The Old City is a square roughly a mile on each side inside a moat and the remains of a brick wall, and it is walkable: Tha Phae Gate, Wat Chedi Luang’s ruined chedi and Wat Phra Singh are a twenty-minute stroll apart, so a ninety-minute session takes in three temples without a car. Just after sunrise monks walk their alms rounds through the lanes; they are photographed from a respectful distance and never posed beside. The light rules are the same as anywhere in Thailand — early or late — but the mornings here are cooler, and between November and February a seven o’clock start is comfortable rather than heroic. West of the moat, Nimman is cafés, co-working spaces and the city’s large remote-work population, which is why headshots and personal-brand sessions are booked here more than anywhere else in the country.
The second half of Chiang Mai is the mountains. Wat Phra That Doi Suthep is half an hour up a winding road and a naga staircase of some three hundred steps; Wat Pha Lat, a quiet forest monastery halfway up, is the photograph most visitors do not know about. Doi Inthanon, the highest peak in Thailand, is about two hours south-west and close to freezing at sunrise in December and January. North of the city, Mae Rim and Mae Taeng have rice fields that are green from July to October and Wat Ban Den, a gilded Lanna temple popular for costume shoots. The costume itself differs from Bangkok’s: studios here dress you in northern Lanna style, with the pha sin skirt. A mountain day is a long one, so it is built around one summit rather than two.
