Prague in White

A Prague photo shoot on a white Christmas, after a fresh dawn snowfall

Hi, I’m author S.
Last time I shared photos from an Okinawa photo shoot, and today it’s Prague. These were taken around Christmas 2023. I’m honestly terrible at keeping my portfolio up to date… so I’ve pulled these photos from my Naver Blog to show you here.
That day it snowed really heavily before dawn, but by the time we started, the snow had stopped and the sun was shining brightly, so we got to do the Prague photo shoot in bright sunshine. It was a bit cold, being winter, but we had a lot of fun shooting.
People sometimes ask me what they should do during a shoot… Don’t worry too much. If you just stay relaxed and go with the flow, you’ll definitely end up with great photos 😀

Once you’ve booked and we’ve settled on a date and time, we meet at the meeting point and head off together. We usually meet at the Starbucks in Malá Strana, on the west side of Charles Bridge (Karlův most). If you don’t have a tram ticket, you can buy one nearby, and you can grab a coffee before we start, which is why I like the Malá Strana Starbucks.
I’ve done photo shoots all over the world, and for Korean clients I try to use a Starbucks as the meeting point whenever I can. There’s some thinking behind that: Starbucks is everywhere in Korea, and I figure it helps take the edge off the strangeness of being abroad. For Koreans, Starbucks doesn’t feel unfamiliar at all.

This is the morning after a heavy snowfall. The snow actually fell before dawn, so the streets hadn’t been fully cleared yet.
We keep shooting like this even while moving between spots. It looks completely natural, but it’s actually a deliberately staged shot. What I had in mind was capturing how the ground looks on a snowy day and, since this is Prague after all, getting the Strahov Monastery (Strahovský klášter) building into the background too.
This is how I work… I think carefully about where background buildings and landmarks sit in the frame, so the people and the setting work together.
Since coming back to Korea, I’ve met the owners of quite a few studios and talked about all sorts of things, and they say shoots that focus mainly on the people dominate the Korean photo shoot market. But honestly… that approach doesn’t really appeal to me. Focusing on people is easy because that’s all you have to think about. Bring the background into it and you’ve got one more thing to worry about, right? Paying 3 million Korean won for an indoor shoot against a white backdrop with powerful studio lighting just doesn’t make sense to me.
For reference, the shoot I’m sharing today ran 3 hours in total, 2 hours by day and 1 hour at night, and cost 450,000 Korean won 😀

When I first moved to Prague in 2014 and came up here, the name was definitely written on it. But it was in Latin, so I had no idea how to say it. There’s a statue of the Virgin Mary, so I just started calling it “Mary Viewpoint” for lack of a better name.
After that… I became so well known in Prague that, as the rumor went, practically everyone knew who I was… and so among Koreans, “Mary Viewpoint” became the name of this place. I do know the real name, but I still just call it Mary Viewpoint.
This is Sarangbi Snap’s signature shot, walking on the sky, taken right here.
You’ll probably spot it in my Okinawa photo shoot photos too, and in Korea these days I take this shot in Busan.

This is the view looking down from Mary Viewpoint. Stunning, isn’t it?
Normally you’d see orange rooftops, but this was a special day when the rooftops were white as far as the eye could see.
For this shot, I walked them through every detail: the pose, how to position their feet, and the angle at which to lift their head. Nothing is set in stone. If you’re struggling with what I ask, I gradually switch to easier, simpler poses… and with people who are doing well, I sometimes ask for harder ones.
When I photograph couples who aren’t professional models, the thing I care about most is “never ask them to do anything they find hard”.

If it hadn’t snowed, we could have tried a pose where the groom lifts the bride to show off his strength, but with the snow and the slippery ground… for safety, I set up something lighter and more playful instead. On a shoot, safety always comes first.
For the record, I’ve photographed around 4,800 groups without anyone being injured or an accident occurring. There have been two thefts during shoots, though ;_;

You come across this spot as you head down from Mary Viewpoint and loop back toward Strahov Monastery. I’d originally planned just a quick shot here, but someone had spread crushed gravel to stop people slipping. It looked messy, of course, so I removed it in Photoshop.
Once I’d made sure it was safe, we tried a shot with a little lift, like this one.
There’s no shortage of ideas for poses and shots, so just relax and come along.

