(It's worth checking out the article with the other three slideshows)

Another of my photos was included in the recent book, This Is Not A Polaroid, which is for sale on Blurb. All the images were created with the Poladroid software, and there are some great pictures in the book, so check it out. Maybe even buy a copy.

Some of my photos and blog-posts have also been included in another book for sale on Blurb, The Little Book of Bookcamp, along with loads of other stuff from other people who attended January's Bookcamp and sister event, the inaugural Papercamp. There are a lot of interesting ideas floating around from both events, so the book looks like it's worth a read.

What are your favourite things about your local area? And what are your least favourite?

I love the atmosphere of the South Bank, the river, the architecture, the tourists, the kids who come from miles around to fall off skateboards… Someone once described it to me as London’s promenade, and I think that’s about right. People take their time and are happy to be seen, you can walk a long way without crossing a road, and the light is incredible when it sets on the Thames to the west. There isn’t much I don’t like about it. A little too much trumpet, maybe.

I think most of your photos are black and white. Do you actually shoot in b/w or do you shoot in colour and edit your pictures later? What's the appeal of monochrome?

I primarily shoot digital, so I shoot in colour and convert to B+W later. As a rule of thumb, unless the colour is one of the main features of the picture, I'll lose it. B+W tends to emphasise the structure of a picture and can remove a layer of distraction. Although other times, colour can clarify a picture that might be confusing in monochrome. One of the joys of digital photography is that you can always try both.

One accusation that is often levelled at so-called street photographers is that they are voyeuristic rubberneckers. Do you agree with that opinion?

I think that would be quite fair in my case! In the strict sense, all photographers are voyeurs in that we like to look. But I don’t think there’s anything unseemly about that. I’m not peeping through windows! I’m primarily interested in how people behave in public, so there’s rarely if ever an expectation of privacy at play.

I did have pause for thought last summer when I was taking pictures of Blackfriars for a "Week In The Life" composite, and in the middle of the week, someone threw themselves off the bridge. Perhaps I should have excluded that event from the record, or started again the following week, but both those options would have undermined the point of the exercise. And the public nature of the suicide felt like a significant part of the tragedy, so I included elements of the police search shortly after he jumped and the recovery of the body at low tide the following day. It became a very different picture from the one I’d had in mind, and one that I genuinely agonised over. [See the montage here.]

Have you ever had someone get really angry at you for taking their picture? What did you do?

No, I've never had someone get really angry, but then I'm most interested taking photos in ultra-public places so it’s seldom an issue. However, I did shoot a collection for an exhibition in Whitechapel last year and met some resistance in some parts around there. But that’s fair enough, and if someone doesn't want their picture taken, I won't take their picture.

You tend to mostly focus on the area where you live and work, along the South Bank. Are there any places or people you dream about visiting to photograph?

The truth is that I don’t think I’m close to over-fishing even a small part of London, and it changes faster than I can photograph it. I love cities though, and would like to photograph a few more. San Francisco always looks ridiculously photogenic, I’d like to see Venice, and Tokyo looks incredible… but I think I’d always wonder what I was missing back at home.

As far as people go, I’d like to overcome my resistance to posed portraits. Most people just don’t look like themselves when they’re acutely conscious that they’re being photographed. And it feels ridiculous to pretend that it’s not a weird situation. So I have this idea of embracing that awkwardness and doing a collection of studio portraits of people hating having their picture taken. Obviously there’s a bit of a Catch-22 to that plan.

It's true, it's really a very weird situation. I hate having my photo taken by anyone else, as I almost always look awful if I know my photo is being taken (and sometimes if I don't know!). I think most photographers tend to be the same; they get uncomfortable if they're on the receiving end of the lens, because they don't have complete control over what they're going to end up looking like. Good lighting can go a long way to appease that worry, though! How do you feel about people taking photos of you? Are there any you've liked?

Maybe I should recruit you as my first subject then! You're right, photographers are the worst at having their photos taken. I hate it too and have huge sympathy for my subjects when I'm taking portraits, and endless admiration for people who are comfortable with it. People who think that models are talentless husks simply don't know what they're talking about. I think I've probably got a bit better since I started taking pictures of other people, but I'd still make a terrible model.

I've only taken a handful of self portraits and that was only when there wasn't a model who was available and patient enough to put up with whatever I was experimenting with. And I still can't look at those pictures objectively. In fact, with some I had to flip the image upside down on screen to process it, otherwise I kept getting distracted, thinking "Aaggh, it's me… Aagh, it's me…" It's almost certainly simple vanity, although I find looking at myself in the mirror slightly eerie too.

So no, no one has ever taken a picture of me that I like. They always reek of self-consciousness and gah.

