Anna Mello Studios

What do you offer?

I make photos and films that are half-memory, half-evidence, a place you can return to long after the day is over. Queer-led and built for every kind of family, with a quiet eye for the soft hours: the half-light before the ceremony, the long look between speeches, the 1am dance floor when no one’s watching

Why do you want to work with the LGBTQ+ community?

Because this is my community, the place where I feel most myself. I’ve always had this drive to be loud about who I am and to help the people around me feel that same pride. Working with queer couples isn’t a niche I chose for my business, it’s a natural extension of who I am. Wedding work moves me every single time, because I understand the fight it took to get here. Witnessing that up close, through my lens, feels like an honor.

Allyship

Beyond being queer myself, allyship for me is structural, not symbolic.

I’m the founder of We Do, a wedding collective in Ireland built specifically for LGBTQIA+ couples, so queer people aren’t left hunting for vendors who’ll treat them with care. They have a whole team that already gets it. For the past three years I’ve worked with Outhouse, Dublin’s LGBTQ+ community resource centre, creating visuals for the space and the community it serves.

A large part of my client base comes from the community and has trusted me with their stories from the very beginning. In my work, correct pronouns are standard and I never assume roles or genders within a couple. I also try to centre queer voices on their own terms.

My documentary A Love to Celebrate gave a range of couples (sapphic, trans, pan, gay) the same questions and let each one answer for themselves. Allyship, to me, is something you keep showing up for, not a label you claim once.

Representation isn’t something I had to add to my business. It’s the foundation of it. The majority of the couples in my portfolio, across my website and social media, are LGBTQIA+, and they’ve been the core of my work since the beginning.

When someone queer looks at my work, they see people like them, not a token couple added for optics. I keep this active by continuing to centre queer love in everything I publish, choosing which work to feature with intention, and making sure my booking process, my language, and my client communication never assume a couple’s roles or genders.

Through We Do, the collective I founded, I’m also building a wider network of vendors so queer couples feel included beyond just photography. Going forward, I want to keep expanding the range of stories I document, not just the couples I’m already close to, so that more of the community sees itself reflected in my work.