someplacefaraway

Jongno area.

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:45:53 -0400

Jongno area.

Park Hyatt near Samsung Station, Seoul. (삼성역)

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 07:08:33 -0400

Park Hyatt near Samsung Station, Seoul. (삼성역)

Shinnonhyeon (신논현역) station after an early summer rain.

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 08:59:50 -0400

Shinnonhyeon (신논현역) station after an early summer rain.

Suseo (수서), the edge of Seoul.

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 04:26:37 -0400

Suseo (수서), the edge of Seoul.

Why I use Micro Four Thirds

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:52:00 -0400

My name is Justin, and I was a gear addict. For a time that now seems like an eternity I was addicted to buying and selling my gear. No matter how many lenses I went through, I still felt like that one lens that I didn’t have was the tool that needed to perfect my art. As if my ability to create was somehow physically attached to a piece of hardware. Looking back now, the addiction was no better than a drug addled trip to Vegas. The only thing I lacked was, of course the drugs, and a Samoan attorney sitting next to me in a candy apple red convertible. In the period of only a year or two I went through a Nikon D50, Canon SX10, Canon 550D and a 7D. A plethora of lenses to go along with those bodies too. 70-300s, various primes, L lenses and the like. Not that I needed all of that to take pictures, but once you get locked into a serious lens collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

I remember one day I was shooting at City Hall in downtown Seoul, I realized that my Canon L 24-105 was just too heavy and bulky for what I wanted to do. So I promptly wandered over to Namdaemoon and traded it in for the 35 f/2 and the 85 1.8. Those two, combined with my 50 1.4 were my triple threat.

It was a combination that ultimately lead to my breakdown in photography. I believe it was just about that time when I hit rock bottom with my gear. I kept saying to myself that the next lens would be the last, the next prime would solve my photographic issues completely. I would go out and shoot off a few hundred shots in a just a few minutes with the 7D. I would fill up an 8 gig card and move on to the next. It was a downward spiral of moving at a defining speed. But the environment around me wasn’t exactly giving me reason to stop either. Thats the problem with being new to a foreign country. It tends of push your inhibitions aside and give you crazy thoughts. The muses are clearly the type to target people like me, I’m convinced they can smell fear and are attracted to it. Like a fly to sugar water, so were the crazy thoughts of my ascendancy into professionalism.

Crazy thoughts like you can do things that you would never have considered back home There was madness all around me and I was so full of wierd that I couldn’t begin to stop let alone tell you where the beginning was. If there is one thing that I have learned about gearheads is that you can never turn your head against their addiction, so convinced are they that are holding the holy grail of all that is photographic that should you decide to disagree, and this is something that I can never suggest, be ready for an earful of everything you don’t want to hear. Opinions are like assholes they say, something that everyone has but I’m convinced that no one ever wants to see yours personally.

By now, if you’re still reading (I can’t blame you if you’ve decided to close this window already, rambling has a tendency to turn people into faux illiterates) you may be asking yourself what this has to do with micro 43s!? Well, to put it simply, to me it means everything. I found my way out of that twisted glass fueled spiral through a change in systems. You might think that switching systems would only fuel the wave of gearheadedness that was following me around like some kind of twisted hell spawned mosquito. Yet, to the contrary, I found a certain sereinity within the system. The body of the camera couldn’t hold a candle to the construction of the 7D and its maximum shutter speed was low (1/2000 compared to that of the 7Ds 1/8000).

Yet, within the limitation I found freedom. No longer was I bound to the crazy gear obsession that I had bought myself into.

I’m not sure if its ironic or not, but in the end, what I was looking for was not MORE…but LESS.

Shin Nonhyun, Seoul at sunset.

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:10:29 -0400

Shin Nonhyun, Seoul at sunset.

Haebangchon, Seoul.

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 19:46:30 -0500

Haebangchon, Seoul.

An alleyway in the morning. Jongno, Seoul

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 10:41:22 -0500

An alleyway in the morning. Jongno, Seoul

Early morning Cheonggaecheong

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:47:22 -0500

Early morning Cheonggaecheong

Jongno in the early morning

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:46:13 -0500

Jongno in the early morning

Yongsan Station under construction

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:06:53 -0500

Yongsan Station under construction

Hong Kong again, in route to Incheon.

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:38:42 -0500

Hong Kong again, in route to Incheon.

Hong Kong International Airport

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:33:02 -0500

Hong Kong International Airport

Rural Gwangju, South Korea

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:22:11 -0500

Rural Gwangju, South Korea

A view from the northern coast of Nami Island, South Korea.

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 03:38:33 -0500

A view from the northern coast of Nami Island, South Korea.

Peaceful protest at Boshingak, Seoul

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:10:04 -0500

Peaceful protest at Boshingak, Seoul

Yongsan train yard, Seoul

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:07:00 -0400

Yongsan train yard, Seoul

An old man fishing on the Han River.

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:07:33 -0400

An old man fishing on the Han River.

The Han River at sunset.

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:01:35 -0400

The Han River at sunset.

Popcorn vender. Seoul, South Korea

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 05:57:05 -0400

Popcorn vender. Seoul, South Korea