About The Photos

They aren’t really very good, but they are mine. A few are a little interesting.

Much like the blog, it’s just a hobby, and no big deal. My machine isn’t really all that good. I prefer P&S cameras for their portability. Being able to carry it everywhere I go very easily means that it’s also easy to take a lot of pictures, and then throw a lot away. Obviously, you do enough of that, you’re going to get lucky once in a while. If I show a picture here, it’s because I think I got lucky.

I’ve been trying to figure why I suddenly decided to start taking photos about a year ago last fall, after having lived here for so long and not deigning to point the machine at anything except birthday parties. I know my initial impulse was just to show this place to people, and I had the notion that my eyes would be different than a Korean person’s, and also different from someone who has been here only a short time.

There’s a lot of ugliness in big cities anywhere, and that’s the easiest thing to notice about this place. For one thing, Koreans are not obsessively worried about clean, neat public spaces, not nearly so much so as the Japanese, for instance. But there is beauty here, too, perhaps made more valuable by what surrounds it, what contains it. The title of an old Thelonius Monk song comes to mind, “Ugly Beauty.” That’s what I’m after, a lot of the time.

I’m not trying to capture images that are unique to or quintessentially about Korea. There are plenty of people better qualified to do that. In the end I see this place not so much as a place where Koreans live, but rather as a place where human beings live.

Whatever impressions or observations come across to people via my photos are simply MY impressions or observations. I’m not a journalist, so I make no claims about objectivity – I’m not an artist, either, and when I take a picture it’s mostly because I saw something I thought it was sort of cool. I’m not really even a photographer, just a shutterbug.

My goal is that every image on this blog come from my camera, and if I break that intention I’ll definitely credit the photographer after getting permission.

If you see something here you like well enough that you’d like to use it elsewhere … well first of all, I’ll probably develop serious doubts about the quality of your judgment. Honestly, just about anyone can take pictures just as good or more likely better than I can. Obviously, the polite thing to do is notify me and let me know whether, where and how any of my images are being used, and give me the chance to say yea or nay.

(Just as obviously, were I to accidentally come across one of my photos at another site – and particularly at a site where someone seeks to make a profit of some kind – well, I’d likely be highly peeved. Hey, wouldn’t you?)

Like I said, it’s not a really big deal. I tend to think a blog is a little more interesting if it includes some images … and I have some pictures sitting around, so why not use them?

It’s not a photoblog, per se, but very occasionally I might post here just to show some pictures. Clicking directly on the image on the image will usually take you to stand-alone shot, usually larger.

If you want to go right to my page on Ipernity you can click here.