About Photocritic
History of the website
The idea of Photocritic started in the late 90s: I had a grand idea of starting a photo criticism site, based on the Norwegian foto.no photo critique site, but aimed at an international audience, and on a far greater scale. I started looking into hiring a programmer to do the work, and started learning how to code myself as well. Soon, it turned out that the idea was a bit optimistic, and eventually I stumbled over a site called PhotoSIG, which had all the functionality I wanted from a photo criticism site.
By then, however, I had bought the Photocritic.org domain, and I figured it was too good a domain to just ignore. I used it as my photography portfolio for a while. In 2002, I started out as a freelance photographer, and as it turned out, Photocritic was not used as a company name by anyone, and soon, Photocritic Ltd was born:
The fish in the logo is a multi-lingual pun: My name is ‘Haje’, which with a bit of butchering sounds like Hai or Haai – which means Shark in Norwegian and Dutch respectively. Seeing as I had strong ties with Holland (I’m Dutch), and Norway (I lived there for 14 years), and because a shark was as good a logo as any, it became my company identity.
I worked as a freelance photographer as I finished my Journalism degree in Liverpool, and switched to full-time once my degree was finished. After about a year, however, I decided that I didn’t have the self-dicipline or inclination to be working for myself at that point in time, and I decided to start looking for a ‘proper job’.
As I re-entered the ranks as a wage slave, the Photocritic.org domain yet again fell into disuse, and I recycled it for a third time, this time into a writing and photography site. In December 2005, one of my articles got slash- and digg-dotted, and that was the motivation I needed for re-vamping the website. I swapped from Mambo/Jumla to WordPress, and have never looked back.
About the design history of Photocritic
Photocritic started up on a bone-stock classic Wordpress design based on Kubrick, with merely a redesigned header image as the only visual modification:
After that, I tried doing a new design, but it turned out to be the least popular change I ever made to my site. Personally, I really liked the design (and I’m currently thinking about implementing it on the Wordpress site running my private website), but people had comments such as “It looks like a clown puked after eating too much candy. It’s hideous and amateur looking”.
Instead, I got a friend of mine to come up with a brand new design, this time in proper retro style. Which is how the site came to look like this:
About the author
I’m just this guy, you know? My job is in publishing, and I’m also in the process of writing a book about photography. Although I don’t take freelance photography assignments anymore, I’m still an avid enthusiast, and I do a lot of photography in my spare time. If you like my writing, there’s loads more over on my personal website – all the non-photography-related stuff goes on there, and all the photo stuff goes on here.
If you want to contact me, try hajejan@kamps.org!
My day job, if it can be called that, is being a writer. I've got one book out there so far and it's awesome, so go ahead and buy a copy! It's available from 
In front of you, five hyperactive men with guitars, drums, and microphones. Behind you, five thousand fans. In your hands, a camera... You're going to need more than just a little bit of good luck to pull this one off. That's where this book comes in.
Take a Canon EOS 450D. Attach a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Hit the streets of London. See what happens.
