Most of us have a bucket list of things we want (or would like) to do in our lifetime. Whether it’s traveling to exotic locations, learning to cook delicious meals or taking on a dream job — we’ve all got something.

Nicolas Vallejos, known on Flickr as ANVRecife, had the same desire, which is in part why he started taking pictures of a character he calls Woody.

“Woody is a catalyst for fun,” he says in the accompanying video. “He can be anything, go anywhere. There’s no limit to what he can do!”

Nicolas’ favorite photos are those shots where Woody represents his alter-ego.

In his life, Nicolas always dreamed about being an astronaut, a biker doing 360 degrees spins, a sushi chef or a baker. One of his favorites is Woody getting a tattoo.

“I always wanted a tattoo and design it myself, but never had the courage to do it!” Nicolas says. “But Woody can. He basically can be anything that I wanted to be and didn’t have either the time, patience or skills. And taking those pictures are the most fun.”

Photography has always a big part of Nicolas’ life. As a design manager in Minneapolis, he was used to directing photo shoots but wanted a more fun and hands on approach.

Nicolas discovered Woody in 2003 while shopping at IKEA. He noticed a bin full of wooden dolls and without question he realized he found his muse for his macro photography.

“I just looked at him and thought ‘Oh my god, I can actually use him as my model!’” Nicolas says. “The moment I picked him up and instantly knew I had something special.”

What excites Nicolas about Woody is the figure provides many challenges as well as possibilities. In the beginning, one of his biggest hurdles was how to convey emotion from something inanimate that has no facial expressions. Nicolas discovered he could achieve this with different body movements, colors, lighting and backgrounds. One of his favorite examples is Slow, where he created a sense of darkness and emotion with the simplest lighting and use of shadows.

Nicolas also loves to use Woody to represent visual metaphors for those situations humans can’t do.

“I think people would love to have a restart button in their lives,” Nicolas describes. “For example, if they’re going through a rough patch, wouldn’t it be great if they had a CONTROL Z or restart button? Woody can do that!”

When Nicolas claims Woody can be anyone, he means it — including famous icons. Woody has impersonated everyone from Che Guevara, Charlie Chaplin, Tom Cruise to even Michael Jackson!

At the end of the day, Nicolas wants people to laugh and be wow’d by what they see in Woody. To date, Nicolas has taken over 300 shots in the last six years and knows there’s still more Woody has left to do.

“People always ask me what will Woody do next?” Nicolas says. “And I always say, ‘You tell me!’ Woody represents all of us. And it’s exciting to know that every challenge I get, Woody is going to come to the rescue, bring my ideas to life that people will hopefully connect with. And I love it.”

Visit Nicolas’ photostream for more of his photography.

Tweet us your ideas about what Woody should do next: @TheWeeklyFlickr #WOODY

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr group or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.

In this edition of The Weekly Flickr, we asked you to help us celebrate those special women in our lives: mothers. We wanted you to share your photos of them and tell us the best advice she’s ever given to you. What better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than to hear their wise words that inspire our lives!

We received countless photos and testimonials from participants, and here you’ll find a selection of them submitted to us. Happy Mother’s Day!

After you’ve watched the video, be sure to check out the photos in our “Mother’s Day” galleries.

“The best advice she gave me is to lead a happy, healthy and full life — such as hers. I need to be mentally and physically strong, which is possible if I keep myself fully engaged in activities I enjoy and avoid worrying.” -KV Gopalakrishnan

“The best advice my mother gave me was, ‘Don’t ever let the negative things in life get you down.’” – ✈ Sean Marc Lee 李子仁

“The best advice my mom ever gave me was to save money. It sure has come in handy at times when I’ve wanted to buy something that wasn’t necessary, and I would think of mom and usually decide against the purchase. My mom is the best, and she certainly had a lot of advice, but I think ‘save money’ is my favorite.” – Doggie Luver

