Not your traditional Easter mascots, the hamsters scurrying through pyza*’s adorable photos won’t fail to get you in the spirit. Be sure to check out her christmas, easter & halloween set to see more tiny creatures starring in holiday scenes (and don’t miss this hamster riding a sheep). Happy Easter everyone!

Photos de pyza*.

Before you prepare to dye (or fry) your eggs this weekend, take a minute to appreciate these moments of joy and grief from beyond the carton. Jumbo and free-range eggs alike have dreams of becoming something more than the discarded gametes they are, and all fear joining their fallen comrades in that giant scramble in the sky.

Photos from leah miraballin’, camhabib, Cath O’Connolly, pixelmama, Beth Radons, and Michele Krankkala.

“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.

Last Flickr Friday we asked you to find your own See of Lights.

Above is a selection of submissions you entered featuring lights over the ocean, a flurry of lights in the darkness, and some more metaphorical interpretations of the theme. You can check out all the contributions in the Flickr Friday group pool. Thanks for your hard work and creativity, and tune in on Friday to hear our next Flickr Friday theme!

Photos from MitchellWood, GeorgePennington, Chris Howard, roberto acevedo 3, megorgar, rysgam, joyrex, Derek Hall, Solacement, and murphygb.

#FlickrFriday is a weekly photography project that challenges your creativity. For a chance to be featured on FlickrBlog, follow @flickr on Twitter & like us on Facebook and look for the weekly theme announcement every Friday. Browse the Flickr Friday category for more.

When we think of capturing beauty, not all of us turn to pesky insects as subjects to shoot. Many macro specialists, however, take the challenge of focusing on tiny bug faces — providing us with a detailed view of the textural and colorful complexity of what usually goes unnoticed with our naked eyes. Over one million species of insects inhabit our world, so expect a whole lot more of these abundantly diverse critters making appearances in Explore.

Enjoy more stunning portraiture in the Mug Shots of Insects gallery and Insect Macro Photography group.

Photos from Craig.Taylor, USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory, Svatoslav Vrabec, Fotoenergie, and Deanster1983.

Shadows, a car roof, water on pavement, a ropetackle lens. Each of these surfaces hold an inverted dimension that’s darker, distorted, or highlights an aspect of the subject you wouldn’t notice by looking at it dead-on. For more photos like these, take a look at the group Reflections.

Photos from Laurent Henocque, idi0tekue, MdKiStLeR, Trapac, Yuliya Bahr, Stephen Edwards, and Liz Outhwaite.

Scenes captured in the Himalayas and other picturesque regions of the landlocked Asian nation located between China and India.

Do you want more pictures from this location? Enjoy other images of what this location offers in the Majestic Nepal gallery and Nepal on Flickr Places.

Photos from NikonMizar, Samsara_107, Oleg Bartunov, johan van moorhem, and EverExplore.

NCAA basketball hits a high note this time of year when U.S. college teams battle to become National Champions through elimination rounds of nail-biting games. Enjoying the intensity coming from teams and fans of this tourney, we explored the action in photos and found these fantastic shots.

See more photos in the NCAA Basketball Action gallery, and share your photos in the NCAA tournament 2013 group.

Photos from Justin_Wan, Steph Anderson, ntisocl, BillZiskin, and vpking.

It’s the season of Sakura and Ume with many wonderful photos uploaded every day. If you love cherry and plum blossom as we do, delve into the beauty of the many Hanami photos uploaded during the last couple of weeks.

Photos from torne (a little bit hungry), danoliverm, L’Ubuesque Boîte à Savon, Benjamin Belusie, kasa51, motocchio, and AdrienG..

“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.