Griffith Observatory Engagement Photo Guide

Few places in Los Angeles pack this much into one short walk: white walls banded with Greek key ornament, Art Deco bronze doors, arched walkways open to the sky, and a parapet with the city laid out beneath it. The palette is pale and quiet, all white walls, green bronze, and soft blue sky, which leaves the two of you as the strongest thing in every frame. A black tuxedo and a white dress read as classic Hollywood up here, and a saturated colour, the reds and yellows we love, separates from the building instantly.

The parapet along the terraces is where the session earns its view. We keep the wall low in the frame so the city sits at shoulder height, downtown's towers standing up out of the haze, and the open sky above leaves nothing to compete with the two of you. It is the best stage on the hill for movement: a lift, a veil caught by the breeze, foreheads together with the basin falling away behind. Late in the afternoon the low sun lights faces from the side while the city behind goes soft and gold.

The building is white, and on a sunny afternoon its walls throw soft light back into faces, which matters here because extra lighting and reflector boards are not allowed. Midday is hard and bright, the clean blue sky we had on the trail below the Hollywood Sign earlier that day, and it flatters the landscape more than faces on the open terraces. The best light starts about two hours before sunset, when the sun comes in warm and low across the parapet. Once it sinks into the haze, we turn you into a silhouette against the sky.

The bronze entrance doors, tall and patterned in Art Deco relief, where a kneeling pose or a quiet stand looks like a film still · The arched walkways, whose openings frame the sky and the city like windows · The smaller green doors set into the white walls, made for a simple standing portrait in open shade · The flowering hedge beneath the tall windows, a burst of yellow and green against all that white · The Hollywood Sign Terrace at the edge of the lawn, at what the observatory calls one of the best places to see the sign

Griffith Observatory welcomes photography for personal use, and its guidelines say that includes a wedding photographer working for an engaged couple, so an engagement session counts as personal photography. Staged photographs like ours are not allowed inside the building, on the roof, in the telescope dome, in the Gottlieb Transit Corridor, or on the Sunset Terrace outside the café, and they may not block steps, sidewalks, driveways, or roads. The only equipment allowed is a camera and a discreet tripod outdoors, and drones are banned in every city park. Commercial shoots need a city film permit, and if the rules change in a way that affects your session, we will flag it early.

The observatory says it is busiest on weekends, during summer and holiday periods, and at sunset, so a weekday is the calm choice, and expect company on the terraces as the light peaks. The building closes on Mondays while the grounds and terraces stay open, and that is when we photographed Yujeong and Edward, with the bronze doors shut behind them. Admission is free, though parking near the building is limited and usually paid, and phones struggle for signal on the hill, so agree on a meeting point before you arrive. Alcohol is not allowed anywhere in Griffith Park without a permit, so save the champagne for dinner, and wear shoes you can walk in: Yujeong paired her tea length dress with white sneakers.

Yujeong and Edward's January engagement session lives in full in our journal, thirty eight photographs from the trail below the Hollywood Sign to the observatory terraces and the lamps of Urban Light at LACMA.