Elopement at Château de Bouffemont, France

I arrived at the château on a July afternoon, the kind of heat that slows everyone down and no one seems to mind. Before greeting anyone, I stood in the driveway for a moment and simply looked at it. A building like that holds light in a way no amount of planning quite prepares you for. 

D and X eloped here — no big wedding guest list to manage, no seating chart, just the two of them and a small circle of people who mattered enough to be there. X told me weeks beforehand that she didn't want the day to feel like it was happening to her. She wanted to be inside it. It's a distinction I keep returning to whenever I'm planning a timeline now.

There's no shortage of beautiful estates within reach of Paris — the region is full of them, tucked behind hedgerows and gates, most looking fairly similar from the road. Bouffemont isn't one you'd mistake for another. It's the staircase that does it: a double curve of pale stone sweeping down from the terrace into the garden, the kind of silhouette that shows up in a single frame and tells you exactly where you are.

The house sits north of Paris, close enough to fly into Charles de Gaulle and be standing on the lawn within the hour. Brick and pale stone, a roofline with more angles than I could count, and that staircase out front doing most of the work — the kind of detail you'd think was added for photographs, except it's just how the house was built two centuries before anyone thought to bring a camera.

What makes it work so well for an elopement is the space around it. Open parkland for a ceremony that doesn't need to compete with rows of chairs, a shaded colonnade for the slower parts of the day, and a west-facing balustrade I clocked within the first ten minutes and didn't say much about. I just made a mental note: that, later, when the sun starts dropping.July gives you a long evening if you're patient. I was right to wait.

A cellist played through the entire processional — no recorded music, just a single instrument carrying across the lawn, which changes the pace of everything. Blue delphinium and lavender ran the length of the aisle, cut through with pale roses and greenery loose enough to look gathered rather than arranged. D kept one hand at the small of F's back as they walked. Nobody choreographed that. It's the kind of detail that only happens when two people aren't performing for two hundred witnesses, just being married in front of the six or seven who mattered enough to be there.

There's a moment after vows like these where a couple doesn't quite know what to do with their hands, standing side by side instead of embracing — and I love that moment more than the kiss that usually follows. It's unguarded in a way posed portraits rarely are. Then the embrace itself, framed by the same blue and lavender that ran the aisle, the château's parkland stretching out behind them with nothing else in the frame to compete with it.

The pace changed after the vows, deliberately. A cake table dressed in the same blue and white as the ceremony flowers, candles lit before anyone had gathered around it. The cutting itself lasted seconds — a kiss caught mid-motion, cake barely touched — because the moment that mattered wasn't the cake, it was the two of them laughing through it.

Dinner came after, set along the colonnade: a long table in pale linen, blue delphinium spilling across it, candlelight doing more of the work than any styling could. Champagne was poured by hand rather than arranged for the camera — a detail that reads as nothing on paper, but shows in a person's expression in a way that's impossible to fake.

F changed into a second gown for the last hour of light — deep rose, floral, with enough movement in the fabric to catch the air as she turned. We went back to the balustrade I'd noted earlier in the day, danced there for a few frames because the light asked for it, then moved to the arched doorway at the back of the house for something quieter and closer. The heat had finally broken, and the light did exactly what I'd been waiting for since arriving: gold, then rose, then almost nothing at all.

Later, a vintage convertible waited at the base of the drive, dressed with the same flowers from the ceremony — arranged in advance, not staged for effect, meant to carry the couple off as the light gave out. A "just married" sign leaned against the back seat as they walked toward it. I photographed that departure in black and white, framed against the château's columns. Color would have been beside the point.

Every image from that day was made on medium format — Pentax 645, for the most part. I shot around a dozen rolls across six hours, which sounds like very little until you've tried to make twelve exposures cover an entire wedding day.

I started shooting film before it was fashionable again, back when most people asked why I'd choose something slower and more expensive on purpose. I still get that question, just less often now that half the industry has picked it up too. My answer hasn't changed: I like not knowing exactly what I have until the scans come back. It keeps me honest about which moments I actually chase, instead of letting a screen tell me I already got it.

It's slower. It's more expensive. I'll still be shooting it after it's gone out of fashion a second time.

Kodak Portra, medium format. Based in Barcelona, working across Spain and Europe.