Featured image credit: Stefan Beutler

The beauty of portraiture is that there is often far more to an image than simple aesthetics. We should get a sense of the subject’s personality, their history and their situation at the time of the photo. On a basic level, the power of portrait photography lies in its ability to tell a story.

With these factors in mind, I’ve gathered together what I feel are some of the best examples of portrait photography from a variety of online photo communities, including Flickr, deviantART and 1x.

Image credit: Natalia Ciobanu

Image credit: eugkyr

Image credit: sobull

Image credit: Andre Arment

Image credit: meriirem

Image credit: Stefan Beutler

Image credit: Dr Mimi

Image credit: Susan Coffey

Image credit: DmitryAgeev

Image credit: WK Chew

Image credit: Cory Smith

Image credit: Pvince

Image credit: Ivaylo Todorov

Image credit: BenoitPaille

Image credit: Dan Comaniciu

Image credit: Benoit Paille

Image credit: Jeremie Mazenq

Image credit: Nullermanden

Image credit: Eric Lafforgue