There’s something special about autumn in Korea. The shorter days bring a warmth and softness to the light that cannot be found at other times of year. Oh, and there’s also the changing leaves! When those two things come together, there’s a short window of a week or two when the parks and forests become somewhat of a fairytale.
Fionn reached out to me well in advance of their trip to Seoul, which is always advised for the busy times of the year as we usually book up a few months in advance. We began our conversation and flip-flopped through several different ideas in the lead-up to the shoot. With autumn, it’s tough to predict exactly what a particular area is going to look like until a week or so in advance. Sudden changes in temperature or a little rainfall can completely throw the season off, so we kept our ideas open until their trip was getting close. Eventually, we settled on working in Peace Park with a quick trip up to Haneul Park for sunset following the major section of our photo shoot.
As with most of my couples, this was Jerome and Fionn’s first photo shoot together. I always like to start simple and keep things light-hearted in the beginning. We all need to warm up and get a feel for how things will go before we dive deep into the session. So, we found a small pocket of backlight to work in and got to work. This type of light makes it easy to create soft, flattering images that I can show my couple to help them relax.
Once my couple are starting to warm up and I have found my groove, I like to work with the light we have and experiment a little. On this day, we had that lovely combination of autumn leaves and warm afternoon light that we always hope for in a late-October photo shoot. This is what autumn feels like here and I want to make sure we capture that. The great thing about Peace Park is all the variety we have in terms of backgrounds. There are dozens of different types of trees and also some art installations that make for constant variety.
As the sun gets lower in the sky, we can start to make some dreamy images in this park, but we have to work quickly as the hills nearby block the sun well before sunset. There is a 15-20 minute window when things get really beautiful at this time of year. The sun’s warmth gives the leaves an extra pop of colour and the feeling of autumn really starts to come through in the images. By this time, Jerome and Fionn were used to being close like this in a public place and we were able to flow through several spaces and get plenty of images very quickly.
As the sun dipped lower, we began our journey up to Haneul Park. Haneul, or Sky, Park, is perched atop a hill of reclaimed land. There are two ways up, several hundred stairs or the electric buggies. We, of course, opted to take the buggies and were glad to find that the queue was short. Unfortunately, they can’t be booked, so you just have to wait in line. Thankfully, we only waited a few minutes. When we reached the top, it was, as expected at this time of year, chaos. This park has become quite famous among locals and tourists alike. This meant quite a bit of manoeuvring to find frames without people and a lot of creative composition on my part to ensure these images were just of my couple. In the last few minutes of daylight, we managed several images with the reeds and then, for good measure, wrapped up with some silliness before heading back down in the dark.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of images from Jerome and Fionn’s pre-wedding photo shoot. Autumn is a beautiful time here in Korea and it’s extremely popular for photo shoots like this one. It’s always great to get the conversation started early if you’re hoping for a booking at this time of year, so reach out any time!