Waiting for a Bus

Until twenty years ago, only blind people could legally be masseuses. I think the same law may have applied to architects and city planners.

I had twenty minutes or so to kill before my bus was due to arrive so I took a little walk. I made the above photo from a street corner. I stopped into a convenience store to have a tin of warm coffee (coffee-flavoured sugar and milk powder) and went back to the bus stop with plenty of time to spare. I opened Hipstamatic on my phone and waited.

This wasn't my bus.

This was also not my bus.

This was my bus. I was home and preparing dinner in no time.

Tearing it Down

Downtown Sokcho

 There are back streets in Sokcho that are eyesores because they've been abandoned and left to fall into disrepair. Someone has lately put up tarpaulins in front of an old restaurant in a major tourist area and is starting to demolish it. No doubt it'll be replaced by yet another fish restaurant. Or a coffee shop.

Cat on Rock

 

Yeongnang Lake

I didn't notice the cat while I was sizing up this landscape scene on my phone because he's the same colour as the rocks. I only saw him when I started looking at how to frame the rocks. Kitty was looking out over its kingdom so I tutted a few times to get its attention.

This might be my favourite photo of the year.

Two From the Seaside

 

Ayajin Harbour Breakwater and Lighthouse

Cheonjin Beach, behind the new recreation centre

The seaside bicycle path was disrupted for a long time because of the construction work on the new recreation centre. It meant I had to ride along the highway for a while, which is terrifying. Now there is a new path that is a bit confusing until you ride it a few times. To the left in the second photo you can see where the old boardwalk was cut and not replaced.

Two Homes

 

I thought this trailer home belonged to a worker on a nearby construction site, but the construction finished and the trailer remained.

This may have started life as a traditional Korean house, but it's been haphazardly modernised. 

The Film View of Sokcho Joyang Archaeological Site

Some time ago I posted photos of the Sokcho Joyang Archaeological Site that I made with my Fujifilm X-T4 digital camera. Here are two pictures I made at the site on film a day before that. 

I prefer the film look, but I had some good pictures from both days at the site.

Over-Complicating

 

2414-Minolta X-700-Fomapan 400-023 stone banner pole holders - shinheung temple

I go through phases where I keep adding to the making and management of photographs until all the joy of the art is fouled with complicated procedures and detail.

For example, the last time I was out with my Nikon F6 film camera, I brought a Fujifilm X-T4 digital camera with me to test exposure and composition before committing each scene to film. Even though the meter in the F6 is excellent and I don't have a problem making proper exposures. On this photo excursion the X-T4 was connected to my iPhone by Bluetooth so I could record locations to the digital copies of the photos and copy that information to the film versions of the photos when I get them back from the lab. So, three devices to make one picture on a piece of film -- the shooting data from the F6, test pictures from the X-T4, and the iPhone to send location information to the X-T4. A lot to keep track of while out and about taking pictures. And this doesn't include the additional step of adding titles, description, keywords, and descriptive file names in Lightroom.

Seeing a film photo in Lightroom with so much detail is satisfying to the completist part of my brain, but is all that information necessary? Maybe if I were writing a book on photography or making pictures for a stock agency, but I'm doing neither of those things and after a morning out juggling cameras, lenses, and a phone to make sure everything has been perfectly recorded, I have to say that photography feels like a drag and a boring exercise in data entry.

And so this evening as I write these paragraphs, I'm telling myself to return to the Keep It Simple, Stupid principle and limit photo notes to a serialised file name that describes only who, what, and where. If a picture is good, it doesn't even need that much information, but a descriptive file name is useful for finding it later.