Writing Skills

My writing skills are atrocious. I can manage a few decent sentences and sometimes a paragraph, but I can't organise my thoughts well enough to complete a short story or a simple essay. I was never a good writer, but years of living in a non-English foreign country and almost as many years having my brain rotted by computers and the Internet have led to a serious deterioration of my ability to think and communicate clearly. I need to rehabilitate myself by regularly writing good sentences, then good paragraphs, and then moving up to essays and stories. This blog entry could be a start.

Tractor in Yongchon Village

 

Tractor, Yongchon Village. 

I had to return to this scene many times to get a composition and light that I was happy with.

Jangsa Harbour

On a misty summer morning, I walked to Jangsa Harbour in Sokcho with my Nikon Z50II and kit lens. I went there before seven in the morning to avoid the heat. 

I've photographed the boat trailers and the marina before, but couldn't get any good result. I'm happy with this picture, maybe because I simplified the scene by shooting vertically and having just one trailer in the foreground.

A boat for fishing tours. Looking at this picture now, I wonder if I shouldn't crop the bottom of the frame to cut out that bit of distracting rope. Something to consider.

I've photographed these boats tied up together before, but on this morning there were some great clouds and fog in the far background.

The harbour is formed by a couple of breakwaters and this is the view looking out to sea from the north breakwater. If you sailed in a straight line from here you would end up somewhere in northern Japan.

The more I use the Z50II, the more I like it. The size is great for walking about, the tiny 24-75mm equivalent kits lens is all I need, and I'm satisfied with how the pictures look. I've recently cancelled my Adobe Lightroom subscription and I'm using Nikon's free NX Studio software. It's a little clunky and slow, but the results are what you would get from the camera. A new addition to the software is a film grain simulation, which removes the too clean look of digital photographs.

Post script:

Cropped version. I like the removal of the distracting rope, but now the boat is in a less interesting position. What do you think?

Irrigation Pump House

Yongchon Village

There are a number of small white sheds in Yongchon's fields. They were once used for irrigation pumps, but seem to be abandoned now. Someone keeps painting them so perhaps they are not officially out of use. 
 

Landscape in Traffic Mirror

 

Yongchon Village

Bushes grow tall in summer and there are blind turns and hills on the roads that go through Yongchon's fields. Thus the need for traffic mirrors to be set up in various locations.

Film

 The photographs in my last post were made on my phone after I used up the end of a roll of film. I now have the scans from that and two other rolls of film. The results were mostly disappointing, but there are a few I don't feel embarrassed to share. All were made using my Nikon F80.

Kodak Ultramax 400. There is little interesting about this sign for a rice and seasoned vegetable restaurant, but I was attracted by the strong yellow colour, the strong shadow, and the contrast between circle and rectangle.

Around Sokcho Central Market there are sidewalk vendors who sell vegetables and dried or half-dried fish. This man is a regular but I don't usually see the woman who is washing chives for him. I made this picture from inside a bus.

My wife received a teaching award at her school and it came with a bouquet of flowers. She put them on the balcony table and I took the opportunity to test out the Kodak 400's dynamic range and colours.

The new English library here in Sokcho.

A photo made so I would remember which camera I had used.

I was sheltering from the sun in this concrete pavilion when I saw the gas delivery truck coming from a distance. I composed and waited for the vehicle to complete the composition. Click. Or flap, rather - the F80's shutter is soft and quiet.

Time for a new roll of film. Kodacolor 100, which is ProImage 100 by another name. I can get both here. The film is cheap compared to something like Portra, but the quality is pretty good and I like the colours it produces. This is an irrigation canal that runs between rice fields in Yongchon Village.

This is the Yongchon CU convenience store where I usually take a break when out riding bicycle. When the weather is decent, I sit outside at the picnic tables. When it's too hot or too cold, I sit inside at one of the table and look out the window.

I rather like the curve of the dyke going off into the distance.

The Christmas Pension. Is this open all year? It seems a rather odd choice of theme considering that most people stay at pensions during the summer months. Nice reds, anyway.

Ilford XP2 Super 400 film. Good stuff that the lab scans well. More rice fields. The dog house next to the utility pole is not for an animal to live in, but to protect an irrigation pump from the rain. It's quite common to see this in farming areas.

Yeongnang Lake. The wooden poles at the bottom are for birds to perch on.

These foldable hoods are for park benches. It was a bright day so I got some nice contrast.

Back to Yongchon Village. These vines are growing up the side of a pumphouse that isn't being used anymore.

I have four more rolls of film in the fridge, but I don't know when I'll get around to using them. Getting it developed and scanned is expensive and these days digital just seems so much more convenient. But I like the film look, so who knows? Maybe I'll reserve film for those days when I get the itch for it.

 

Post-Film End of a Bicycle Ride

I used up the get-it-over-with end of a roll of Kodak ProImage 100 on a bicycle ride in the countryside this morning and, instead of putting in another roll of film and making maybe one or two more pictures, decided to switch to the Hipstamatic application on my phone.

Brunch Café 

This unusual brunch café is between the villages of Yongchon and Bongpo. Right behind me is the sea and between me and the café is an empty field. I wonder how long it will stay empty. Maybe there's something wrong with the land, otherwise developers would have torn up every flower and bush and put up ugly concrete boxes to sell coffee in by now.

Yongchon CU Convenience Store

I made my regular stop at a convenience store to take a break.

Everything I need for an hour or so of riding and rests - camera (Nikon F80 today), books of poems, and a notebook. I pay my seat fee at the convenience store by buying a small container of milk to drink.

Out of frame to the right is a former empty piece of land that now has a massive convention centre being built on it. They destroyed every living thing on that piece of earth, built an ugly concrete building, and then dug up some pine trees from somewhere else in the country and dragged them to this place to make the new eyesore look like it fits in with nature.

Farmer's Shed

It's not a pretty concrete box, but at least it's photogenic.

Yeongang Lake

Almost home. I stopped to make a picture of the lake. In the background you can see a new apartment complex going up. The former mayor relaxed the rules about building around the lake park. Again, why have trees when you can have money?

I love riding out into the countryside. It's usually relaxing, there are lots of places where you don't have to meet people and cars, and it's relatively quiet. But seeing the land being torn up for development gives me a sour taste in my mouth.