Alina Korneeva

Alina is a Moscow based full-time photographer. We talked about her artistic view, why she favors people over architecture and the advantages of analog photography.
Image: Self portrait.

Thomas Berlin: Alina, you are creating natural looking portraits of woman in your studio. Is your focus on beautiful photographs only, or do you also consider the personality of the model?

Alina Korneeva: I believe that the point of photography is in revealing people’s beauty in an individual way. I create beautiful shots taking into account the individuality of the exact model, who I shoot. I don't understand how it could be otherwise. For me photography has always been a combination of creating beautiful pictures and revealing individuality.

Thomas Berlin: Let us go a bit deeper. Do you want to express something with your images?

Alina Korneeva: I’m always trying to show the individuality of a person, its versatility. I’m aiming to capture perception of a person’s essence — exact elements, which a person consists of, without adding any previously seen shapes, not admitting any person’s feigned representations, forbidding stereotyped posing. In my shots I’m looking for a person’s nature, that’s why I always choose basic clothes that do not draw attention. I don't hide a person behind clothes, my philosophy is that personality should come to the fore. I want my works to be dedicated only to the personality I shot, regardless of time and environment. I also try to show my customers that he/she is a completed beautiful masterpiece, with his/her own unique features, even if he/she does not even realize it yet. This is kind of therapy, self-acceptance of a person.

Thomas Berlin: How would you describe your picture style?

Alina Korneeva: I don’t think that there is a name for my style, and I really don’t want to be labeled. I just like taking pictures of people. I tried different approaches and found out that I want to show people’s personality in a natural way, not hiding it behind tons of make-up and layers of clothing. Perfect session for me is when a person does not pretend to be someone, but opens up and allows to shoot him/her as he/she is.

Thomas Berlin: Is beauty in the mainstream sense decisive for the model selection or would you also work with models that do not correspond to the current ideal of beauty?

Alina Korneeva: I shoot not only models, I like working with people of different ages and sizes, without any restrictions. First of all, I work with a person and it doesn't matter to me whether a person has experience as a model or not. I really do not like the standardized concept of beauty, because everyone is beautiful. I’m very glad that the trend towards naturalness and individuality is developing. Girls want less and less to be just same-looking copies of each other. Fewer people are using processing and filters. We are moving towards a healthier society where people learn to accept themselves.

Thomas Berlin: Why do you photograph people and not e.g. architecture or other motifs?

Alina Korneeva: For me it's much more interesting to work with people. I can shoot architecture too, but it is not as enjoyable as when you try to create something with a person whom you see for the first time in your life. Even if this is your close friend, it doesn't matter, shooting people is always a special feeling. It's like a dance where you interact. Architecture doesn't care how and why you shoot it, it doesn't participate in the process, that's why it's boring for me.

Thomas Berlin: Are you a full time or part time photographer?

Alina Korneeva: I’m a full-time photographer. I work pretty hard now — recently I got my own studio, and it does not allow me to relax and stimulates my activity. I’m co-renting this studio with several talented photographers. I try to mix commercial orders and creative sessions evenly and give myself enough time to rest so as not to burn out, as has happened to me before. Burnout is a fairly common story among creative people, it hinders progress a lot.

Thomas Berlin: How important is it to you that other people like your work?

Alina Korneeva: I won’t dissemble — the response and feedback are very important to me. Moreover, I consider it normal to look for feedback from people. Why do I shoot? Do I exist without my audience? Are my works needed, if they don’t leave any feedback? I’m sincerely convinced that the more hearts I can touch, the more meaning my works contain.

Thomas Berlin: How do you deal with light? When is natural light and when is artificial light the center of your choice?

Alina Korneeva: Natural light is a priority for me, if it's enough - I shoot only with it. If the light is bad I use additional sources. I like working with cinema light.

Thomas Berlin: Please sort the following ingredients of a people shoot according to decreasing priority for your work: model, concept, location, camera equipment, light, spirit of the photographer.

Alina Korneeva: These all are even components, they go together, not separately. No doubt, the most important component is light — you can’t take a shot without light, everything else is optional.

Thomas Berlin: Again: Alina, you are shooting mostly analog. What is the special charm of analog pictures? Can't it also be generated digitally?

