PHOTO TRIP ST. PETERSBURG — EIGHT MODELS, ONE ROBBERY

Arrival

St. Petersburg is beautiful, but the city doesn’t try to please you. I wasn’t afraid, but I had respect. Maybe it was the language, maybe that feeling of never quite knowing where you stood. This photography trip was different from the start.

The “Family Pension”

We stayed in a small, pleasant “family pension” with roughly 1,700 rooms. The corridors felt like airports, the walls were thin and it was constantly loud. The hotel food wasn’t great, but the food in the city was consistently very good.

Daily Rhythm

Mornings started with breakfast, then we took Uber to the studio. The drivers often dropped us 500 to 600 metres from the location. With Cyrillic signs and no sense of direction, those moments felt genuinely disorienting — but somehow we found our way every time.

The Studios

We worked exclusively in studios — but anyone picturing white walls and studio flash was wrong. The locations in St. Petersburg were lofts. High ceilings, old architecture, a lot of character. And above all: daylight. Large windows, often north or east-facing, that soft light you can’t buy.

I prefer working with available light over artificial light anyway — not out of convenience, but because it’s more honest. In these spaces that wasn’t a compromise. It was the only right decision. The light did the work with us.

More on available light photography: PetaPixel — Photography 101: Using Available Light

We were travelling together and tried not to influence each other. When my colleague was shooting in the studio, I knocked, waited for the okay, and stayed outside until he was done. When it was my turn, he was elsewhere, and so was the model. In the evenings we looked at the results and envied each other. Exactly as it should be.

In the mornings we worked with two models and shot for about three hours. Then a short lunch break, a change of location in the afternoon, new faces. Then another three hours of shooting. No stopwatch, but a rhythm that established itself quickly.

One of the models spoke exclusively Russian. There was no need to explain much — she set a relentless pace herself. She’d position herself, glance briefly, ask “Что дальше?” — “What now?” — and was already moving into the next pose. I’ve rarely shot so fast and rarely enjoyed it so much. That energy carried the whole room.

Some of the best images from this photography trip are now part of the Collector’s Edition and SIGNED.FRAMED.ICONIC. — limited edition fine art nude photography, hand-signed, numbered, for collectors who know what they want.

We called one Uber driver “Schumacher”. He drove close to a hundred kilometres an hour through residential streets, took corners like slalom gates, and smiled the whole time. I held on and wondered whether everyone drives like this here or whether we just got lucky.

One evening stood out: we wanted to eat steak with two of the models. In this restaurant every waiter and waitress looked like a model and sang between courses. It felt absurd, but it was good — both the food and the moment.

On the last day we had some time and visited a church. My equipment stayed at the hotel, his didn’t. On the street a man approached us and offered a hat — one of those with fold-down ear flaps. Meanwhile someone tried to open my colleague’s camera backpack. He turned around and hit back. Suddenly there were five men. It was fast, loud and pointless. In the end one lens was missing, nothing else. In that moment I understood that these men had nothing to lose. I was genuinely afraid.

The good things stay. I think first of the women — friendly, present, uncomplicated. I think of the food, of the evenings after the shoot, and of the model who only spoke Russian and understood everything anyway. St. Petersburg didn’t embrace me, but the week was full. Eight models, many images, a few bruises. It was real, and that’s why I went.

The images from this photography trip are available as limited edition fine art prints — exclusively here. Not in a poster shop. Not on Amazon. Only here, only as long as the edition runs.