We probably shot inside Prague Castle too, but since I didn’t upload any of those photos, I’m guessing a lot of the concepts were repeats. Honestly, shots inside Prague Castle are so predictable that I often leave them out when I write them up on the blog. There are a lot of restrictions on what you can shoot there.
Here we pack a little snow together to make a nose. I act out every expression in front of you, right down to scrunching up your eyes, so there’s nothing to worry about here either.
I actually used to do this shot a lot for couples’ photo shoots in Korea, where I did it with a macaron. Prague is so pretty outdoors… that I rarely bothered going into places like cafés.
In Prague, even two full hours of nonstop outdoor shooting isn’t enough.

After the daytime shoot, we pick things back up at night. The meeting point is the same: Starbucks Malá Strana (Malostranské náměstí). Starting photo shoots here and wrapping them up at Old Town Square is a system I was the first to set up, and these days most Prague photo shoot studios follow almost all the standards I created. Of course, that’s because I encouraged them to do it this way.
We meet at the familiar spot and carry on with the night shoot.
A tram decked out in Christmas decorations happened to be passing by, so I quickly came up with a pose for the shot. A shot like this is pretty rare in itself. Just so you know, not every tram gets pretty Christmas decorations like that. Only a handful do, which makes it an even more special memory.

We passed a Christmas tree on the way… so I set up a shot on the spot. A completely straight-faced photo can end up looking stale, so I added a little something to get them smiling.

This shot has the Vltava River with Charles Bridge in view. It’s a classic landmark photo. You know how a quick search on Naver Shopping turns up loads of shops that will frame your photos? Get a big one made and hang it at home, and it looks great. The photos have 10K resolution as standard, so they can be enlarged without looking pixelated.
The key detail in this shot is the way the bride lifts her heels off the ground. First, I ask her to link arms with the groom, move a little apart, rise onto her toes, and push against him. I tell him to hold his ground and resist her push.
That gives us all kinds of shots, and I just pick one to work on. An easy way to get a great shot with hardly any effort 😀

We can try all sorts of shots on Charles Bridge, and here I’ve included one of the couple kissing.
This one is carefully calculated too. It only works if none of the gas lamps on either side are broken, and Prague Castle has to show up in the background. So every time I shoot here, the most important thing is checking how many lamps are out. If even one light is off in this shot, something feels a bit empty. When that happens, I just move to a different spot 😀
The streetlights on Charles Bridge aren’t ordinary halogen or LED lights but gas lamps, so roughly one goes out about every two weeks. Even so, gas lamps are far prettier than halogen or LED lights and have so much more atmosphere, so I love them xD

This is the pier that appears early in the first Mission: Impossible film.
Back in 2014, cameras weren’t as capable, so this was a really important spot to shoot. As mirrorless cameras got better, a shoot that used to take 15 minutes here could be wrapped up in about 3. It matters a lot less now, and in my later years of Prague photo shoots it became a quick-stop spot: if we could shoot here in passing, we did, and if it didn’t look doable, we just skipped it.
A lot of people use the photos taken here as their messaging app profile pictures 😀

When we start shooting in Malá Strana, we usually finish at Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí). The reason there are no Christmas market photos this time… is that right before I shared these on my Naver Blog, I’d already uploaded a Prague photo shoot taken at the Christmas market. I think I left them out because it felt a bit repetitive.
Some of the concepts overlapped a little too, so I did it on purpose to set this one apart. If I get the chance to share more Prague photo shoots later, I’ll show you the rest then.
That’s how the shoot goes, and then we wrap up. I go over a few things with you, we say our goodbyes, and that’s it.
It used to take 2 months from the shoot to delivery… but now, once I edit one photo, AI can apply an editing style that matches mine by almost 90%, so I can deliver the photos in about 15 days.

Thank you so, so much for leaving such a lovely review. You can also find it in the reviews on my Naver Smart Store.

Wishing you happiness always, and I hope we meet again someday.

These days I do photo shoots around Gyeongju, Busan, Tongyeong, and Geoje. I’m good with babies too… so right now I’m doing a lot of baby photo shoots, and in Gyeongju I do family photo shoots. In Busan and Geoje I shoot all kinds of things, from first-birthday parties to wedding ceremonies. My contact details are on my Smart Store, so get in touch if you need a photo shoot 😀