Autumnal Peaks
All around us green is turning into fiery shades of yellow, orange and red. Autumn is here, cold nights force me to close my windows and wear clothes the summer had managed to make me forget I owned. And yet it is my favorite season.
As a result of that seasonal shift, you will undoubtedly have seen northern hemisphere autumnal tree pictures flooding your social media radar. For good reasons of course, trees are peaking and it is all a spectacle you don’t want to miss. But I feel, after all those years here, that pictures of backlit tree leaves have become so expected that I can’t care much for those anymore. I’d like to see the Korean landscape in a different way, one that uses fall colors, but not by making it the main subject. Therefore the idea that a pun would make a good concept became the main drive for this post. I want to use the word “peak” both as a verb and a noun. I will show you views from peaks and of peaks, surrounded by peaking autumn trees.
I will start with views of peaks, with one I have already made a post about, 국기봉 - Flag Peak in 관악산 - Gwanaksan and its neighbor peak. Those aren’t the most grandiose peaks around but they do have arguments for themselves, one of them being that, hit with sunset light, they reveal their true identity.
This peak looks so much grander from this angle, especially robed in red.
Details in this picture are what brought me to direct my lens to it. You can see a Korean War bunker, hikers on their path and, lower, that brighter tree which was the only one to received light so low on the face, standing up to the giant granite formation.
Now, on to 도봉산 - Dobongsan’s summit, getting the last light of the day.
This is a very zoomed in shot of 자운봉 - Jaun Peak and all the other peaks surrounding it. Doesn’t it feel like this is a ridge far away in a major countryside mountain chain? That ridge is also a lot of fun to hike!
Let’s zoom out and unveil a classic Seoul mountain shot: 인수봉 - Insu Peak in 북한산 - Bukhan Mountain.
This view is probably the most epic of any mountain view around Seoul, it is no mystery it is so famous. If you can, do hike up to it, hike up for sunset or, even better, sunrise. The last light hitting Insu Peak brings this vista to a different level.
On that very spot, if you turn around you can see the rest of the connected peaks that make 만경대 - Mangyeong peak, on which you stand. One of them, the lowest one actually, stole the show that evening:
This peak is shaped in a classical sharp triangle that seems to slash through the autumnal background, and yet, the soft light coming from the right makes it appear more rounded and welcoming. Quick bonus info: you can see the vestiges of the early 18th century outer Seoul wall on the very ridge (under that cubic boulder).
Sunset time is my favorite time to shoot during fall because that light sublimates peaking trees color. So it was only natural that I chose that time for this peak series. However it is not the only time, sunrise works just as well.
I talked about it before but, for me, fall means nostalgia. Not of the depressing kind, rather the one you’d feel finding an object, at the bottom of a box, that transports you years back, during some happy event of your childhood. This is fall for me.
So here is a short sunrise story that took place in 2011, in 도봉산 - Dobongsan.
I had only seen three falls in Korea before that day and I was, still am, in love with the landscape at this time of year. There is nothing more marvelous in Korea than gazing down at the multicolored coat mountains wear in fall from a high peak. It looks as if vegetation is putting on a firework show before the night, a last valiant stand before surrendering to the cold.
Foliage peaks and die. Yes it is, inherently, truly romantic. But for landscape photographers it also means haste. These roughly 2 weeks of beauty are short lived and any opportunity lost fatefully means a one-year wait.
So it happened on that day of autumn 2011 that John and I spent the night out to capture a view we had been lusting after for a while: 망월사 - Mangweol temple at sunrise from an adjacent peak.
That night pollution forecast was extremely low so we expected the best light. We had a no cloud forecast for the next morning too. All the stars aligned, we took the last subway to Dobongsan Station and started our way up. It isn’t the most famous path so we met almost nobody, and that’s how we wanted it.
I don’t remember the temperatures being too cold so we stopped at our first spot for the night, a star trail shot of our destination.
We stayed 2 hours at this spot to get as much star motion as possible. I couldn’t find a name for this peak but you can’t miss it on the way up, it’s tall enough down-climbers use it as training before rappelling down from Dobongsan’s summit.
John had brought cards and thankfully it was a windless night so we killed time playing games while our cameras worked on that star trail shot. At this point sleep wasn’t yet too hard to fight but as the end of this exposure approached it was harder to fight. So we pushed on to stay awake.
We made a couple more stops to shoot more stars and every minute that passed we grew more sleepy. My memory got blurry because of the exhaustion and the 9 passed years but I do remember setting an alarm during the last star trail to make sure we’d have enough time to make our way to our destination for sunrise.
So here we are, on top of our peak, pinned under pine trees, our cheap 200mm zoom lenses mounted on our crop bodies, the sun has risen already but it is blocked by 수락산 - Surak Mountain in the east. We have some time to adjust our compositions. Finally the bright ball in the sky made its way above the ridges of Surak Mountain and bathed the trees and the temple in a warm ardent light.
Time to shoot. No time to talk, no time to sleep or even feel sleepy. That side light won’t last forever, it is now or never, we’ll sleep later.
Mangweol temple has 2 major buildings, this one is a modest pavilion pinned on a ridge on top of a small cliff and under another one behind it. This shot was pre sunrise actually, the light was still purple which isn’t my favorite but it works well in fall!
The main pavilion in not yet complete sunrise light. I knew the right light was getting close, and so was my excitement. There is still some purple in this shot and it isn’t optimally framed, I just wanted to use it as a transition between early sunrise to full sunrise.
This is the main frame of that morning. It has its flaws compositionally but for me it remains a vivid memory. That gorgeous crimson tree in the middle was so vibrant that, even from as distant as it was, I still remember it standing out so much.
10 minutes later the good light was already gone. The adrenaline left with it and the warm sun on our necks brought comfort… and sleepiness. It was high time to hike back down and end this wonderful night hike. It felt like the longest descent we had ever taken! The subway ride back home was even longer, well for the part that we were awake anyway!
I keep such a fond memory of that trip that I place it somewhere near the peak of my photography trips, pun definitely intended.
This is my 10th post, an unassuming number of course, but a meaningful one to me nonetheless, as it motivates me to find new ideas and keep writing. So if you have followed me so far I want to thank you very much for giving me some of your time and interest, and I hope to keep showing you more beautiful sights in the future.
No alltrails this time again as I’m not even sure that app existed in 2011! But a couple of pinned maps to help you find those views, those places are quite famous so you will have no issue finding them. Also, as always follow me on instagram @romainphoto_outside (the link at the top of this page) for more photography than I can blog about!
Feel free to leave a comment below and share my blog so that, one day maybe, I can meet you during a hike here!
A bientôt!
만경대 - Mangyeong Peak (last 3 peak pictures)
Nameless peak with view of 망월사 - Mangwol Temple