“The best advice she ever gave me was you have to remember to always smile and keep your head up because your smile could make anyone’s day. I’m not saying don’t be sad, we need a little sadness to truly appreciate the good in our lives. But at the end of the day, knowing you made someone’s day with just a smile will always put a smile on your face. I’m not going to be with you forever, but I want the image of your smile to be my last memory; that, would be my heaven.” – Omolade A. Oke | Human

“More than advice, she is my example and shows me how to be better all the time.” – M.Moraes Fotografia

“The best advice my mom gave me was to work hard and get along with others.” – disneymike

“My mother told me to notice all the beauties of the world.” – Room With A View

“The best advice my mom gave me was to lead by example, to never forget where I come from and be proud of who I am.” - patrick j. clarke

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.

When it comes to describing Garth Hill’s photography, many call it “dream-like,” comparing him to Salvador Dalí or René Magritte. But if you ask Garth directly, he says his Flickr name best defines his work.

“On Flickr, I go by Photoimaginarium,” Garth says in the accompanying video. “When you go to my stream, it’s always going to be a blend of photography and imagination.”

Garth considers himself both an amateur photographer and an amateur philosopher. “It’s important to me that the viewers have a deep connection to the work,” he says. “Also that their imagination comes alive, that they get inspired by what they see. It’s about connecting with the viewer.”

Garth takes all his pictures with a point-and-shoot camera and edits his pictures on a free software program called Gimp. He hopes this easy and low cost approach encourages others to create thought-provoking pieces of their own.

“It’s important to me that people have the ability and encouragement to make art that’s fun and deeply personal to them,” Garth says. “From the grandmother living in rural Nebraska to some kid in the city. They don’t need fancy cameras or Photoshop to make fun and exciting imaginative experiences. Anyone can do it.”

Garth uses collage as a basic principle with his photography. “I really enjoy blending different scenes and different people,” he says. “I like to startle a viewer — to stop them — and then the space around that character tends to be full of little details from other spaces.”

Every weekend, Garth takes close to 300-400 shots — mostly landscapes, backdrops, and people out on the street. He likes to work with candids, something ordinary that he can turn into something stimulating. At home, he’ll flip through the images until something strikes his imagination. A good example is, Unwrapping the Afternoon Light.

“I’ll take a character or person from the candid shot,” he explains. “And I’ll pull him out and add in some sky. I’ll throw in some birds. And suddenly he’s in a fantasy landscape. And they’re all ordinary shots I took right on the street.”

One of Garth’s favorite photos is called Live Bravely. The original picture was a blurry shot of a man pushing a baby carriage on a sidewalk. Garth blended the picture with another he took of a cheese grater, made it dark so the viewer’s eye would be drawn to the redness of the carriage.

“When I look at this picture, you’ve got this guy almost walking through a Greek myth of the clashing rocks through two enormous skyscraping cheese graters,” he says, “ I love it because it’s very simple, but it makes people stop and look again.”

Garth believes in the power of symbols and connecting people through them with his art. He admits he’s fascinated by everyone’s different interpretations.

“Everywhere in the world you’re going to have clouds, the moon, the sun, and they might mean something slightly different to you,” Garth explains, “But there’s a way in which all those very ordinary symbols connect people all across the world. They all evoke feelings and everyone has a different personal take. It’s what I love the most about my art.”

At the end of the day, Garth hopes his work is inspiring to people. “I definitely hope that people will do a double-take and get drawn in. And the more that you get drawn in, the more I hope that there’s a chance you’ll start to really connect your own life to the world of art and photography.”

Visit Garth’s photostream for more of his photography.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group or tweet us at #theweeklyflickr.

“It’s incredible just how much Flickr has impacted me as a photographer,” says high school student Jackson Stack, known on Flickr as Jacksonian22.

“It’s changed my life.” he tells The Weekly Flickr in this week’s episode. “I basically got my college education for free thanks to my Flickr community.”

Jackson describes his photography as emotive and dark. He’s drawn to conceptual photography because he says it allows him to express himself more artistically compared to other mediums of photography.

