SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, MEXICO20°54′55″N 100°44′38″W · NOVEMBER · LOVERS SESSION
THE PHOTOGRAPHS WERE NOT
The wedding was over. We still had photographs to make.
Anna found my photographs on Instagram about a year before she wrote to me. She showed them to Nahuel, they spent more than an hour going through the website, and decided that if they ever got married, they wanted me there. This was before the proposal. Before anyone else knew there would be a wedding. I only found out when their inquiry landed in my inbox.
In 2010 I backpacked through Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica. I had never been to Mexico, so calling it a return would be geographically a little questionable. It felt like one anyway. Something about being back in that part of the world was immediately familiar.
They are both wedding photographers, which changes the conversation. Anna and Nahuel had a big wedding in San Miguel de Allende, with 70 to 100 guests in the original plan. They also asked for an after-wedding session from the start. They knew what a wedding day does to time. It eats it.
The portraits mattered enough to give them another day. No pretending these were stolen minutes from a quiet elopement. They were made afterwards, because some photographs need longer than the space between the ceremony and whatever comes next. And because once the obvious picture is done, things can get a little strange.
Two days later, there was finally time for the photographs that would not fit anywhere else.
Anna and Nahuel had kept the little chapel to themselves. They had never taken another couple there, even though they photographed weddings for a living. In their words, the chapel was only for them. It looked like it belonged in a Quentin Tarantino film. That was exactly why they loved it.
I have either an inborn or a learned aversion to cops. I honestly don't know which. Either way, I rarely feel safer when they show up.
While we were making the last photographs, the hand over the eye and then the two of them walking away, the police stopped beside us. Did we know the area was unsafe because of the cartels? We should be careful.
Great. Cops and cartels. Exactly the kind of reassurance I needed.
We packed up and left.
Anna and Nahuel's story shows another way to work with a San Miguel de Allende elopement photographer. Their wedding itself was large, not an elopement. Because the two photographers wanted more room for their portraits, we met again for a separate Lovers Session. The additional day gave us time for cinematic and documentary photography without a ceremony schedule or a waiting room full of guests. For couples planning an elopement or a portrait session in San Miguel de Allende, the useful part is simple: enough time changes what photographs are possible.