The End of June The End of July

Munam Harbour

 I've finally caught up to the end of June with my photo editing. I want to review my keepers for another week or two and then send them off to get printed. And then edit that pile of photos.

This will be my last post for a while. On Monday I am going to Seoul for four days to have a hotel staycation. I'll probably make a few pictures, but it will be too hot and humid or pissing down rain or all at the same time for much of that. I'm not sure what camera to take. Maybe the Minolta X-700? It's light and that's important for miserable summer days. I could take the Nikon F6 or the D850 for higher quality, but I'm not sure it's worth it. I'm tempted to just use my phone, but it's old and I sometimes have to smack it against my leg to get it to focus. So that's probably not a good idea.

See you in August!

[Edit: I've more or less decided on the F6 with black and white film]

The last part of a roll of Portra 160

 To use up the last half of a roll of Portra 160 film, I went for a walk along the coast and then around the village of Yongchon.

This was the third attempt at the composition. In my failed attempts I cut out too much of the seaweed in the bottom left, I suspected the horizontal dock line wasn't straight, and I cut off the top of the boat on the right. Shameful, but I finally got what I wanted.

A less interesting but not bad version of the above picture with just one boat.

This tractor is used for raking the beach and for pulling fishing nets together.

The sign on this empty piece of land says the area is constantly being recorded by CCTV.

Yongchon Village. I'm not sure the darker green of the tree stands out enough against the lighter green of the rice fields.

Almost home. This massive wall is holding up an apartment complex. It makes me quite nervous, to tell the truth.

I love the look of film, but I'm not sure I have the computer skills to make scans look good. I'll have these printed soon and then I'll be able to judge better.

All taken on the Nikon F6.

Joyang Archaeological Site Park

Another attempt at making a picture of a thatched roof and a green fence

 

Sangdomun Village

 

Propane/Butane Tanks for Cooking

Stairs Leading Up to the Levee

Athletics Field

Old Man Passing By

Sangdomun (Upper Sangdo) Village is a great place to take a walk and relax because it's on a city bus route, there aren't a very large number of tourists, the people are friendly, it's quiet, and there are lots of cats. I especially enjoy the picnic tables by the athletics field. I usually stop there to write in my jounral, review photos (if using digital), and have a tin of coffee.

Elephant Man

 

I like this photo of the man with the elephants on his shirt, but it's just going to live on my hard drive forever and ever because of the mistakes. The thing that irritates me most about the photo is how his cap in connected to the black car in the distance. This could have been avoided if I had stood on my tippy-toes (not easy) or if I had stepped slightly to the right. Stepping to the right would have also taken care of the second thing I dislike about the photo - the close distance between the bicycle and the utility pole.

But there are things I like about the picture. The woman on the far left didn't get cut off by the frame. That was just luck because I didn't notice her when I was making the picture. I did notice the car going through the intersection and timed the photo so that it would fit neatly between the frame and the pole.

And I like the man's shirt.

Rocks and Water

 

Wood on Munam Beach

Cove near Munam Harbour

Yongchon

 A slew of pictures from the village of Yongchon, Goseong County.

Bicycle and Field

 

Nikon F6, Portra 160 film

I couldn't see the farmer who owns this bicycle until I was a little farther on and looking straight down a row of corn. The plants weren't that high, but he was bent right over digging at some weeds with a trowel.

Frame 36

 

Amice on the Balcony

As is so often the case, the last frame on a roll of film is a pet.

Sign and Vines

 

Minolta X-700, Kodak Gold 200 Film

Three Blue Pictures

 

Seaside Restaurant, Sokcho

Cable Ferry between Abai Village and Downtown Sokcho

The completely original and not at all derivatively named Sokcho Eye Ferris wheel

Minolta X-700, Kodak Gold 200 Film

Tractor

 

I did quite a bit of moving about to get the compositions just the way I wanted. For the first photo, I wanted the tips of the branches in the upper right to be completely visible.I was also careful to out the tractor between two trees and not have the tree behind the tractor sticking out awkwardly somewhere. I.e., the 'tree sticking out of someone's head' mistake. Also notice the exhaust pipe is not caught up in the lower branches. Oh ho ho. For the second picture, I wanted the tractor to be partly hidden behind the branches but I didn't want the 'face' covered. By face, I mean the headlights and grill.

I am pleased with these two photos but, oddly enough, I went back there some days later with a digital camera and couldn't get even one decent picture. I wonder what the difference was. Maybe there were no other good views of the tractor I could find. Maybe the ease of digital photography meant I was just clicking away and getting nowhere. Maybe, and most likely, I just went back to the same place too quickly and there was no time for me to be able to look at the scene with fresh eyes.

Rice Field

Rice Seedlings, Yongchon Village

 

Cats

 

"This pencil is out of place. It belongs on the floor."

Cats in front a café, Sangdomun Village.

Cheongcho Park, Sokcho

 

All photos made with a Minolta X-700 and Kodak Gold film.

Get it Right

The sun is too strong, even for the cat.

