You may have missed this because I made toy shooters into a new section but have now decided to just include everything here instead. So here you have the first ever Toy Shooters interview and challenge with Felix Poortman aka. Meffi. If you want to be the next toy shooter just drop me an email.

Hey Felix, Thanks for taking part in the first ever Toy Shooters interview and challenge. Lets get down to business and start with something simple.

Tell us a bit more about yourself and where you are from?

The pleasure is entirely mine! My name is Felix Poortman, but Flickr people will know me as Meffi. I’m a 23 year old student of Asian Archaeology in Leiden, The Netherlands, where I live as well.

What is your earliest memory of taking a photo?

Hmm I can’t really remember when it was, sometimes when I was little my dad let me take a picture with his camera. I’ve started taking more pictures when I was around 10 years old I think, when I got this cheap panorama-camera. Since then I always took my camera on trips or vacations. However, since I kinda sucked at it (half my pictures would turn out useless), I didn’t take a lot of photo’s after the first few times. Of course now that I have my digital camera useless pictures are a thing of the past,

So what got you into taking photos of toys?

I was actually inspired by some other Flickr toy shooters. I got into designer toys not so long ago and when I saw what people like Doc18 and Ophelia87 were doing I just got inspired to do the same.

If your camera could double up as a weapon or gadget, what weapon or gadget would it become? And how would it work?

Oow tricky… Let’s see, it would have to be something wacky, like a cup heater or something. Ow I got it, a microwave! You never know when you might need one… First you’d have to shrink your food with the built-in shrinkray, then you’d have to put the mini food into the battery compartment, set the timer and wait. After that you reverse the shrinking process, and bon appetite!

As a child what toy did you always want but never got?

Difficult to remember one specific toy, I guess I either had everything I wanted or there was too much that I wanted but never got. I do remember one thing: a castle!
I’ve always wanted a Playmobile castle… Ow and those old Lego castles were the bomb as well.

You recently lost some of your toys, how did that happen and how did you feel?

Ah yes, the lost toys… Well, I’ve got a room here in Leiden, but during the weekends I go home to my family, who live 3 hours away. About a month ago I decided to take some of my toys with me, to take photo’s of them in our garden. The trip home went well, the trip back was a disaster though… I was about halfway home when I had to change trains. I was already sitting in my train and it was about to leave, when the conductor said the train was only going halfway. Cause it was almost leaving I got out as fast as I could, and in doing so I left my bag in the train. After that incident I felt really bad for about 3 weeks, among the things lost was my little plush giraffe which I’d had since I was born and I was pretty emotional about that.
Fortunately I got my bag back about 2 weeks ago, they found it after all. Although my t-shirts and my toys were missing, my giraffe has been returned to me.

What is your favourite toy and what toy is best in front of your camera?

My favourite toy tends to change a lot. At the moment I really like the Titus and Odysseus toys I got from Insurgents Wilderness Gruppo, but the toy I will be most upset about if I lost it again would still be my little giraffe.
In front of the camera I also like the aforementioned Titus and Odysseus, but I also really like a little Link gashapon figure I got some time ago. He was among the stolen toys as well, but he was the only one that I actually got back, although he does miss one of his little hands now…

If a celebrity was a toy, and you were a part of the paparazzi, what toy / celebrity would you love to take pictures of and why?

Hmm I’d like to take pictures of someone like Jeffrey Rudom or Matthew McGrory, who sadly died last year. They probably won’t be counted as celebs, cause I doubt that many people will know them, but they are both actors with very striking looks. Jeff Rudom is just an utter bear of a man, and most of you will know Matthew from his role as Karl the Giant in Tim Burton’s Big Fish. The most extraordinary people give always give interesting pictures. I have to add that this is only because I don’t think of myself as a really good photographer, it’s more of a challenge to get really interesting pictures from ordinary people (although in their own way, everyone is extraordinary), and I really admire the people who can do that, maybe I’ll be able to as well if I keep practicing.

Now for your challenge – Your theme is… STEALTH

Stealth # 1
Odysseus decides to take the stealthy approach and sneak up on the refrigerator guard…

Stealth # 2
Operation codename: All your base are belong to us
Location: Monsterism Island
Mission: infiltration…

Stealth # 3
It’s a pity Zoltan doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head…

Stealth # 4
Assassination: eastern style

So what do you think of the 4 photos? I give Felix 2 thumbs up especially for photo 1.

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