Photographer Jimena San Miguel of Volvoreta is deeply passionate about film photography and provides her couples with a tailored photography and newly added 16mm film experience. Based in Spain and travelling worldwide, Volvoreta only takes on a limited number of six weddings per year. Jimena loves working with couples who allow her full creative freedom to capture their wedding in a creative and unique style.
What would you like couples to know about you?
Jimena from Volvoreta is a Spanish artist based in Europe, although she has close ties to the USA and travels all over the world. Jimena works for European fashion magazines completely in analog film, does photography in cinema movies and weddings with a great emotional charge. For her everything she does is within the same universe, because her vision carries it into everything she does. And that is what makes her unique.
Tell us about your business!
Jimena´s photography captures how extraordinary an unforgettable celebration like your wedding day can be. With a touch of creativity and delicateness. It is intended for couples who want to hire an author to tell their story. She moves away from offering a product that is already designed, but she offers a creative project where you will work in several meetings with her. She develops her work in analog, while a second photographer shoots in digital. While you have a photographer in the front row getting the most important digital images (entrance of the bride, family photos, the dance etc.), Jimena will be looking for a new perspective, always from the more emotional and familiar side.
She does only 6 weddings per year and her intention is to celebrate all the moments of planning with each couple. She can better develop her aesthetic proposals, with clients who appreciate the adventure of creativity and who give free rein to the fact that there is no imposed aesthetics, but rather creative freedom. She loves working with couples who want a wedding author in one of the biggest adventures of their life.
Although she has had digital video for many seasons now, she is developing something more authentic and differentiating by adding 16mm cinema film. This year, Jimena and her team have just launched the creation of a film shot in 16mm with a cinema camera, spectacular, with the intention of shooting for the first time in this format, a wedding. It is a very specific product for clients who are in the creative world and want something very different.
Here is an example of what it was like to do this film project: For this wedding, they went to the most representative organ of love, the heart, and studied its beats linked to the MPH of the music. Music is linked to a certain heart rate (depending on the style of music), and we linked the heart rate to the emotions of a wedding.
Where are you based?
I live with my camera in a suitcase. I am unable to stay still in one place for long, but when I do, I rest in a Spanish paradise called Galicia, very close to Portugal, which I call home. Every year I go to the USA for work and during the year I usually find myself in Italy, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland or Bali, where I usually retire for a few months.
Do you travel for weddings?
What is important is the energy of the couples in wanting to have something creative, linked to something intimate, relaxed and real about them. Be true. Having said that, if you have won me over, I'll go anywhere to get to know your story.
How would you describe your style?
To describe my style, I have to describe my identity. My way of working represents everything I know and everything I am. My vision of the world is an emotional point of view. And what moves emotions, in my case, is the reality of life and the actions that today seem unimportant and when time goes by are the ones you remember the most. The moments where you are sitting with your dad laughing and talking about the day you introduced him to your fiancé. Or your mother looking at you while standing proudly. You, nervously tripping over your wedding dress. A sideways glance from your husband. A shadow telling a story. A photograph that conveys a movement. Sometimes beauty doesn't need to be seen clearly.
What is your most memorable career moment?
Something memorable I could say was being the official photographer of the wedding of Rafael Nadal and Mery Perello, German royalty, the Oscar-winning Guillermo Navarro and Susana Tembleque, the curator of the Alberts Museum, Dr Madeleine Haddon. Also, my first 100% analog wedding of a couple of artists in Sicily. I especially remember the cover of Moments magazine where we did an editorial 100% in analog in the snow of Austria at dawn that was unforgettable, or also the first film in which I was in charge of all the photography. All those jobs where I had a real connection with the couple and their guests, where I could observe closely and had a sincere invitation to be part of their world for a few days. I am so grateful that my passion has led me to meet such amazing people.
What inspires you?
If you ask me about one of my virtues, I would say that one of them is that I am able to see beauty in the little things of life, in everyday life. For me, something beautiful and everyday is the family, and that which defines it and makes it special. For me, certain innocuous things are important. I fall in love with people's little imperfections; an awkwardness, an exaggerated laugh, a walk, a way of combing their hair...
Do you shoot digitally, on film or both?
I shoot analog 35mm and my second photographer covers everything on digital format. Sometimes we can have a third photographer.
Do you have custom packages according to individual needs?
I like to listen to each story and think together about what might be the best fit for each case.
Who is your dream client?
I can better develop my aesthetic proposals, with clients who appreciate the adventure of creativity and who give free rein to the fact that there are no imposed aesthetics, but rather there is complete creative freedom. Couples who want a wedding artist in one of the biggest adventures of their life.
What is your advice to couples getting married?
Be true to your identity.
