Seoul Part 3: Tourist

People at home are always telling me, "You look like a tourist with that camera."  I can't really blame them, especially if I'm wearing a vest with gear poking out of the pockets, a 1970's-era looking camera (sometimes, it is that old, sometimes it isn't), and a look on my face as if I'm seeing everything in my own city for the first time.

Life is just nicer if you treat everything like you're seeing it for the first time.  I mean, don't be an idiot about it -- it's still the same thing you saw yesterday.  However, it's a different day.  The sun is in a different place, and there are different people standing around or walking past, doing different things wearing different clothes.  Hell, you're not even standing in exactly the same spot as yesterday.

Literally, everything but the thing itself has changed.  This is called context, and I try to get as much of it as I can in my photos.  You miss out on a ton of stuff walking from place to place just staring at the sidewalk.  Or if you manage to get lost and end up on the "scenic route", just keep in mind the reason they call it that, and maybe it'll end up being a worthwhile detour.

Don't even worry about the camera.  Just take it all in.

Our usual modus operandi when traveling is to drop ourselves into a foreign destination and spend as much time as we can looking around to see what locals do.  However, we do indulge in the occasional tourist trap.  Seoul Tower on Namsan is nice little place with a panoramic view of Seoul.  There's a cable car from Myeongdong that will take you up to the base area.  There's a path to walk up, but it was icy and we decided not to bother with it.

It's one of those places where you take your high school sweetheart for a romantic date.  There's a "couples ticket" for $39USD that gets you a ride for two to the base area, and then a pizza or spaghetti dinner for two at the "Italian" restaurant there.  The food was passable and worth the trip, especially because it must have been an off hour and we had the place to ourselves with a nice window seat.  Once you get up there there's evidence scribbled all over of love found, lost, and unrequited, There's also a love lock wall covered with locks as testaments of couples' undying love.  The gift shop sells locks and permanent markers for your convenience.

The trip to the observation deck is a separate ticket.  They also have a couples ticket.  I think it's an elevator ride for two and a bucket of popcorn and a box of chocolates or something.  We didn't bother with that.  Just the elevator ride.


We had the good fortune to be experiencing most of this stuff for the first time on this trip.  We'd gone to Seoul in 2010, but managed to get horrifically sick the day we got in.  We spent a lot of time in the hotel room watching televised Starcraft matches and rice cooker infomercials.  Speaking of which, the Noble Hotel near Insadong is the place to be.  It's about $55USD a night, free wi fi, clean stuff, free drinks in the fridge.

Noble Hotel is a 5 or 10 minute walk away from the Anguk subway station, which is right by Insadong-gil, a nice little shopping and eating district where you can pick up cute artsy crafty things like porcelain jewelry or things with birds on them (yeah, think Portlandia, except everything doesn't suck).  Ssamziegil is basically a big corkscrewing complex lined with shops to that effect.  You walk up the path until you get to the top, and take the stairs back down.

If you stick your head down the side alleys, they're full of restaurants serving pretty solid traditional Korean stuff.  They're also good for a drink.  Lots of places try their best to make it clear that they will gladly serve you alcohol.  Unfortunately, I wasn't traveling with drinkers.  Maybe next time.

 

Also near the hotel are some cool historical sites -- well, I guess in a town as old as Seoul, you're never really far from history.  Anyway, the hotel is literally down the block from Donhwamun gate, where you can pay a small fee to have a look at the Changdeokgung palace grounds.  We skipped it for no real reason on this trip and mostly had a look around the outside, which is nicely lit at night and rather pretty in the snow.  It's a warm sight to see after a long day of walking around to let you know that you've made it back.

Also within walking distance (about 15 minutes) of Noble Hotel is Gwanghwamun gate at Gyeongbokgung Palace, where we decided to actually have a look around and test out my new camera.  The palace grounds tend to be nice and rather serene places to have a quiet stroll through, once you get far enough away from the herds of Chinese tourists.