“I truly believe photography is the visual documentation of life,” he says. “When I go out on shoots, I really like to experiment with different concepts and try to incorporate emotions and atmosphere into my pictures.”

Jackson first joined Flickr in 2010 and used it mainly to post pictures from his photography class. He called himself “an amateur at best”, taking photos with black and white film. However his passion quickly evolved when he began a 365 project and received positive feedback from Flickr users.

A lot of the advice he received dealt with the colors and themes of his photos and how to work with the technical aspects of editing.

“I really didn’t know much before I joined Flickr,” says Jackson. “But I saw all these people who posted these incredible photos with beautiful colors and tones. I really wanted to emulate their style and everyone really helped me to get to that point.”

More importantly, Jackson was inspired by the different concepts and themes he came across.

“It was so inspiring to me to see people who put their emotions out there in such a raw way with their photos,” Jackson says. “It really helped me to be more adventurous with my photography.”

By the time Jackson ended his 365, he felt he had truly grown as a photographer – especially after posting this picture, Finding Lost Ground.

“I finally understood how much photography meant to me,” he says. “I realized it’s my passion, it’s what I want to do, and I decided I was going to apply to school for photography.”

Jackson had his sights set on Cooper Union School of Art – a prestigious school that only accepts 65 applicants nationwide with each applicant receiving a full tuition scholarship. Jackson put his heart and soul into their home test.

The prompt he chose asked him to create a series defining an object of varying weight. After careful thought and reflection on his work, Jackson decided to depict emotional weight.

“All my years on Flickr inspired me because it helped me with self portraiture,” Jackson says. “I had been immersed in conceptual photography for so long that I knew I could make something incredible. Once I came to that decision, everything else just fell into place.”

One of his favorite photos from his Cooper Union home test is called, Adulthood. The photo depicted the end of the series, which is the the final representation of all this compounded emotional weight. He took three separate photos, composited and edited them together resulting in one beautiful shot.

After spending a month on his prompt, Jackson was extremely proud of his final work. However that feeling couldn’t compare to the moment he received his acceptance letter to Cooper Union.

“It was best moment of my life,” he says. “And it wouldn’t have happened without my Flickr community. It was their help and inspiration to pursue my photography that lead me here. I’m living proof that if you put in the time, hard work and dedication – dreams do come true.”

Jackson’s advice to other young photographers: “Never give up. If you work at it continually and give it your all, you will get better and find your passion. Once you have that, you can go anywhere with it.”

Visit Jackson’s photostream for more of his photography.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group or tweet us at #theweeklyflickr.

Let’s be honest: Most high school kids would choose school lunches over homemade lunches when given the choice. But not David LaFerriere’s kids Evan, 15, and Kenny, 14, because they’d miss out on their dad’s hand-drawn-surprise lunch bags!

“I’ve been doing it for my kids since they were little,” the graphic designer, known as D Laferriere on Flickr, tells us in the accompanying video. “They love it, and nothing makes me happier than hearing their reaction at the end of the day.”

David started making these decorative lunch bags back in May 2008. It all came about one morning in an attempt to do something special for his boys.

“It was just a way to have fun with the kids,” David says. “And also start my creative juices before work. I had already been making their lunches, and I experimented with a few things.”

David first began using food coloring and tried to draw directly onto the bread. The bread, however, was too rough, and the process became too time consuming, so he dropped that idea. He found a black Sharpie one morning on his kitchen counter and wondered if it would work – and sure enough it did.

“At first it was just red and black markers,” David says. “Then I got more colors and got more creative. The Sharpies were great; how they adhere to the bag. I’d tried all sorts of things to make different pictures like using a napkin to smudge the ink or different forms of shading. It was fun!”

David’s ideas for the bags come from a wide variety of places. He owns many different animals at his home in Massachusetts, so he often draws his chickens, rabbits and dogs – sometimes having the animals doing human activities, like a duck going tubing.

