Rain, wind and sargassum

If it rains

The first thing is not to panic, and not to treat rain as if it had automatically ruined the photographs.

At the venues where I work I identify covered spaces with genuinely good light ahead of time: terraces, corridors, the architecture of the hotel, lobbies, suites with large windows, areas that are partly sheltered. My plan B is not simply “shoot everything in the ballroom”.

I also work very closely with your planner, because a flexible timeline makes an enormous difference. If it is raining during the time set aside for portraits, we can move part of it, photograph the family somewhere covered and keep another small window open to go out with the two of you. Sometimes ten or fifteen minutes without rain are all we need for a completely different series of photographs.

What matters is protecting first the moments that can’t be repeated, and keeping flexible the ones we can move. And very often the sky after a storm ends up far more interesting than a perfectly clear day.

We hired Kristina for our wedding back in November. On our wedding day the weather was very rainy and grey and I was worried how the photos would turn out because everything was wet! Kristina worked her magic, I was over the moon with ALL of our photos. I'm so thankful we found her. — Shayne L., a November wedding · all reviews

Wind

There is almost always a breeze on the beach here. It is what makes a veil photograph beautifully, and what undoes a hairstyle designed for an indoor ballroom. Light, fluid fabrics move with it and photograph beautifully; ask your stylist for a style that holds in the wind, and save the veil for the moments where movement is the point.

Sargassum

In the Riviera Maya it usually starts to become a more serious consideration in spring and summer, and May to August is a window when I always keep it in mind. But it changes enormously from one year to the next, and even from one beach to another on the same day. I would never promise a couple that there will be no sargassum. What I can control is how I photograph.

If there is seaweed along the shore, I can work with side angles, frames where the sea and the sky dominate instead of the shoreline, closer portraits, and the architecture or the vegetation of the venue as part of the composition. We can also look at which part of the beach is cleanest and, if the logistics of the day allow it, move a small part of the portraits there. The time of day matters too, because the quality and direction of the light change completely how the water and the beach read.

The solution to sargassum doesn’t start in editing. It starts with choosing where, when and from which direction to photograph.

The season, honestly

From June to October afternoons are hotter and storms can arrive and pass quickly; from November to April the weather is usually drier. Neither is a reason to choose or avoid a date. It is a reason to have a covered option ready and a timeline that can bend — and, in summer, to consider a slightly later ceremony, which the ceremony time guide calculates for your exact date.