Photo experimentation in South Korea
Riding Seoul’s Subway line 2 in January 2012. I think of Line 2 as the Green Line because this is its color on the Seoul subway map.
I didn’t imagine that owning an iPhone would change the way I photograph.
Pre-iPhone, I carried one of my big pro cameras with me everywhere. Bringing my 5D Mark II to a birthday party or a friend’s barbecue automatically put me in “professional photographer mode.” Every picture had to be perfectly composed, in perfect light, at the perfect time. I photographed many memorable moments but wasn’t really in the moment.
A couple years ago I bought a Canon G11, a small point-and-shoot camera. Since this wasn’t a professional camera, I thought I wouldn’t feel compelled to make perfect pictures with it. I would photograph on program mode, let the camera control everything. Wrong.
Last year I bought an iPhone. I didn’t give a thought to the phone’s camera, which it turns out produces pictures that are as high-quality as the ones that came out of my first digital SLR (the Canon 10D, for you gear geeks out there). I love the iPhone camera. I have almost no control over the exposure settings. Turns out this was what I needed to set me free. Now I’m more experimental. I make more photographs. I still think about composition, light and moment; I think it would be impossible for me not to think about those. But I don’t obsess over them. I just let the pictures happen and I’m more willing to make mistakes.
Thanks, iPhone.
A fake parachutist hangs over a temporary children’s exhibit at the Korean War Memorial museum in Seoul.
Bicycles rent for 3,000 won (about $3) per hour at Yeouido Park in Seoul.
Bus reflection in Seoul.
Riding the bus from Sokcho, on South Korea’s far northeastern coast, to Daegu, I took this picture where everything seems to bend toward the center of the photograph. I still can’t figure out what happened but I like the effect.
Royal Korean procession through Incheon Airport
One of the many reasons I love Korea – cultural experiences in the airport!
Family History: Mom
Many years ago, my Mom and Sister Chrispina were postulants at a convent in Seoul. Now Sister Chrispina is studying English in Washington DC, not far from my house. “What was my Mom like when she was younger?” I asked her. “Your Mom always said she wanted to fly, like this, with her arms,” said Sister Chrispina. “She wanted to fly all around the world!” It seemed an impossible dream at the time, coming as my Mom did from a poor family in a country still recovering from war. But my Mom has been around the world many times over. So has Sister Chrispina. This past weekend, they met for the first time in seven years. I hope they have many more opportunities to strengthen their friendship while Sister Chrispina is in the United States.
Airports around the world
Shenyang, China
What I love about an airport is knowing I could end up anywhere in the world from there. Sometimes, on my way to my gate, I stop and read the departure monitors. I like imagining where I would travel if I weren’t heading to my current destination: “Buenos Aires would be fun; I’ve never been there. Cleveland would be like another world. Plus I could visit the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. Oooooh – Singapore! I could visit Sooz and Barry. Well, maybe next year. I should go to my gate now.”
The second thing I love about an airport is watching the people. Before 9/11 kept non-passengers from going to airline gates, I used to hang out at National Airport in Washington DC and watch people walk out of those tubular disembarking hallways and into their loved ones’ arms. Or not. Sometimes people came out, looked around for someone who wasn’t there and walked out to the main terminal halls. Budding writer that I was, I wrote down descriptions of these reunions (or non-reunions) and built short story scenes around what I saw.
In the past couple months I’ve spent a lot of time in airports. Which means I’ve also taken a lot of pictures in airports: the people, the buildings, the atmosphere. Some airports are like art museums, with sculptures and paintings and light displays (I’m thinking Detroit.) Some airports are like shopping malls, with people milling about the duty-free stores, picking out chocolates and perfumes and trinkets they don’t really need (I’m thinking Seoul-Incheon and London Heathrow.) It’s all incredibly fascinating. And so I’ve decided to start a photo essay on airports. Looking at the photographs I’ve posted, it seems that right now I’m interested in the architecture and the color in airports but I don’t really have a theme or an idea where this will lead me. We’ll see.
Detroit, USA
Detroit, USA
Seoul-Incheon, South Korea
Washington DC, USA
(Above: That's me photographing while snowshoeing through a snowstorm. Picture by