The Weather

Screw this weather. The End.

   Yesterday my little group and I went on an adventure into Seoul. We saw quite a few things including a palace performance. Unfortunately, however, I cannot say I have much to show you on the matter. I will surely be going back to these places in the near future because I absolutely could not focus on sight seeing.

   "Could not focus" is an understatement. I was completely shocked by the amount of absolute suck that is South Korean weather. I have never in my life experienced heat like this. I was born and raised in a very dry climate. With that comes sweltering heat its true. But this heat was on a different scale. The reason for that was the humidity. Embarrassing and uncomfortable does not begin to explain the way I felt sweating profusely while walking around. I looked like I had never walked more than 10 feet in my life. It wasn't the actual activity though. I could have stood in one spot the whole day and been sweating just the same amount.

   Anyways all my complaining aside, I really liked what I saw. I need to go back for sure, but I think that will have to wait for a cooler season. I will show a couple of photos I tried to take but they aren't great at all. My mind was more like, "Please stop sweating," than, "What is my shutter speed?" So forgive me.

First Day Blues

   I'm just going to be honest here. But first thing is first, I am in Korea.

   Currently I am staying in Incheon. Incheon is a city a little bit outside of Seoul, the capitol of South Korea. This is the first city you will enter since the national airport is in Incheon.

   About that flight... it is terrible. I love to fly as I have mentioned before, but any flight over about 2 hours is terribly uncomfortable. My advice, adjust to the new time zone early if you have the chance by trying to stay up during the night and sleeping during the day. It sucks while trying to adjust, but it is going to suck no matter where you try to accomplish it. Next choose a flight that is in the morning (your time which happens to be the other time zone's night time) and you will be so tired during the flight that you will knock out no matter what the level of comfort is.  At least I know I do. Oh, and invest in a neck pillow!

   Anyways I am here safely and I guess that is all the matters. I can't, however, say I am completely happy. I remember going to Japan and how happy I was by being there. Simply stepping off the airplane felt like a huge achievement. I was ready, I was excited and eager to explore. Here in Korea... at least this first day, I don't feel exactly the same way. Please don't misunderstand me, I am grateful to have this opportunity and I am not infinitely melancholy or anything close. But I do have a little bit of the blues. I felt no real drive to record any vlogs for the first day, and even my photography suffered because of these blues. My heart was just elsewhere today.

   Perhaps it was just a harder flight than I thought, but I think it is more than that. I couldn't possibly explain why I feel this way in one single blog post. Partly because you would have to read a very lengthy post, and partly because I really don't know why myself. However, I can pin point two reasons for sure.

   First off, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and book my flight a few days early with two other people. These two are great, I have no issues with them in any way. But I think this was a mistake all the same. I am just simply not the kind of person to travel with friends. I can't explain it. It is not as if they are dragging me down, or ruining my experience in any way. In fact for any other person these two would probably enhance the experience, they are just really fun people.

   Now more than ever though, I have come to the conclusion that I am a very reclusive person. I do not want to be, but I am very uncomfortable with people. I never thought it was this bad, but the way I feel right now only serves to confirm what I am and to what degree it afflicts me. I do not like that I am this way. I like people, I like their stories, and yet I can't feel comfortable around them for too long. I don't know when this became a thing, perhaps I have always been like this, but I wish I wasn't.

   I am afraid of what this may mean for my future relationships. Before I never had a problem spending lots of time with a girlfriend or someone I was dating. But that was a very long time ago. I have wondered why I have been single for so many years, and I feel like I may know now. If that isn't the case, then this has developed in that long period of time, and I wonder how a future relationship would carry out. I guess it isn't important right now, there are no girls knocking down my hotel room door or anything, but it has been on my mind. By the way, one thing that really set this off is that I found out I will be having a roommate for three weeks during orientation. That really upset me.

