Zoom-in Online

I've mentioned Justin Horrocks a few times already, but in case you don't know him, he's a fellow photographer, iStocker and all-round good guy. We recently agreed to start doing a monthly shoot together, just to see what might come of it. We recently made our first attempt.

Originally, we'd been trying to cast a couple of models, but for several reasons (one of which being, that we were a bit slow in contacting them) we ended up with no one but each other. But then Justin said, he was in need of a new profile picture for his iStockphoto page. Would I mind shooting him? Of course not!

We immediately went outfit-shopping at a nearby thrift store and came back with something suitably tacky. He wanted the photo to be fun, so we started fooling around, making faces and exaggerating classic stock poses (thumbs up, everyone!). In the end, he got what he needed, and I had a good bunch of new, silly photos for my own portfolio.

My prettier half, Kelly Cline, shot the photo I've been using since the beginning of 2008, and I absolutely love what she did. I processed my own portfolio photo, to make it look more like my style. Justin processed his own photo as well.

In other words: If you're looking for an easy and fun photography challenge, gang up with a few others and shoot portraits specifically for online use. These days we all have Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, Twitter pages as well as microstock portfolios. We need fresh portraits on a regular basis!

Rasmus Rasmussen is on loan from iStockphoto, where he is part of the image inspection team.