Okinawa Photo Shoot: American Village with a Little One

Family photos at American Village, with ice cream, tears and smiles

👋 Haisai! I’m author S.
It’s been a while since my last Okinawa photo shoot post. I kept doing shoots, but couldn’t post any photos.. because everyone chose the ‘private’ option.. leaving me with nothing I could share. Every once in a blue moon.. I get photos I can share, so here they are. Thank you so, so much for letting me share them 👍

Today’s shoot took place at American Village. It lasted one hour, and although it was mostly cloudy, I edited the photos to make the weather look a little clearer.

Today’s photos are from American Village. It was a more popular choice than you might think.
I used to photograph babies here often. With short walks between spots and plenty of different backdrops, there was lots I could do.
Any planned poses for the shoot.. none. I capture things just as they happen. Only two of the photos I’m showing you today were posed.

Of course, I can give directions too, but these days many people prefer candid shots without any posing, so that’s how I work. I can also adjust my approach to suit what you want. I’ve photographed more than 4,000 groups, after all.

For American Village shoots, I used to spend a little time taking photos on the beach too. I really made the most of that one-hour shoot.
One little shame here.. the baby’s shoes couldn’t get wet. Water shoes or flip-flops would have given us more variety. I also photograph little ones dipping their feet in the water or running away at the sight of it.
There’s a foot-washing station right next to the beach, so no worries there.

I used to do a lot of ‘walking against the sky’ photos in Prague, with just people and sky in the frame. I originally did these at Olympic Park (올림픽공원) around 2012.. They weren’t popular then, but became a huge hit when I went to Prague..
As I mentioned at the start, it looks clear in the photos, but it really wasn’t that clear. There was quite a bit of hazy cloud that day. The photos could have been prettier if the weather had cooperated, which is a little disappointing.

This is one of the two posed shots.

I didn’t ask them to do anything here either. I just say, ‘We’re heading over that way now,’ and run ahead. What you do is up to you

All I said was to sit down for a moment.. I work out the angles and framing on the fly. It’s always about catching the moment.
If photos of kids look normal, something’s off. With kids, a little chaos is perfectly normal.

I don’t know why I took this. I was busy snapping away, and it ended up among the photos, so I gave it an edit.

This is where the route branches off. Is the baby old enough to eat ice cream?
If so, I used to head to Blue Seal or a street food truck selling ice cream. If they were too young for ice cream, I headed toward the shops.

Choosing ice cream without a care in the world,
I didn’t direct this, but I can predict children’s behavior to some extent, so I get into position ahead of them, ready to photograph what happens next.

Brown eyes, I see. Hehe, mine are brown too.

When editing baby photos, I have my own criteria for whether to remove things around their mouths. When they’re eating ice cream like this, I leave it alone. You can only get away with a face-filling close-up like this when you’re little..

With candid photos, I always have to stay on my toes and catch the moment.

This is when ‘Just one bite for Daddy’.. turned into a disaster. Dad pretended to take a big bite.. and the baby burst into tears. Crying makes their eyes red, which doesn’t look good in photos, so I have to smooth things over quickly.

So Dad quickly bought some strawberry ice cream, and the crisis was over. Luckily, we managed to stop the tears before their eyes went red.

Again, since I was capturing things as they happened without directing them.. this spot was a little tricky that day. Because.. it was crowded. If I’d been doing more posed shots, I could have had them walk back and forth a little until I got the photo. Instead, I somehow found an angle and made it work like this.
For couples’ photos, I sometimes give a little more direction.

This is the second of the two posed shots.
After all.. they came to Okinawa, so I had to get one with a landmark that feels like Okinawa.

And we finish up here on the tree-lined path. The shoot took exactly one hour.

Hope you make some happy memories in Okinawa! Mata yasai 👋

Okinawa photo shoots were 250,000 KRW for one hour in the daytime or 300,000 KRW for one hour at sunset or at night, including 20 edited photos and 300 original photos, but I’m not currently taking bookings for Okinawa photo shoots. I may resume someday, but there’s no set date. I’ll post an announcement if I do. I’m currently doing shoots in Gyeongju, and my base covers Tongyeong, Geoje, Changwon and western Busan. For booking information and contact details, please visit the Sarangbi Snap page.