Seoul is also great for shopping.  Check out the Apgujeong area in the Gangnam district for the latest in fashion trends both foreign and domestic.  Like with music, Korea likes to adopt a lot of cues from the West for clothing.  However, they do make a name for themselves with socks.  Koreans make awesome socks.

Anyway.  Apgujeong.  Think SoHo in NYC with little boutiques that sell things both high and low.  You can find some serious four-digit designer wear, but most of the stuff is perfectly affordable and practical, but still refreshingly cool.  I scored myself an awesome down jacket for $120 with a gigantic space marine helmet of a hood.  I wasn't originally in the market for a new jacket, but the one I brought with me was inadequate, and it was just so damn cold in Seoul.  I also grabbed a big pile of socks to bring home for everyone.  That really made souvenir shopping a breeze.  It was socks for everyone.  So far, I've had no complaints.

Sorry if the photos in this post feel a bit "lonely".  I have a 50mm lens on the Bessa (yep, all the photos in this post and the one after it were shot on film), and it does snug the frame up considerably over the 35mm equivalent on the X100S.  What ends up happening is that my photos at 50mm end up being of single subjects.  Maybe two or three if they're close friends or working together on something.

The wider angle on the Fuji really brought in a lot of context while losing a little bit of the individuals in the scene, though it almost requires having people in the frame to give some meaning to all the noise.  You could "zoom with your feet" and take a step back, but I just like being in the middle of things.

Don't worry, though.  The purpose of this post was to show you some of the things we did and saw as tourists in Seoul.  The next post will be more about the people of Seoul and living among them.

Anyway, happy Lunar New Year, everyone.  Stay tuned for more!

Seoul Part 2: Getting Into the Rhythm

I said that I was kind of taking the same pictures in Seoul as I was back home.  One thing that kind of helped was how familiar everything felt.  The people there love Western culture, and you definitely see its influence on things like food, fashion, and music.  However, they tend to lag a bit behind.  What you end up with is a neat anachronism where you see familiar themes from a few years ago, but they've been reshaped to fit in a present day context.  For example, the dubstep wobble is just beginning to creep its way into pop music, for better or worse.  Cafes are all over the place, from cute little wood-panel knit-beanie joints to big by-the-gallon Starbucks establishments (they have Starbucks there, too), and they all serve muffins and buttery French-style pastries.  Burger, pizza, and pasta restaurants are in no short supply, and LV bags and Canada Goose parkas are the norm, but then again, where in the world right now are they not?

... Yet it all feels distinctly Korean.  Flavors, textures, colors, and sounds have been rebalanced for the local palate, taking care not to offend the elderly -- many of which still grace the sidewalks with their daily strolls around town, cold weather be damned.  With the exception of the former chaos of a bustling COEX Mall, nothing in particular screams in your face for attention like it would in the West and nothing is ever really done to excess.  It doesn't really need to.  Streets and sidewalks are wider, and there's more open space to take your time and take it all in.  Everything just exists, politely asking for a moment -- a far cry from the strobe lights and neon signs of Tokyo and Hong Kong.  If something happens to catch your fancy, stop in and take a look, taste, or listen.

There is WiFi everywhere.  Absolutely everywhere, from the subway to the top floor.  I had forgotten to unlock my phone in time but I ended up not needing to, as you can stand outside a cafe (or just walk in for a $6 cup of Bolivian hand-drip), jump on their WiFi, and look up your next destination.  The local telecoms also offer pay services that you can log into while you're on the subway.  We didn't really need that, though.  There was enough free WiFi to bounce on and off of just to get what you need to know.

With that, getting around town was extremely easy.  We were at most a 20 minute train ride from anywhere we wanted to get in Seoul.  Their subway system is reminiscent of those of Tokyo and Hong Kong, with ample ventilation, big LCD screens to tell you where the next train is, and sliding glass doors to keep the tracks clean and running smoothly.  The trains run smoothly enough that it's not necessary to grab a pole or hanging loop to keep yourself upright.  Everything is very shiny and new, not having to conform to hundred-year-old fixtures like it does in New York City.

Speaking of fixtures...

