Author Archives: Deea

About Deea

Summer lover.

Kateryna • Porto

Those of you who know me must know by now that I’ve got itchy feet. I can’t stay in one place for too long: I get bored, irritable, grumpy. I need to change the scenery every other few months at least, otherwise I’m going nuts.

Which is why in May we packed our bags and jumped on a plane to Porto, Portugal, where we visited a friend couple. This was sort of a holiday – “sort of” because I still had to work every now and then to finish some pending tasks.

So, while holidaying there I decided to squeeze in my schedule a quick model test shoot with Kateryna Atamanova, a beautiful model I had previously discovered on Instagram. She was up for the session as well so we agreed on an early morning meeting in the heart of Porto.

I wanted to capture bits of the city as well so we moved around the central streets to discover old stone walls, blue azulejos or views of the city’s skyline with its orange rooftops. Kateryna was very easy to work with, posing graciously for the camera; it was a pleasure to photograph her in the picturesque setup of Porto – my only regret is we didn’t have more time available 🙂

Spilled Rainbow • Editorial in Ellements Magazine • April 2018

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Early January we turned my studio upside down. Actually, a few days ago I still found bits of cotton wool sneaking around.

Let’s just rewind a bit.

A few days previous to this session, Damaris (the model) introduced me to Anna (the MUA), a talented artist from our hometown Oradea. As I mostly shoot outdoors, I wanted to experiment more indoors during the depressing winter days and try my hand at beauty photography, something I have quite neglected over time. Damaris & Anna were also eager to create something new so, long story short, we decided to get together and do a beauty series. We found a theme based around colours and came up with the rainbow idea. We wanted it to be fun, crazy and out of the ordinary. Anna made a few amazing illustrations with her make-up proposals for the series to have an idea of what we were going to shoot and Damaris brought with her all the random expressions possible.

To give the idea of a rainbow between clouds, we used LOADS of cotton wool and struggled with getting it to stay in place. By the time we finished shooting, there was cotton wool and hair spray all over the place.

We imagined it would take us a few hours to get the whole 6 looks done, but it turned out we needed two afternoons extended to very late evenings to finish it all.

The results: a gazillion awesome captures that made my life a nightmare to select just a few best ones. And, bonus, some of them made it into the April issues of Ellements Magazine.

Equipment used: Canon 6D with Canon EF 50mm f1.8, one small 160W studio strobe light with 60x60cm square softbox.

Team credits:

Model: Damaris Prada.

MUA: Anna Cherciu

Discover Boutique • Lookbook

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Remember the campaign I shot for Discover Boutique fashion brand last year in Barcelona? The beautiful white/blue garments, the luscious green garden as location and the 3 lovely muses?

Well, earlier this year I got to photograph their lookbook as well!

We shot it at my studio in Oradea with beautiful Damaris as model and the most pleasant natural winter light. I had a studio flash and soft box prepared just in case (with weather you never know!) but ended up not using them.

Michelle (the woman behind Discover Boutique) flew in one day earlier with all the garments and a few lovely accessories and we woke up earlier the day of the shoot to get everything ready before the model arrived. It was actually funny to shoot summer clothing while outdoors the temperatures were quickly heading below zero. 😉

We decided to photograph on the natural wooden floor instead of an all-white simple backdrop because it contrasts beautifully with the white/blue clothing and it also goes nicely with the whole idea of timeless and sustainable fashion. Plus, it adds more interest to the images without distracting attention.

Hair and make-up were also kept to a minimum and done by the model herself.

It was a pleasure to photograph these looks again in a different environment and I’m happy with how it all turned out!

Winds of Change • Editorial in PUMP Magazine • December 2017

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Been waiting for so long to share this one with you!

While living in Barcelona last year I got the opportunity to meet some amazing people in the industry, talented & ambitious emerging artists and luckily had the chance to collaborate with some of them.

You already know beautiful Danny from some of my previous posts (this one and this one). After I met her and did the test shoot, I knew I wanted her in the editorial I was already planning with Sandra (the stylist) and I was so happy when she accepted to play the part! She’s not only beautiful and talented, but also serious about the modelling job and I sincerely hope she’ll have a great future as a model.

With Sandra – Sa Rederi – I met randomly at an event and I liked her strong, determined attitude from the very beginning. It was also such a joy to have someone to practice my Spanish with! 😉 She’s very passionate about styling and very professional. I deeply appreciated how well she took care of her task, she prepared each look in advance (and sent me pics so I had an idea beforehand of how the styling will look like on the day of the photoshoot), took care of all clothes to be in order for the day, had the releases at hand, helped the model get in and out of each look and all in all was in charge of everything that implied styling and assisting as well. It might sound like common sense to do all this as a stylist but, unfortunately, very few people are this serious about their job.

Sandra brought along Esther, an incredibly talented make-up artist and a person with such a positive attitude it was a pleasure to work with her!

This photoshoot turned out to be one of my favourites to date! The theme was revolving around the late autumn season, with a casual, yet interesting styling, simple but eye-catching make-up, all in a gorgeous location on the outskirts of Barcelona.

