Print Edit: Making Waves with Kristianne Koch Riddle

Kristianne Koch Riddle, one of our member photographers based in San Diego, sent us an email looking for some help getting a new print portfolio together. Kristianne is known for her unique and artful kids and lifestyle photography, but she recently returned from a year-long trip onboard a sailboat with her family and wanted help creating an edit that would integrate her new oceanic lifestyle imagery into her current work. Our approach was to do so in a manner that would feel cohesive with the rest of her work and brand.

Beginning The Edit

In the batch of images she sent over, Kristianne had included a handful of scenic, fine-art seascapes for us to consider. Although we chose not to incorporate too much of this work into the edit in order to keep the book as commercially viable and as client and brand-focused as possible, we were able to carefully incorporate a few of them.

Since Kristianne’s style is consistent, solid, and developed, we knew it was going to be a great edit to work on. After making our selects from a batch of 500 or so images and considering a handful of different organizational options, we decided to take a thematic approach to sequence her work. Knowing that the sailing trip was going to include her most recent work, we wanted to make sure that those images were included in the first half of the portfolio before featuring some of the less recent land-based lifestyle and kids work. As we sequenced and arranged the images, we considered the flow of the book itself and looked for photos that paired well together in order to tell a lifestyle story over a period of time. Another important aspect was identifying images that would act as strong openers and closers of this story to reveal something unique about Kristianne, her style, and her work.

Making The Work Flow

Kristianne’s edit starts with a handful of aquatic lifestyle spreads, beginning at the seashore, then drifting out to sea, and after that showing glimpses of life aboard the sailboat. Afterward, the artful and moody photos of children looking for shells and fish along rocky jetties act as the perfect segue into the rocky, earthy images of children camping in the woods, which then leads into the rest of Kristianne’s lifestyle work. The book closes with a series of active senior living images and family-focused lifestyle content taken at the end of the day. The closing image is a quiet, fine art image of a blade of grass poking out of the marsh and directing your focus back to the sea. 

The Finished Edit

Krisitanne was very happy with her edit and ordered two copies: one for her own client meetings, and a second copy for us to keep in-house for upcoming portfolio events. She had these words to say:

Oh my gosh, Stacy!! I love, love, love it. All my favorites are in there. It has a great flow and the stuff I think of as travel really is a lifestyle. I am seeing it now…. So fun to see images together that was shot so far apart (in time) and see a tie-in.. Thank you so much for this amazing edit. I am excited!

Check out Kristianne’s new portfolio below:

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