#memberspotlight

✨️ Member Spotlight✨️

SpoonwoodDraws is a Scientific illustrator and artist that specializes in animal, fantasy and design; Spoon has a great eye for balance and elements, every illustration is a treasure to look at!

Spoon has been an integral part of the Cafe and is always there to help as well as hang out. And thus they have assumed a "Community Sage" role. Spoon recently hosted a super informational workshop on how to draw animals and has plans to host more in the future. Thank you so much for being such a great part of the Cafe and making it what it is today!

I absolutely recommend checking out their work and supporting them on social media: https://linktr.ee/spoonwooddraws

Your Story: Sven Berger

In our Your Story feature, we ask our members about what inspires their photography, the processes they use to make images, and the stories behind their pictures.

Q. What's the story behind this photo?

A. My son was playing around our holiday house. A lot of water and water guns were included in the fight between my kids. It was a hot summer day at the Baltic Sea.

Q. What do you think about when you’re photographing?

A. I really think about the photo. I think about the composition, the light, about what will happen next to take this picture. I love to watch all these situations through my lens.

Q. Why do you take pictures?

A. I take picture to freeze the life in a photo. All that beauty in life - the sad and the happy moments. I love to see the captured light and shadows. I love to see the life that is in this moment.

Q.What do you like to take pictures of and why?

A. I am a people photographer - most of the time children and families. I think there are never ending stories to be told in every second. I try to capture these stories and create memories. And the most of the time I take photos of my children. Seeing the time flies so very fast. So I started a project "a day in your life" - there I stayed a whole day with a family and created a day to remember forever

Q. What do you want to say with your images?

A. Enjoy life. Do what you want to do. Enjoy and fight for freedom in life.

Q. Are you a self-taught photographer? If not, how did you learn to make photographs?

A. I am a self-taught photographer, after the birth of my first child I bought my first digital camera and joined Flickr. Here I learnt so much after being a member in a group which took every day a photo with a topic.

Q. Have you been inspired by any photographers in the Your Shot community?

A. Yes, Your Shot Photographer Monika Multan has inspired me a lot.

Q. Whose photography has influenced you the most?

A. I would definietly say Sally Mann, but there are so many others.

Your Story: Nikola Franjic

In our Your Story feature, we ask our members about what inspires their photography, the processes they use to make images, and the stories behind their pictures.

Q. How was this image made?

A. I was inspired by the colors and the smell of autumn. My wife walked in the middle of the road and I was patiently waiting. In one moment she spread out her arms, tilted her head back, and the photo was made. It was a perfect moment, where all the elements between the scenery, my wife’s yellow dress and the road were in harmony. It also captured her spirit.

Q. What do you think about when you’re photographing?

A. I don’t think much. I feel. Photography is a way of living. If you can’t feel it, you can’t pass it on, because it is the moment that should tell a whole story. Sometimes it does not say much, it’s just a beautiful moment, and nothing more.

Q. Why do you take pictures?

A. It is my way to express how I view the world. I don’t talk much, I don’t have the gift of writing, I can’t play music, and I can’t even sing very well. But I can see and I can pass my view on to someone else. People, emotions, street life or beautiful scenery– by capturing these, I can show others how I see things. I can celebrate life and the world through that shot.

Q. What was the first photo you took? Or the first photo you took that was meaningful to you?

A. I can’t really remember my first photograph because it was so long ago. My father bought me a camera when I was a little boy (actually he bought it for himself) and from there I started my love for capturing moments.

Q. What do you want to say with your images?

A. Life is short and beautiful. Every moment, every story, every emotion, every sunset is important and beautiful in it’s own way. Every individual matters, we all make it such perfect place to live. Use your gifts to make it even more beautiful.

Your Story: Lara Kantardjian

In our Your Story feature, we ask our members some questions to learn more about what inspires their photography, the processes they use to make images, and the stories behind their pictures.

Q. What's the story behind this photo?

A. It was photographed in the Lazio coastal region of Rome in summer 2016. It is from the series “Urban Pulse: Rome” (2015-2016), which has been featured in LensCulture, Resource Magazine, Kiosk der Demokratie, and Italian Ways. The description I have used for the series and the process of photographing in an urban setting in general is of wandering the streets like a spectator from Rilke’s Duino Elegies, always seeing, feeling, and connecting to everything—in search of a certain mood, a certain light—from the ordinary to the sublime state.

Q. How was this image made?

A. Spontaneously, while taking a break at a beach bar from photographing by the coast. Having observed everything around me, I noticed the volleyball courts starting to empty. Something about the last player to leave caught my eye and held my attention. There was something about him—his look and demeanor—that interested me. I was simply drawn to him. It’s a feeling you get. You see a person, a scene, and suddenly you have a creative need to make a photograph. Nothing else at that point in time matters except capturing the moment. I instinctively reached for my Ricoh camera with a fixed 28mm lens. Within a few seconds—before he reached the corner of the path—I had made my way there, leaned down, and composed what I wanted in the frame. With my eyes locked on him (not the viewfinder), I waited for the moment he turned and was mid-stride. When his back was against the cloud, I felt that it could appear either as an angel’s wing or a sense of one’s head being in the clouds, and I made this image.

Q. What do you think about when you’re photographing?

A. When I am in my photo zone, I don’t think. I photograph instinctively and with my soul. And when you make photographs with your soul, you empty your thoughts to leave space to let things in. You think visually. By doing so, you are completely focused and in a heightened sense of seeing, feeling, and—to paraphrase Andrei Tarkovsky—with an awareness of the world that impacts the way you relate to reality.

Q. How would you describe your photographic style?

A. Fine art urban photography, documenting daily life on the streets and farther on in black and white using predominantly traditional film. I would say my style has elements of existentialist narrative and poetic realism, with an affinity to cinematic mood and lighting.

Q. Why do you take pictures?

A. I like to convey what I feel and try to transform emotions into images. I want to bring out an alternative point of view that stimulates the spectator’s imagination and does not necessarily reflect what we usually see in reality.

Q. How did you discover the Your Shot community?

A. Wanting to know more about some of the curators I was working with at the time led me to links of their published photographs on Your Shot.

Your Story: Daniele Filacchioni

In our Your Story feature, we ask our members about what inspires their photography, the processes they use to make images, and the stories behind their pictures.

Q. What's the story behind this photo?

A. In reality there is not a particular story– I love dynamics and movement. The photo was taken in a museum in Rome at a multimedia installation.

Q. What do you think about when you’re photographing?

A. I am totally focused on the kind of image that I would like to achieve and I follow my instinct.

Q. Why do you take pictures?

A. It is a primary priority of my life. It moves me. It makes me feel alive.

Q. How would you describe your photographic style?

A. Without doubt, tending to the abstract.

Q. What do you want to say with your images?

A. I would like to convey what I feel. I'm trying to transform emotions into images. I want to bring out an alternative point of view which is able to stimulate the spectator's imagination and a point of view that does not necessarily reflect what we usually see in reality.

Q. Are you a self-taught photographer? If not, how did you learn to make photographs?

A. I started at the state art institute in Rome in 1980, later working as an industrial photographer. I attended the European Design Institute for the first year, but I learned mainly by acquainting myself with the great masters of the past from Ansel Adams to Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Sebastiao Salgado, the Ernst Haas movement, and many others. I've always been a tireless image observer.

Q. Whose photography has influenced you the most?

A."La Suerte de Capa" by Ernst Haas.