Spotlight 7 Week 12: Zeynep Kanra

Another week of Spotlight 7 brings more international flavor to the group. This week, Zeynep Kanra exhibits 10 of her many fine portraits. Living in Turkey for all of her 32 years, Zeynep has also traveled the world to collect many of the 300+ portraits in this photoset, including multiple trips to India, Nepal and surrounding areas. Here's a small excerpt from this week's interview with curator Daniel Krieger:

2) How does your location influence your photography?
I love people, no matter to which religion or history they belong...Istanbul is a present given to life and it opens new doors every time, keeps secrets, tells many tales and yes, Istanbul is gifted, so as the photographer living in this city of soul.

Please visit Spotlight 7 to read the rest of this week's interview, view the photos and flip through all the past archives. Thank you for visiting and we'll see you next week! Until then, Namaste!

Bookmarklets

Flickr friends & 6 Million People member Andreas (aka slowburn) has developed Firefox bookmarklets for 6 Million People. Drag any of the bookmarklets to your bookmarks bar. Then, when you find a photo on Flickr that you would like to invite to 6 Million People, just click the link & the invitation will be appended to any comment you've already left. I can't post the bookmarklets here for some reason (silly Blogger!) so grab them from Andreas' blog. Thanks for the help!

Lucas

Lucas b/w, originally uploaded by jakerome.

Lucas is one of my little friends.

Spotlight 7 Week 10: Made in Sheffield

, originally uploaded by madeinsheffield.

This is week number 10, which means we now have 100 awesome photos in Spotlight 7. Madeinsheffield won the friendly competition in 6 Million People, and happened to meet smoothdude in New York a week later! Here's an excerpt from the interview, and the photos really speak for themselves. Congrats Charlotte!

3) How do you approach random people on the street to take their photograph?
I find the quicker the exchange the better. Rather than launching into a big explanation, I just smile and politely ask if I can take their picture. Most people say yes, some people ask why. If they ask, I say it's just for my portfolio. Sometimes I might flatter them a little, such as telling them they have a great look, which tends to do the trick! I'm always a little nervous when I ask the first one of the day, sometimes my hands go a bit shaky which can be a bit problematic! Once you've asked the first though it gets much easier.

5) I love how some of your street portraits are diptychs. What inspired you to show two different views like that?
I only recently discovered the wonders of diptychs when looking at all the amazing stuff on Flickr. I just began playing around one day, at first with two portrait shots of the same person, just with different expressions, then I realised that not only was it nice to see a face in close-up, but it was interesting to see a bit of context regarding their surroundings. I haven't seen a lot of diptychs like that, but I'm sure I'm by no means the first person to do it.

My.. what big eyes you have...

My.. what big eyes you have..., originally uploaded by The Canon Rattman.

Speaks for itself!

blown away

blown away, originally uploaded by Perpetually.

Perpetually

Untitled

, originally uploaded by [brett walker].

Just a great photo.

SPotlight Seven Week 9: Mike Peters

For the 9th week of Spotlight 7, chief curator Daniel Krieger, aka smoothdude, has selected Mike Peters to be the featured portraitist. His photography was noticed after posting on the thread for aspiring Spotlight 7 photographers. Mike, originally from New Jersey, especially enjoys photographing the people and sights of Coney Island. Mike takes a lot of photos of strangers, and smoothdude asked about his approach:

4) How do you approach random people on the street to take their photograph?
I tend to be pretty obvious about what I'm up to, carrying a 120 slr is hard to hide. I usually just walk up, raise the camera, compose, focus and make the exposure. Sometimes they see me coming, sometimes not, either way I look them in the eye and smile when I'm done. There are times when I'm in the middle of a conversation when I'll just raise the camera and make a photo while I'm talking. And there have been one or two instances where someone has stopped me and asked if I would take a photo of them. There is no one way to do it. The main thing is not to be sneaky or tentative. Be bold and confident and people will usually accept your presence.

Check out the rest to read the whole interview and see all the photos, too in this week's edition of Spotlight Seven.