, specifically, I\u2019m probably a little more lenient in that I just want beautiful content, I want beautiful photo stories, I want people that tell stories through images, it\u2019s a little different.<\/p>\n When we launched\u00a0Hipstamatic<\/strong>\u00a0originally, there was a really bad camera on the iPhone and we thought: \"What if we made this look better, and we made it look more analogue?\" The goal was to create an image that felt very nostalgic. As the camera got better, we realized that instead of creating these images that were so effected or nostalgic, what if we used this tool to actually create new things. We worked with\u00a0David Loftus<\/strong>\u00a0to create a food lens. Some of the new stuff that we did with the\u00a0Americana<\/strong>\u00a0lens (with\u00a0Chiun-Kai Shih<\/strong>), working with\u00a0Nic Adler<\/strong>\u00a0(on the\u00a0Adler<\/strong>\u00a0lens) to figure out how we can take better images inside of a bar or a venue with the\u00a0Jolly Rainbo<\/strong>\u00a0flash \u2014 what we were trying to do was create better images. We were our target audience, we\u2019re artists and photographers as well and there\u2019s certain things that we wanted as the tool became better.<\/p>\n I\u2019d say that for the last two years, we\u2019ve been working on just creating the most beautiful image possible. It\u2019s really no longer about nostalgia. I mean there\u2019s a certain component to it, but the newest lenses that we\u2019ve created are not meant to mimic an old image, they\u2019re meant to be beautiful. The 41 mega pixel camera on the Lumia just means we have more room to zoom and take beautiful photos!<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_7_placeholderWe\u2019re not moving away from the core of who we are, but we are evolving.\u00a0We partnered with Nokia specifically because of the hardware, we were excited about a 41 mega pixel camera that you could carry in your pocket. It\u2019s something that hasn\u2019t been seen. We definitely wanted to be at the forefront of what that meant, and being able to access some additional controls, and get long exposures\u2026 things that we weren\u2019t able to do in the past. What should be very clear is that we are photographers and graphic designers and we love what we do. We will continue to create products we love and that, hopefully, our community will love too.<\/p>\n Hipstamatic<\/strong>\u00a0is our baby, when people get scared that we\u2019re going to leave it alone, I mean would you ever leave your baby alone? Why would you ever? There\u2019s been a shift of attention; it\u2019s like what happens when you have a second child, you have to split the attention, but that doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019d ever leave one behind.<\/p>\n We\u2019re art kids, we didn\u2019t know we were entering a tech world when we launched Hipstamatic. We were doing what we loved, and we created it and people loved it too. Then we moved to San Francisco and suddenly we\u2019re a tech company, because this is a tech hub, which is great and it has pushed us further, but to ever think that we were ever going to abandon one of our kids, that would never happen!<\/p>\n We introduced\u00a0Hipstamatic<\/strong>\u00a0with language that was very familiar to photographers \u2014 \"lenses and films\". We were using very normal language for ourselves when we were describing the products. Everything that we referenced, your \"gallery\" of photos, everything was art related; even now in\u00a0Oggl<\/strong>\u00a0you\u2019re \"curating\" images, it\u2019s language that\u2019s very familiar to us and photographers, so very early on we were embraced by the photography community.<\/p>\n So, in that way, we definitely have a close relationship to traditional photography, and probably one of the reasons why traditional photographers have really jumped on board.<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_8_placeholder<\/p>\n All the time! One of the other exciting parts is that, with all these other communities starting up, like\u00a0Hipstamatic<\/strong>\u00a0New England<\/strong>,\u00a0Hipstamatic World<\/strong>, all these communities on Facebook,\u2026 and now with\u00a0Hipstography<\/strong>. You guys are finding work that we didn\u2019t see, and there\u2019s so much stuff coming in, so sometimes we miss it. It\u2019s exciting when you guys are also finding these incredible photographers and all this great work.\u00a0Oggl<\/strong>, for some reason, has really inspired a new line of macro lens photographers. We hadn\u2019t seen much of that before. You get these beautifully detailed images of flowers and bugs, and stuff that would have led me to say, \"not another flower picture!<\/em>\" But these are actually really beautiful and you have these moments when you think,\u00a0\"OK, maybe I\u2019ll showcase a flower!<\/em>\" They\u2019re beautiful to begin with, so it\u2019s not hard to get a good photograph of them, but there\u2019s new perspective or new point of view.<\/p>\n Millo Salgado<\/strong>\u00a0is doing a surf story for us, for the next issue. When we first started doing \"Adventures in Hipstaland<\/strong>\", whenever the photographers, after we\u2019d feature them, went anywhere they\u2019d send us a bunch of images and we thought, \"well, I kind of have to give exposure to other people as well.\" That\u2019s how I became friends with\u00a0Cara Gallardo<\/strong>. She sent us this photo story and it was beautiful, and then as she travelled around, we realized, \"wow, you\u2019re just always taking these really beautiful images,\" so we have to try and figure out where we\u2019re going to put them.<\/p>\n My favorite combination, right now, is the\u00a0G2<\/strong>\u00a0lens with the\u00a0BlacKeys<\/strong>\u00a0film.\u00a0My favorite lens, not that I use it that often, is the\u00a0Tinto<\/strong>. My favorite film is\u00a0DC<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 I like a simple black border, and the\u00a0Jolly Rainbo<\/strong>\u00a0is really the only flash I use. I usually use the hard flash, so I want to tone down the hard flash.<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_9_placeholder<\/p>\n I\u2019m using\u00a0Oggl<\/strong>\u00a0on a more day-to-day basis, but that might just be because it\u2019s a new toy, so I like to play with it! It\u2019s a different experience, and I like it, but I\u2019ll always have love for\u00a0Hipstamatic<\/strong>, too.<\/p>\n ngg_shortcode_10_placeholder<\/p>\n Photos:\u00a0Mario Estrada<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0[button color=\"black\" link=\"http:\/\/oggl.me\/mario\/\"]Oggl[\/button]<\/p>\n Previous meetings:\u00a0Lucas Buick<\/a>\u00a0-\u00a0Ryan Dorshorst<\/a>\u00a0-\u00a0\u00a0Aravind Kaimal<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nAt this point, I\u2019m really VP of Special Projects, and Editorial Director of\u00a0Snap<\/strong>, and I still do Director of Fun type stuff, like gallery events, music events, which is, by nature, quite fun!<\/p>\nAre you still doing a lot of gallery events?<\/h4>\n
Don't you think it's important to show photos to a bigger audience?<\/h4>\n
What's your background before Hipstamatic?<\/h4>\n
How many readers are you getting for Snap magazine?<\/h4>\n
ngg_shortcode_5_placeholder<\/h4>\n
Do you get a lot of submissions every month?<\/h4>\n
\nWe got really excited about validating some of these photographers who are creating beautiful stuff. It was like ok, \"how do we showcase as many photographers as possible per issue?\" That\u2019s how the magazine has become what it is now.<\/p>\nHipstamatic and Oggl take square photos; sometimes, you crop photos for Snap. Why don\u2019t you publish in a square format?<\/h4>\n
Do you accept edited photos for Snap?<\/h4>\n
Has working with the Lumia hardware changed the way you approach designing filters and lens?<\/h4>\n
So you\u2019re not going to start moving away from Hipstamatic\u2019s nostalgic heritage?<\/h4>\n
Do you see Hipstamatic as the app of choice for\u00a0professional photographers and artists?<\/h4>\n
Are you surprised by the creativity of the users?<\/h4>\n
What are your favorite lens, film, flash and combo?<\/h4>\n
Oggl or Hipstamatic?<\/h4>\n