Amalya
Shandelman
🇺🇸 The United States
With us
4 years
Studio Name
Amalya Shandelman Photography
Amalya, a university-trained journalist now focusing exclusively on photography, hails from Moscow, Russia. As a schoolgirl she roamed the streets of that peerless Slavic metropolis (not alone, of course), honing her black-and-white skills on Grandpa's cherished prewar Leica. Now based in Houston, Texas, there is no finer day than one spent behind the camera, putting her subjects at ease and capturing them in their finest moments, candid or posed. Amalya's photography emanates from deep within - motivated and inspired, above all, by her love of the art and for her subjects, and for capturing everything that is human in every image.
Winning photos
Underwater photography allows you not only to transcend terrestrial physical boundaries, where objects and bodies behave differently, but also exposes new emotional facets of your model.
On plunging into this less familiar environment, a person subtly changes - water combines radical moments: both comfort for the body and tension for the psyche.(The model must never completely forget that breathing under water is simply not an option.)
No matter what precise control a professional model usually has in the frame, here she will do battle with herself, study herself and feel differently. Inevitably, she will afford the photographer unexpected details in her facial expression, posture, and mood.
Thus, the photographer and her model are no longer directors of the photoshoot but researchers endeavoring, among the many unexpected shades of the uncontrolled, to discover new truths in themselves and in the frame.
Underwater photography allows you not only to transcend terrestrial physical boundaries, where objects and bodies behave differently, but also exposes new emotional facets of your model.
On plunging into this less familiar environment, a person subtly changes - water combines radical moments: both comfort for the body and tension for the psyche.(The model must never completely forget that breathing under water is simply not an option.)
No matter what precise control a professional model usually has in the frame, here she will do battle with herself, study herself and feel differently. Inevitably, she will afford the photographer unexpected details in her facial expression, posture, and mood.
Thus, the photographer and her model are no longer directors of the photoshoot but researchers endeavoring, among the many unexpected shades of the uncontrolled, to discover new truths in themselves and in the frame.
EVOLVE
Each of us is born into a rigidly finite world, our uniquely inherited chain of DNA pervading our every cell. As we grow, we strive for the infinite, for liberation from that daisy chain, to become much more than mere natural determinism suggests.
Observe my alter ego Irina, a mirror image of myself, demonstrating that noble transformation from Prometheus bound to unbound. Like a serpent shedding its skin, she frees herself, in layers and stages, of a purely mathematical definition, congenitally bestowed. She unravels that chain of command. No longer controlled by nature, she influences nature, directs it, even creates it anew.
We grow and thus we evolve, to much more than nature alone would have had us become.
EMERGE
An "e" prefix is most often short for Latin "ex": "out of, from."
So "emerge" can be understood as "e-merge" - merging with something by leaving it.
Which is obviously a paradox on the face of it! Can we make some sense of this?
But look at it this way. By becoming each day a new and better version of ourselves, we also become newer, truer versions of everything we always were. Think of it as an e-merge: Leaving our old selves to merge back into ourselves, bigger and better.
Life is not static. It is about dynamics. Life is about change.
As a portrait photographer, those are the dynamics I endeavor always to capture in my subjects. To help them see themselves as I see them: Constantly emerging and stepping out of themselves, but then to come back in - truer and better.
What joys of expectant motherhood!
A harmonious blend of love and stylish glamour that leaps off the page and into our hearts.
What greater happiness can there be, than the imminent expectation of new life?
And not just any, but a new life that *we* are bringing into the world!
Is there anything greater than bringing new human life into the world?`
We don't think so.
This Mom Soon To Be has got it all well in hand.
As she awaits the big day.
It won't be long now.
Motherhood is a joy to experience.
And also a joy to behold.
Behold.
Many mothers choose to de-emphasize their own needs for the sake of their baby.
Many do, but not all.
Observe, and be inspired.
Man reaches for the heavens, but his success remains to be seen.
Woman ad-"dresses" that challenge very differently.
Wrapping herself in lustrous sky-blue azure, she declares:
I am woman. Look no higher, look no further.
I am your heaven on earth.