The weather was not on our side unfortunately – we had to postpone the photo session once due to unexpected storms and even on the day of the session it got cloudy and dark while we were hurrying to photograph the last looks. But all in all it turned out great and what I appreciated the most was how well every one in the team got involved and took their tasks with utmost seriosity.

This series got featured in the December issue of PUMP Magazine and really, you can tell how much I love the outcome by the amount of outtakes I’ve got from the set. It was so, so hard to pick just a few final images!

Hope you like it too and don’t forget to show some love to the talented team as well!

Photographer: Andreea Iancu

Model: Danil Polanco

Styling: Sa Rederi

HMUA: Esther Carbonell

Designers featured: Carlos Barrutia, Valmizar, Judith Gomez, Shernas, Natalie Joyce.

And here are some of my favourite outtakes (unpublished captures):

Discover Boutique Campaign • BALI Collection

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With a bit of delay… Happy New Year! 🙂

How are you guys?

I’ve been willing to write this blog post for a couple of months now, but never found the time to sit down in silence and properly gather my thoughts.

Thankfully, here I finally am!

I met Michelle on a hot summer day in Barcelona to talk about her upcoming project. There are people that uplift your spirit from the second you see them and I felt exactly like that when I saw her. She seemed cheerful and energetic and walked me through her project with a contagious enthusiasm. Her dream was to design her own womenswear line and she was working passionately (and hard!) at it: building her brand and website from scratch, learning to design clothes and to pour her ideas into something tangible, searching the right factory to create the products… and then her attention and care for the clothes not only to come out as faithful as possible to how she envisioned them, but also for them to be ethically made by a factory that respects its workers.

She had a story.

She had a story and her ambition and enthusiasm made me believe in it.

And because of that, I’m so happy she believed in me and I got to be the one to photograph the launching campaign of her first collection, a beautiful womenswear line of airy, flowing garments in white and blue, bearing symbols inspired from Bali.

Michelle’s idea for the campaign was to feature a few different models that would embody the core values of the “Discover Boutique” woman: confident, adventurous, in love with life and nature.

Our models for the day were (from left to right in the image below): Elisa, Maria and Katrina – three beautiful ladies with different stories, backgrounds and personalities, but despite being different, I feel they fitted in so well in the whole story.

The location was also stunning: the Botanical Garden of Marimurtra in Blanes (a coastal village close by to Barcelona), a lavishly exotic place overlooking the Mediterranean Sea that would hint a bit to the rich greeneries – but unfortunately too distant! – of Bali.

We began the day quite early over tasty homemade coffee with the girls getting their make-up and hair done at Michelle’s place and then headed over to Blanes. I have to confess that, despite the day starting sunny and cloudless, I was afraid of an unexpected rain – the past days in Barcelona made me fear these sudden weather changes. Me fear got even bigger when, once in Blanes, a gloomy cloud was hovering over the botanical garden.. but, luckily, no drop of rain ruined the day!

The whole shoot was a pleasure and we finished the day with a few more captures on a nearby beach until the night engulfed us (and the mosquitoes ate me alive…).

Ok, enough talking 🙂

Head over to Discover Boutique website to read more about the story behind Michelle’s brand! There’s also a behind the scenes video from our photo session 😉

Also, many many thanks, again, to the amazing team and to Michelle for believing in me!

Models: Elisa, Maria and Katrina

HMUA: Brenda Sarkissian

Behind the scenes photo & video: Scott Gower & Terry Williams

Enjoy the photos and let me know which garment is your favourite! 🙂

♥︎

#inmystudio • Oana

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Seems that this autumn was quite fruitful with my studio series. 🙂

This time it was a cold dull morning, the light very different from the previous session. It gives me the feeling of rain and melancholia, a sort of sadness – but a beautiful one.

I love doing these experiments in various types of natural light – it’s amazing how much it changes its quality and how varied the results that you can obtain.

I also played with a shallow depth of field, especially in the close-ups, to focus on the model’s wonderful eyes.

Again, you can notice how the light shapes her features differently, by moving from the darker areas of the room to right in front of the window.

Model: Oana G.

Check out the whole #inmystudio series.

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#inmystudio • Manuela

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One sunny autumn day I got together with two of my favourite persons and put up a quick photo session at my place. The weather was amazing: pleasant warm morning sun creating different light areas inside my studio, I just had to take advantage of it!

I wanted very natural make-up & hair and various accessories to play with – we worked with what the girls had in their wardrobes, especially the tassel earrings which were quite in at that time.

As always it’s a pleasure to work with Manuela, the model, and Cristina, the MUA – I know I can count on them every time to deliver beautiful results. And a bonus point, every shoot with them is a fun one 😉

You’ll notice how the light changes in some of the captures – it’s because we moved around from the more shaded areas to the ones right in front of the window to experiment. Natural light is still my absolute favourite light to photograph in, problem is it’s hard to count on it due to it’s unpredictability and often inconsistency so in the meanwhile I’m learning to love the artificial light life 🙂

Check out the whole #inmystudio series.