October 10, 2012. Lost at City

Perched upon another rooftop, I couldn't have achieved this shot without being far away, higher up and using a large zoom. This photo was taken pushing the limits on my worst glass, the 75-300mm telephoto, but I found the composition intriguing enough to overlook the faults from the optics. This bird's eye view of two girls on a rooftop terrace gave an angle that made the city look like a sea of giant waves, transforming the balcony into a ship to explore and get lost. Seoul really is a sea of massive, disorganized buildings which explains the people's heavy reliance on GPS.
And yes, out there be monsters... monsters that smell like kimchi, garlic and soju at 11 pm on the subway!

October 9, 2012. Tape, Spit and Cigarette Buds

An evening alleyway, they type you usually do not want to walk down at night.
For me, it's the most bizarre thought that this back road access is actually still safe, even in the late hours where sane people are all in bed sleeping. That is the glory of Seoul. Yet a haunting quality will still lurk between the rusting tubes and dirty cracks... it's hard to imagine that people live in here.

October 8, 2012. Staircase to an Insanity

It's a climb they make every day, once when leaving, once when coming back. The staircase silently representing the fall that must come after every rise. And as its tramplers walk its grey, hard steps, they are treading on the artificial stones of their sanity.
But there are those who have silently disappeared from the staircase, leading their same straight line life until it vanished with an absolute, clean-cut interruption. It was simply a slipping of the foot, a random loss in balance, but by tripping on these stairs, they say, you trip, and lose your sanity.

October 7, 2012. Final Stages

If you think about where you'd like to be when you are old, you might think of the countryside, or a small town, in a calm country where the slow life is at your pace. You certainly wouldn't imagine Seoul, an up-to-date city where new technology seems to revolutionize the industry twice a day. Thus there are always elderly people struggling with the subway system, confused with their phones or simply oblivious to the technology around them that could help them out. Yet if we look at the plus side, Seoul has pleasant, clean and well-maintained parks in every corner, open university campuses where you can relax, and where they do relax, and many accessible mountains where they make regular hikes. So the deal isn't all bad.
 If you've been to Seoul, could you imagine growing old in such a place?

October 6, 2012. Classic Korean

An old temple for scholars, now just a tourist site. In great condition and with vibrant colors, and oddly filled with praying mantises... is that not a coincidence?

October 5, 2012. Walking Down the Old and New

I waited a long time for this alleyway to finally clear up. Hahoe, an old folk town we toured this weekend. On the left we see a stone wall and on the right a (badly) restored one. This led down to a 300 year old tree where people write wishes on little strips of paper and they tie it around the tree. Anyway I just found it a pleasant, classic looking alley so it was worth the wait.

October 4, 2012. Dirty Lines

Despite the city's name you will find little soul in the thousands of identical apartment buildings that characterize Seoul. You have to take those dirty back roads where people who have character and work hard have made a home. It's easy to get lost in the disorganized maze of random chunks of brick, block and metal that many call home, and to top it off run crazy power lines with seemingly random direction, like a spiderweb used to piece the houses together. Yet this is how I want, and will remember Korea by.

October 3, 2012. Subtle Appearance

Decided to throw together a brief photoshoot this evening since I had nothing for today. It's always good practice too. We wanted to try something new so Yvonne did some Gothic makeup, and I spruced it up a bit in photoshop. I still find "studio" photography (not really a studio, just my room made into a makeshift one) hard, so I'd really like to get feedback on this one.

October 2, 2012. Impatient Young

Two bikes, two very different purposes.
I take the subway.

October 1, 2012. Lights and Toys

I got to play with my friend's tilt-shift lens, and have some fun. It's a lens used more seriously for architecture, but more creatively for slicing focus. Instagram wasn't the first to do it eh!