My Work During Milan Design Week

There is a particular kind of quiet that fills certain rooms during Milan Design Week, even when they are full of people. I noticed it again this year while photographing installations set inside a building with faded plaster walls and herringbone floors worn soft by decades of footsteps. A pale curtain moved gently in front of a window. A single ceramic form sat on a plinth, catching the light from one angle and disappearing into shadow from another. Nobody had to tell me to slow down in that room. The space did it for me.

Why I Keep Returning

I have always been deeply fascinated by art and by the personalities behind the creative process. Spending time in an environment like this is incredibly inspiring to me, allowing me to immerse myself in different forms of creativity and discover new ways of seeing the world.

I believe it is important not to stay exclusively within the wedding industry and develop a single, narrow way of seeing. Milan Design Week pulls me out of that almost by force. Every exhibition and every conversation with a designer or architect atFuorisalone becomes a small source of inspiration that shapes how I observe, compose, and tell stories through my images.

Walking Through the Installations

This year I moved between spaces that could not have been more different from one another. A room of sculptural furniture in bold orange and dusty blue, lit dramatically against concrete walls left almost untouched. A few rooms over, a softer world entirely: powder blue walls, fragile ceramic forms balanced on thin metal stands, the kind of objects that seem to hold their breath.

Photographing both in the same afternoon is a strange and wonderful exercise. You learn to adjust your eye quickly, to read a new kind of light and stillness within minutes of leaving the last room behind.

The Value of Stepping Outside Your Own Industry

One of my biggest takeaways from this year, and it is the same one I seem to have every year, was the reminder that creativity genuinely thrives when we step outside our own industry. Being surrounded by designers, artists, and architects from different backgrounds is refreshing in a way that is hard to describe until you are standing in the middle of it.

It also reminds me how important it is to stay curious. Whenever I immerse myself in a world outside of weddings, whether that is design, art, or interiors, I come back with fresh inspiration that ultimately enriches the way I approach photography for my couples.

What This Has Taught Me About Photographing Weddings

The design world has taught me to pay close attention to composition, balance, light, texture, and the relationship between people and the spaces around them. It has trained my eye to notice small details that often go unnoticed but contribute enormously to the overall feeling of an image. A single sculptural object placed just right can hold an entire room. These are not lessons I learned in weddings but I learned them here.

It has also encouraged me to think beyond trends and focus on photographs that feel thoughtful and emotionally resonant. Great design is often timeless because it is rooted in authenticity rather than whatever happens to be fashionable in a given season, and I try to bring that same philosophy to my own work.

Most importantly, being exposed to art, design, and architecture continuously expands what I think of as my visual vocabulary. It helps me arrive at each wedding with fresh eyes, allowing me to create images that feel both editorial and deeply personal, while staying true to the people in front of my camera.

Why It Matters

I do not think I will ever stop returning to Milan Design Week. Not because it makes for good content but because it keeps the part of me that fell in love with photography in the first place wide awake.

If you are curious about the work I create when I am not photographing weddings, you can see more of it on myInstagram highlight on “Design Week”, or take a look at ourdestination wedding portfolio to see how that same eye finds its way back into my work with couples.