Summer 2020 was hot. Really hot. I had hoped the mountains would offer at least a touch of cool air and maybe some clouds — a bit of soft light, a stripe of shade. But none of that showed up. Instead, the sun beat straight down from above: harsh, bright, relentless. No trees, no rock ledge offering more than three minutes of relief. No surprise there — the Grimsel Pass sits at about 2,160 metres above sea level, well above the tree line. Conditions that, politely said, were “challenging” for classic portrait photography; honestly, they were flat-out bad.

And that’s exactly why I love this series with Brysa Kelly.

Black-and-white was the key. It stripped the scene back to what mattered: shape, contrast, texture. Where colour in that glaring alpine light would have pulled your attention in every direction — sun-bleached rock, bluish distance, warm skin tones — monochrome brings calm. It centres Brysa’s presence. The hard light carves out her features with fine shadows, while the open mountain landscape, softened in the background, becomes a minimal stage. The result is a tension between vastness (the high alpine space) and intimacy (expression, gesture, hands).

Across the full series you’ll see variations on that idea: shifts in angle, moments of backlight, subtle hand positions tracing lines into the space, posture set against open terrain. You can feel the heat, the thin air, the high-elevation glare — and at the same time a concentrated quiet in Brysa’s performance. It’s an editorial built on reduction: no set, no studio comfort, just a model, the mountains, and the unforgiving light of high summer.

By the end of the day I was wiped out — sun, altitude, and hours of total focus take their toll. But it was absolutely worth it. Working with a model like Brysa Kelly, who stays present and engaged even in tough conditions, is a gift. From adversity came a series I value deeply: honest, raw, monochrome.