Group of Friends Creatively Documents No-Shave November in Photos

Pictured: Michael Lubin, Stephen Santos, Josh Antioho, Tyler Petersen, and Brock Macpherson

Every November, millions of people participate in No-Shave November—a month-long commitment to forgo shaving and grooming to raise cancer awareness. For men, this typically means letting their facial hair grow long—whether it involves starting a beard or refraining from trimming their already-long whiskers. One group of guy friends have made this time of year a tradition and used it as an excuse to dress up in costumes and take a creative group photo. Starting in 2013, the men have donned outfits and been everything from lumberjacks to Viking warriors.

The group of guys are long-time friends who enjoy creating online content and work collaboratively on the project each year. “Usually when we get together we'll bounce ideas around for a theme beforehand, and usually the ones that make us laugh the most are the themes we go with,” Michael Lubin tells My Modern Met. “Three outta the five of us are roommates, and the other two are local, so getting together for the photoshoot is easy.” They set up photo lights, snap each individual portrait, and then Photoshop everyone into one picture along with props and other effects. “We always try to one-up the previous year, so most of our favorites tend to be the latter ones.”

For many years, the group kept their No-Shave photos largely to themselves, opting to share them with people in their social network. But all of that changed in 2017. “Stephen’s girlfriend at the time suggested we put it on Reddit,” Lubin explains. “None of us had posted anything on it and weren't sure if anything would come of it, and lo and behold, we got 62.7K upvotes on Reddit in 2017, and now in 2020, we hit 109K upvotes!”

We’re looking forward to seeing what they come up with next year. In the meantime, scroll down to see what they've created over the past seven years.