Retreat Photography in Spain | One Life Wellness Workshop with Gillian McMichael

This has been a long time coming. There are a few reasons why it’s taken me a year to post about my experience photographing Gillian McMichael’s One Life Retreat in Spain. The obvious one is time, but the main reason is grief. Even writing this makes me tear up a little and it’s odd for me to get this personal about a job, but it’s part of my experience during this time and it’d feel dishonest and fake if I gloss over this.

Photographing the retreat was an absolute dream, I had the best time. Being part of this amazing retreat and safe space and witnessing Gillian doing her magic as well as doing all of that in a beautiful and picturesque setting that is Sóller was a career high. Coincidently, that meant I also spent my birthday in Spain with some downtime and location scouting at the beach. So coming back from that amazing week I felt on top of the world and positive. That’s when I got the call that my grandma is in the hospital and it’s not looking good. Unfortunately the next day she passed away. I don’t want to write about all the things I felt and how the next weeks and months looked for me as this is not what this post is about, but it is the main reason I put off sharing about my experience in Spain. Even as I write this I’m still not sure if I keep this paragraph or if I should just delete it. I guess you’ll see what I decided to do… or not.

At the beginning of last year, I’ve met Gillian McMichael and we had our first branding shoot together in a lovely styled home in Central London. It was such a great shoot and we really hit it off. Fast forward a few months and Gillian got in touch again and asked me if I was interested in photographing one of her retreats in Spain. As you can imagine it was a no-brainer.

The brief was to capture the essence of the retreat and Gillian doing her magic as the branding photos would be used across multiple websites and social media platforms to advertise future One Life Retreats. I spent 2 full days with the group from 7 am till late, photographing the daily guided morning yoga and meditation sessions as well as the discussion rounds on dealing with trauma and improving your mental health.

On the second day the morning meditation took place at the beach in Port de Sóller before all the tourists swarmed the area, so it was quiet and tranquil, just the atmosphere you’re hoping for to meditate. After some pastries and ice cream at the beach, we headed back to the villa. The rest of the retreat day included a guided journaling session, some 1:1 Reiki sessions performed by Gillian as well as a group chakra clearing & toning. The day ended with a burning ceremony where everyone wrote down things they wanted to let go of or wanted to change in their life and then burned the piece of paper.

In between activities Gillian and I went to explore the streets of Sóller for some branding and lifestyle portraits, which she’s been using as cover photos for her reels and in posts across her other social media for the past year.