I’m happy to share with you today the first set from my photo session with beautiful model Ana Lendl a few weeks ago in Barcelona!
Ana is from Vienna and I was following her instagram for quite a while already, hoping that maybe one day when I find myself in her city I’ll get the chance to photograph her beauty. Guess what? The chance arrived much earlier, when Ana announced she was heading to Barcelona!
Yaaay!
The rest is obvious: we met for a quick photoshoot in one of Barcelona’s beautiful gardens. I had an idea in mind of what I was looking for in terms of framing and posing, however, the location was so rich in picture-perfect corners that we quickly switched to another place that worked out much better with her look and which also had more pleasant lighting. Always try to have this lesson in mind: keep your eyes open, be aware of your surroundings and try to get the subject from various angles in various locations.
Ana was lovely and such a pleasure to work with! And despite her having a cold, she made it through the session with professionalism! Hats off!
Make-up was done by Ana herself and the gorgeous red dress is from Mango.
I met Nathalia a few years ago while living in Sevilla, Spain and then life brought us together again a month ago in Barcelona 🙂 Funny how life works sometimes, isn’t it?
She needed a set of professional portraits right before she left Spain to pursue a greater challenge in her life. The photos were required to be serious but not stiff, rather more casual, showing of her personality in a subtle way.
I’m so proud that she trusted me as a photographer and I hope I successfully managed to express how she’s a strong and ambitious woman, yet friendly and approachable, with a warm heart.
Of course I also had her stand in a colorful flower bush by the end of our shoot – because flower obsession reasons.
I shared her story on my Wonderful Stories page, but you can read it here too. Below are her words:
“She didn’t know what these pictures were representing for me. During this shooting, she was immortalising a before and an after, the beginning of a new period for me. My new me. Nobody said it would be an easy period, but at least it is a new and challenging one, and Andreea perfectly captured the message I wanted to transmit: Hello, my name is Nathalia and I am ready to fight for my dreams, without fear. Here we go.” – Nathalia
Wishing you all the best in what’s to come, Nathalia, and hope our paths will cross again soon!
As you might have noticed, I finally made some free time to get back on track with the blog – so many projects I didn’t get the chance to share with you yet! One at a time, bare with me!
So back at the end of May (madre mia, is it really August already or am I dreaming!?) I had the pleasure to photograph beautiful Damaris for her 18th birthday. She’s such a sweet girl, it was a joy to take her portraits!
It’s always such a nice feeling to see a model (especially when they don’t have too much experience or any at all) transform from being a bit nervous at the beginning of the photoshoot and then gradually gaining confidence, so by the end of the session they’re relaxed and, most of the times, it’s when we get the best captures.
We went for one of my all-time favourite setups: nature, this time in the form of a gorgeous, intimate garden that gave us plenty of options to move around and alternate angles. All natural light!
The rose bush was special itself – it wasn’t actually part of the mentioned garden. We spotted it by the road in front of a block of flats, while in the car. The moment I saw it I already had the framed portrait in my head, so by the end of the session we headed back there, found it again, and got a few more captures while dealing with curious passers-by.
I’m in love with the results of this session and hope you guys like it too!
To mark such an important moment – turning 18 – this session wouldn’t have been complete without having the photos in print form too, to make sure they won’t get lost in the sea of digital files and to keep them forever (or gift them to loved ones). All of them came in white frame and safely guarded in a box for protection.
I always advocate for having your favourite photos printed – especially when they mark an important moment in your life. Actually, I’m looking forward to selecting and printing out my travel captures as soon as I settle in one place and have where to store them (or show them off, hehe) – the selecting process will surely be the hardest one, in order to pick the best of the best.
Do you value printed photography? Share your thoughts below!
I’ve been quite the busy bee in the past months since arriving in Barcelona – from adding new beautiful faces to my portfolio, working on some awesome photo projects I can’t tell you more about just yet, to meeting new people and discovering as much of Barcelona and the surroundings as I can.. oh, by the way! I’ve created a new blog completely dedicated to my travel wanderings that are not connected to my photoshoots and it’s called.. wait for it… Where is Deea!
So for those of you that kept telling me to write more about my whereabouts – now you have a special place just for that! You guys know how much I love traveling so if you follow me there you’ll definitely be the first to see all the new content that’s coming up!
Now let’s get back to today’s subject! 😉
One of the first photoshoots I had after arriving in Barcelona was with beautiful Marie from Germany who was visiting here with a friend. We connected quite randomly via Facebook: she saw my announcement that I was heading to Barcelona and she wrote me! So glad she did, because I’m in love with how our photos turned out (and also with her freckled skin!)!
We fought the midday heat in the center of Barcelona while also trying to ignore a ton of tourists curious to see what’s going on. If you’ve been around here for a while, then you know how much I dislike shooting at noon! So if that’s a must, I always try to look for a shaded spot next to a building or maybe a park with rich foliage – this time it was the park’s turn to shade us.
I knew I wanted to include flowers in this session because in the days before meeting Marie I was absolutely obsessing with every pink bougainvillea bush I ran into. But the first bush we found at hand was a white one in the shade of a tree. Hmm.. this might work, I thought.
Oh, and it did so well! I fell in love with how the light was filtering through the foliage, how the model was shaded but the flowers were glimmering around her in the sunlight! I felt it all fell together so beautifully – of course that having a stunning model who posed wonderfully helped too! 😉
I was satisfied with our captures – I knew I had at the very least a couple of great ones to pick – but while leaving the park we bumped into a.. pink bougainvillea bush! HELL YEAH! Camera back on and let’s improvise the scene for a few more photos!
What I love most about this session is how different the location and light transformed an otherwise similar setup. The model was the same, wearing almost no make-up and having the same hairstyle. Still, the first set – in the white bush – looks more as a fairytale, whereas the second one – in the pink bush – has a sort of latino feeling in it.
And, bonus! I recored a new video featuring the retouching process that went behind the first set! I thought you guys might be interested in how I approached the skin retouching considering the freckles (which can make it more difficult). It also contains the color toning as it was all done on the spot, no actions used. Let me know what you think and what would you like me to feature in the future videos!
