We spent the day shooting with the super-talented Ukrainian fashion designer Viktoriia Vlasenko and model Katie Murillo in the Imperial Sand Dunes of California.
Viktoriia trained as a designer in Milan, the fashion capital of Italy, and brought her Euro-Slavic design sensibilities to California, where she met us during a fashion shoot. It turned out to be a very fortuitous meeting and melding of minds! We quickly learned that we shared a passion for photography-based storytelling, and together story-boarded a series of incredible fashion editorials.
Our first shoot, the “Goddess of Sunrise,” cast the ever-beautiful Katelynn Murillo as she who has awakened to the desert sun. The location of the shoot was the Imperial Sand Dunes, a challenging location, at least for that day! Our van filled with lighting and camera equipment was completely stuck in the quicksand caused by a sudden flash downpour in the middle of the night. What are the chances that it would rain in one of the driest places on earth on the ONE day we chose to shoot in the desert? Thanks to the kindness of strangers, we managed to escape the sand dunes and head to our shoot location on time for sunrise the next morning.
Every cloud has a silver lining, because the overcast skies that caused the unexpected downpour broke into a glorious sunrise - perfection!
This sample photo is a pre-production snippet. We can’t wait to share the next leg of our adventure - stay tuned!