I had gone with the intention of getting a new (used) film camera to shoot alongside the Fuji but unfortunately, the power adapter we bought ended up not fitting the outlets in the hotel room and I only have two batteries for the Fuji, now without a working charger.  I ran them both up in about three days.  Depending on how often I wake up the camera to take pictures, the battery in the X100S lasts for about 200 shots.  One of my few complaints about the Fuji has always been the tiny little battery.

So, with the Fuji dead, the new camera would have to take over as my primary shooter for the trip. Luckily for me, the camera I would get, the Voigtlander Bessa R2A, would be a worthy stand-in.  I'll introduce you in the next post, along with the pictures I took with it.

Again, here's the rest of the album I shot on digital, including some B roll.

Seoul Part 1: Shaking Off the Jet Lag

So, this blog started off with 3 posts in rapid succession, and then completely dropped off for two weeks.  The reason was that I was on vacation in Seoul for the last two weeks and was busy having a pretty good time there, so I didn't really want to scribble out little nickel and dime posts on my phone when I could just get back to New York and make some sense of it all before posting it.

Of course, I brought the X100S and took lots of photos, but I have to admit, it wasn't as many as I probably could have taken if I'd flown solo -- I was with the wife and in-laws, so I didn't really want to hold up the pack because I'd seen something down an alley (there are lots of those in Seoul) and had to run over to grab it.

Anyway, I learned something pretty important while travelling with my camera: I am not a very good travel photographer.  A travel photographer brings out the beauty and color of a destination and really make you want to get on a plane and see it for yourself.  A hard look at the stuff I was photographing there made me realize I was just taking the same photos I would have taken back home -- they're just pictures of life as it's lived there; the only difference is the backdrop and maybe a few mannerisms.  That's not to say you shouldn't travel just because it's all the same.  To the contrary, it's to say that life is beautiful, and I think you should get out there and see as much of it as you can.

I struggled a bit with whether I should really go into the photography bit or if I should write a vacation blog post.  I settled on the latter just because I like vacations, but as I mentioned before the photos aren't exactly vacation photos, so you'll have to keep that fact in mind.

We flew out of JFK with the overly cautious Asian parental flight plan of "try to arrive 3 hours before your flight, and just for good measure, leave the house a half hour earlier than you think you should" so we had a lot of time to kill.  Thankfully, mom-in-law has flown to Mars and back on Asiana and used her status to get the two us into the travelers' lounge to kill some time and smuggle cans of orange juice back out for the upcoming flight.

The flight itself was about as good as you can get being stuck for 14 hours in a 550mph aluminum can in the sky.  I've never been as excited about airline food as I have been on Asiana.  The bibimbap they serve is better than some that I've actually paid for in NYC, with a cute little instruction card and the gochujang being presented in a little toothpaste tube.  On the way home, they served ssambap in a similar fashion.

We got in after dark and went straight to bed. The next day, we went to Namdaemun Market because I'd read that you could get some nice deals on cameras there.  The place, named for the Namdaemun gate that sits in the middle of its main traffic circle, is very similar to the street markets of Hong Kong, where you can buy cheap clothing, bags, greasy street food, and other stuff.  Right outside one of the exits is a row of camera shops selling all sorts of used cameras, from old accordion folders to Leica rangefinders to medium format Hasselblads and Mamiyas to DSLRs.  I was in search of a Voigtlander Bessa R2M.  More on that later.

The street food is an incredible hodgepodge of various things skewered on sticks, battered, or both, and plunged into week-old oil.  Our favorite was the yachae hotteok, conveniently located in front of the row of camera shops.  Normally, hotteok is a pancake kind of thing filled with brown sugar or honey, flavored with cinnamon.  Yachae (vegetable) hotteok is filled with vegetables and sweet rice noodles.  We'd always seen a line of at least 15 to 20 people for it, and finally found it reasonably short on one of our numerous visits to the camera shop, and jumped on.  When you ask for one, they pull it from the oil still dripping, give it a quick shake, and hand it over in a fold of wax paper.  Price: 1000KRW, currently less than $1 USD.  There's just enough batter on the outside to form a light and crispy crust to hold the soft stuff inside without it spilling out with every bite.

