What happens when you process 640x480 JPEG webcam photos through a variety of Adobe Photoshop™ filters? The Faces Project is a series of digitally manipulated medium-resolution self-portraits that demonstrate how color, light, texture - and a pixel here, a pixel there - can radically shift the perceived emotional nuances of a face.

The prototype for the series was the little square icon in this blog's titlebar, processed from a January 2004 snapshot using Photoshop's "Stamp" filter in #000000 and #ff0099. As an experiment, I set up an Olympus W10 digital camera/voice recorder in webcam mode and took a series of muggy "photo booth" type snapshots. While this certainly isn't the first project of its kind, I've found the results surprisingly revealing and introspective. Some of the portraits are Warholishly Pop-py or "I-screamy" in the style of Edvard Munch; others look like album covers I've seen - or like nothing I've ever seen before.

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