“I’ve had cupcakes, birthday cakes, crazy fish with eyes and robots,” David says. “I’ve had ants and bugs crawling around on the bags. You name it, I’ve done it.”

Often times David will look at the bread and get inspiration from the bread bubbles. “I’ll draw a fish around the bubble as if he’s about to eat it. One of my kids’ favorites is using the bubble as hole a worm comes out of!”

David decided to post his pictures on Flickr because eventually the bags get thrown out. He wanted a way to have them around to look back on. “You figure 180 school days in a year, and times that by two, that’s 360 days,” he says. “And then you add on summer time when they’re going to soccer camp, it all adds up. It’s been almost five years now, and it’s like 1,082 bags and counting.”

A few weeks after he began posting his pictures, David become overwhelmed with positive responses. He started getting contacts from people all over the world. “It was incredible,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to find them or look at them. I was just doing it for me and my kids, but all of a sudden I started getting views!”

In 2009, Sharpie contacted David and asked to feature his work on their blog. After that, different bloggers reached out to him, and the exposure he got was unstoppable.

“In November 2012, I probably I had 100,000 views total in four years,” he says. “Then I started getting noticed more and more and in February of 2013, it got doubled to 600,000. It’s just incredible!”

Amid all the attention, David says what means the most are the nostalgic comments he receives from viewers.

“The sandwich bags are something that my boys and I share together,” David says. “But the comments people leave about a parent doing something similar really touches me, because there are other parents that love their kids just as much. And they love them enough to leave a little note, a little whatever it may be… that’s just something that brightens their day when they get to their lunch.”

Visit David’s photostream to see more of his photography.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at #theweeklyflickr.

“I want people to take a moment from their crazy lives and live in these imaginary, dreamlike worlds I’ve created,” says photography student Nico Nordström, known on Flickr as Nico Nordström.

“Because that’s what my work has done for me,” she tells The Weekly Flickr in this week’s episode. “It’s been an escape — healing me in more ways than I can describe.”

Nico knew she wanted to become a photographer since the first time she held a camera. She would spend hours as a child inside Houston’s art museums, focusing on lighting and composition. Afterwards, she’d go home and set up little photo shoots with her Barbies, using disposable cameras and house lamps for lighting.

“I fell in love with photography,” she says, “And knew if I wanted to become successful, the only way would be through hard work, dedication and practice.”

Nico is inspired by surrealism and conceptual photography. However, she also seeks to personify emotions and feelings through her work, specifically grief, death and loss — which stems from a very difficult time in her life.

In December of 2010, her best friend, Louis Yonich (captured in the photo below), of 10 years unexpectedly passed away. Nico was 20 years old at the time and didn’t know how to cope with such a tragic loss.

“Having somebody who you always expect to be there… to just be gone,” she says, “It was completely shocking, very surreal. Nothing felt real to me anymore. I felt like I was living in another world.”

Nico poured everything she was feeling into her photography. She felt like it was a very safe place to go, and ultimately would be a constructive way to handle her grief.

“Creating worlds provided a cathartic escape for me,” she said, “There’s something so special about seeing something in your head and then seeing it in front of you. It’s one thing to create a world in post production, but to be able to live in it — even if it’s just for a few hours — it’s beautiful.”

Thus began Nico’s “labor of love” as she put her mind, body and soul into her work. Nico planned huge and elaborate productions in her sketchbook. She taught herself how to sew and began creating handmade costumes and props for her characters. Being a poor college student, she’d often sacrifice food money in order for her vision to come alive. With the help of others she built sets, had her friends pose as muses, and spent many sleepless hours shooting and editing her proofs.

One of Nico’s favorite photos is The Unreachable Goal. It was inspired by the chaos in her life upon returning to school after Louis’ death.

“I was balancing everything,” she says, “And to deal with school on top of dealing with life felt impossible and completely unreachable.”

Nico made the dress in the photo and borrowed an old desk from her parents’ house. Together with her friends, she lugged everything into the forest, positioned her model horizontally on a bar stool, and threw papers around. “We definitely got a lot of confused looks from runners and dog walkers that day,” she says.

