How do you define beauty in your work, and what elements do you consider essential to achieving it?
For me, beauty often exists slightly outside of what we consider normal, safe, or predictable.
In wedding photography, that might sound like a risky approach. Weddings are important, unrepeatable, and there is a certain responsibility that comes with documenting them. But I actually see it the opposite way. For me, the real risk is not trying to create something new. It is staying inside what you already know will work, repeating what has already been done, and allowing safety to become predictability.
I’m interested in that space where you don’t completely know what is going to happen.
Of course, there is a lot of planning behind my work. I think you need preparation, experience and intention to be able to recognize a great moment when it appears. But once I’m there, I also want to leave space for the unexpected. For a strange movement, an imperfect composition, an unusual light, a gesture that lasts half a second, or something happening in the background that suddenly transforms the entire photograph.
That uncertainty is essential to me.
There is something beautiful about not knowing exactly what you are going to create, and then experiencing that rare moment when everything suddenly aligns. The people, the light, the emotion, the movement, your own instinct. And for a fraction of a second, you create something you couldn’t have planned — sometimes something you didn’t even know you were capable of creating.
That happens surprisingly often at weddings. No matter how much we plan them, they are still alive. They are full of people, emotions, accidents, contradictions and unexpected moments.
And I think that is where I find beauty in my work: somewhere between authenticity and the surreal. Between something completely real and something that somehow feels almost impossible.
I like photographs that feel honest, but also slightly out of place. Images that make you stop for a second because there is something you cannot immediately explain.
Something unexpected.
Something that makes us dream.
What rituals or routines do you follow when starting a new project? Is there something that always sparks your creativity?
For me, every project starts with people.
Before thinking about photographs, locations, light or aesthetics, I need to understand the people involved. I usually send questionnaires that help me enter their world a little deeper — their expectations, references, ideas, personalities, the things they love, and sometimes even the things they don’t know how to express visually yet.
From there, I start building a universe around the project.
I create different moodboards, collect references, think about textures, colors, cinema, fashion, places, and anything that can help me understand how the story could feel rather than simply how it could look. I don’t necessarily want to recreate any of those references. They are more like fragments that help put my mind in a certain place.
But probably my most important ritual is music.
I create a playlist for almost every project. It might sound unrelated to photography, but for me it connects everything inside my head. I’ve always created while listening to music. There is something about it that immediately triggers my imagination. A song can give me a rhythm, a color, a scene, even an emotion that I later unconsciously bring into the photographs.
Sometimes I will listen to that playlist while traveling to the wedding or walking around the location before everything begins. It helps me enter that particular world and disconnect from everything else.
I also write. Not always, and not necessarily with the intention of showing it to anyone. Sometimes they are just small stories, sentences, fictional scenes or thoughts inspired by the people I’m about to photograph. Later, I occasionally connect those words with the images.
I think all these rituals serve the same purpose: they allow me to arrive at a project with ideas, but without a script.
I don’t want to know exactly what I’m going to create. I just want my imagination to already be awake when the unexpected happens.
And if I had to choose one thing that consistently sparks my creativity, it would be music. It has always been there. Sometimes, before I can see the photograph, I can almost hear it.
Is there a specific piece you've created that feels like a perfect reflection of your aesthetic vision? What makes it so special to you?
I don’t think there is one specific project that stands above everything else or perfectly represents my aesthetic vision. For me, it’s usually more about certain moments and feelings — sometimes not even directly connected to the final images, but to how I felt while creating them and what they unlocked in me.
If I had to choose one, I would probably go back to my first destination wedding, in the old streets of Shanghai.
I remember photographing there and feeling completely connected to what I was doing. Everything was unfamiliar — the streets, the light, the atmosphere, the culture — and somehow that uncertainty gave me an incredible sense of freedom.
I wasn’t trying to follow a formula or prove anything. I was simply exploring, reacting and creating.
Looking back, I think that project connected with something very deep inside me. It made me understand that traveling, discovering unfamiliar worlds and placing myself outside of what I know could become an essential part of my creative process.
Maybe the most special projects are not always the ones that best represent who you are, but the ones that reveal who you might become.
What's your relationship with “imperfection” - grain, softness, crop, a missed focus?
I’ve never been a friend of perfection. In fact, one of my mottos is action over perfection.
I would always rather take a risk and create something that feels alive, used, lived-in, than something technically perfect but somehow lifeless.
Grain, softness, an unexpected crop, missed focus — I don’t necessarily see these things as mistakes. They can be tools. Ways of bringing photography closer to something deeply human, because they remind us of our own intrinsic imperfection.
I think that’s often where the most interesting things begin.
When there is real passion, things are rarely perfect. They can be chaotic, unpredictable, even flawed, and still feel incredible at the same time. I love that paradox.
That’s why I’m constantly experimenting with processes that remove a little control from my hands. Film, unusual cameras, imperfect light, movement, accidents. Not because I want imperfection for the sake of it, but because I want the photographs to feel human.
Perfection can be beautiful. But imperfection can make you feel something.
When editing photos, do you have a go-to soundtrack or playlist that sets the mood? How does music influence your creative flow?
Well, music is everything. I think I’ve probably made that clear already.
Music takes me somewhere else creatively. It connects me with the world of ideas in a way that very few things can. I remember walking through cities for hours with my headphones on, listening to music and unconsciously creating stories around the people, places and situations I was seeing. It’s almost like putting a different prism in front of reality.
When I’m editing, I usually listen to ambient music, electronic indie, or songs with deep but subjective lyrics — lyrics that suggest something without completely defining what you’re supposed to feel. I like having that space for interpretation.
Artists like Chromatics, Kazy Lambist or The Marías are often somewhere in the background.
Music changes the rhythm of the way I edit, but more importantly, it changes the way I feel the photographs. Sometimes a song can completely transform my relationship with an image and make me see something in it that wasn’t there before.
For me, music isn’t really the soundtrack to the creative process. It’s part of the process itself.
If your work was shown without your name on it, what would give you away?
Passion, humanity, connection, and perhaps something slightly dreamlike.
I’ve always wanted to create a story within a single photograph. But I don’t want to be the one explaining that story. The interpretation should belong to whoever is standing on the other side of the image.
When someone looks at one of my photographs and feels that something is happening beyond what they can actually see — something intimate, nostalgic, strange or unexplained — that’s when I feel I’ve created something meaningful.
I would love my photographs to feel the way I feel when reading a Haruki Murakami novel. You understand certain parts, others remain completely mysterious, and somehow you’re happy not to understand everything.
There is beauty in leaving space for imagination.
So perhaps that’s what would give me away: intimacy mixed with something slightly surreal. Nostalgia without knowing exactly what you’re nostalgic for. A photograph that gives you enough to enter the story, but never enough to completely explain it.
How do you know when an edit is finished? What's usually the last thing you touch?
I’m a very organic and visceral person, so I don’t really chase absolute perfection. I think I would go crazy if I did.
There is simply an internal click that tells me: that’s it.
I’m aware there could always be another adjustment, another hour, another version that is technically more refined. But at some point, you have to stop thinking and trust what you feel.
For me, an edit is usually finished when color and atmosphere finally meet. When the image feels coherent with the story I have in my head, I know I don’t need to push it any further.
The last thing I usually touch is color — sometimes incredibly small adjustments. Not because I’m looking for technical perfection, but because color defines so much of the emotional atmosphere of an image.
When the photograph feels the way I imagined it, I’m done.
