Ten pages, one location, and a single line of afternoon light moving across a dune. That was the whole brief.
This story ran across ten pages in UNTAMED's September 2026 issue, alongside features on sculpture, fashion, and fiction from photographers and artists working in very different mediums. Ours was the desert: model Olga, shot at Al Qudra on the edge of Dubai, where the city ends and the dunes take over within a few minutes' drive.
- Model: Olga
- Photographer: Hatim Champeli
- Creative Agency: Photoczaro
- Location: Al Qudra Desert, Dubai, UAE
- Publication: UNTAMED, September 2026
We built the set around movement rather than static poses: an arm thrown up against the sky, hair caught mid-turn, the moment right after a fall into the sand rather than a composed lying-down shot. A sheer, dust-grey dress did a lot of the work here. In direct sun it reads almost architectural; against the shade of a dune ridge it goes soft and translucent. Moving between the two within the same set is what gives the story its range across ten pages instead of feeling like one pose repeated.
"Every frame is a moment of self-connection and pure expression."
That line ran as the pull-quote across several spreads, and it's close to how the day actually felt on set. Al Qudra at that hour is quiet in a way that's hard to describe to anyone who hasn't shot there: no other crew in sight, just wind, sand, and however much light is left. Olga worked with that quiet rather than against it, which is exactly what a still photograph needs from a subject.
Three more pages from the same set, as they ran in UNTAMED's September 2026 issue.
Why desert light works this way
Al Qudra gives you two completely different palettes depending on where you point the camera. Shoot against the sky and you get a hard, saturated blue with almost no gradient: it reads as bold and graphic, closer to a studio backdrop than a landscape. Shoot low, with the dune itself behind the subject, and the same afternoon turns warm, textured, and almost monochrome in tone. This set moves between both within the same sequence, which is part of why a single location can carry ten pages without repeating itself.
None of that happens by accident once you're on site. It's a matter of tracking the sun's angle against the dune ridges over the course of the shoot and planning which setups need which light, rather than working through a shot list in a fixed order.
Shooting against open sky rather than the dune: a different palette from the same afternoon.
Listed in the issue's table of contents, alongside features on fashion, sculpture, and fiction.
This is the second time I've placed a set with UNTAMED, and desert work continues to be some of the most rewarding I shoot in the UAE. It has almost nothing to do with equipment and everything to do with patience: waiting for the wind to settle a dress into the right fold, or for a shadow to fall exactly where it needs to on a dune ridge. Ten pages is a real commitment from an editor's side, and I don't take that lightly.
Want to shoot something similarly location-driven? Get in touch and we'll plan around the light, not just the calendar.
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Based in Dubai. Available for desert and location editorials, model portfolio sessions, and magazine-ready concepts. WhatsApp is the fastest way to reach me.