This is a good point to talk about your burgeoning fame as an international street art icon, thanks to French street artist, C215. That must feel quite weird! I found it quite weird when I found out about it, and it wasn't even me it had happened to, but it demonstrated how small the world is sometimes. It felt weird because I'd seen the image on a wall in Brighton, and thought it looked familiar, but it took a random and unexpected comment from your brother on one of my Flickr contacts' photos for me to make the connection. If it was me, I'd probably be trying to find photos of it all over the world, just to see where it had been stencilled. Have you done that? Where was the best place?

You know what, I've not seen a single one the the flesh (paint?), even though the ones in London went up not far from where I live. I have my own copy though, and there are so many photos of them on Flickr that I never actually felt the need to go out myself to see them in situ.

Given how I feel about pictures of me, it does feel a bit weird. I saw that one was sold at his last show in New York, and the idea that a picture of me might be hanging in some fashionable Brooklynite's home feels odd to say the least. But I also feel reasonably disassociated from it. The stencil is such an awesome piece of work in itself that my role in it feels very minor. And as you say, unless you know about it, you're unlikely to make the connection. I might feel differently if I was getting recognised. C215 has made stencils from a few of my pictures, each more mind-blowing than the last. And we're planning a more concerted collaboration this year, so overall I'm very happy that it happened and am looking forward to what's to come.

Oh, cool! That answers one of my next questions, about whether you have any projects or experiments coming up in 2009 that you're excited about. I hope you keep us posted on that when you're ready to talk about it!

Last year, you put together a book — what made you decide to make a book? I've had a few ideas for books myself, and I've really been struggling with choosing the pictures and the layouts. It's not as easy as it looks! How did you choose a theme, and the pictures? Was it an easy process for you?

I first used Blurb to make a book because I'd done the unit photography on a short film called Stiletto, and wanted to give the cast and crew a souvenir. I threw together a simple book of 10x8s and was really impressed with the result. It's also a lot cheaper than getting prints and putting them in an album.

The web is a gift for photographers, but there's still something nice about prints. I've made a few books since for particular projects and having a big big coffee-table book of some of my favourite pictures of London has been a great way to show people a sample of the kind of thing I do without having to dispatch them, URL in hand, to find a computer.

As far as layouts go I'm a believer in keeping it simple. With the London book I selected half of the images to work as a full bleed 13×11, and the other half are cropped to best advantage and sit on the facing page against a black or white background. The hardest part was choosing the order but with a bit of playing around it's surprising how naturally a flow emerges. It's actually a lot of fun.

Buy Jon's book here, and see more of his work on Flickr.

I first got to know Jon through mutual drinking buddies a few years ago. We'd occasionally see each other at the same social events, but it wasn't until we discovered we were both avid users of Flickr that we really became friends. Since then, looking at his street photography and painterly compositions has helped to rekindle my interest in parts of London that had previously seemed clichéd and boring.

Although Jon agreed to be interviewed because it sounded "like a laugh", our correspondence became a fascinating discourse on being bitten by the creative bug, as he made some very interesting and intelligent points about the craft of photography. Each point he made inspired further questions and considerations, many of which were in directions I hadn't even considered. In fact, Jon's answers were so detailed and inspired so many supplemental questions that I've had to split the interview into two parts — and stop asking more questions, or the interview would probably never even have made it this far, even though I could happily have continued the conversation for a while. I'm interested to know what you think about it, as well, so please do leave comments if you have anything to say.

How long have you been taking photos? Who (or what) inspired you to pick up camera?

I’ve always taken snap-shots, like everyone else, but I first picked up an SLR in November 2006. A friend of mine had recently taken it up and was making nice pictures. To be honest, I expected it to be a fad…

You mean that you expected your interest was a fad? So I guess you never expected it to lead to doing photoshoots for other people. How does that feel — is it something you're keen to pursue further?

Yes, I've never been a natural hobbyist, and I half-expected my camera would start gathering dust in a drawer somewhere after a few weeks. I certainly didn't imagine that I'd get to the point where people would pay for my pictures.

I'm still a little ambivalent about doing it for money, or at least I think it can be dangerous to imagine that you can make a living only doing things you enjoy. So on one level I always want to remain an amateur photographer (in the sense of doing it for the love of it), but if I could also make a living using a camera, then I can think of many many less appealing ways of paying the rent.

Who inspires you now?

I’m a big fan of Flickr (and had been for quite a long time before I started taking pictures myself), so I can find almost endless inspiration from countless photographers there. I also love ffffound.com.

I don't often find myself feeling uninspired but when I do, just going for a walk is usually enough to get me excited about taking pictures again. Failing that, the Tate Modern and the British Museum are very photographer-friendly and I rarely leave one or the other without a photo or an idea for a photo.

Flickr is such a great visual resource; I can get lost in there for hours and hours. Who do you like on Flickr? How about some recommendations?

