julia wells

I don’t cold DM people.
Ever.
But this felt like one of those moments where you either listen to the signal or spend the rest of the day pretending you didn’t hear it.

So I messaged her. Direct. Zero warm-up.
“I want to come take photos with you in Greece.”

And then immediately overthought every word I’d typed.

Julia responded in a way that is extremely Julia:
Ooooooh, tell me more.

Then:

Make it more powerful.
More congruent.
More focused on what it would actually be like for her.
And yes — she asked to be flirted with.

So I rewrote it while sweating through my shirt in that uniquely spicy Türkiye heat, trying to sound confident and not like a weirdo. A week went by. Texts while she was on the plane. Some business flirting, I guess.

As I packed up my camera and said goodbye to my clients in Cukurcuma (in Istanbul), a notification came through. She said yes. And then she paid.

Which meant I booked a flight to Crete within minutes, found a tiny apartment in Chania’s old town with just enough room for my luggage and my gear, and decided, “Okay. We’re really doing this.”

Two women who didn’t know each other, betting on instinct and following it all the way across the Mediterranean.

The Work

This wasn’t exactly a styled photoshoot or a mood-board production.
This was documentary meets bring out a big vision. There were trips to Greek secondhand stores, me designing some totally Julia merch with the local tee-shirt printer in the market (hoping she wouldn’t be offended by what I was asking her to write on the bags. She was cool.)

Julia showed up with her full range — funny, serious, soft, intense, chaotic, grounded, sexy, expressive, and absolutely up for (almost) anything. I photographed all of it. Not the curated version. Not the “coach” version. The human version.

We moved fast.
We sweated.
We stopped wherever something caught our eye — a cool ATM, an ice cream shop, a strip of afternoon light hitting a wall just right.

She needed volume because she posts constantly, so I shot with that in mind:
range, repetition without sameness, enough material to carry her for months without losing her individuality.

Everything was informal, responsive, improvised, honest, real.
Which is exactly who Julia is. I brought a little bit of planning and pushing us into places her photos hadn’t yet gone– a place where brand could be found in the details.

The Partnership

Here’s the real story underneath all of this:

Julia sent money across the world to a woman she’d never met.
I booked a flight based on a DM thread that no longer exists because her Instagram got deleted again.
Neither of us asked for certainty.
Both of us trusted the moment.

She pushed me to be more powerful in my ask.
I photographed her in her actual bigness.
We met each other in the place where creative work actually happens — not in perfection, but in risk.

The Result

The images look like her: sharp, funny, emotional, open, alive.

They look like the environment: sun, sea, wind, heat, movement.

They look like the partnership: no chill, no performance, no guessing. Just two women working at full honesty, full instinct, full yes.

This is the kind of collaboration I want more of — where the work is only possible because both people were willing to take a chance on each other before it made any sense on paper.