Photographer Howard Schatz had an idea: place actors in a series of roles and dramatic situations to reveal the essence of their characters. Such was the premise behind his book, In Character: Actors Acting, which captures some of Hollywood’s most emotive stars in the act of, well, making faces. Luckily for us, he continued the tradition for Vanity Fair. Here are some of the best.

The Zelda Project is a Los Angeles, CA based group of friends who seek to bring to life the characters, settings, and overall feel of Ocarina of Time through photography and film. Our ultimate goal is to create the characters as they would appear in reality to the best of our abilities, placing them in beautiful sceneries true to their Hyrulean counterparts, and creating elaborate photosets utilizing art ranging from costuming to 3D CGI.

International photographic competition, which runs in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, awards special prize for the best close-up images. Here: Winner – Mayflies by Petar Sabol, Goričan, Croatia. (Photo by Sabol Petar/International Garden Photographer of the Year)

Run by the Society of German Nature Photographers (Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen), the prestigious annual contest celebrates the best wildlife photography from members in Germany. Here: Landscapes, second place: Florian Smit, “Rainforest” (Danum valley, Borneo). (Photo by Florian Smit/2019 GDT Nature Photographer of the Year)

A participant sets off on a penny-farthing bicycle at the start of the The Tweed Run in central London, Britain, May 14, 2016. The Tweed Run, a very British public bicycle ride through London's streets, with a prerequisite that participants are dressed in their best tweed cycling attire. (Photo by Hannah McKay/Reuters)

Born in Hanoi, 1979, a member of the Young Painter Association of Vietnam, Trang is an emerging young artist whose mind has been engraved with images of the city and the Northern villages. She brings these vivid memories of the villagers and their life to her paintings. She paints scenes of landscapes in thick textural impasto with bright colours of red, orange, yellow, and blue, making the genre of landscape her own. Her paintings depict her passion to showcase the radiance and freshness of the landscapes in Vietnam. For every stroke of brush reflects her burning desire to bring out a world of complications to simple living and a deep appreciation of nature’s blessing and beauty.

San Zhi, Taiwan is an abandoned vacation resort on the northern coast of Taiwan. It was built in the early 1980s, but construction of the futuristic resort ceased after a series of fatal accidents.
Even though it never opened as a vacation resort, San Zhi can still be toured. The strange pod-like buildings act as a tourist attraction. The colors of the pod-like buildings depend on their location. The buildings in the west are green, in the east pink, in the south blue, and in the north white

Moraine Lake is a glacially-fed lake in Banff National Park, 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) outside the Village of Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. It is situated in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, at an elevation of approximately 6,183 feet (1,885 m). The lake has a surface area of .5 square kilometres (0.19 sq mi). The lake, being glacially fed, does not reach its crest until mid to late June. When it is full, it reflects a distinct shade of blue. The colour is due to the refraction of light off the rock flour deposited in the lake on a continual basis.