Photography has healed Nico and helped her come to terms with her grief. But more importantly, it’s helped her honor her best friend, Louis.

“The last conversation he and I had, I was seriously considering changing my major to something a little more practical,” Nico says. “Louis told me no and encouraged me to stick with photography because he thought I was good. When he passed away, pursuing photography had a bigger meaning for me.”

Nico says Louis was obsessed with dragonflies, and to thank him she hides dragonflies in some of her pictures, like in her If Winter Ends series.

Nico hopes when people look at her work, it helps heal them as well.

“I feel that my pictures reflect the different stages of grief but it also shows the beauty that comes out of it,” she says. “When something awful happens, the only thing you can do is try to spread love and happiness and beauty to everyone around you.”

Visit Nico’s photostream for more of her photography.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group or tweet us at #theweeklyflickr.

Spring is finally here and before you know it those muggy summer days will be upon us. While most of us prefer to stay inside next to the air conditioner, photographer Steve Wall, known on Flickr as Steve took it, grabs his camera and heads straight out the door.

“The more humid, the better,” he tells The Weekly Flickr in this week’s episode. “Because I know there’s something incredible outside to be captured.”

Steve is particularly interested in macro photography, a type of extreme close-up photography, usually of very small subjects. He describes it as venturing into a whole new world.

His obsession for water drops began completely by accident. He bought a new camera, but the lens he wanted was on order. “I couldn’t just stand there and look at my camera,” he says. “So I purchased an inexpensive Nikkor 60mm macro lens.”

A few days later he went outside after a rainstorm to capture a few interesting drops on pine needles. It was only when he looked at those shots on his computer that he noticed the pine needles were refracted inside the water, as seen in his photo Tripple Dripper.

“I was amazed,” Steve says. “The the first thing I wanted to know was ‘How did that happen?’ and the second thing I wanted to know was ‘What else could I put in there?’. Since then I’ve been on a quest to take better and better macro photos.”

Steve was fascinated by the physics of water drops and their ability to refract images. “It’s amazing you can have such detail in such a small size,” he says. “The idea that water is cohesive and actually forms a sphere and that sphere is a lens… the same kind of lens on the old time cameras that refracts an image upside down and backwards. It’s mesmerizing.”

The water drop photos in Steve’s photostream are the result of an evolutionary process. He actually created a self-described ‘water drop photo factory’ in his own backyard.

“I’ve planted my garden with various kinds of good plants for blooms nearby, good plants for retaining water drops,” Steve admits. “And I’ve learned you don’t just look at the water drops from one angle; you have to move up and down and back and forth to try to get the perfect angle of the refraction inside. And this of course frequently means crawling around on my hands and knees in the wet!”

One of his favorites is called Drops of Purple Petals, which he took on his hands and knees using a Coke can as a tripod to get the perfect angle. He likes this one in particular because you can actually see tiny water drops on the petals of the flower refracted inside the larger droplets.

Steve is often asked if the images inside the water drops are real or edited in with Photoshop. People are so convinced of the latter that they’ve even invited him to join Flickr groups specifically for photoshopped images. Steve finds the assumptions amusing and enjoys their reactions when they learn the truth.

“My favorite thing is when those who thought my pictures were photoshopped take it on as a challenge for themselves to capture water drop photos,” he says, “They often come back and say, ‘Wow, you were right!’”

Steve plans to continue his love for finding refractions in dew drops because he’s still impressed by the color, composition and details of every picture.

“It’s just amazingly beautiful,” Steve says. “The idea that you peer inside the water drop, you can see hidden worlds of mystery. It just lets your imagination run wild.”

Visit Steve’s photostream for more of his inspiring macro and nature photography.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group or tweet us at #theweeklyflickr.

“When people first look at my pictures, they’re immediately drawn to them,” says Jon Smith who is a chemist by trade and known on Flickr as WideEyedIlluminations.

