2021 yearly print editionBeachfront Elopement Editorial in Les Sables-d'Olonne
Les Sables d’Olonne
France - Juin 2021
Above: Magazine Editorial film for Se Marier en Vendée 2021, Les Sables d’Olonne
Below: Photos by Il était un Pixel
This editorial was born from a wager on light, and it ended up published in the print magazine Se Marier en Vendée. Between the two: a dune in Les Sables-d'Olonne, a couple of surfers, a bohemian van, and a creative team I talked into setting alarms at an hour editorials usually never see.
Two surfers, one true story
The casting was both an obvious choice and a stroke of luck: a couple of surfers, models for the editorial and a real couple in life. Since they genuinely surfed, the day began in the water: a surf session at sunrise, the two of them alone in the waves, unbelievable light, and images no staging could have manufactured, because nothing in them was staged.
The scenario then unfolded a love-flight in the most literal sense: an elopement for two imagined on the dune, surfboards planted in the sand, bohemian atmosphere around the van, the ceremony at the top of the dune overlooking the very beach where they had surfed that morning, and a dinner on the sand at sunset to close the day where it had begun: in gold.
And the best ending was not in the script: a few years later, that couple of models entrusted me with the photographs of their real wedding. When an editorial's fiction becomes a true story you are asked to document, the project had aimed true.
The wager: 5 a.m.
Projects like this normally shoot between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., the comfortable hours for everyone and the worst hours for light. I proposed the opposite: start at 5 a.m., at sunrise, and work through to sunset, a full midsummer amplitude, embraced. Convincing an entire team of creatives to set that alarm takes a little diplomacy; the result repaid it a hundredfold. These images made real waves when they came out, and they are what earned me, the following year, the magazine's cover with another editorial. Sunrise light is not a photographer's whim: it is a competitive advantage.
A full day of summer light
Working from sunrise to sunset in high summer means holding sixteen hours of different light in a single series: the pre-dawn blue for the surf session, morning gold on wet wetsuits, the hard white of noon spent in the van's shade preparing what came next, then the slow descent toward evening, the ceremony on the dune in raking light, and the dinner on the sand as everything turned pink. Few projects offer a photographer that complete crossing of the clock, and it is what gives the published series its coherence: one day, told by its light.
Editorial Team
Photo/Video: Il était un Pixel, Jérémie
Planning: Se Marier en Vendée + Event by Audrey
Wedding dress: Les Mariées de Laurane
Suit: L’Alchimiste Challans
Flowers: Nuances florales
Cake: Les Gateaux de Nino
MUA: Coraly Vincent
Hair: Atelier C
Champagne: Champagne Pommery
Arch Wood connexion
Surf board: Daddy Seal Surfboard
Stationery: MademoiselleCréa85
Why real couples beat models
One casting decision deserves its footnote: choosing a real couple over professional models was not sentimentality, it was strategy. Surfers who actually surf gave us a genuine dawn session no choreography could fake; a couple who actually love each other gave us glances no direction could summon. The magazine's readers responded to precisely that authenticity, and it is the same reason my wedding work stays documentary at its core: real always reads as real.
What this editorial proved
Three things I keep repeating, and this day demonstrated: the Vendée coast stands comparison with any editorial setting in Europe, provided you photograph it at its own hours; the seaside elopement, barefoot, board under the arm or not, is a format that breathes freedom and photographs like it; and publication is never the goal, always the consequence, of work where the whole team agreed to serve the light rather than its comfort.
And for your project?
Couples of the dawn: if an elopement on my coast makes you dream, I know every dune and every hour. Designers and magazines: laboratories of this kind are always welcome.