There have been a few changes in my life in the last couple of months. Most notably, as you can see from above, we’ve added a member to our family. It’s been one of those times in life where I’ve mostly just sat back and taken it all in. I’ve not taken a whole lot […]
Tag: travel photography
Unfair
I don’t much care for k-pop. I don’t watch many Korean dramas. I don’t watch a whole lot of TV. I don’t follow “idols” or really pay attention to what they do. Last week I was teaching a class. One of my students asked me for my thoughts on the recent suicides of Korean idols […]
2018: Top 10 Photos (1-5)
5 This is a photo of my mom. My mom came to Korea for the first time in 2018. I cherished that time with her. We didn’t have a great relationship when I was young. She’s a bit like Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter. Tons of heart but extremely strict and can be borderline scary. […]
2018: Top 10 Photos (6-10)
10 So, here goes. My top ten photos of 2018. Well, in fact this post will just go through 6-10 in reverse order. Above is number 10. Admittedly this year was slim pickings for street photography. I quite literally didn’t do much of it. In February I participated in the 24 hour project in Busan. […]
Five Goals For 2019
So, it is 2019. How time flies. I can’t believe last year went by so quickly. Was shocking to me. Was really one of the best years in my life. That is, at least personally. It almost felt like a vacation of a year. 2019 is here and I need to buckle down and get […]
New Beginnings
Well, it has been nearly four months since I posted something here. Every time I post I promise I will get better and posting and every time I promise that I end up getting worse. I’d like to say that it is solely because I am busy. I am busy, yet, it is mostly out […]
Birthday
It was my birthday yesterday. I tend to forget. They kind of just happen. I’d asked people on my Instagram in the morning what I should have for dinner. It seemed a fine enough idea. The choices were raw beef or sushi. I’d put on shorts and paint stained t-shirt to go out. Since renovating […]
24 Hour Project: Busan (Final Kit Bag)
So, this is my bag for the @24hourproject this year. I’ll leave work tonight and head for the port/beach city of Busan. The cameras I’ve decided to take are the original Fujifilm X100, the Leica T (with 50mm Summilux v2), and my phone. I’ll use the Fuji for street, the Leica for portraits, and the phone if […]
24 Hour Project: Busan Edition 2018 (Prep 1)
So I’ve done the 24 Hour Project for four years in a row. It is a difficult thing to do, in fact, sometimes it outright sucks. I don’t know why I keep doing it. Well, I guess I kind of do. The memories. I do the project selfishly. Even though it is always a struggle […]
Olympus OM-D EM-1 / Pen-F Review
I’ve got some good news and some bad news about this ‘review.’ The bad news first. I’d been waiting to do this review because I didn’t have any photos. Literally, I didn’t have any time since I promised this review to even take photos. Not even a spare hour to walk around. Feck. My days […]
Return of the Legend: Ricoh GRII Follow Up
Well, this should come as a surprise. I’ve been shooting with a Ricoh GRII again. Yup, again (well only like ten photos so far, ha). My blog post- Why I Always End Up With Ricoh – is especially pertinent at these kind of moments. The story goes something like this: I had a GRII at […]
A Post About Nothing
This is a post about nothing in particular, I promise. It isn’t about anything that has been talked about a thousand times and it certainly isn’t going to be about comparing anything. Definitely not. It is just a post about some photos I took on a day trip to Gunsan. I had planned on going […]
Into the Summer, Leica, and an Upcoming Workshop
The summer is almost here. It’s already hot. It’s even getting humid. I don’t love summers in Korea, never have. Lots of things going on this summer though. So far, I’ve spent some time traveling nearby cities. Places I hadn’t yet gone. It is strange to me how even within an hour from where I […]
Tea Fields
The green tea fields of Boseong. A popular place for Koreans to visit during the spring and summer. I went without much thought. I went without many expectations. I was somehow expecting a tranquil experience. I was expecting a feeling of calm. In fact, though, it was busy and crowded. It was full of tourists. […]
Cherry Blossoms and a Girl
I noticed her. The park was full of tourists. The cherry blossom season in Gyeongju is a big event in Korea. The small lake had a winding path circling it. Strangely, no one walked up to the lake. She did, though. Wearing a hanbok (traditional Korean dress) like out of a dynasty far removed she […]
Yongsan Station
This place always feels weird to me. Yongsan Station is one of the largest train stations in Korea. Living in Iksan, it is the station I always arrive at. Lots of memories here. The station has changed a lot over the past 8 or so years. In a lot of ways, anyway. In a lot […]
Back to Film
I wrote a little about this in my last post. After some careful thought I decided to shoot a lot more film this year. Almost exclusively, actually. It isn’t something that is easy to do but, something I feel is necessary. The first obvious question is why. Well, it isn’t easy to answer this either. […]
The Ricoh GR II and Why I Always End Up With a Ricoh
So, I just wrote about the Fujifilm X-Pro 2. It is a nice enough camera. I used it over the past six months. The fact of the matter is though, I never felt much of a connection to that camera. It worked just fine, but it never made me want to take photos. It was […]
2017, Week 2.
One of the things I’ve decided to do in 2017 is to lose some weight, ha. A typical resolution but a necessary one. I gained 15KG in 2016. No good, that. Luckily already shedding them in the first couple weeks of 2017. The first thing I did was quite all the shit I was doing. […]
2017, Week 1.
About a week into 2017 and things are slightly better than they were at the end of 2016. As you might figured from my last post I wasn’t entirely happy with 2016. In fact, it fucking sucked. I started out 2017 in Busan. Kinda felt like traveling to start the year. Busan is a city […]
2016, Go Stuff Yourself.