“But their ‘wow moment’ isn’t until they hear my story,” he tells The Weekly Flickr in the accompanying video. “Photography saved my life.”

Jon first got into photography as a creative outlet. “I needed something to balance out the analytical part of my brain,” he says. “Something that I could control and have fun doing.”

He was drawn to high-speed photography because it captures something we cannot normally see with our eyes.

“It’s this special moment between the before and after,” Jon says. “Where everything just comes together. It’s beautiful.”

Jon specifically likes using light bulbs in his photography because they are so ordinary.

“People see and use light bulbs every day. They’re something we don’t pay attention to,” he says. “By shooting them, having them explode and filling them with different materials creates an interesting juxtaposition that I’m really drawn to.”

His approach to each photo is always creative and imaginative. Jon starts out by taking apart the bulb from the bottom and filling it with different materials.

“It’s always fun,” he says. “I’ve used feathers, flowers, marbles, chalk dust — just about anything I can find.”

Jon then shoots the bulbs in the dark, inside his garage with a sound activated flash trigger to capture and freeze the moment.

“I’m always surprised at the end result of the picture,” he says. “I have this initial idea of how I want the picture to look but it never comes out how I expect. Instead, it’s even better — more beautiful than I imagined.”

Most of his photos are spontaneous, but others are thought provoking. One of his favorites is ROYGBIV, a light bulb he filled with colored ground pastel chalk.

“The rainbow is a symbol of the LGBT movement,” he says. “I wanted to use the symbolism of the light bulb to evoke the feeling of breaking through antiquated stereotypes people have.”

Jon uses symbolism regularly in his work, but perhaps the biggest is the effect photography has had in his life.

“I was going through a deep depression and was feeling like nothing was going right, nothing was good in my life, and I lost control,” he says. “Photography saved me because it allowed me to see the world in a different way. It reminded me to live in the moment.”

“The light bulb was a symbol of light in a really dark time for me,” he adds.

“When I’m preparing these light bulbs, it’s not what it looks like before or after,” Jon says. “It’s that one brief moment when it’s breaking apart that really captures the beauty and destruction. It helped me realize to focus on the now – not the past or future.”

Jon hopes people look at his work and appreciate the moment as well.

“I want them to feel happy and excited,” he says. “If they’re in a dark time or having trouble, I hope they can look at my pictures and feel better…[and] turn a light on in their life like it did with mine.”

Visit Jon’s photostream for more of his photography.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group or tweet us at #theweeklyflickr.

“I’m just an average guy that likes taking photos with my smartphone,” says electrical engineer Jose Vazquez, known on Flickr as jmvazquezjr (jmv_nyc). “It started out as a hobby but now has truly defined my life.”

“I can’t imagine doing anything else”, he tells us.

Jose began taking pictures four years ago while traveling abroad with his wife. He bought a DSLR camera but found it extremely difficult. “I was very intimidated,” Jose says. “It was so overwhelming with buttons everywhere. I kept asking myself, ‘What does this do? What does that do?’ I was a mess.”

After a few years of taking pictures on a DSLR, Jose bought an iPhone and immediately realized its potential as a camera. “It was just simpler,” he says. “I liked being able to take a picture, edit and share it wherever and whenever I wanted.”

He began downloading apps, joining social networks and over time his skill set progressed. “It was very helpful as a learning tool,” Jose says. “I would upload a picture, ask for constructive criticism and learn new techniques that helped me as a photographer.”

Given the convenience and accessibility of his smartphone’s camera, Jose quickly developed his photographic style.

“I normally don’t have a plan when I go out,” he says. “From the moment I’m on the train, I’m snapping away. I go to the park, shoot interesting people, beautiful landscapes – I just kinda wing it.”

Jose became interested in urban exploration after seeing photos on Flickr. He was fascinated by abandoned buildings and old hospitals.

“Seeing the decay, the peeling paint, all these places that have been taken over by the elements was incredible,” he says. “Thinking about the history and what went on there…I was totally into it from then on.”