Then we went to COEX Mall in Gangnam, normally a cacophony of blaring Kpop, young people, and neon colors, but currently under major renovation and reduced to a maze of blank hallways and people just using the inside as shelter on their way from the subway station to wherever it was they were going.  It's slated for completion by the end of 2014, but for now it's eerie being inside a giant shopping mall with no shops.  Anyway, we were a bit disappointed but we were really there for the COEX Aquarium, which is still open.

Yes, the mall is large enough to house a decent-size aquarium.  Whenever we travel, we always make a point of visiting the local aquarium if one exists.  I'm not sure what it is about fish we find so fascinating.  Maybe it's the colors and shapes, or their ability to truly move freely in a three dimensional environment.  Anyway, the aquarium at COEX is one of my favorites I've seen so far.  It's a linear trail so you only ever have one direction to go in, and the slight narrowness of the path itself along with the openness of the exhibits creates a tendency to keep people moving forward instead of bunching up at key points.  The experience is smooth but not rushed.  The animals are all healthy and well taken care of.

 

Also in Gangnam, down the road from COEX, is GomTV Studio, home of the GSL Starcraft 2 tournament held 4 times a year.  Starcraft 2 is a real time strategy game, and it's been rather popular in Korea, with the matches commentated and broadcast on TV as any sport would be.  The matches are 1 on 1, with the players playing inside soundproof booths and the happenings  in the game projected on the big screen.  There's a live audience of about 40 in attendance in cheap plastic chairs.  To our surprise, roughly half of the audience that day was female.  Normally, you'd figure this was a guy thing.

However, that day Lee Young Ho, a.k.a. "Flash" was playing.  He's one of the old-timers, having made a name for himself as one of the best Starcraft 1 players of all time.  He has a large following of fangirls.  Sharon had been afraid of being the only girl there, but was both relieved and fascinated by Flash's female following, translating for me some of the things they were saying.

At some point, a mild anxiety spread over the girls, who were sitting in a cluster to our left.

"He's not in his booth."
"Where did he go?"
"I don't know.  He just disappeared."
"He went to the bathroom."
"Oh."

Sure enough, Flash came back from the bathroom and walked past us down the aisle back to his booth.  The girls' heads turned in unison to smile at him as he walked past.

Unfortunately, Flash was not his usual self and played poorly, getting dropped from the tournament that day.  Between games, we made our own early retreat as we hadn't completely shaken off the jet lag, and the curtain was slowly inching its way down for the day.

And the same is happening right now as I write this post.  I'll pick this up again tomorrow but for now, here's the Google Plus album of the rest of the photos I took on the X100S, including stuff I'll be discussing in upcoming posts, and some in-betweeners that I won't.  Hopefully, the link works without anyone having to sign in or anything.  Let me know if there are any issues with that.  I'm new at this.

Fuji X100S

This is my Fuji X100S.

It has a 16 megapixel X-Trans CMOS II sensor with phase detect autofocus and no anti-aliasing filter, 28mm prime (full-frame equivalent: 35mm) f/2 lens, leaf shutter up to 1/4000s, with 1/1000s flash sync, and so on...

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the image quality of this thing, even though it's fantastic.  That's been run into the ground already.

I'm here to talk about what it's like to take pictures with this thing.  It's definitely a unique experience.  The layout of the camera is that an old school rangefinder camera, like a Leica or a Voigtlander Bessa.  The X100S is not a rangefinder, though -- I'll go over rangefinders in a later post, when I bring out my Fuji GW690II.  The Fuji X100S is essentially a mirrorless camera with a magical viewfinder.


One of the biggest complaints about mirrorless cameras is that their viewfinders are electronic.

(Digital) single lens reflex cameras, or (D)SLRs, have optical viewfinders, or OVFs.  On a single lens reflex camera, you look through the viewfinder, which bounces down a pentaprism, off a mirror, and then out the front of the camera through the lens.  On a rangefinder, an OVF is just an optically corrected hole through the camera that runs parallel to the actual taking lens.  It's kind of more of a guess, like a rifle scope.  The problem with rangefinder cameras was parallax error -- the closer you got to your subject, the more the view through the OVF would change from what the actual taking lens would see.

