Wat Umong and its forest tunnels

At the foot of Doi Suthep, west of the old city and about a kilometre south of the university's main campus, Wat Umong is a forest temple where monks still study, and it feels like it: tall trees, a quiet lake, and brick tunnels beneath a large chedi, with Buddha images set in niches along the walls. Signs with proverbs in Thai and English hang from the trees along the paths.

The light under the trees stays soft all day, which makes it the honest answer to what to shoot at noon. The couple frames belong to the trees and the tunnel mouths rather than the shrines inside, and it is the calmest setting in the city for an engagement session. In the haze months, from about February to April, when the mountain views vanish, it loses nothing: the frames here were always close ones.

Voices stay low, the images in the tunnels are photographed on their own, and shoulders and knees are covered. A working place of study is not a set: a session here is quieter, more distant and shorter than one in the open, and kisses and lifts belong outside the temple grounds.