Spotlight 7 Week 11: François Coquerel

, originally uploaded by François Coquerel.

Somehow, I forgot to post about this brilliant work! Check out the whole interview and the photos, too, from François Coquerel.

Spotlight Seven Week 15: Az Rehman

Interview.

This week's exhibition in Spotlight 7 was curated by Week 10 presenter Made in Sheffield. The week 15 presenter for Spotlight Seven is Az Rehman, a.k.a. . Az. Currently living in Southampton, UK, Az is an admirer of Brian Griffin and even had the opportunity to photgraph him at a recent exhibition. Here's a little excerpt from the interview:

4) Tell us a little about your Bargate portraits set.
The Bargate Project started over a year ago. The original idea was to take some pictures of my home town to add to the Southampton Group on flickr. As I walked around the city centre I was lost and didn't know what to shoot. I thought I may as well just start with a picture of the Bargate. As I began focusing the lens I focused on the people walking towards me and loved how the depth of field looked. So I asked a few people to stop for me. When I saw the negs I was really excited by them and decided to turn it into a project.

I have shot over 100 frames now and 99% of the time only shoot one frame. I decided to keep the aperture at F4 for all the images to keep the depth of field uniform throughout the project. During bright days I have to use very strong ND filters to get the lens to F4.

I hope to get them exhibited one day, but so far the local people who are in charge of displaying art/photography have shown little interest in the images. It is VERY important to me that they are displayed out on the street. I want the general public to see them.

This is a shot of Ray in his Photo Gallery, I would have liked to have shown you more of the room, but sadly the light was very low.......The windows had been covered with photographs.The only place that I could take his picture handheld was by using the light from the doorway. I hope that the background is enough to give you an idea of how the rest of the room looked.
Interview

Multicolored wonder

Multicolored wonder, originally uploaded by jakerome.

I ran the Palos Verdes Half Marathon on Saturday. After the race, I walked up the course a little bit and got many shots of the marathoners & half marathoners finishing the event. This was one of the more colorful characters.

Mikołaj

Mikołaj, originally uploaded by hampshiregirl.

A very focused young lad.

Product placement

Product placement, originally uploaded by Weinaiko.

Swoosh

Niguel

Niguel, originally uploaded by widegamut.

8x10 Deardorff w/ Kodak lens Polaroid 809 transfer print

Carwax in NYC

Carwax journeyed to NYC to visit smoothdude and get some (no doubt) rockin' photos taken of his son for smoothie's Street Scenes project.

Spotlight 7 Week 14: calanan!

Please welcome Spotlight 7 Week 14 contributor Michael Calanan, aka calanan. After living in Buffalo, NY, calanan moved to Salt Lake City last summer and has explored both locales with great depth. Calanan is not only a great photographer, but is also a bit of a social butterfly both on Flickr and in the real world. I've been lucky enough to meet calanan on several occasions as he showed me some Salt Lake City's more interesting locales, making sure to take a few great portraits each time. As an organizer of Flickr meet-ups in both of his recent home cities, Mike has helped bring those Flickr communities many fun times.

One of calanan's most interesting projects is his drive-by shooting series. Here's an excerpt from this week's interview:

3) Tell us briefly about your drive by theater set www.flickr.com/photos/calanan/sets/72057594048931046/
Years ago I came across the photography of David Bradford in the form of his book, "Drive by Shootings: Photographs by a New York Taxi Driver" and I was captivated. David was initially an illustrator who began driving a cab as a way to spend more time on the streets of NYC looking for visual inspiration. He took to using a camera to capture scenes simply as a reference for his drawings but as he progressed he realized the photos themselves were artistic creations. I was especially moved by his photos of people:

drivebyshootings.com/gallery/PEOPLE/

...and began my own project, first by emulating his style, later by perfecting my own technique and then by developing my own style. I eventually came to the realisation that my photos were beginning to resemble the look of cinematic stills and from that point forward I've sought to capture people both interacting with and against the backdrop of the city.

Make sure you visit Spotlight Seven to see all of this week's selections, and check out all of the nearly 100 photos he's already added to the 6 Million People group. Also check out calanan's blog and portfolio website. Here are a couple more photos from this week's exhibit... that's me on the bottom/right.

New Orleans protest

, originally uploaded by eddhead.

Great protest photo.

Flickr Journée du Donut à Paris

Flickr Journée du Donut à Paris, originally uploaded by aeter.

The Day of the Donut was a unique, spontaneous event that took the Flickrverse by storm on April 16, 2008. Events were held all over the world, and people enjoyed donuts from Kuala Lampur to Okinawa, Bangkok to Bahrain, Vancouver to Toronto, Berlin to Paris, Santa Cruz to San Francisco, Los Angeles to Oxford, New York to Chicago. A really fun day.

full circle

full circle, originally uploaded by swissrolli.

A tremendous photo. One of my favorite portraits on Flickr.

Spotlight 7 Week 13: kelco

Please welcome kelco as the week 13 presenter for Spotlight 7. Kelco was born across the street from a plum orchard and grew up just down the street from an apple orchard. Actually, that's not right. Kelco was born across the street from a plum orchard and just down the street from Apple Computer in the heart of Silicon Valley. Kelco now lives in Santa Cruz, CA.

Kelco's work can be also be found on his website, but the best way to learn about this portrait photographer is by reading this week's interview. Here's an excerpt.

2) What inspired you to do this set.

I thought it would be interesting to shoot a large number of people with the same basic lighting set-up, composition, expression, etc, and then show them together as a series. I like the fact that although many of the elements are the same, each image is completely different from one to the next. Plus, I think it will be a cool sociological experiment to see how people react when they walk into a room and see 50 grim hoodlums staring back at eye-level.

3) What is the lighting setup for that?

A Canon 550EX with a diffuser on camera, bounced off several reflectors.

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.