The Four O'Clock Podcast

For over 25 years Steve McPherson has used objects found from his local coast as a material for a range of artworks. Since 2007 the plastic shards and novelties have become his primary source material and a focus for the development of his concepts and concerns. Steve has recently been featured in a short film by filmmaker Julian Hanford called PLASTIC SONG - The art of Steve McPherson. All links discussed in the show can be accessed through the podcast website: fouroclockpodcast.com

The journalist and author, John-Paul Flintoff, has described Dan Thompson as a visionary, an artist with a heartfelt sense of what matters in the real world, and the gumption to make it happen, not once but often. John-Paul also stated: It's unusual to spend time with Dan and not to come away inspired. In this edition of the Four O'Clock Podcast we learn about Dan's work as a writer, artist and social activist. NB: There is a small technical glitch on some of the audio recording  creating an echo but it does not interfere with the podcast.

In this edition of the Four O'Clock Podcast we are in conversation with Luke Beard a photographer, CEO and founder of the web service Exposure that provides simple but empowering products for storytellers. Luke is also an Englishman who has made Atlanta, USA his home. The Exposure website is just shy of seven years old at this point. It came out on the back of Luke kind of taking photography a lot more seriously. At the time, he had just moved to San Francisco to join a kind of ideas incubator. It was never really clearly defined, but it was effectively a place where creative developers, writers, designers, engineers, were given resources to build solutions to problems that they had with the idea that eventually something would click or work or be a hit and so Exposure was born.

Gabrielle Motola is a photographer and storyteller, I first met Gabrielle in 2006 when she was taking street portraits in East London's Broadway market for her project, London E8  4PH. Gabrielle is a London based photographer, writer and podcaster. She frequently integrates solo motorcycle travel into her work, focusing on long-term projects, often evolving into immersive journeys that take her around the globe. She studied psychology, film and photography at the University of Miami and the Spéos Institute in Paris, and has also worked as a professional photographic printer, an editor and colourist in cinema. Gabrielle spent the better part of five years living in Iceland, where she produced her first book, An Equal Difference, published in 2016. A collection of essays, portraits and landscapes exploring the Icelandic mindset, An Equal Difference is inspired by our modern search for gender equality and shared humanity. It takes inspiration from, and analyses Icelandic society, but seeks to understand how we all could build equal and benevolent societies. It was during the making of this book that she began writing professionally. Show-notes for this podcast are at: https://www.fouroclockpodcast.com/

In this episode of The Four O'Clock Podcast we catch up with young entrepreneur, Fynn Blackie, and get to know who he is and what drives him. Also we discuss how Starling Bank helped get his company MOD Digital on the road. Flynn is a young entrepreneur who is making online waves in the web design and business marketing world with his company modern digital, which he created after spending some time on work experience with the website agency David and George in Edinburgh.

On this edition of the Four O'Clock Podcast were talking to Adam Gough, the editor of Spike Lee's Netflix film Da 5 Bloods and the 2019 Oscar-winning film by Alfonso Cuarón, ROMA. Adam has had a fantastic journey starting out as an unpaid editorial runner on the 2006 teen spy movie Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker. From there, Adam set out on an impressive career path that would include assistant work on In Bruges, Harry Potter, and X-Men: First Class, before he became a full-fledged editor in his own right working on award-winning features for iconic directors. 

For a lot of people instant photography is the new cool but it's still an important creative tool for a lot of artists. Artists like Andrew J. Millar who pushes the limits of Polaroid film exploring the manipulative potential of this light sensitive material. In recent years Andrew's work has become increasingly popular and his talent has earned him international recognition with solo exhibitions in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, New York, and London. This episode also takes a brief look at the story of Polaroid and it's inventor Edwin Land who in 1948 launched the Land Camera and therefore started the Instant photography genres that is once again becoming popular and cool for a new generation of consumer.

The Four O'Clock podcast is a series of stories about our world and the people that keep it moving. In this first episode we look to the past and the Gulf Tanker Wars of 1988 through the eyes of the crew of a Royal Navy frigate, HMS Boxer. In 1988 the Middle East Gulf shipping lanes were a crowded theatre of operations. At least ten Western navies and eight regional navies patrolled the area. It was the site of weekly incidents in which merchant vessels were crippled. The Arab Ship Repair Yard in Bahrain and its counterpart in Dubai, could not keep up with the demand for repairs to ships attacked by Iranian naval forces in these so-called Tanker Wars. The Tanker Wars were fuelled by bitter religious and political acrimony, the Iran-Iraq War, was one of the longest interstate conflicts of the 20th century, had spread into the Persian Gulf in 1987. Forced to protect vital petroleum tankers, NATO and Soviet naval forces in the Gulf faced new and old challenges from a variety of Iranian and Iraqi threats. As the war dragged into 1988, there was little prospect of either belligerent raising a white flag making this a dangerous place for British and other International ships operating in the area.