New Jersey native and fine art photographer Michael Massaia suffers from insomnia. And so, when he first heard the term "seeing the black dog" in relation to the hallucinations truckers see when they're sleep deprived, the idea for a photo series by the same name immediately took shape.
Hamilton College assistant art professor Robert Knight has a project titled "Sleepless" that consists of ghostly long exposure photographs of people tossing and turning throughout the night. The project was inspired by his experience with insomnia, which set in after he and his wife became parents for the first time. After documenting his own sleep movements, he began documenting other people's sleep as well. To create the images, he carefully calculates proper exposure based on the dim lights in the room, and then asks the subject to open the shutter before they go to bed and then close it before the sun comes up.