The photo season is over for the year except for the odd phone snapshot. It's usually too hot to go out and anywhere interesting will be overrun by tourists anyway. Most of the pictures I'll be posting for the next month or so will be from the spring.

A few weeks ago I received the scans from two rolls of film. Scans from the lab are always hit or miss (auto roll scan) and this time the white balance was difficult to correct. I dislike making adjustments to photos and it took me a while to adjust colour, exposure, contrast, and sharpening. I don't like doing it and I'm not very good at it. I have a couple of rolls of film left but I'm not sure when I'll use them. In addition to the nuisance of post-processing, film is expensive to purchase and get developed.

Digital photos are easier to work with because Lightroom 'understands' them better and there are many convenient tools for adjusting raw files. But I still don't like messing around with the pictures. There are so many choices that it leads to analysis paralysis and the ease of messing around with sliders easily leads to the over-manipulated look.

Maybe I should take a Lightroom course to improve my skills. But many of the courses I've looked at teach how you how to use the controls but not how to use them judiciously depending on the photo. I think my time would be better spent setting the camera to JPG and one Picture Control and getting good results straight out of the camera.

The photo in this post was made with Hipstamatic on my iPhone. One of the things I like about Hipstamatic is that all the adjustments and effects are added by the program. There's nothing for me to do. When I check a photo in Hipstamatic, it's either a properly done picture or it's not and it gets deleted. I should apply this (lack of) workflow to my regular digital photography. And use slide film when I want to use film. Well, maybe if I win the lottery . . .

I'm not sure if I made sense or just rambled. Anyway, enjoy my relaxing cat.

How Nice It Would Be

Somewhere in Central Newfoundland

Have I complained about this before? My Lightroom catalogue is large and it isn't easy to find things. Most everything is organised by date, but for long periods of time I only gave photographs a serial number based on the date it was made. Film scans didn't always have even that. 00004.jpg seems to be a common file name.

   So I've allotted a year (ha-ha) to go through more than fourteen thousand pictures and add descriptive file names, titles, captions, and keywords. Depending on the photo. A descriptive file name including a date at the least. I started with the earliest photo I have, a picture of my father as a boy with his grandfather holding up some trout they've caught. That would be in the nineteen-fifties. I'm currently working on the year 2005. After months of going through pictures. And I didn't start photography as a serious hobby until late in that year or perhaps early the next year. Most of the work is still ahead of me . . .

Hahoe Mask Festival, 2005. Nikon FM3a (I think)

I sometimes envy people who take all their pictures with their phones and then let Apple Photos or Google Photos take care of arranging everything. Many such services these days offer searches that use facial recognition and AI rather than manually entered keywords and captions. How nice it would be to click away, delete mistakes, and not worry about how to find the pictures later.

Joyang Archaeological Site Park, Sokcho

 I've written about this park somewhere before so I won't repeat myself. I used the Nikon D850 on a tripod for these photos. Except for the last photo, I used film simulations in Lightroom to change the look.

Chinese Food

Fried Rice and Sweet and Sour Pork Set

 Me and the Missus went to Dongchun-gwan Chinese restaurant a couple of months ago because she got out of school early. We like that restaurant because it's close to our apartment, it's clean, and the staff are friendly. The restaurant has been around since 1969, proof that many other people like the place as well.

We ordered the fried rice and sweet and sour pork set. The fried rice comes with black bean sauce. The sweet and sour pork comes with deep-fried dumplings. On the right you can see a small bowl of spicy soup. Everything was so good and I like the design of the dishes.

   I was so happy with the look of the meal that I took a phone picture before eating. I'm pretty happy with the picture, but I wish the lower right had something to fill the empty space and it probably would have been a good idea to show at least a little bit of what's in the small dishes at the top. But it doesn't really matter because I'm not a professional food photographer. It was just a snapshot to remember a nice time out at a restaurant

Everyone's Lost Their Head

 

May, 2025

These headless mannequins are in the display window of a Fila store that's recently gone out of business. I worked at getting a good composition and micro-composition (notice the streetlamp in the upper right) for a little while and then noticed the woman in the hat walking down the sidewalk. Her dark clothes stood out against the light mannequin and her white hat contrasted with the road and tree trunk (never mind the tree trunk is growing out of her head) so I thought she would make a nice secondary subject. I pressed the shutter button on the phone once and then, in a nice bit of luck, she turned awkwardly and looked up. Click! Or whatever the sound an iPhone makes is when taking a picture.

When I got home and looked the picture over I was very pleased with it. When I saw the confused woman juxtaposed with the headless mannequins the phrase "Everyone's lost their head" popped into my mind. And thus the title.

Buddhist Temple Lanterns

Nikpn D850, 85mm lens, Kodak E100 film simulation

iPhone, wide lens, Hipstamatic Filter

This is not straight photography. I used software in both cases to make the lanterns more colourful than they were in real life. It's not how I saw the lanterns, but it's how I felt them when I visited the temple.

Sidewalk Parking

 

A sidewalk, or, as seen by motorists, extra parking space