Alina Korneeva: Nobody yet has invented how to make digital shots look exactly as analog. All attempts failed — I always can see the difference between an analog shot and a digital one with a filter. If you want to get analog look — shoot on film, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Thomas Berlin: But isn't the analogue way of working in commissioned photography somehow anachronistic? Can you please say more about your motivation to switch from digital to analog photography?

Alina Korneeva: I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to study photography by digital and to start shooting analog only after gaining experience. While shooting digital you are unlimited and you can do as many shots as you want, but analog film does not forgive mistakes, each frame costs money. Digital photography allows everybody to learn how to shoot without enormous expenses.

I switched to analog photography because it gives me the opportunity to focus on photography, not retouching. When I was shooting digital, I was wasting 2-3 days on retouching after each session. Just shots selection usually took several hours. It was terribly exhausting for me, I didn't go out for a walk, I forgot to eat. I think it's awful when you take pictures for two hours and retouch for several days after. In addition by retouching I was always aiming to achieve the analog look of my digital shots. Why imitate when you can just shoot on film? Medium format has a wide dynamic range and high image resolution. People have a stereotype associated with film, they think that analog shots are of inferior quality and must have a lot of grain, but this is not true. Medium format outperforms most digital cameras and competes with top-end ones. Medium format shots have stunning depth and characteristic tonality that cannot be mimicked on a digital image.

After shooting 40-50 frames per session, I usually give the client about 30 good photos. This is a great efficiency, I think. When shooting digital, I took 700-1000 shots and gave only 15.The more time I shoot on film, the less I enjoy digital shots from other photographers. My attitude and taste changed. Those photos which I used to go crazy with now seem empty to me, because they lack this analog depth. My switch to analog photography is more practical than romantic. But I can't rule out romance either, because analog photography is special. Every shot has much more value and the picture that analog photography provides is pure magic.

Thomas Berlin: What is your analog workflow up to the final image?

Alina Korneeva: After a session I bring films to the Lighthouse Film Lab. Great professionals work there. They know what exact result I want to get and do their best for it. I’m completely satisfied with their work. Also, the lab’s clients can always ask for help or advice and they’ll answer with pleasure. After receiving scans I do minimal processing — adjusting the black and white points and color curves. Analog photography allows me to get great-looking shots without hours of retouching. First of all I’m a photographer and I want to take shots, not waste time on retouching and adjusting.

Thomas Berlin: With which combination of a camera and two lenses could you do 80% of your shootings? Which cameras / formats do you mainly work with?

Alina Korneeva: Pentax 67II + SMC Takumar 105mm f/2.8 + Pentax 67 135mm F4 Macro. This combination covers all my studio sessions. I’m not the person who carries a huge park of lenses and cameras and this is the set that I use on a regular basis. For walking and travelling, I have two 35mm cameras — Contax 167MT with great Carl Zeiss optics (Distagon 35mm 2.8, Distagon 25mm 2.8 and Planar 50mm 1.7) and Olympus Mju II. I also have a digital Canon 5D Mark IV, but after switching to medium format, I don't use it at all.

Thomas Berlin: Do models perceive analog technology differently? How do the models react when you shoot with cameras from the last century?

Alina Korneeva: I believe that the customer should not be given the opportunity to choose whether the camera will be: analog or digital. It’s like telling the artist on which canvas and with what colors to paint. Film or digital are just tools. My film camera is more expensive than my Mark IV. Not many people understand the seriousness of this colossus until they see it. My models are always watching the process with interest, they like to be shot on analog. It is always leisurely and meditative. There are only 10 frames in one roll, I usually shoot only 4-5 rolls during 2-3 hours session. This is not like shooting 1000+ digital photos in a crazy rhythm, it’s completely different. In general, nowadays there are a lot of people who shoot analog in Moscow, so you won't surprise anyone. And this is good, I’m glad that analog photography is becoming so popular, and not dying, as many previously thought.

Thomas Berlin: How do you prepare for a shoot?

