This year we shared nearly 200 portfolios of amazing photographers and other artists using this medium as the main tool to create their projects. Check out 20 bests below that we painstakingly filtered from Designcollector 2015 photo archive

Vincent Laforet

United States

Multi-talented Swiss-born filmmaker and photographer Vincent Laforet has wowed his fans with breathtaking late-night aerial photos of New York City, illuminated by the lights of a city that never sleeps. He shot the series “Night Over New York” while sitting on the edge of a helicopter flying above the Big Apple.

Daisuke Takakura

Japan

Japanese photographer Daisuke Takakura takes clone photography pretty seriously. His project “Monodramatic” features some models tens of times, with some of the clones so far away from the camera that they can barely be seen in the distance.

Uldus Bakhtiozina

Russia

Uldus reinterprets traditional Russian Tales in her photos by focusing on the pagans roots and ethnography of Russia. Her works are thoroughly detailed and immersive, and are based on comprehensive research and comparison with Euro-Asian mythology. The artist pays special attention to her ambivalent interpretation of the symbolism hidden in legends and myths.

Daria Khoroshavina

Russia

Moscow-based photographer Daria Khoroshavina creates awesome animated photographs of her favourite cooking recipes.

Francesca Fattori

United Kingdom

The Wonders Taste was inspired by a René Magritte’s picture named “The Invisible’s Taste”. Artist Francesca Fattori often take inspiration from the surrealist art. Fattori objectifies ordinary food ingredients by relating them to her personal perceptions of sinuosity; extravagance; limitation and fragility. The pictures are still scenes from a play and removed from their fluid natural sequence, which she likes to call “Metaphysical Landscapes”.

Chris Burkard

USA

Chris Burkard is a photographer based in California, whose work is layered by surf, outdoor, lifestyle and travel subjects. Burkard’s images are punctuated by energized landscapes and moments of bliss, by adventure seeking and the lifestyle that ensues, by movement and intuitive light-working capabilities

Blake Little

USA

“When people showed up to Blake Little’s studio in response to a Craigslist ad calling for actors, the amateur thespians didn’t realize what they were in for. Fascinated with honey as a symbol and an artistic medium, Little asked his subjects to strip naked and pose in front of a monochromatic backdrop while his assistants doused them in gallons of the sticky, viscous substance. The experiment yielded a striking photo series in which people with a diverse array of body types and aesthetics appear transformed into statues."

Mihaela Noroc

Romania (x2 TOP2015)

Romanian photographer Mihaela Noroc is on a mission to capture portraits of women from every country in the world in order to shed light on the beauty that exists everywhere. A little over two years ago, at the age of 27, Noroc quit her job, withdrew all her life savings, and embarked on an incredible journey across the globe with little more than her camera and backpack. Her travels so far are documented in The Atlas of Beauty, an ongoing project that features a diverse array of local women from 37 different countries and almost every single continent.

Alex MacLean

USA

Award-winning Fine Art Aerial photographer Alex MacLean creates abstract canvases by shooting man-made and natural landscapes from a bird’s eye view.

Ray Collins

Australia

Artists have wrestled with the raw, majestic, natural power of the sea for hundreds of years, but Australia-based photographer Ray Collins is one of the few who really gets it right. Collins’ epic wave photos seem to freeze and capture all of the sea’s power, casting it in the respectful and majestic light that it deserves.

Michael Wolf

Germany

With seven million people, Hong Kong is the 4th most densely populated places in the world. However, plain numbers never tell the full story. In his “Architecture of Density” photo series, German photographer Michael Wolf explores the jaw-dropping urban landscapes of Hong Kong. He rids his photographs of any context, removing any sky or horizon line from the frame and flattening the space until it becomes a relentless abstraction of urban expansion, with no escape for the viewer’s eye. Infinite and haunting.

Alain Cornu

France

If you have been to Paris you might remember its mythical nights full of love and unknown. Photographer Alain Cornu focus on the second topic – unknown for the common eye, and that is Paris roofs.

Sergei Sarakhanov

Ukraine (x2 TOP2015)

Awesome lifestyle and fine art portrait photographer Sergei Sarakhanov raised in St.Petersburg and based in Kiev, Ukraine.

Anna Radchenko

United Kingdom, Russia

Anna Radchenko is one of the new exciting talented breed of Russian artists that are now using London as their creative base. Originally from Moscow, Anna creates visual works on human emotions and observations of the modern world, working with installations and photography.

Klaus Frahm

Germany

Photographer Klaus Frahm takes photos of theater auditoriums from the stage, showing us ‘a work-space hidden behind the red curtain’ as he describes it. His ongoing series ‘The Fourth Wall’ takes us behind-the-scenes of Europe’s most famous theatres.

Anna di Prospero

Italy

Rome-based Anna di Prospero travels a lot, and creates meaningful self-portraits blending herself into urban environments

Chompoo Baritone

Thailand

Every day, thousands of people on Instagram snap pictures meant to invent a new identity for themselves. That is the message behind this wonderful photo series by Chompoo Baritone, a photographer in Bangkok, Thailand who shows just how fake Instagram photos can be.

Erik Madigan Heck

United Kingdom

“At first, these highly stylized fashion images from Erik Madigan Heck look like vector art. However, these shots of Junya Watanabe’s Fall 2015 collection are actually all photography, but edited to be flat and one dimensional to complement the graphic nature of the collection.”

Mattia Crepaldi

Italy

Milan-based photographer Mattia Crepaldi teamed up with some of the most beautiful models of Italy and Europe, such as Ilaria Pozzi. They all have jaw-dropping tattoos, from neo traditional to geometric, and from tattoo masters such as Marco Galdo. Mattia Crepaldi’s portraits are diptychs, showing two different aspects or complementary sides of his model. The result is raw, dark, but also moving and breath-taking…

Ben Thomas

Australia

“In the series ‘Chroma’, Australian photographer Ben Thomas captures photos of urban landscapes featuring bright aqua-hue tones and simple forms that resemble illustrations. Shot across a number of cities – including London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Shanghai – the images depict a diverse mix of architecture and skylines. To achieve the colour and texture seen in his photos, Thomas usually photographs on sunny days and uses photo editing tools to create the right balance between intensity and depth.”