South Korea: Aiden, part 1

Aiden was one of the most unexpected and great guys I've had the pleasure to meet and photograph - kind of on a whim. 

I was living in Beijing at the time, but was in the Northern Mariana Islands (near Guam) with clients from China for a tourism photo gig. We were supposed to be down there for 2 weeks, but ended up having to cut it short and evacuate because of a typhoon. We couldn't get a direct flight from Saipan to Beijing, so we had to stopover in Seoul. Unfortunately, my passport was just shy of having enough time left on its validity and I wasn't allowed to board the flight to China. Long story short, I had to stay in Seoul unexpectedly for 10 days while getting an emergency passport issued through the US embassy in Seoul. While the situation was stressful, I was excited to have this unexpected time in Seoul. I'd been there twice before (and twice since), but never more than just a few days.

Hello Grindr. Aiden and I met a few days after I arrived. We chatted on the app and the same day met at a cafe near my hotel. We of course hit it off and even went back to my hotel after the cafe to try some test shots on the rooftop. It was late afternoon and the sun was making a hasty exit, so the shots were limited, but we had fun. We then made plans to have a couple more tries in the coming days - more on the rooftop as well as some street shots I wanted to try out. The street shots are the ones I'll start with, but if any of you have my book 'Asian Male Portraits', you will have seen some of the rooftop shots already.

The weather on this particular day wasn't agreeable, but we made do. I had come across this yellow door while wandering around one day, so wanted to bring Aiden back to try out some shots there. He's wearing my shorts 😂

Seoul, July 2015