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Hi Martin! First, can you tell us a little about yourself?

Hi, I’m the other Martin Taylor. I was born in raised in Lancashire, England but since 1995 I have lived in San Francisco and worked in Silicon Valley. By day I’m usually up to my elbows in code but in my free time (and occasionally these days, during office hours) I’m into multimedia creation of any kind. I’ve been into still photography since my teens, and I’ve always messed around with music but these days I’m also into videography, 3D modeling, a little bit of everything. The ability to take part in these traditionally closed activities has been made possible by the technology that has democratized many art forms. Good still and video cameras are very accessible and especially the software to create, edit and share work is so cheap and easy to use … when I was a kid in the 80’s the things that we can do today so easily and cheaply was was what we dreamed of - today’s technology was our Sci-Fi then.

It seems that curation is one of the last art forms to be democratized in this way through Pinterest and other social media tools. It used to be that you had to go through the gatekeepers (editors, publishers, radio stations, studios) to achieve what you can now through Pinterest, blogging, podcasting, YouTube, and the like. Everything is still in constant state of flux and that’s really exciting both to watch and participate in.

What are some of your favorite websites to pin from?

To be honest, I don’t usually go out of my way searching for things to pin and the boards I make are largely for my own entertainment. Often times I’m using Pinterest like visual bookmarks of things that interest me. I still have a huge number of sites I subscribe to through RSS feeds, that I go through every day in Google Reader. If I see something while I’m going through these feeds that I want to keep because I think it might be useful later or it’s just inspirational to me, I’ll pin it. I go through a lot of Guerrilla Filmmaking sites looking for ideas I can steal (e.g., CheesyCam , The Frugal Filmmaker, The Joy of Film Editing, and many more). There’s a lot of sites about music making on my list like Palm Sounds, Guitarz, iOS Musician, etc. Like any good petrolhead I visit Jalopnik several times a day and there are lots of photography, technology and design sites to - too many to mention.

I don’t think it matters where you pin from as long as you pin things that you’re really interested in. I want to pin things no one else has pinned and create boards no one else has thought of. Inevitably you find out your original idea isn’t quite as unique as you thought but that is always my intention. You can tell when someone is pinning for pinning’s sake. The point of curation is to cut through the noise and fluff to identify what is really important to you. By doing so you solidify your own ideas on a theme and that’s part of the value Pinterest has for me.

Your blog post “A Guy’s Guide to Pinterest” has some pretty cool suggestions. What advice do you have for men who are looking for ways to use Pinterest?

I don’t think my advice is just for men any more than Pinterest is just for women but I wrote that piece because that seemed to be the image the popular press had saddled Pinterest with. I think my main advice is not to go into it seeing how many followers you can amass but to use it as another tool to compile and explorer eclectic subjects you are interested in. Even though there’s no such thing as a private Pinterest board I have created boards that I didn’t expect to be of interest to anyone but me. For example, my Guerrilla Filmmaking board I really only intended to use to store links to things I thought might be useful - I put DIY projects I might try at some point, or resources that might be useful, or articles I found inspiring that I might want to go back to. I’ve declared bankruptcy on the browser bookmark model. I know that with the cloud you can have bookmarks sync across devices but my bookmark lists are so long and undecipherable after decades online that they are useless to me. Pinterest allows me to create boards than scan and read easily to find what I’m looking for.

I do also create boards that are intended to be more public (some might say, more preachy). My Photographer’s Photographers board might be an example of this; I use it to document all the photographers I believe are important to the art of photography. So many people tell me that they’re into photography when what they really mean is that they’re into cameras or PhotoShop. I have been accused of being a photography snob and I will own that label and in part this board is me doing just that. I am drawing a line in the sand and saying that these are the photographers I think are most important to the art-form and if you don’t know who they are and you claim to be a photographer it might be time to get some schooling. This is unapologetically, and totally subjectively, my own opinion and if you don’t agree with it you should feel free to create your own, contrary list.

I guess I’m saying that you should look to find ways to use Pinterest than are personally useful to you or are your specific, passionate point of view. If you are creating boards of repins just like everyone else your boards are of little use to you or anyone else and they just disappear into the background noise.

We love your Fantasy Party Guests board. What inspired you to create it?

It’s partly based on a game my wife and I play making up a list of who we would invite to our fantasy dinner party. It’s also partly based on an old TV show I used to love called Dinner for Five where you felt like you were at the dinner table with five interesting celebrities. It’s also, in part, my take on the Inspiring People board that many people create. When I pin something I usually put something in the description that I hope isn’t generic. For my Fantasy Dinner Party Guests board I try to explain in a few words why I would want them to come to dinner. Perhaps who your heroes are says something about you and these are the people who inspire me, who I try emulate and any of whom I wish was my mentor in one field or another.

You have an eclectic collection of pins. What are some of personal favorite boards that you’ve created?

I really enjoyed putting together my Lost Childhood board. It’s very personal and probably of no interest to anyone except a handful of people my age who grew up in England and had my interests. I was on a nostalgia kick the weekend I put it together and I was dragging some things out from the dusty corners of my memories and researching them on the interwebs. Instead of losing that transient information I put it into a board I can visit and add to whenever the mood strikes again. Just flicking through it takes my back to another time and place. As you get older you need to help remembering this stuff.

I also enjoy creating really specific boards about things that interest me that there really is no place for anywhere else on the internet. For example I really like art made from cardboard for some reason; whenever I came across it on the various art blogs I follow I was drawn to it but then it would just fade to the back of my mind until I happened on something cardboard again. Creating my Outside The Box: Cardboard Art board just gives me somewhere to store that stuff in one place. The same goes for my Art About Cameras board.

Like every gearhead I have a board of cars I lust after but I also have an unhealthy obsession with ugly cars. Whenever I come across something on the road I can’t understand how it ever made it into production I’ll make a mental note of it and add it to my Car Designers Asleep at the Wheel board. Where else could you store this kind of information?

Thanks for the pinterview, Martin! Hopefully one day, you’ll get to throw the dinner party of your dreams. Happy pinning!