We’re back with the eighteenth installment of our 5 Questions. We’re still in Melbourne, as velco (our previous interview subject) selected Barbara Fischer.

If you’re not familiar with her work, here’s what the Flickrverse has to say:

“Barb is an inspirational photographer, not just for her skill in capturing good photographs which she has by the bucketload, but for her ability of vision. There is so much to be learnt on how to open your eyes from browsing this stream that I am amazed there are so few “oh wow” comments here.” — Kevin Day

“Barbara is one of my very first contacts in flickr. Seeing her exceptional work, was love at the first sight. I think, it is the way, she is looking at the world around her, that is fascinating me such a lot – and this way of view is captured in any single picture of her.” — LichtEinfall

“Barb always shows us how to use light. Simply, one of the best suburban photographers anywhere. She has a gift for making the unloved shabbiness of backstreets Melbourne somehow alluringly lovely, and has redefined turquoise as a colour for me!” — SteveFE

1. Barbara, we know it’s a tough question, but if you had to pick just one camera to shoot with from now until the end of time, what would that be?

I would have to chose the Olympus Om2N. It’s a battle axe, very reliable and it gives me lovely photos as long as I don’t load it with a nasty film.

2. Another (possibly) tough question… Tell us your favourite photos on Flickr, and why you like them. First, a favourite from your photostream?

This was a smelly, polluted pond in a semi industrial area, an unpleasant place, but as a photo it turned into something quite surreal and beautiful.

And from another Flickr member?

Nick Hinch does fantastic street photography in Melbourne.

3. What’s one tip that you would share with someone who’s just picking up a camera?

My main tip would be to try to please yourself with your photography, not others. Take an interest in your subjects and find out what you feel strongly about. There is enough generic and kitschy stuff around, find your own voice. Learn about the technical side of photography but ultimately what counts are the photos you take. Don’t bling your camera up and then wear it like it’s a piece of jewellery, that’s what nerds do.

4. When we interview peeps for employment here at Team Flickr, we always ask: “Kittens, babies, sunsets or flowers? Pick one.”

The nicest light is at sunset time.

5. Which Flickr member should we ask these 5 questions of next?

I pick nouredine. He gets an amazing feeling of liveliness and drama out of even the stillest subject and works with wonderful precision. His photos have been a big inspiration for me, he is a wonderful artist and great talent.

Heather: Barbara, thank you very much. We’ll return with our interview of nouredine soon. Happy weekend, everyone!

Photos from _barb_, nick hinch, and nouredine.

Previously, 5 Questions for Kevin Meredith, Steph Goralnick, Olivia Wright, Eric Lafforgue, Maciej Dakowicz, Swiatek Wojtkowiak, Bart Pogoda, Brett Walker, Susan Mac, Minas Papadopoulos, karton kutuda shot zımbırtısı, Fate, Nurul, Charlie Lumanlan, Kit, memetic, and velco.

Photos from .:Cal°, Laurennicole81 and annabelletexter.

two photographers · one camera · one weekend · a thousand people
Our project is a true portrait of Britain created by photographing 1,000 people. We stopped everyone who crossed our path on the streets of London, excluding nobody, asking the same question more than fifteen hundred times. In a moment where recession is the main subject of every discussion, it was striking to come across such positive attitude. This is the true face of Britain.

A great project by Carlo Nicora and Fabulous Muscles. To see more portraits from the streets of London check out their sets Thousand Portraits and One Thousand Portraits.

Photos in The Commons by The Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress has created a remarkable set, FSA/OWI Favorites, which includes the “Migrant Mother,” by Dorothea Lange, the original film negative of which is housed at the Library of Congress. The Library preserves Lange’s original, and makes the digitized photo freely available. “Migrant Mother” is part of a landmark photo documentary project based in the U.S. Resettlement Administration, the Farm Security Administration (FSA), and later the Office of War Information (OWI). The most active years were 1935-1943, and the collection was transferred to the Library of Congress in 1944.

The Library of Congress’ newest set features 10 of the most frequently requested photos plus staff picks to introduce you to the vast archive of about 170,000 negatives and 107,000 prints of life in America during the Great Depression and World War II. Do not miss a visit to the FSA/OWI Collection in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) at LOC to explore more of these amazing photos by gifted photographers who worked with 35mm and large format sheet film. Please go to the Library of Congress’ blog post for much more information and insight.

If you have never seen these, don’t pass up a moment to experience them.

“We are releasing all of the Flickr shapefiles as a single download, available for use under the Creative Commons Zero waiver. That’s fancy-talk for ‘public domain’.”

For the full poop on today’s Shapefile release, please check out Aaron’s most excellent post on code.Flickr. If you’re asking yourself, “what’s a Shapefile”, please see the FAQs.

Photo from straup.

Please join us in welcoming the National Library of Wales, established in 1907, as the 26th Flickr Commons partner! The National Library, which exists to collect, preserve and celebrate the heritage and culture of Wales, joins with 126 photos in 3 sets, a sampling from a collection of over 800,000 photographs.

Included are 100 photographs from the P B Abery collection, taken between 1890 and 1940 in Radnorshire, the border area of Wales and England. There are some fun photos – such as this dog smoking a pipe – as well as classic pictures of churches and chapels, townlife in Newtown, and agriculture.

Enjoy the photographs — they’ll be uploading more soon.

Photos from * cate *. View the complete “living with clowns” set.

“The Isolated Building Studies are the visual confluence of my interests in urban dynamism, socioeconomic inequality and photography. By using uniform composition in photographs of buildings with no neighboring structures, I hope to draw attention to new ways of seeing the common impact of divergent investment processes on urban communities.

Isolated buildings are particularly useful for the exploration of neighborhood transformation and its social correlates because they are immediately recognized as unusual. As urban buildings, their form illustrates their connection with adjacent structures: vertical, boxy, an architecture confined by palpably limited parcels. When their neighboring buildings are missing, a tension emerges: the urban form clashes with the seemingly suburban, even rural setting. Thoughtfully engaging the landscape requires further investigation to resolve this tension: Why is this building isolated? It is from this fundamental friction that the Isolated Building Studies launches.” — Isolated Building Studies: Revealing Meaning Through Recontextualization

View metroblossom’s complete set: Isolated Building Studies.
Suggested by weirdoldhattie in Flickr Central.

“In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)” — STS-125 Atlantis Solar Transit (200905120002HQ)

Wow. Just wow.

Photo from nasa hq photo.