Deserted Depth wasn't born from a business plan. It wasn't born from an idea I'd been sitting on, or some dream I kept journaling about. It was born from a single moment — a friend handing me confidence I didn't know I was missing, and a camera I barely knew how to hold.
It was 2020. The world had stopped. I'd been a music producer for years — Drum and Bass under the name Outcrier, later Synthwave as Velocity Zero. I'd been a DJ, a model, worked ten years at Garden Festivals across Croatia. I'd always been around cameras — old Canon Powershots during skating sessions as a kid, a battered Sony tape camcorder recording tricks on concrete. But I never called myself a photographer. Not even close.
Then Tina changed that. She was a professional model, a close friend, and she saw something in me I hadn't seen yet. She pushed me to pick up a real camera and actually shoot. So I did. And the first images I took with her — those first raw, unpolished frames — defined everything. They showed me exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and what kind of photographer I was going to become.
One of the earliest Deserted Depth sessions — finding the language
Not an idea. A moment.
The name came before the concept was fully formed. "Deserted" — like the silence of something abandoned, something raw and unfiltered. "Depth" — the frame within the frame, the thing you feel before you understand it. At first it sounded like desert landscapes and empty buildings. Later, the real meaning revealed itself: the deserted depth we all carry inside. The parts of ourselves that don't get space in everyday life.
I realized I wasn't looking for a pose. I was looking for real moments. That first photo session showed me how much photography can open a space where people actually see themselves — dignified, aesthetically clear, and most importantly, safe.
Photography is our past made present. Every time I see a frame from the past, we relive it again. That feeling is what sparked everything.
Breaking the taboo in Croatia
In Croatia, what I was doing was more taboo than you'd imagine. Bold, sensual, cinematic editorial photography — the kind you'd see in international fashion magazines — simply wasn't being done here at a professional grade. People had opinions. Strong ones. But that was the whole point. The tagline wrote itself early on: the energy behind everything I shoot is essentially "think what you want — this isn't for you to approve."
Deserted Depth isn't boudoir. That's a specific thing, and this isn't it. This is more like a movie. That scene in the film that's intimate and cinematic — where the light does most of the talking and the subject is the protagonist of their own story. You buy into an experience. You show up, and you get to live out a photoshoot that's been designed around who you are, not what someone else thinks you should look like.
How a shoot actually works
Every session starts with what I call the "Pilot" — the first fifteen minutes. Music playing, movement, laughter, pauses. Nothing is forced. The goal is to find "that moment" — the one that doesn't know it's important, the one that happens in between the poses. The camera just follows. Movement becomes natural. Light does its thing. Then you're in the zone — a state where you become the main character.
The values behind every shoot are simple: Vision — I know what I'm doing and why. Freedom — expression without judgment, with clear consent at every moment. Quality — nothing is accidental, from preparation to the final delivered image.
People come rested. Body and mind are equally important as light and frame. Some clients come back months later. Some want to shoot all the time. The ones who get it — they understand that this isn't about producing content. It's about creating something that belongs to them. A version of themselves they didn't know existed until they saw it in a frame.
Dark, dramatic, unapologetic — the Deserted Depth signature
Where it stands now
Six years in. Over 50 clients. A printed manifest booklet I hand to every person before a shoot — so they know exactly what they're walking into and what the experience is about. The Instagram regularly pulls 100k+ views on content, which tells me the work resonates far beyond the people who follow the account.
The hidden becomes an image. The moment stays forever. That's the line from the manifest, and it's still the truest thing I've written about what this project is.
Work on you. For you. That's the whole point. Explore the full Deserted Depth project.