About
I'm the one who'll be three feet away when you cry, and far enough back that you'll forget I'm there.
I'm Élodie. I started in a darkroom, and I still think about your wedding the way I think about a print — something you'll hold in your hands in fifty years.
I photograph a small number of weddings each year, based in California and traveling wherever the day takes me. My job isn't to direct your day. It's to be there — completely — while you live it.
Most of my couples find me through someone I've already photographed. They come for the images, but what they mention afterward is how calm the day felt. That calm is deliberate — it's what lets the real moments happen in front of the camera.
At a glance
- Documentary approach — film and digital
- A limited number of weddings each year
- California based, available worldwide
- Galleries delivered within six weeks
The darkroom taught me patience. You wait, you watch, and the image arrives when it's ready. Weddings are the same — the real photograph is never the one you pose. It's the one that happens while nobody is performing: your father's hand on your shoulder a second before he speaks, the laugh you couldn't hold in.
The couples I work with don't want a thousand photographs. They want the twenty they'll print, frame, and pass down. That's the work I'm trying to make — not a record of how the day looked, but something that still feels like it, years from now.
How the day works
Before
We build your timeline together. I scout every venue before the day, I know where the light falls at four o'clock, and you'll never wonder where I am or what happens next.
During
Always alone, always two cameras — one film, one digital, every frame backed up twice before I sleep. I don't run shot lists or stage moments. I'm three feet away when you cry, and far enough back that you forget I'm there.
After
A full gallery within six weeks, a hand-edited film scan set, and guidance on prints — because these are meant to live on a wall, not in a folder.
She cried with us at the ceremony, and we never once saw the camera. Our photographs feel like memories, not pictures.
Mara & Daniel — Santa Ynez Valley
Twelve years behind a camera Ninety-three weddings Based in California — at home anywhere
Off camera
When I'm not shooting, I'm usually in the mountains with a film camera that doesn't work half the time, hunting for roadside diners with good pie. I believe in handwritten notes, long dinners, and printing your photographs while you still remember the day.