My journey continues with a few random photographs throughout January- February 2016, followed by a good photo walk that I took in Goyang, South Korea. Goyang is a smaller city that borders Seoul, South Korea. I did my little walk in a small town in that area, close to where I lived at the time. It was a really good walk around, observing and creating for a good portion of the afternoon. The following are the photographs from that period. As I share the images I will comment on them, share advice for photographers, or leave other thoughts on the images.
Photograph #1/2
The first two photographs I took at Everland, probably the most popular and largest amusement park in South Korea. It’s a little outside of Seoul, and I went there with a bunch of kids on a little field trip. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to take photographs, other than with the children, however, in the evening we went out to the amusement park, just for about 30~45 minutes. During this time some of the kids wanted to ride the merry-go-round, and fortunately enough for me I had my camera and my tripod with me, which I used to photograph the scene using a long-exposure technique. I was impressed with the results of my experiment.
Photograph #3
A rather common scene in Seoul. Street Food! It’s very delicious. 😋 This is one of the photographs I took in Myeongdong, Seoul, which is very famous for its street food in addition to being a major tourist attraction for shopping.
Photograph #4
Moving along here. I went out for a long but good photo walk close to my home in Goyang city. This was a really good walk, I took many photographs which will make up the majority of the following photographs as well as the above image. Some of the images didn’t even make it onto my edit list at the time. Some did, and now I’ve re-done them as I prepared to feature them online.
Photograph #5
This photograph is one that I took that kind of seems like something that I would photograph more so today than I would have done back then in 2016. That’s what I found so interesting about this photograph, I have photographs of similar scenes later in my photo archives.
Photograph #6
I didn’t particularly photograph this very well. In South Korea, there is an aged population that does box-collecting to earn a very difficult living. In this photograph, you see the cart clearly, but sadly the cars in the background draw attention much more than the man who’s collecting the boxes in the image. My advice to fellow photographers is to analyze the scene well. Be aware of the background and foreground elements of the composition to ensure that something isn’t drawing away attention from the actual subject of the photograph.
Photograph #7
I found the composition of this photograph to be quite intriguing! I’d love to get your thoughts on the image…
Photograph #8
Again, this type of image of the residential areas of buildings and living areas played a larger role in my later photography, making this specific day with these types of images very intriguing. I tell you, generally these types of images were not common in my collection early on.
Photograph #9
The bright sunshine made taking some of these images difficult. Nonetheless I enjoyed reviewing them.
Photograph #10
I like this image. Something about the cars lining this narrow residential street and the tree branches. The image reminds me of Korea. I hope it gives you a glimpse.
Photograph #11
I also really love this image. We have this beautiful scene of the bridge and the mountains in the background. The power lines going through the scene also add something interesting to the photograph.
Photograph #12
Continuing with the scenes in the same area.
Photograph #13
Crossing at the bridge.
Photograph #14
I typically do not do color, but I kept this one in color. Honestly, I have always been drawn to black-and-white and have gotten that where I like it. I haven’t taught myself to get color the way that I like it just yet. But I still try from time to time, when the photograph calls for it.
Photograph #15/16
Here are another couple of images that I just had to do in color as well.
Photograph #17
Another residential photograph between some of the villas (3~6-story apartment-like buildings).
Photograph #18
I like this image quite a bit, though the hydro tower in the background is poorly positioned in the frame. A good inspection of all the elements in the frame could have led to an adjusted composition and possibly a better photograph.
Photograph #19
A random photograph of some of the fields along the way.
Photograph #20
Photograph #21
Another color image, and one that I normally wouldn’t share. But I’m sharing a little preview of the general photographs that I took at the time. Some of the better images that I liked, and then some of the images that weren’t special by any means. I’m still happy to present an overview of where I was at in my personal photography journey at the time.
Photograph #22
I picked this photograph to share as well. I edited out a version to share with this article. I never edited this photograph even in the past when I originally took the image. I think the image is alright, I like the fact that I photographed the scene with the woman facing me instead of just taking photographs of a subject back. Taking photographs of the back of a person was honestly more where I was back in 2016. I was very nervous to take photographs of people facing me, possibly noticing me.
But I’m very glad I overcame that. Of course, this image shows that at times, I did push myself to do some when the opportunity presented itself. Photographs of the back, are really way too common, seldom interesting, and often too cliché. If you’re at the stage of taking those types of images, I’d encourage you to try to get out of your comfort zone and push yourself a little bit more to try to overcome that fear.
One thing about the image above I’d say, is I’m a little dissatisfied with the right side of the image. It’s an image that surely could have been improved on at the time.
January 2016
Photograph(s): #4951~6708
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