French photographer and director Romain Laurent started making portrait-based GIFs as a way to produce work outside his commercial jobs, a spontaneous project that would encourage him to produce consistently for himself rather than clients.

An Egyptian passenger sits on the locomotive of a train as it leaves Cairo train station in Egypt, Wednesday, October 14, 2015. (Photo by Amr Nabil/AP Photo)

A photojournalist is silhouetted by the sunset as a lightning strike at a resort affected by Saturday's tsunami in Carita, Indonesia, Tuesday, December 25, 2018. Christmas celebrations traditionally filled with laughter and uplifting music were replaced by somber prayers for tsunami victims in an area hit without warning following a volcanic eruption, leaving hundreds of people dead and thousands homeless in disaster-prone Indonesia. (Photo by Fauzy Chaniago/AP Photo)

First responders work at the site of a deadly bus crash, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on February 10, 2025. (Photo by Josue Decavele/Reuters)

Macaques huddle together for warmth at a hot spring in Nagano, Japan in the last decade of December 2023. Known as snow monkeys, the animals soak in the 40°C water every day during cold weather, spending their bathtime grooming, snoozing and playing on visitors’ camera tripods. (Photo by David Lazar/Animal News Agency)

A child yells, “I don't want go!” as a state employee attempts to remove her from another branch of the Orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding, in the Kenscoff area outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, February 14, 2020. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)

Sophie Weissenberg, of Germany, grabs her ankle after being injured while warming up for the women's heptathlon 100-meter hurdles at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Thursday, August 8, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France. (Photo by Ashley Landis/AP Photo)

A Scottish Highland bull on the loose in New Milford, Connecticut on Tuesday, February 18, 2025. (Photo by Caitlin Mandracchi/AP Photo)