An electronic viewfinder (EVF) on a mirrorless camera is basically a tiny LCD screen with a magnifying lens that you look into and pretend you're looking through an SLR lens.  However, because the camera has to process the information from the sensor and then pump it up to the LCD, there's a tiny lag that people find offputting.  It "disconnects" you from the scene.  Still, though, some people love it because it lets you see just what the photo you're about to take is going to look like, and it also tends to have a lot more information on the screen like your camera settings or your histogram.

The advantage of the rangefinder (and mirrorless cameras) is that you don't have to house a pentaprism and mirror assembly, which allowed for the camera to be smaller and lighter.  The shorter distance between the back of the lens and the film (or digital sensor) also allowed for the lens itself to be much smaller.  If you look at the photo of the X100S at the top of this post, that front element on the f/2 lens is about the size of a quarter.  An equivalent lens on an SLR would be at least twice the size.

And now we get to the X100S.  It's got both an OVF and an EVF.  You switch between them with the little lever by your index finger on the front of the camera.  Also, in OVF mode, the OVF has a digital overlay, pretty much like a fighter jet HUD.  This allows you to see all sorts of information without having to look too far away from your scene.

When you decide you want to look through the lens, which is good for more exact framing and for when you want to see exactly what your composition will be (let's say you're shooting through a hole in a wall, or through a chain link fence), you flick the switch and the transition to EVF mode is extremely quick.

The hybrid viewfinder makes shooting with this camera a ton of fun, even if you don't end up with keeper shots at the end of the day.  The retro styling belies the innovative technology Fuji has packed into this little camera.  Once you get past the faux leather and the clicky knobs and look through the hybrid viewfinder, you step right into the future, and this camera is ready to help you make some great photography happen.

Now, enough about the viewfinder.  Let's talk about exposure settings, the other part of the camera that is distinctly retro.  One thing that tends to get lost in the transition from old mechanical things to new digital things is tactility.  It was the reason people held onto their Blackberry keyboards for so long before giving in to iPhone touchscreens -- you could feel the buttons, and when you could feel the buttons, you didn't have to take your eye off of what was important.  Thankfully, smartphone keyboards and autocorrect have come a very long way.

Old cameras had shutter speed knobs and aperture rings, pretty much exactly like the Fuji X100S does (see above).  When a camera had aperture or shutter priority, you'd set either the aperture or the shutter dial to "A", and that value would be automated.  That is, if you were to set the aperture to f/4 and the shutter speed to "A", the camera would meter your scene and automatically decide what shutter speed to take the photo at.  This is known as "aperture priority".  Conversely, if you set the shutter speed to, say, 1/125s, the camera would decide what aperture to use.  This is "shutter priority."

If you set both settings to "A" the camera chooses both values, and you have "program mode"

Newer cameras did away with the hardware settings and added a P/A/S/M (program/aperture/shutter/manual) knob.  You would choose the mode, and then you would set the variables after that.

I prefer the older style.  If I want aperture priority, I just slam the shutter speed all the way to "A" and fire away.  And I'd already know what the aperture is because I can feel which aperture I'm shooting at.  (Also, the nice viewfinder on the X100S makes it extremely visible.)

The Nikon Df tried to do this, but it kind of got bogged down by, ironically, its own digital legacy.  The newer lenses didn't have aperture rings, so aperture still had to be set by other means, and in the end there was still the need for a P/A/S/M knob.  The camera just turned into a mess of knobs and buttons while the Fujis and Leicas and older film cameras only have a graceful few.

There are a multitude of reasons it's just not done anymore, but I still prefer the old way of setting exposure.  It's why I love shooting my old film cameras.  I just kind of wish Fuji hadn't styled the X100S as such.  I would definitely love to see what a modern take on the rangefinder style would look like if it were designed by anyone other than Leica.

