If you’re at all familiar with my work, you’ve seen Kristina Koumaeva’s face many times. She’s a stunning dancer and model, brilliant mind, and all-around amazing person. Los Angeles is home base for her right now so I always get excited when she comes back to town and we have a chance to work together.
I can always count on Kristina to bring massive creative energy and awesome ideas to our shoots. This time around, she wanted to be in nature so we chose a local park for our location. I wanted her in a field with tall, golden grass and I knew just the spot. Kristina wanted to show a more vulnerable side so we decided to remove a little clothing. Not always the best idea in a public space but between our secluded spot and her amazing boyfriend, Josh playing lookout, we made it work. She also brought an epic scarf so we had tons of fun playing with that!
The weather was beautiful and a little unusual. We had sunlight coming from one direction but a nice cloud bank in the other direction. The combination was wonderful because the temperature was perfectly warm but the tones were so stormy. As such, I edited this session a little differently than I would have normally.
I use my creative work as an opportunity to explore new lighting, editing methods, posing, etc to ensure that I’m constantly growing as an artist. This time, I placed focus on moodier tones and the use of texture. I haven’t played with texture very much but I love it when it’s used well. In this case, I used it to further separate Kristina from the background and to add a little more life to the image. The texture I used is from Brooke Shaedan (a queen of creative composites) and looks similar to a concrete wall. Overall, I had lots of fun editing this series and plan to incorporate more textures in my future work!