When the day of the shoot arrives, however, Orwald
improvises a lot: playing with light, colour and objects within
the frame and often underexposing her images to give them a
more “mystic” look. She doesn’t take many shots, mostly she
simply converses with her models and, in the process of getting
to know each other, she will take some shots of them.
Orwald shares:
“I try to emanate something private, exposing
the beauty within. It is not just a portrait of a
beautiful girl, I seek muses who have beauty in
their eyes and souls, not only beautiful faces. I
always want to convey to the viewer something
both magical and mysterious.
“Often, I hear from people that my muses don’t
belong in the modern world, it seems like they
live in their own parallel universe. I like this
observation very much, it’s very close to my
heart.”
Once Orwald has her raw images, she begins her edits
in Lightroom or sometimes ACR, and will do the colour
corrections there. Then she turns to Photoshop for the more
detailed retouches. While it is not often a lengthy process,
sometimes she can toil with one single photo for 5-7 hours in
order to find its perfection. More concerned with colour than
retouching, Orwald labours to combine a realistic style with a
fairy-tale or old-fashioned look.
You can see in her images the nostalgia for past ages and
epochs with their talented artists, architecture and painters. Her
work is the hymn to nature and our connections with it--the ode
to our uniqueness.
Orwald concludes:
“My models don’t demonstrate ‘makeup’ or
‘ haircuts’. It doesn’t matter if they have red
lipstick or if they don’t. They are not just
empty dolls, I want to show them living in my
images—they are uniquely beautiful human
beings with their unique souls. I’m trying to
show the world how different, unusual and
beautiful nature creates us. I think beauty doesn’t
need any words, it blossoms in silence.”
Irina Bunyatyan - @irinaorwald