Alina Korneeva: I’m a person with a not very good memory and, in addition, I suffer from hyper-responsibility. So, for every session I prepare using a special checklist in my iPhone's notes. There is a list of what I need to take with me and I literally put it in my bag and tick the boxes. This helps a lot to avoid failures. I think that every photographer had a situation when he/she forgot flash drives or films or batteries, took the wrong lens or something like that. I'm a human and I can fail, that's okay. Knowing this fact, I always reinsure. By the way, now I’m writing two guides for photographers, one of them is about how to shoot model tests, the second is about how to prepare and not mess up on shooting. The second one will include my checklist.

Thomas Berlin: Do you create mood boards before shootings? Do you share this with the models?

Alina Korneeva: Very rarely. I work in a studio, which I know very well — I understand what kind of light will be there at a certain hour of the day, where and how it falls, what equipment and clothes I have. I prepare for each session in my head — I look through the photos of the person who comes to me, I figure out what clothes will fit, what mood it would be great to convey (although the mood is an unpredictable thing and I will never make a sad person have fun — this is unnatural ), approximate angles and points where I will shoot it and etc. I have some basic scenarios that I think over, but they will most likely change during the session, because I try to find an individual approach to each person, and not to work like a conveyor.

Thomas Berlin: How important is social media for your success and inspiration? What do you use?

Alina Korneeva: To my great regret, social media presence is very important. To be honest, I don't really like running Instagram on a daily basis, it feels like an eternal race that is terribly exhausting. I’m a creative person, I want to think about other, creative things. But today's world makes me follow these rules of the game. Nowadays we have a situation when people go to a photographer not because he/she is good, but because he/she has a lot of followers. Many people do not know how to separate these things and believe that if a photographer is popular, then he has good taste and takes good shots. This is not true. I know many examples when photographers with lots of followers shoot really bad, but charge huge money for it, and vice versa, when very talented guys gain subscribers very slowly, simply because they don’t know how to run Instagram properly and engage in self-promotion.

Thomas Berlin: You had previously emphasized the individuality of the person you are photographing. How should the photographer behave towards models?

Alina Korneeva: This is a question with no common answer. All people are different and everyone needs their own approach. Once a model came to my session and she didn't say a word during shooting. She was in a very bad mood, I did not bother her, we just did our job and went our separate ways. Photography is always about joining forces of two parties.

Thomas Berlin: Alina, after the interesting information about your view of photography, I would like to come to you as a person. How did you get into photography? And what excites you about it? Why are you didn't become a painter or so?

Alina Korneeva: I fell in love with drawing as soon as I learned to hold a pencil in my hand, I was several years old. Of all the occupations, drawing was my favorite. It is a pity that my parents didn’t send me to an art school, this is their big mistake. Growing up, I drew less and less. I started taking pictures at the age of 13, when I went to a children's camp and took a compact camera with me. Everything got into the lens — children, guides, flowers, insects, architecture and local landscapes. Photography captured me very quickly. When I turned 15, my parents gave me my first DSLR, I think it was a Canon 400D with a kit lens. From that moment I seriously approached the study of photography, I bought a thick book on Photoshop (there was no YouTube at that time), took pictures of my classmates and created some creepy art pictures with them. I liked the dark photos with a touch of fantasy. I got a Canon 5D and a 50mm 1.4 when I was 17. It seemed like something outstanding. I went to study at a well-known Moscow photography school and took a course of fashion photography. We were taught how to work with a model and set the light. Since then, I’ve started shooting in studios. I didn't shoot as often as I wanted. I really liked taking pictures, but at that time there were a lot of parties in my life and I was just wasting my time. I had a break of 2-3 years when I didn't shoot at all. Then I moved to Australia, where I lived for three years, where I had no time for photography. I studied a lot and worked as a retoucher. I can say that only 5 years ago my hobby turned into a profession. I returned to Moscow and started developing as a photographer.

Thomas Berlin: What do you like to do besides photography?

Alina Korneeva: I started snowboarding not so long ago, and this summer I’m mastering a skateboard cruiser. I’m planning horse riding and extreme driving courses. As for refilling the resource state, I really like being in nature, especially by the water. Or a long drive somewhere, the road makes me very relaxed.

Thomas Berlin: Alina, thank you for the insights you gave and good luck with your book projects..

You find Alina on instagram and her website. Feedback is welcome here.