Driven By Boredom started in a Penn State dorm room back in 2001. I was a punk kid at frat party school and all my entire social circle was in DC. I had broadband internet and nothing to do, so I spent all my time working on a bunch of creative projects that I wanted to share with my friends back home. Back then if you wanted to share a photo with someone, you’d just have to email it to them so I started a website where I could post all the projects I created, bored out of my mind. I named it Driven By Boredom.
The site was a blog before most people even knew what a blog was. Most of the bloggers of that era didn’t even use that term, we called our sites E/N pages, short for Everything/Nothing. The idea was that you could post anything you wanted on there, but the term was used derisively as well… We wrote about everything, but were saying nothing.
A year after the site started I had dropped out of Penn State and went to art school in Richmond, VA where a bunch of my friends had moved after college. I had friends and a punk scene and was much happier, going out every night to shoot photos at shows. The site didn’t get updated as often, and quickly became primarily a place to post my photography.
In 2003 I saw a band called The Gaskets, they were nothing like the punk bands I was listening to at the time. They were a two man dance band, but they had so much energy and I offered to manage them. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew I could get them better shows than the open mic night bars they were playing. I was right and they quickly grew to be one of the bigger bands in town. I put all my focus into them and Driven By Boredom became just a promotional outlet for the band. I would rarely update the site and when I did it was mostly about the band.
By 2006 blogging platforms were all the rage and since my site was so out of date I decided to relaunch Driven By Boredom on Blogger.com. I wanted to get back to blogging and Driven By Boredom 2.o was born. I don’t think I made 10 posts before abandoning it completely. That same year things changed pretty drastically for me. The Gaskets were in the slow process of breaking up and I decided to move to New York.
When I moved to New York I had no intention of becoming a professional photographer. I had always wanted to work in the music industry and photography was just a tool in my arsenal. But the Gaskets were playing less and less, fighting more and more and I was going out every night to party in lower Manhattan and of course I brought a camera with me.
“What website is that for?” was a question I got asked at least five times a night when I was out partying. I was just taking the photos because photography had become a compulsion at that point. I had no plans on doing anything with them. Fortunately for me, that was the beginning of the party photo era, and I had a camera, I had access to everything, and I still had a website.
By 2007 Driven By Boredom 3.0 was born. Back to my original drivenbyboredom domain name, but this time using the super easy WordPress as the backend. It made updating as easy as one of the blogging sites, but it was all mine and for the next few years that was my entire life. I worked the morning shift doing room service in a midtown hotel restaurant. I had to be there at 5:30 am, so I would party and take photos all night, go back to Brooklyn, shower and head to work. I would get back in the afternoon, update my website with photos from the night before, sleep until 8 or 9pm and then start all over again. Eventually I quit that job and tried to make it as a full time photographer for a few months, but I eventually ran out of money and had to get another job.
In December 2008 the housing market had collapsed and the whole seconds shift of my job got laid off two days before Christmas. I had the option to re interview for the first shift, but I took the buyout, got on unemployment, and by the time it ran out, I was actually making a living as a photographer. I never looked back.
A few years later I was shooting less, but making more. I was in my 30s and wasn’t grinding as hard. Driven By Boredom was no longer a party photo blog, but a mix of event work, journalism, portraits and of course the NSFW work content I became well known for. The site had changed, my life had changed by the design for the site had not. Driven By Boredom 3.0 continued long past its usefulness. Photos were too small for modern screens, my gallery system started breaking and people weren’t really reading blogs anymore. I continued to update the site, but by the 2020s I was so embarrassed by the site design and functionality that I almost completely stopped promoting it.
Nearly 25 years after Driven By Boredom began in that dorm room, Driven By Boredom 4.0 was born. The site is functional again, the pictures look good on modern screens and I hope to get back to blogging like the good old days.* Gone is all the old content and we are starting fresh, with a mix of all new content as I continue to take photos, but also looking back to some of the classic posts from the DBB glory days. Plus the “B-Sides” section of the blog will allow me to do quick, fun updates, without distracting from the photography people are here for.
I am writing this version of the About section in February 2024, shortly before the launch of 4.0 and I have no idea what this site is going to look like in a year, five years or in another 25 years, but I have a feeling I will still be updating it until my untimely passing. I wonder what DBB 5.0 will be?
About me:
My name is Nate “Igor” Smith, a photographer, writer and publisher of small books and zines. I grew up in the DC area, have a BFA in photography and film making from Virginia Commonwealth University and spent two decades living in Brooklyn before moving to Wilmington, NC to slowly fade into obscurity as a middle aged man whose cultural importance won’t be realized until after I’m gone. Contact me here.