Portraits Like These Aren't Common And They're Absolutely Beautiful
Alexandra Bochkareva is a Russian Photographer based in St Petersburg and has a great fascination for freckles and crimson locks. She says, “I adore working with redheaded and freckled models.”
Since she was first hooked on photography four years ago, Alexandra has captured the beauty of redheads through her dreamy and dazzling photographs.
While her models are humans, she has not limited her creativity to photographing only people but has also included a gorgeous red fox in her fairy tale portraits. This creates a truly gorgeous and enchanting feel to these photographs.
Alexandra started her career as a photographer after the birth of her daughter. While Alexandra has had some formal training, she developed her photographic skills mostly by reading books and through experimentation as a way to sharpen her skills.
Alexandra’s models were her friends and family when she initially took the first step into her photographic career. Experimenting with different styles of portrait photography, Alexandra eventually found her niche for capturing portraits of redheads.
As she progressed, she began mostly shooting outdoors in areas like forests or meadows amongst the luscious greenery. For her shoots, she mostly hires Polina (Polly) and Olga as her models.
Using these locations in particular and combining stunning forest backdrops with these models, their crimson locks look striking against the green color thereby giving that scenic look resembling a fairy tale.
To further enhance the beauty of her portraits and to add more life and focus to them, Alexandra introduced her models to a trained red fox named Alice and now they all work alongside each other.
The fiery red fox has since been featured in two series so far; notably the Autumn and the Winter series that you see here today.
In the Autumn series, Olga was photographed along with the red fox on the forest floor and the Winter series features Polly and Alice interacting with each other and embracing the snow.
When you look at the photographs, you can see that no fear exists between the models and Alice the fox and they look very calm and comfortable. This really brings out some beautiful emotion in the images which is really quite stark.
Alexandra says, “Alice is a wonderful animal, sometimes she is friendly, sometimes not. All the photographs are spontaneous – I tried to catch the moments of their unity. ”
Alexandra uses a manual Helios 77m-4 lens and the available natural lighting outdoors to capture these enchanting portraits.
If you are inspired by Alexandra’s work and wish to see more of her works or follow her, please follow the links below.
- Her Website
- Her 500px account is @leks-a
- Her Instagram is @alexandra_bochkareva_arts
- Her Facebook Page is @alexandrabochkarevaphotography
- Her Flickr Photostream is @in_bokeh
Autumn Series
Girl and Fox (Autumn) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Autumn) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Autumn) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Autumn) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Autumn) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Winter Series
Girl and Fox (Autumn) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Winter) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Winter) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Winter) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Winter) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Girl and Fox (Winter) – Image by Alexandra Bochkareva
Further Resources
- The Art of Stunning Natural Portrait Lighting With Reflectors by Alohal
- Capturing the Beauty of Natural Light at Any Time of Day by Chris Garrett
- Natural Light Techniques to Make Amazing Travel Portraits by Jacob Maentz
Alexandra's Pages
- Her Website
- Her 500px account is @leks-a
- Her Instagram is @alexandra_bochkareva_arts
- Her Facebook Page is @alexandrabochkarevaphotography
- Her Flickr Photostream is @in_bokeh
Further Learning
If you're into Portrait Photography, then you'll probably want to learn about The Art Of Portrait Photography. This guide will have you down with all the essentials you need to know to get your portraits looking gorgeous!