But other than that, I am perfectly happy with my Fuji X100S, my favorite camera in the world.

Oh, and about the accessories in the first picture: the strap is from DSPTCH and the lens hood is from Vello.  The hood is still made of metal, fits great, and does what a hood is supposed to do (which is, keep rain off the lens and prevent flare), but costs about a third the price of the one from Fuji.

Also, there was an older model called the Fuji X100.  It basically works the exact same way as the X100S, but it had some dealbreaking flaws, like sluggish autofocus and some annoying menu designs.  The X100S also had some nice picture quality upgrades.  However, most of what I say in this post other than the specs will apply to the older X100.

Street Photography

I don't have much to say about what street photography is that hasn't been said already, so here's the lazy link to Wikipedia if you're unfamiliar with the concept entirely.

For this post I'll stick as close as I can to what street photography means to me.

I've always been on the fence about applying the term "street photography" to my work. You don't always need to be on the street or even an urban environment to do it. Also, the word "street" gives it a bit of a gritty graffiti'ed aftertaste that I don't always find to be an integral part of my work. The Wiki gets kind of weird with some sort of "it's about a time, not a place" thing, but that's way over my head.

For now I'll just go along with it for lack of a better term.  Street photography, as far as this blog is concerned, is photography of candid, unposed, unscripted moments in public areas.

Life, basically.

There's argument over the ethics of capturing images of people in public areas.  I have to admit, getting blasted in the face by Bruce Gilden's corded flash and being thanked by his gaptoothed grin doesn't really sound like the makings of a good time.  I personally wouldn't mind, but it's not something I feel comfortable doing to other people.  I do like looking at his photos though.

As for the privacy issue, it's a public space after all, and anyone is free to walk past and witness it.  To be honest, I'm not really as interested in what the subjects are actually doing as much as what they're being a part of.

New York City is home to 8.3 million unknowing actors stuck on a crowded stage starring in a play with no intended audience.  If you stand at a street corner for just a little bit, little scenes pop up.  The cast walks on set and stands in just the right places, under just the right lighting and making just the right poses.  It just wouldn't be the same without them.  Without them, it's just a street corner.

If you stop and watch, it's actually quite beautiful.

Here are a few street photographers I like to follow:
Rinzi Ruiz (Flickr)
Marius Vieth (Flickr)
Maciej Dakowicz (Flickr)
Junku Nishimura (Youtube)

About

Well, here we go -- welcome to The Fickle Frame, everyone!

This is where you'll find photos I've taken, both old and new, along with any thoughts and feelings I have about them.  From time to time I'll be putting in some thoughts on other things, like other photographers, photos, books, gear, or anything else that I encounter.

Normally I like for my photos to speak for themselves, but I'm hoping that my thinking out loud will help both me and you understand a little more about them, and maybe a little more about photography in general.  Now, I'm not a photographer by schooling or by trade -- I am a photographer only by virtue of being a guy with a camera.  My greatest fear is for this blog to ever sound preachy or pretentious, and I welcome any questions or constructive criticism my readers may have.

I have a long lineup of cameras, both film and digital, but my primary weapon of choice is the Fuji X100S.  I shoot lots of different photos, but most of my photography is of the "street" variety.

More on these later.

For now, I'm just glad to have this thing off the ground, after years of occasional poking and prodding and hint-hints from friends to start a blog.

Oh.  Right.

For the time being, chances are good you already know who I am; this all started on my humble little Facebook page, shared only with the 200-or-so people I'd added as friends.  Facebook isn't really the best place for photos to be displayed, but for a while I loved it as a place for photos to be seen.  I'm self-conscious by nature, and Facebook was a comfortable place to be seen without being taken too seriously.  I thought my photos were just a river flowing into the sea.

After a while, people started approaching me and telling me they liked my stuff.  To those people: I've thanked you already, but I thank you again.  You'll be seeing some familiar photos from the past.  I hope my stories and thoughts help shed new light on them and let you look at them again.  This is all the stuff that just wouldn't feel right to put on Facebook.

This is happening because of you.

Enjoy.


-J