In the beginning, around twelve or thirteen, I just used my moms’. It was the family camera, a Canon, something a mum would use, just like a Canon SLR with a zoom lens. But my first camera that was my own was a Minolta SRT101, and my friend gave it to me. He thought it was broken but it just needed a new battery, so I just put a new battery in it and started using it. It was just a tank, a silver metal machine. That’s how I started. I was probably like sixteen, seventeen. 
I really started to learn about and get into photography at around nineteen or twenty, and it always came in waves because I was skating professionally, so sometimes I wouldn't think about photography for a while and then there were times when I could concentrate on it. Skating was my day job so I tried to fit in photography whenever I could.

The book is essentially all of my everyday experiences. The whole thing is these micro events that happen throughout my day. It’s what I saw every day. With people, most of the time they don’t know I’m taking the photo, and if they do, they don’t really react in any way. There’s only been a handful of times when someone’s really reacted (in any sort of way) – that’s the thing about photographing strangers, there’s such an intense fear that comes over you before you do it. But generally, nothing ever happens and you kind of have to remember that.

I found that shirt in Los Angeles. I was really drawn to it because of the use of words and the language. It’s a phrase that travelled from here, over to Asia, was somehow changed and then travelled back here printed on a t-shirt. It mirrored the way the photos on the blog do. The words travelled, probably over the web, and then it became physical, like the book. And it was a weird physical object, like, who made this? Who’s going to wear this? Who's going to buy this? It’s so strange. Why does this exist? It’s sort of like a lot of the photos, they have that feeling of questioning why did someone make this, why did someone do this. It’s so illogical, but sometimes illogical can be very interesting.

Yes, the design of the book is based on the blog. I thought it would be funny to base the design of a book based on a Tumblr blog where you can just use these pre-made themes, like choosing a colour of paint on a wall. I just picked one randomly and I thought it would be funny to base the whole book on that. The gold font alludes to the title of the blog, Nazi Gold. I wanted to make the cover a little ostentatious; the photos are low quality, so to make the cover like that, I thought it would be funny to juxtapose it a little bit.

The title was actually because of the time we went to Vietnam. We went during the Asian Lunar Year, so Chinese New Year. During that time, we met people in these little villages along the roads and highways that we were on, and we were told that a lot of people drive drunk. There are a lot of accidents and a lot of people die, so that’s why it’s called The Killing Season, it was that particular time of year.

What we do is really, really difficult, and part of the enjoyment is learning and accomplishing new things and inventing new stuff for yourself, and that comes at a great personal and physical cost. It’s not like going to war or anything, but it’s very difficult physically – sometimes it takes a toll –, so I think that’s why skaters can appreciate something like that. If something is that difficult to do, I guess it deserves some respect and I think that’s why.

I have, I lived in Barcelona for nine months.