series

Michael Zhang

Portraits of Online Gamers Next to Their Alter Egos

For his project Alter Ego, photographer Robbie Cooper traveled around the world to shoot portraits of online gamers. He then combined his portraits with screenshots of the gamers' avatars in the various games they play, showing an interesting side-by-side comparison of what the people look like in the real world compared to what they choose to look like in their fantasy worlds. The project got its start back in 2003 after Cooper did a shoot with a CEO who used the game Everquest to communicate with his children after getting divorced.

Michael Zhang

Faceless Portraits With Low-Key Lighting

Shape is a series by French photographer Quentin Arnaud that consists of minimalistic portraits shot with low-key lighting. The stark lighting highlights the shape of the head but completely leaves the face void of any details, giving a creepy and ominous look to each of the photos.

Michael Zhang

Portraits of Dogs as They Shake Off Water

For her series "Shake", pet photographer Carli Davidson photographed curious portraits of dogs shaking off water. Use a fast shutter speed and you can capture all kinds of strange expressions on your dog's face.

Michael Zhang

Before and After Portraits of Joggers

Photographer Sacha Goldberger set up an outdoor studio in a Parisian park and asked joggers who ran by to sprint and then pose for a photograph while out of breath. He then invited the same joggers to visit his studio one week later to be photographed in the same pose, but dressed up. The resulting photos are an interesting series of "raw vs. proper" portraits of strangers.

Michael Zhang

Candid Portraits of Passing Motorists

"Vector Portraits" is a series of candid portraits of passing motorists shot by photographer Andrew Bush between 1989 and 1997 in the Los Angeles area. After making 66 of these portraits, he published a photo book with them titled "Drive".

Michael Zhang

Portraits of Panamanian Men and Their Souped-Up Bikes

Panamanian photographer José Castrellón's series Priti Baiks features portraits of men standing proudly next to their decorated bikes. The bikes are their owners' only form of transportation, and the owners spend a considerable amount of their time and resources personalizing their bikes into symbols of identity and individuality.

Michael Zhang

Hollywood Blvd Superheroes at Home

The superheroes that line Hollywood Boulevard for tourist pictures may have a tiny taste of stardom while on the job, but what are their lives like when they put down their masks and capes? For his project "Super Heroes", photographer Gregg Segal followed a number of superheroes home to document their not-so-super lives when not on the job.

Michael Zhang

Photographer Chris McCaw Burns Through Photo Paper — Literally

Photographer Chris McCaw was making long exposures of the night sky during a camping trip when he forgot to cap his camera lens before going to sleep. When he woke up, he discovered that the sun had burned a hole through his negative. After processing the film, he found that it had solarized, or reversed in tone. What started as an accident McCaw now does intentionally for his "Sunburn" series of photographs.

Using homemade large format cameras, McCaw exposes silver gelatin paper for extended periods of time, burning through the paper and inverting the image.

Michael Zhang

BBC Series from 1983 Featuring Masters of Photography

In 1983 the BBC aired a series called "Master Photographers" in which they interviewed some of the biggest names in photography at the time, including Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The series can't be found anywhere on DVD, but luckily many of the episodes have been uploaded to YouTube. If you're at all interested in learning how historical greats worked and thought, this is a video series you have to bookmark and chew through.