She only said yes because it was me.
Then she said yes to everything else.
The ensaio that started a lot of things
This is the ensaio — the Portuguese word for a portrait sitting, the closest thing English has is "shoot" but it doesn't carry the same weight — that started a lot of things for me. I was at the beginning of my work in Dublin. I had decided I wanted to be a queer-led wedding photographer in Ireland, but I didn't yet have the portfolio that would let people understand what I meant by that. I needed to photograph couples I trusted. I asked Nai and Hanna.
Hanna is shy — properly shy. The kind of shy that turns down photoshoots out of principle, that hates having a phone aimed at her at a birthday party, that goes quiet when a friend takes out a camera. She told me, in the same sentence, that she'd never do this for anyone else and that she was doing it because it was me. Because we already knew each other. Because she trusted the lens specifically when I was the one holding it.
That sentence — I'm only saying yes because it's you — is, in a quiet way, the thesis of how I work. Photography is consent. Especially queer portrait photography. The camera, the editing, the gallery, the way the photos are shared — all of it is built on the small repeated yes between the person being seen and the person looking. If the trust isn't there, the photos can be technically beautiful and still feel wrong. If the trust is there, even a phone snap can be holy.
A Dublin studio session, editorial light, two people who knew each other
We went to a studio. The light was very magazine, very editorial — clean, intentional, unforgiving. The kind of light that makes nervous people more nervous because it shows everything. I expected nervousness. I was bracing for it. I was ready to slow the session down, sit on the floor, drink tea, wait it out.
What happened instead was Hanna and Nai forgetting the camera completely, looking at each other the way they look at each other when no one is around. Foreheads touched. Hands found hands. The shy one — Hanna — kept laughing, a particular laugh she only does around Nai. The editorial light caught all of it. The lens, for once, was just a witness.
Two Brazilians, one Dublin, a relationship I've always admired
Hanna is from Porto Alegre. Nai is from Salvador. They met in Dublin and they stayed in Dublin and they have built one of the most quietly steady relationships I know. They put work into each other. They check in. They choose, in a way that I have always admired. There is no theatre in their love. It's daily, low-frequency, real-frequency, the kind that doesn't post anniversaries because the anniversary lives in the kitchen on a Tuesday at 7pm.
The photos from that ensaio are few. They are also among the photos I look at the most. They remind me what I'm trying to do. They remind me that trust is the only thing that makes any of this work. They remind me that when a shy person says yes, but only to you, the only correct answer is to handle that yes like a small bird.
If you're a queer couple in Dublin looking for an editorial ensaio or couple portrait session — and you've put off photoshoots because you've never trusted a photographer to see you the right way — that's the kind of work I most want to do.
Coverage · Studio ensaio · short session, Dublin
Brief · Editorial, intimate, two people who already know each other
Result · The photos that taught me what I was doing