2016 was a weird year for me. Lots of things changed. Both for better and worse. Photographically, I think I grew a lot this year. I didn’t post much however, and have become quite lazy about it. Hence the guest posts lately. I’m glad Bin has being doing that. As per usual, I changed cameras […]
iPhone Workflow: Part 2 – Colour
Okay, so I promised this like three weeks ago. As many of you may have started to figure out, I’m a lazy blogger. I mean, I always was but now I have enough people following that I get called out for it, ha. Deservedly so 😉 That being said, here I am! Colour time. Yes, […]
Back Stories 1: Crosses
I noticed the orange and red lights first while flying into Korea. I remember thinking about Gibson’s Neuromancer. The neon night city of Chiba and my obtuse vision of what Asia was like. When the plane was close to touching down I realized what I was looking at were crosses. Equally neon, they littered the skyline. I didn’t […]
Being Complicit: The “Original” Ricoh GR Digital
I don’t know when I suddenly turned into a “reviewer” of cameras. I guess it isn’t really much about the cameras. I’ve for the most part stopped buying cameras. New cameras, anyway. Cameras sort of find their way to me. Cameras of all different types. Let me start by saying this: I have stopped paying […]
The Ricoh GRD4
“In your opinion, what is the best digital camera ever made? I mean, if you could only have one camera what would it be?” “The Ricoh GRD4.” “You mean the new one? The large sensor one? I think that is the GR..” “No. I mean the Ricoh GRD4.” An excerpt from an interview I did […]
Parallels
I took the late train home Saturday night from Seoul. I haven’t taken the train much this year. I’m not sure why. I like the window seat. I like watching the countryside drone on. The contact sheets that make up my life. I was tired. Tired a lot lately. Almost too tired to take this […]
Iksan Terminal
The first day I was in Korea I was dropped off at a small motel. While I had some experience travelling, I’m not sure I was ready for the feeling of being left in a motel in what felt like the middle of nowhere. I was so jet lagged I spent the first 10 hours […]
No Apologies
“Why do you take so many photos on the train?” I get it.It must be sort of boring to see twenty photos a week of people on the Seoul tube. Fact of that matter is, I don’t take many photos. I literally never go outside with my camera just to take photos. I don’t do […]
The Fujifilm X100T
As a continuation of the rather strange last month for my blog I’ve decided to do another “review.” I put that in quotations because I don’t think I really know how to do a proper review. This will be more like my thoughts on a camera I’ve used off and on for a while: The […]
See ya, 2015.
In a hotel room in Seoul. Staying in a hotel makes me feel like I’m doing something. I sort of enjoy it. I don’t usually take this kinda photo. Felt like a memory I wanted to be in. 2015 has come and gone. It was a mostly up and sometimes down year. I enjoyed most […]
Still Mobile
A lot of things can happen in a week. A lot of things did happen. A week from writing my post on mobile photography I find myself ironically with no camera but my phone. A long story short, Ricoh wanted to charge me $700 to fix a camera that costs less than that new. I’m […]
Mobile Photography: 5 Reasons I Love It
So I said I was done with gear posts during the last post. I guess I kind of lied. The one camera I hadn’t talked about yet was probably the one I use the most. My phone. The mobile phone has been the camera I’ve used the most over the past 5 or so years. […]
The Ricoh GR
I’m going to do something today I don’t usually do anymore. I’m going to talk a little about a camera. It is pretty ironic that I planned on talking about the Ricoh GR on this blog post and today it decided to have a problem with its lens mechanism. More on that later. I don’t […]
My Korea
I am often asked why I choose to live in Korea. I’m Canadian, for those of you who didn’t know. I’ve lived in Korea for most of the last 8 years. And quite honestly, I am perfectly happy to never go back. At least not to live. It is hard to describe why that is […]
Neverland Continued
Some time ago I made a blog post talking about how I felt taking photos in Korea. I called it Neverland, because of something my father used to say to me. He used to tell me that Korea was my Neverland. “Having fun in Neverland, Peter?” He always said that. At the time I thought […]
Fog
Thursday morning was pretty foggy. Probably the most fog I’ve seen in Korea. Granted it was 6 AM. Maybe my brain was a little foggy. On my way to the golf course this was pretty much the scene out my window. Not ideal. Glad I could take a photo of it with my phone. Phones […]
A Trip to Seoul
Seoul and back again. October 2015.
Simple Things
The end of a long weekend. I used to travel on weekends like this. I would go to Tokyo or Hong Kong. Now, I prefer to stay nearer home. Funny that. I’m not sure I enjoy staying close. I stayed in a hotel last night just to feel like I was doing something. Just to […]
Sundays
Finally, I’ve had a chance to settle into my new/old city. I love being here. It is relaxing. I feel relaxed. Something I haven’t done for some time. It is a quiet place, much quieter than where I had been. Sundays, like today, are particularly quiet. I get bored easily, so needless to say, days […]
The Underground
Its been a while since a post. In fact, my posts are coming less and less lately. It is hard to find the time to take photos, and even harder to find the time to post them. I realized that 90 percent of the photos I take are on the underground. I suppose it is […]
Feeling
More fish. After spending the previous weekend in Busan I found it hard to get away from the couple of photos I took there. I feel like I figured something out about myself there. I’ve always found it really hard to explain why I like the photos I take with small, compact cameras more. It […]
In Busan
I was packing for a one night trip to Busan on Friday and I had a problem that I hadn’t had in a while. I couldn’t figure out what camera to take with me. To travel, or to take photos, ha. It is a difficult question as I feel like too many people can’t distinguish […]