BORREGO SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA - Some stories belong to the person being photographed.

You don’t need all the details.

Neither do I.

Jannet originally came into our world through plans that eventually changed direction. When that happened, we invited her back for a couple of portrait sessions instead.

No ceremony.

No timeline.

No crowd waiting somewhere.

Just Jannet, a camera, and a chance to make something new out of a chapter that hadn’t gone the way anybody expected.

On March 22, 2025, that brought us to Borrego Springs.

I wanted the photographs to feel like strength.

Resilience.

Not the loud kind.

The kind that gets up and keeps moving.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably keep saying it.

The desert gets misunderstood.

At first glance, it can look like a place where things go to die.

Dry earth.

Hard rock.

Plants that look like they’ve been arguing with the sun for fifty years.

Not much mercy.

But look closer.

Things are alive everywhere.

They just learned how to survive differently.

That’s what I love about it.

The desert can symbolize an ending, sure.

But it can also be the place where life starts again tougher than it was before.

There was something about that idea that made Borrego Springs feel right for Jannet.

I wasn’t interested in making photographs about whatever came before this session.

That belonged to her.

I wanted to photograph what comes next.

When I started directing Jannet, strength was the thing I wanted to pull into the photographs.

But strength is tricky.

Tell someone to look strong and there’s a pretty good chance they’ll stare angrily into the camera like they’re about to fight somebody in a parking lot.

That wasn’t what I wanted.

Strength can be still.

Quiet.

Controlled.

It can be somebody standing alone with an entire mountain behind her and not disappearing into it.

It can be the way she holds herself.

Where her eyes go.

How much space she occupies without apologizing for it.

So I coached.

Changed the position of a shoulder.

Adjusted where she looked.

Used the rocks.

Let the landscape do some of the heavy lifting.

Then kept working.

Jannet was quiet.

I could tell she was uneasy.

And I understood it.

I’m a man photographing a woman. I don’t get to walk into that situation assuming somebody should immediately trust me because I happen to be holding an expensive camera.

Women have reasons to be careful.

So I worked differently.

I gave her space.

I avoided unnecessary physical contact.

If I wanted to change something, I asked whether it was okay.

If we were going to try something different, I made sure she knew she had a choice.

She needed to feel that she was still in control of the session.

And somewhere in between all of that, I did what I usually do when a room—or in this case, an enormous desert—feels a little tense.

I made jokes.

Because apparently that’s one of the things I bring to a photoshoot besides cameras.

The trust didn’t suddenly arrive in some big cinematic moment.

It happened gradually.

A little more comfort.

A little more understanding.

Another photograph.

Then another.

That was enough.

There’s a phrase photographers use a lot:

Let your walls down.

I use it too.

Because when somebody trusts us, we can usually reach photographs with more emotion in them.

But there’s another side to that.

You don’t owe your photographer access to every part of you.

Trust has to be earned.

And even then, you decide how much you want to give.

Not every portrait session turns into some grand revelation where I suddenly understand who somebody is at the deepest level.

Frankly, I shouldn’t.

I’m a photographer.

Not a locksmith.

My job isn’t to break through somebody’s defenses because I think there might be a better photograph hiding behind them.

My job is to recognize where the person is comfortable, respect it, and create the strongest work I can inside the trust they’ve given me.

That was this session.

I could write some dramatic paragraph here about discovering the woman underneath everything.

I’m not going to.

I didn’t.

Jannet kept a lot of herself private.

And that’s okay.

What I can tell you is much simpler.

She’s a beautiful woman.

She looked good standing in that enormous desert.

She carried herself with strength.

And for a few hours, we made photographs together that belonged entirely to her.

Sometimes that’s enough.

Maybe more photographers should be willing to say that.

We have this strange idea that fresh starts are supposed to be loud.

New chapter.

New me.

Big declaration.

Maybe dramatic music starts playing somewhere.

Real life usually isn’t that tidy.

Sometimes starting over is quieter.

You get dressed.

You drive into the desert.

You stand in front of somebody’s camera even though you’re not completely comfortable with it.

You try something.

Then you go home.

No fireworks required.

Life still moved forward.

And I think there’s something pretty beautiful about that.

Borrego Springs can tell completely different stories depending on who steps into it.

In Krissel’s Borrego Springs portrait session, another photographer stepped in front of our camera and eventually gave herself completely to the creative process. Same desert. Very different relationship with the camera. Black Rider Studios

You can also see a different kind of creative solo portraiture in Diana’s editorial portrait session in Escondido, where a passion project gave us room to explore beauty, presence, and the way someone sees herself. Black Rider Studios

That’s one of the reasons I don’t want our solo portraits to follow a formula.

Different people bring different amounts of themselves.

The photography should leave room for that.

lack Rider Studios describes its solo portrait work as living somewhere between strength and softness, with a cinematic approach built around the person rather than forcing everyone into the same mold. Black Rider Studios

That also means the experience matters.

If you’re nervous, we notice.

If you need space, we give it.

If you don’t know how to pose, we direct you.

If something doesn’t feel right, say so.

The strongest photographs usually come from trust and collaboration, but neither of those things can be forced.

The desert never asked Jannet what happened before she got there.

Neither did I.

We just made photographs.

Sometimes the next chapter can begin that simply.