There are so many and I discover new ones every day. Singling individuals out feels capricious but if consistency is a virtue (and I'm not sure it is — there are some killer pictures to be found in some unpromising looking photostreams), and excluding friends of mine who I'm naturally going to feel a bias towards, I'd recommend:

Doyle Shafer
Rob Randerson
Tony Day
madeinsheffield
Sannah Kvist
Jeremy Walker
Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Greg Funnell
Noah Kalina
Jean-François Juteau
Ronya Galka
Sarah Sitkin

I could easily go on, and I'm sure I've missed key people out, but all these guys struggle to take a bad picture. Also, someone who is not on Flickr but is worth a mention because his street photography sets the bar for me, Matt Stuart.

Wow! That's a lot of work, and a lot of other peoples' lives, to look at. Would you describe yourself as a curious person?

Who wouldn't? But, to be honest, I don't think that I'm unusually curious, and when I'm taking pictures I'm curious on quite a superficial level — I'm more interested in how things look than how they are. If I see a nice moment, I almost don't want to know exactly what the story is, because imagining that is part of the pleasure of the picture.

I think that sort of visual experience, where the work speaks for itself in whatever voice the viewer hears, is usually more successful than the kind of conceptual art where you have to know all the reasons behind its creation before you can appreciate it. It's as though there's less ego in it — that the work is the important thing, not its creator. Would you say this is true about your work, or do you think you impose your own ego and personality on it at all?

That's a good question and hard to answer. On the one hand I like pictures that are internally coherent and self-contained, even if they're ambiguous. I think the photographer should arrange the furniture to accommodate an audience, and the viewer shouldn't be required to bring anything to the party. But I know other people disagree with that, and I think there are certain situations (when building a series or collection of pictures, for example) where context is going to be important.

As for ego and the role of the creator, that's tricky too because while I basically agree that the picture is the important thing, not the person who took it, it would be disingenuous to claim that I'm not imposing something on the scene. For me, photography is all about editing. And while a photograph isn't like painting where you start with a blank canvas, it is always extremely selective. As soon as you put a frame around something you're imposing yourself on the scene. And there is a role for ego here — I want to present things that I've seen, that I think are interesting or amusing or beautiful or whatever, and I'll process an image to conjur as closely as possible how I saw it. So in that sense it's all about me me me.

I've read a few interviews with artists who say that their biggest joy is in the creating, not in the finished work. Taking photos is different, isn't it, because the creation of the work often has to happen in a split second to capture a scene before it changes — certainly with street photography, anyway. So, you have to be able to spot events in time to capture them quickly.

Do you think that using a camera has changed the way you look at your surroundings at all? I know that I actively keep an eye out for interesting combinations of shapes and colours since I started to take photos of urban abstracts and focus on small details that often get overlooked. But I don't take many pictures of people in the street, so I feel like I don't have the "eye" yet to find the good shots. Is it just a case of looking from different angles?

You know those actors and directors who say that they never watch their own films once they're finished? Well, I'm nothing like them. I spend more time than I should probably admit looking at my own pictures. So I can't pretend I'm not interested in the finished article. I do enjoy taking photos but I think that's about the promise of getting something good. Although walking around London is a pretty nice way to spend some time.

I don't think using a camera has changed the way I look at my surroundings much, because before I carried a camera everywhere I'd still see things and think, "That'd make a nice photograph". I expect most people do that. I think the difference now is that I think those thoughts more in terms of exposure. I pay less attention to things that will be hard to photograph, and more to scenes that would be photogenic. I never used to loiter around a nice patch of light like I sometimes do now, for example.

As for the photographic "eye", I think quite a lot of guff is talked about it. Taking a photo is like hitting "pause" – I don't think it's a rare instinct. Same with "looking for different angles"; if there's something spoiling your view, you move, don't you?

When you put it like that, it seems obvious! And yet, I still get frustrated when photographs don't come out the way I see them in my head. Many of your photos have a sense of composition that suggests you have quite a considered approach yourself. You also take a lot of candid pictures of strangers, too, so I suppose you must "shoot from the hip" a lot, as well. Which approach do you prefer?

Shooting from the hip is more a matter necessity then preference. If I could freeze time then I’d frame every shot just how I want it, but in reality you have to react quickly when the moments present themselves. I shoot most of my street stuff with a 50mm or 35mm lens and with practice I've got pretty good at aiming and visualising what they're going to see. Sometimes the composition is changed later when cropping, but the arrangement of elements in a scene is often a big part of its initial appeal, so that composition becomes the reason for hitting the shutter. I like actions, faces, gestures and so on, but generally it’s the way they relate to each other that makes the picture.

Thanks Jon!

Tune in later this week for part two….