One of his favorite photos is the one above called Tunnel Seating (a photo taken with a DSLR camera) which was taken at a psychiatric hospital.

“That place had been open since the late 1800s,” Jose says. “Just thinking about what went on in there all those years – it’s like having an all access pass to a museum that no one can enter. It’s an amazing experience.”

Photography has completely taken over Jose’s life. He even plans to pursue it full-time in the future.

“My wife pushes me everyday to do more,” he admits. “She sees how happy it makes me and wants me to go down this route.”

Jose credits his smartphone for finding his new passion in photography.

“It is really surprising how much photography means to me now. It just drives me everyday,” he says. “I can’t wait to pull my phone out and snap away.”

For all of you aspiring smartphone photographers out there, Jose offers these tips:

1. Download an app that gives you control of the exposure and focus on your phone. It opens so many doors creatively for things such as: controlling depth of field or creating a silhouette.
2. Take the time to learn about what goes into picture taking – especially when it comes to composition.
3. Shoot pictures all the time. You’ll be surprised at what you’re into when you start shooting a lot.

Visit Jose’s photostream for more of his photography.

Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group or tweet us at #theweeklyflickr.

Most people might run away from an erupting volcano as fast as they possibly can, but photographer Sean King does just the opposite. He gravitates towards the natural beauty of lava flows reaching 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It’s an amazing thing,” Sean tells The Weekly Flickr.

“The adrenaline is insane,” he says. “When you’re out in the flow, you can feel the heat from the lava. It crackles, it pops, it hisses.”

Sean moved to Hawaii from New York with his wife nearly 8 years ago. After working in construction for years, he felt that he needed a change in his life.

“It was all getting very stressful,” he says. “We started to notice more garbage on the roads, more people, longer commutes to work…little by little it was all just taking away from me as a person. We figured let’s step outside the box and give paradise a try.”

He was introduced to photography completely by accident. Marveled by the exotic beauty of Hawaii, Sean wanted to capture his surroundings and share the experience with his friends back in New York. On a whim, he bought a camera and decided to go out and take photos near the Kilauea volcano. Little did he know it would change his life forever.

“One night the western flank of the Pu’u O’o volcano collapsed, and I got incredible pictures,” Sean says. “The next day, I went out and noticed a light gray streak sort of dance across the floor, moving towards the volcano. It was a lunar rainbow. I was just mesmerized; never saw anything like it.”

Instantaneously, Sean became in awe of the volcano’s unpredictability and the pictures he captured.

“One night a double lava glow, the next night a moonbow, it was insane!” he says. “I just fell in love with the volcano there on out.”

Sean joined Flickr a few days later to share his pictures and was overwhelmed by the feedback. He met people who not only praised his work but gave him advice on future shoots.

“Flickr has been like a university, the university of photography,” he says. “I have no experience with cameras so having people share their settings and help you come home with quality pictures is incredible.”

One thing that sets Sean apart from other photographers is that he’s colorblind. A condition that has made him susceptible to photoshopping accusations. Sean, however, uses this to his advantage.

“I found that it’s my color-blindness that makes my pictures attractive to people,” he says. “You’re actually getting a vision of what I actually see which is that certain colors are brighter and more intense. It’s really cool.”

Sean calls himself an adventurer by spirit and takes every opportunity to explore Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. To him, there’s nothing better than liquid rock, streaming earth and the sulphurous smell of freshly made land.

“You just never know what you’re going to find,” he says. “I can see anything, from the Milky Way to a lava flow. I like going out, learning and loving that something dangerous — but beautiful — can happen.”

Above all, Sean wants people to capture that adventure spirit through his pictures.

“I want people to understand that this island is alive,” he says. “It’s the heartbeat of the world. It grows, it pulses and you can physically see everything that I capture in my camera.”

Hawaii has given Sean a new meaning in life. He credits the island for giving him the ability to find his passion in life: photography.

“My passion is like the volcano. It’s just always there, always growing,” Sean says.

Visit Sean’s photostream for more of his photography.

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