Lake Titicaca and Sucre represent the two dominant visual traditions in Bolivian elopement photography. They are separated by a flight and a meaningful altitude change, and they produce photographs that share nothing except the fact that they are unmistakably Bolivian.

Couple at Lake Titicaca during their Bolivia elopement with the vast sacred lake and the Andean mountains on both the Bolivian and Peruvian shores visible — Lake Titicaca: the vast sacred lake, the Inca pilgrimage island, and the altiplano sky at thirty-eight hundred metres. This photograph says Bolivia immediately.

What Lake Titicaca Gives You

Lake Titicaca gives you scale and silence. The lake is six times the area of Lake Geneva and sits three and a half kilometres above sea level. Isla del Sol has no cars and no roads and its ancient terraces have not changed since the Inca. Standing at the north end of the island at dawn, with the lake on both sides and the Bolivian Andes behind, produces a photograph that communicates something about time and space that no colonial city can. The lake is the oldest sacred site in the Andes. The photographs here carry that weight.

Couple in elopement attire on the shores of Lake Titicaca on the Bolivian side with the water and the island and mountains behind them — Lake Titicaca at its most photogenic: the Isla del Sol dawn, the lake on both sides of the trail, and the silence of a place that has no vehicles and no modern infrastructure

What Sucre Gives You

Sucre gives you architecture. The entire historic centre is white: whitewashed colonial facades, white stone churches, white arcade columns around the central plaza. The Casa de la Libertad, the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the Convento de San Felipe Neri with its rooftop terrace all offer baroque colonial architecture that photographs in a completely different idiom from the lakeside. Sucre is a city you walk through and the colonial details at eye level, the iron window grilles, the flower boxes, the narrow streets, all give intimate portrait contexts that the open lake cannot.

Couple in elopement attire in a colonial setting during their Sucre Bolivia elopement with the white colonial architecture and the city context behind them — Sucre: the white colonial city, the baroque churches, and the intimate street contexts. A completely different visual world from the open lake at altitude.

Combining Both

A complete Bolivia elopement does both. The flight from La Paz to Sucre is forty-five minutes and connecting Sucre back to La Paz to drive to Copacabana is straightforward. A ten-to-twelve day Bolivia trip can include two days in Sucre, two days in La Paz (altitude acclimatisation and city photography), and three days at the lake including the Isla del Sol overnight. The two destinations do not repeat each other and they tell a more complete Bolivian story together than either can alone.

Arman

Destination Wedding Photographer

Vancouver · Medellín · Worldwide