Looking Up

Amice

Amice's natural curiosity is causing him to look up and wonder if he can get even higher. There's a lesson in there for all of us. (Please don't say 'Curiosity killed the cat' in the comments . . . ).

Buckets of Fun

 

Nikon F6, Kodak Portra 160

Photographed while waiting for prints at a local photo lab.

Story House Revisited

There is a colour version of this scene here. I think this black and while film version expresses my feelings about the city being torn down and turned into apartments for rich Seoulites and property investors better than the colour version does.

Raw Fish

 

Outside a raw fish restaurant, Sokcho

Some years ago, the faculty and staff of the middle school where I worked had lunch at a raw fish restaurant. Sitting uncomfortably cross-legged at a floor table with a bowl of white rice in front of me, I searched the many side dishes for something that didn't have any seafood in it. Although I tried to avoid looking at it, my eyes couldn't help be drawn to the fresh-from-the-aquarium fish lying on its side in a central platter garnished with leafy vegetables. The fish was intact, but its flesh had been thinly sliced to allow easy eating with chopsticks. Its round eye seemed to be looking straight at me. I felt guilty, even though I wasn't going to eat it. The young dimple-cheeked teaching assistant sitting across from me was also looking at the fish with her hands folded benignly in her lap.

'It looks so pitiful,' she said. When I grunted my assent, she took a sesame leaf from the platter and covered its face. Then she picked up her chopsticks and looked for the plumpest bits.

Strange Creatures

 

I don't know what Amice thinks about the cars going back and forth all day on the street below. Can cats differentiate between animals and machines? Maybe he thinks of the SUVs and sedans as especially ugly breeds of dogs.

Taking a break at GS25 convenience store

 

GS25 convenience store on Yeongnang Coastal Road

The cars and the umbrellas weren't moving, so I had plenty of time to micro-compose. 

Beached Swimming Platform

 

Lighthouse Beach, Sokcho

I haven't been in Sokcho long enough to know if this is a swimming platform or a platform for something else. I may never find out because I avoid the beach and tourist areas during the summer. At the moment it's just a place for a small bird to have a rest.

Anchovies

 

Yangyang Market

The two smaller sizes of anchovies are usually fried in soy sauce or chilli paste. The larger ones are for soup stock. 

Rachel's Kitchen

 

Yeongnang Coastal Road, Sokcho.

Amice

 

Walls

 

House Wall, Domun Village

House Wall, Sokcho

The other end of an alley

 

Houses and Warehouse(?), Yangyang

I spied a sliver of the orange and white building (house?) through an alley off the main Yangyang road. I walked through and found this open space. I'm not sure if this patch of concrete is private property or not, but I took the time to carefully compose and make this photograph. Normally I would have separated the roof of the building on the right from the roof of the background building, but in this case I think the continuity of line from one roof to the other is better. Roof lining up with roof is repeated in the left part of the photograph, where the tin roof edge of the house is connected to the roof of the white building on the very far left.

Would this be a better crop, I wonder? Not sure. It feels a bit cramped now. And the lines of the dark window in the first version are paralleled in the dark lines of the white wall on the far left.  Any thoughts?

A Clean, Well-Lighted Alley

 

Downtown Yangyang

No matter how new and shiny the shop fronts on a road are, the alleys rarely get any sort of update.  Why spend money on what most people don't see? That said, in this alley, the building on the right has white siding and the buildings on the right have been given a coat of white paint. 

The lines in the siding lead the eye to the point of interest in the background. The shed (or whatever) is also the brightest part of the picture, which helps to draw the eye. My favourite part of the photo is the bit of wire in the lower left that mirrors the lines of the siding. It fills a bit of blank space and points the viewer towards the focal point. I think my composition here was influenced by what I learned from Ian Roberts' painting channel on YouTube.

Frame and Clouds

 

Kodak Portra 160, Nikon F6

The wood in this picture is not a cross - it's the left side of a frame for drying fish. I like the colours, the simplicity, and those puffy little clouds, but I also like the diagonal division of the photo into frame-sky and cloud-sky. I think the photo would be a lot less interesting if that bit of string wasn't there, though I can't explain why. Some reasons might be: It repeats the shape of the frame, it repeats the horizontal and vertical lines of the wooden frame, the little line of cloud connects to the horizontal bit of the strong, and maybe the relaxed nature of the string is repeated in those wispy clouds. Maybe. Anyone here have a degree in visual design?

Sketch - LP Records

 

Nikon D850, 50mm 1.4G

I've always enjoyed looking at sketches by both professionals and amateurs. There is something very appealing about looking at a scene and quickly putting the essence of it down on paper. Picasso did brilliant sketches, Dali made sure his cheques wouldn't be cashed by restaurants if he sketched something on the back of one, and even non-painters like Sylvia Plath did decent drawings.

I would like to do pencil sketches, but I'm not sure I have the talent for it. It's said that you shouldn't take up piano at an advanced age. Does the same hold true for arts that take a lot of practice and skill like drawing and painting? Anyway, I do photography because, like William Henry Fox Talbot, I can't draw. But maybe I can still do sketches.

According to some dictionary definitions, a sketch is a quickly drawn picture that doesn't have many details and is not usually intended to be a finished work. A photograph can't really be a picture lacking many details, but it can certainly be a quick picture not meant to be a work of art. I almost wrote, "like a snapshot", but I think a sketch is more deliberate than that.

A few days ago I put a roll of HP5+ in my Minolta X-700 with no clear purpose other than wanting to use the X-700. But maybe that could be my pencil and sketchbook, as it were. It's too bloody hot and humid these days to lug heavy cameras and a tripod around, but the Minolta is small and light and perfect for making quick photographs if I absolutely must go out somewhere. It might be an interesting project to make sketches of things around my neighbourhood and city regardless of the light and weather. Black and white film is still relatively cheap and I can concentrate on shape, light, and line. 

You will, however, notice that the first of my sketches was done on a large digital camera, contradicting the plan I described in the previous paragraph. It doesn't matter. Using film isn't a rule, it just matches up more closely than digital to the idea of a pencil sketch I have in my mind. I'll probably use digital when it's more convenient. The photo above, for example, required an ISO of 5600 at an aperture of f11.

I imagine it will be a couple of weeks before sketches on film start appearing here. Black and white film isn't as expensive as colour film, but I can't afford to use it up quickly.

Rock Formation, Geojin

 

Goseong County, Geojin. HP5+, Nikon F100

I came to this place accidentally on purpose. One rainy day I jumped on Bus 1 just to see where it would take me and rode it to Geojin, the last stop. I got off the bus and walked up the road a bit to have a look at this interesting rock formation. Between lashings of rain I managed to make this photo with a 28mm lens. (Probably the AF Nikkor 28mm 1:2.8D).

Last Thursday I went back with my Fujifilm X-T4 to photograph the rock again.

I like the first photograph the best. The colour photos were made on a 16mm lens (24mm equivalent on a 35mm camera) and they are too wide. In the first picture the rocks don't feel as stretched apart, if you know what I mean. Also, the tide appears to have been lower in the first photo, and the exposed rocks help with the balance of the composition and give it a weightier feel appropriate to the subject matter. What I like about the colour photos are the touches of green near the top of the rock. It's a real point of interest. Notice that the light vein of rock in the formation curls and leads right to it. That nice leading line is broken in the last photo.

The next time I visit this rock, I'll go in the late afternoon when the sun is behind me rather than in the east. That would reduce the contrast between the rocks and background. I had to expose carefully and then raise the shadows quite a bit in all these photos. And I'll bring either the F6 or the D850 so I can use a 28mm lens instead of a 24mm equivalent lens.