1 year 12 photos
It has been a year since my wife and I officially said “yes” to one another, and almost right after the happy ceremony was over we promised each other to take 1 picture every month, in our wedding outfit, for as long as we can. I don’t know how long we will manage to keep it going, mostly because of the clothes, but so far we have taken 12 photos, most of which we are quite proud of and I want to share them with you.
I don’t have the soul of a portrait photographer so for me it is a double journey: a married life one and a photography skill one. As a husband I found that having to find a subject for next/this month is a great tool to summarize our couple status and we always come out of the shoot closer than when we started it, even if some are quite improvised or in harsher conditions. As a photographer I found that having to enter a genre I am unfamiliar withbrought me back to my early days of photography when everything was new and exciting, and that is a feeling any professional dreams of reviving every day! So if you are wondering about doing some kind of post-wedding project, I would highly recommend it.
JULY 2019
This is our first one, and as often when first tries we didn’t know quite yet how get about doing this. So we picked a house nearby our home that had these beautiful flower vines over its gate. These flowers are called 능소화 (凌霄花), roughly translatable as “sky teasing flower”. A message of hope for us, newly wed couple!
AUGUST 2019
This is a place we visited a few years ago and had great fun at. In 연인산, a long walk up 용추계곡 you will find this 5-meter-high rock that makes for a perfect diving spot. Unfortunately, when we went this time, diving/swimming was prohibited and they even set up a big cctv-speaker+sign thing to dissuade you from having fun… Big shame, yes, but the rest of the stream is fair game so go enjoy it anyway!
SEPTEMBER 2019
추석 (harvest festival) was in September last year so we went to my wife’s hometown, 춘천 (Chuncheon). It happens that there is one of the best skate park in the country there where national championships are held every year. And since it was 추석 the idea of riding our boards in 한복 (traditional clothing) came naturally. So if you skate you’ll know right away that those shots are staged but it was good fun to shoot and it took 4 people (her parents helped) to produce those images so it was a family effort, just like 추석!
October 2019
The october photo probably has the most behind story. Let’s start with the simplest: I turned 33 and I decided that I would no longer have hair from that day on, it was a long time coming inevitable decision! The main story is that my wife got a job at 마포구청 as a local tour guide and for that position she created a tour of 홍대 area’s live music background. That’s why she’s holding the 마포구 tour program flag and wears the program’s hat. Finally the location itself may look quite decrepit but it happens to be the first live rock bar in Seoul. However the fate of the historically valuable place is uncertain, at the time of the shoot it was closed and noone seemed to be willing to take over. Hopefully covid-19 won’t have entirely buried it… along with the tour program my wife invested a lot in.
NOVEMBER 2019
My favorite shot of this year. Though it doesn’t have as deep a meaning as the previous entry the colors are gorgeous and I generally love the feeling I get from it. But it isn’t to say that there isn’t a story behind it! We shot this at 서울현충원 (Seoul National cemetary) for practical reasons, mostly that while trees were peaking red, the place is close to home and the area was empty of people. Especially at the hour at which shot this: for sunrise, a little after 7am. We didn’t only have to get up early for this one, we also had to freeze; thermometer showed -2°C! It actually was the coldest photoshoot of the year! It is hard to see in low resolution but I had un-redden the skin on my hands and our noses! And we had to shoot 3 times that leaves throw. Needless to say that we were happy to get back in the heated car!
DECEMBER 2019
This is a more expected shot for that time of year. A good friend of mine is a full mode Christmas geek and decorates his appartment in the most complete and magical way you could imagine, so we just had to shoot the december picture there! We used the flash light of my phone to create the light coming out of the present, totally improvised but it worked! This shot is the last one of a christmas series actually, you can find the others here.
JANUARY 2020
Alright! We went a long way to shoot this one! We packed up all the necessary camera gear, a soft box and a stand and headed to France for my dad’s 70th birthday. We didn’t tell him we’d be there that day so it was a beautiful surprise. Also we had to set the frame for over 20 minutes before actually bringing the cake so the guests started to lose patience! But no regret, even though my wife is a bit dark I will keep my dad’s expression in this shot forever in my memory as the happiest moment we spent in 2020 so far! Especially knowing all the tragedies 2020 would bring after that…
FEBRUARY 2020
Another birthday! This time my wife’s. We didn’t have much of a plan for this one but when we saw that that day (luckily that day being actually her birthday!) snow came down, we rushed to the mountain to shoot… well whatever we could as long as it was in the snow! So yes this one is very improvised, only natural light and the angle is quite random but her smile makes up for all that, doesn’t it? It was the only snow we had that winter so we had to made good use of it!
MARCH 2020
Only a little after my wife’s birthday is when all went downhill. 2020 was starting to show its real face: covid-19 pandemic. Though we know now that Korea fared well in the pandemic, at that time numbers just kept increasing and fear settled in the country. So we had to use our project to document that really bizarre time. We bought a police line roll, taped some to the door frame of our home and spend over 2 hours finding the right lighting angles. Afterwards, in post, I had to completely replace the police writing on the tape with more relevant writing and composite 3 shots to get to the final image. A lot of work but we are proud of the result.
Fun behind the scene fact: after installing the tape, while I was setting up a flash to light it, a neighbor came down the stairs and asked me, in a really alarmed tone, if a burglar went through the house! That police tape did an amazing job! I told her it was just for a picture but she stayed a whole minute staring at the door with the deepest frown on her face. ㅋㅋㅋ
APRIL 2020
March brought a planet scale disease, april brought a personal one. My wife’s mother was diagnosed with and operated for ovarian cancer, stage 2. It was a considerable blow to the family, and it made us consider death in a way we hadn’t before.
For the non Korean speakers, the letters on the right read “cancer”. My wife came up with the idea of the boxing outfit to symbolize her mom’s fight against the disease. Also, april means cherry blossoms season so they had to be in this month photo but they aren’t quite the focus point. To all those who are affected by cancer our thoughts go with you, keep fighting!
MAY 2020
Alright, enough gloom for this year! We got married last year in May, 4th. Since it is the first anniversary we decided to chose a picture from both weddings. So here was a picture we took during dinner of the french wedding. And because we both like Star Wars, and it happened to be may the fourth we took a Star Wars theme picture. I can’t say I am super happy about my photoshop job on this one but as long as I’m a Sith I’m happy!
JUNE 2020
The following month was our Korean wedding, one year before on the exact day this post went online, completing a whole year of marriage. It was an unusual experience for us to prepare this sencond wedding since we had done it once already, but for sure we were more relaxed! The whole ceremony happened so fast though it felt like it just started that we were already in the hotel room exhausted and ready to sleep! For me, following the traditional ceremony was an enjoyable experience, and it turned to plain funny when I first tried lifting my wife and fell back! All in all it was a great day and we picked that picture because of it’s general mood and we wanted to finish on a positive note.
Saying that looking back at a year of passed life is always an insightful thing is quite cliché but it is true. I guess it is comparing your expectations a year ago and comparing to where life actually brought you that makes people think it is an intellectually valuable effort. And clearly, who would have, last year in july, guessed that the world would go through a still unresolved pandemic, that my wife’s family would know cancer, that other health related issues would surface in my family, that the local and global economy would slow down so much, making for the best spring Korea has know for probably more than a century…
I suppose that the surprisingly humbling lesson to take away from this first year is simply that the future is always uncertain, so regardless of how well you are doing today plan tomorrow as if it won’t be in your favor. Basically be the ant and not the cigada from the fable. But keep your chin up; it can only get better from here!