Load data are the heartbeat of electric power systems and the important basis for power system planning and operation. This talk discusses two load-related research works, including load visualization and customer directrix load. First, we present a new load visualization method “Load Photo” to visualize loads in power systems. A load photo is a 2-D pixel graphical representation of load, in which the x-axis represents sampling time points for every day from Sunday to Saturday, the y-axis represents weeks from the first week till the last week, and the pixel color demonstrates the normalized load. The idea of load photo is just like taking a photo for the load that clearly demonstrates the load’s behavior. Furthermore, a load photo could serve as an input to deep learning models for more advanced applications. Then, we present the concept of customer directrix load (CDL) and a novel CDL-based demand response (DR) scheme. CDL is the desired load profile for customers from the view of the entire demand response program. CDL is proposed to address the deficiencies of the current customer baseline load (CBL)-based DR schemes. Large-scale CDL-based DR can be a critical enabler to integrate significant renewable energy sources into power systems.