Photo Galleries Online

If you are seeking material for a project, are in need of images for your site, or are just fascinated with collections of really good or fairly effective imagery, there are a number of photo galleries online for you to consider. While the following list is quite limited, though, to my preferences or positive experiences with photo galleries online, keep in mind that many more than these few I name are available, accessible, and/or affordable.

My number one favorite of all the photo galleries online is a massive, comprehensive site called Worth a 1000 (worth1000.com). Here you get more than photos: you get categories of photo-shopped, modified, creative constructions with themes such as the following (my titles, as I recall them):

modified cars – two cars are melded to create an awesome prototype, cleverly “re-built” depending upon the ingenuity of the Photoshop artist. For example, an ambulance is melded with a Ferrari, to make the ambulance a faster vehicle.

gender swap – a celebrity of one gender is modified to have the attributes of the opposite gender. So, for example, Angelina Jolie has a five o’clock shadow and extra amounts of body hair, while Brad Pitt has breasts and makeup. Very well done.

Renaissance painting revisited – the artists change the faces and bodies of a classic piece of artwork, so that, for instance, L. Brunin’s “The Alchemist” now has the face of Al Pacino, or Bougereau’s girl holding chicken on a stick over her shoulder is replaced with Drew Barrymore doing the same. Utterly fascinating when done well.

The art that goes into these photo galleries online is stunning. It takes hours and expertise and a twisted mind to come up with melting frogs, snails that have a cinnamon bun shell, and many more montaged pics….

Another kind of project that should be included in our look at photo galleries online is the photo essay. Diego Goldberg is one of the first to do this. Starting in 1976, he took a head shot of him and his wife. The date was June 17th, to be exact. Every June 17th from then on, he Goldberg did a photo of his “family,” one photo of each existing family member. The results are fascinating: like watching a flipbook of the family development. You can access this series at http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/essays/diegotime/time.html

Others have ridden the coattails of Goldberg, or have had the very same idea, only using themselves alone as the subject and doing the exercise every day. The “Adaption to My Generation” is a must-see also, then, which you can see at http://www.c71123.com/daily_photo/index.php

Of course, if you are looking for straight-up photo galleries online, those which have pictures of light bulbs or lighthouses or cats, people, dogs in the local park, etc., there are the great stock photos galleries—StockPhotos.com, ClipArt.com, and IndexOpen.com—all of which require a membership fee to cover the copyright protection, etc...

And beautiful photo galleries online that offer work by individual artists at the top of their game include those of Jay Arraich (http://www.arraich.com/freephotos.htm); Photos and Video by Creative Power (www.cpPhotosVideo.com); and Suzanne Plunkett’s photo coverage of 9-1-1 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/special/photoessay/pages/attack_9.html