BORREGO SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA - Sometimes an idea starts with a mood board.

Sometimes it starts with a location.

This one started in the car after a wedding.

Krissel had stepped in to assist me on a wedding when Maria wasn't available. Krissel is a friend, a colleague, and a photographer herself. She owns Krissel Rivas Photography, so she knows exactly what this job looks like from our side of the camera.

On the drive home, we started talking photography.

Ideas.

Things we wanted to make.

The kind of conversations photographers have when we've spent an entire day creating pictures and apparently haven't had enough yet.

Krissel told me how much she loved the Black Rider Studios style and that she really wanted to do a passion project with us.

That was enough for me.

We started planning.

And on February 16, 2025, we headed into Borrego Springs to make something that had absolutely nothing to do with another person's wedding.

This time, the photographer was going to be the subject.

I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

It is.

Every photographer has their own way of doing things.

Their own ideas about light.

Posing.

Composition.

Movement.

What looks good.

What doesn't.

And now you've got another professional standing in front of your camera who understands exactly what you're doing while you're doing it.

That's a little intimidating.

But Krissel made that feeling disappear pretty quickly.

Almost immediately, she stopped being the photographer.

She became the subject.

That's when everything opened up.

Her walls came down.

She stopped thinking about how I was making the photograph and started participating in it.

Then she began giving me these incredible poses.

Not poses that felt rehearsed.

Not somebody trying to demonstrate that she knew how photography worked.

Emotion.

Movement.

Presence.

She gave me enough artistic freedom to materialize the thing I had been seeing in my head.

At that point, I wasn't photographing another photographer anymore.

I was just photographing Krissel.

Exactly where I wanted to be.

Those were the three things I wanted from this session.

Strength.

Sensuality.

Femininity.

I don't see those things as opposites.

A woman doesn't have to sacrifice softness to look powerful.

She doesn't have to become aggressive to show strength.

And sensuality doesn't have to overwhelm the person underneath it.

Krissel could stand almost completely still and command the photograph.

Then she'd move through the dress, climb onto a rock, sit in the grass or look straight through the camera and give the image something completely different.

That's what I was after.

Not one version of her.

All those qualities existing together.

I love photographing in the desert.

I think it's one of the most underrated landscapes we have.

People see emptiness.

I see scale.

Texture.

Silence.

Mountains that don't need any help looking dramatic.

Light that can turn completely different in a matter of minutes.

And there is something majestic about how unforgiving the place looks.

A forest can make someone feel enchanted.

The ocean can make someone feel free.

The desert?

The desert can turn a woman into a phoenix.

That's what I wanted for Krissel.

The landscape is enormous, but she never looks swallowed by it.

She holds her ground.

Sometimes she almost seems to challenge it.

That black dress against all those pale rocks, golden grasses and muted mountains made her impossible to ignore.

Exactly the point.

I've talked about black before.

I don't see it simply as a color of mourning or darkness.

To me, black can represent freedom.

The most intimate part of ourselves.

The version underneath all the decoration.

Something pure.

Something honest.

This is who I am.

Krissel's black dress gave the portraits that feeling.

Then there were the boots.

Boots always bring something else into a photograph for me.

Adventure.

Movement.

Freedom.

They tell you this person isn't just standing somewhere waiting to be admired.

She can go somewhere.

Climb something.

Disappear over the next ridge if she feels like it.

Put those things together—the black dress, boots, silver jewelry, Krissel, and Borrego Springs—and the character started forming on its own.

We just followed her.

This is why trust matters so much in portrait photography.

Everybody arrives with defenses.

Some are obvious.

Some aren't.

Where do I put my hands?

Does this look weird?

Is my body okay from this angle?

What is the photographer seeing?

And if you keep asking those questions for the entire session, you're never really present.

The camera wins.

But when those defenses start coming down, something changes.

The person begins moving differently.

Expressions stop being calculated.

They start giving you ideas you didn't ask for.

The session becomes a collaboration instead of a sequence of poses.

Krissel got there fast.

And for someone who normally knows exactly what is happening on the other side of the lens, I think that's pretty remarkable.

She trusted me enough to stop managing the photograph.

That gave me the freedom to actually create it.

Then I sent her the photographs.

Her texts started coming in.

“I'm speechless ☠️”

Then:

“I can't believe it.”

A wall of star-eyed emojis.

“Wow wow wow.”

And then my favorite:

“Wow wow I can't stop looking at them.”

Followed by a mind-blown emoji.

That's the reaction I'm chasing with solo portraits.

Not because I need somebody staring at my photography all night.

I want them staring at themselves.

There's a difference.

Krissel already understands photography.

She knows lighting.

She knows editing.

She knows what lenses and angles can do.

And she still looked at herself and couldn't stop looking.

That's pretty damn satisfying.

Whenever I photograph someone alone, the objective is pretty simple.

I want them to see how amazing they are.

I'm not interested in manufacturing some imaginary version of you that only exists for an hour.

The person is already there.

Sometimes the difficult part is getting someone to lower the defenses long enough to actually see her.

That's why I think a solo portrait session can become an unforgettable experience.

The more willing you are to let those defenses down, the more room there is for something honest to happen.

And strangely enough, the more you stop worrying about looking good for the camera, the more likely you are to look at the photographs afterward and think:

Wait. That's me?

Yeah.

That's you.

It always was.

A passion project gives us room to build something around the person rather than forcing every session through the same formula.

In Diana's editorial portrait session in Escondido, another creative collaboration gave us room to explore presence, beauty, mood and the freedom that comes from creating without a traditional milestone attached to the session.

You can also explore Yaneli's flower-field portrait session, where the landscape becomes an active part of the visual story in a completely different way—color, movement and spring replacing the severity of the desert.

Different women.

Different environments.

Different energy.

That's how it should be.

Black Rider Studios' portrait work is built around mood, emotion, atmosphere and story. Our current portrait offerings specifically include solo and editorial photography built around that cinematic approach.

You don't need a wedding.

A graduation.

A pregnancy.

An anniversary.

You don't really need an excuse at all.

Sometimes wanting to see yourself differently is enough.

A passion project gives us room to build something around the person rather than forcing every session through the same formula.

In Diana's editorial portrait session in Escondido, another creative collaboration gave us room to explore presence, beauty, mood and the freedom that comes from creating without a traditional milestone attached to the session.

You can also explore Yaneli's flower-field portrait session, where the landscape becomes an active part of the visual story in a completely different way—color, movement and spring replacing the severity of the desert.

Different women.

Different environments.

Different energy.

That's how it should be.

Krissel came into the desert as a photographer. That didn't last long. Somewhere between the black dress, the mountains and the last of that Borrego Springs light, she stopped worrying about the camera. And that's when I got to photograph her.