   Secondly, for my blues, I feel like I have really made my family sad because of leaving for so long. I mean, that's normal right? Anyone would be at least a little sad that their loved one will be half way across the world for an extended period of time. But I don't like the feeling of doing this to my family. I have always felt an inexplicably high sense of responsibility for them, and doing this makes me feel like I am not fulfilling those responsibilities and making their lives a little more difficult at the same time.

   I am home sick already... to say the least. I want to be with my family more now than I ever have before. I felt a little bit like this before I left to Japan, but not to this degree at all. Maybe its because of the length, maybe not. Its weird too, because I really don't have the mindset of particularly needing anyone around me. I am a survivor and, as I stated above, a recluse. I get by alone very well no matter what the situation. But it is not because I need my family to do for me, rather I want to do for them. Here I am almost helpless. I know they will get by with or without me. They are not completely hopeless cases who can't do without me, but as I have said before, that's not at all the point.

   I hope this subsides. I don't know what to do about my reclusive tendencies, but I do hope that I am just having normal home sickness. I really think I am, I think it just hit me hard this time. Here is to hoping for better moods!


   Thanks for reading guys, I appreciate it. I know this one was kind of a heavy one. I will be recording more vlog videos about my travels soon. I know many people liked those so please be on the lookout for those and share my blog with anyone who might be interested.

Anticipation

Fun fact: 16 days until I leave for Korea.

   I guess I just wanted to share my plans with everyone. In 16 days I will be boarding a plane to South Korea. Actually to San Francisco but then to Korea if you want to be precise. I am excited, but I hate this part of the travel experience.

   For one, the wait. Anticipation is a killer for me, I hate it. When it is a long wait, I don't really mind. I just kind of stop thinking about it for a while because I know there is no reason to get myself worked up for something that won't happen for months. But when it gets to the last few weeks, things start to change. You simply cannot push it out of your mind. Even if you try, the excitement and wonder seems to bubble to the surface instantly. Not only that but at this point you have so many last minute things you need to do, stuff you need to buy, people you need to speak to, and so on. So putting your coming travels out of your mind completely is detrimental unless you want to forget something important. But the second reason I hate this part is because of the flight. I don't mind flying, I like it, but after a few hours being stuck in a pressurized tube with however many other people gets well... annoying.

   Usually I like to travel alone. I really don't like having the burden of someone else to look after or potentially ruin what I set out to do for the day. But it isn't just that. I am the kind that needs to drink stuff in alone. As I have said before when I went to Japan, I love to just sit on the sidewalk and watch crowds go by. In that moment I am completely quiet, but my mind is a cacophony of internal narrative and careful thought processes. I am trying to view the scene and people I am seeing as best I can in a clear and unimpeded way. Perhaps I am making no sense, or perhaps I am making complete sense I don't know. I do know there are people out there that I could travel with who would understand this and be able to support my foibles selflessly. But this person would be a very specific person and not just anyone I am afraid.

   So then, why did I book a plane ticket to Seoul 3 days early with 2 other people I hardly know? As I've said previously in this blog, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to put yourself out of your comfort zone every once in a while. You never know what will come of it. Perhaps it will be a dismal experience but in the end if you didn't ride the wave, you will never know where it would take you. To me that is too much of a risk. So I am travelling with 2 others who were accepted to the same program I was and are from San Antonio. I don't know what this experience will be like. I think these people are pretty cool people, but beyond that, who knows? I certainly don't and to me, that's enough.

Painful Film

   Oh how I yearn to shoot film every day. I love my D610 so much that I'd be pretty sad if I ever had to move up to a more "professional" body any time in the future. But film just captures something more than can be explained. I don't know what the difference really is but something about film has character that digital images just do not. That's not to say digital does not look good, it looks great, but there is a subtle difference between the two I can't quite put my finger on.

   Recently I wanted to break out my Pentax camera. I love this camera. It's completely manual, no light meter, small, relatively light, just all around a basic but fun camera to use. I thought well sure, but instead of going with my regular Kodak, why not try a new film stock. Now, I've tried Kodak black and white and color, and I've also tried Fuji Film color. I like Kodak and I usually reach for it when I am in the mood to shoot film. Plus with the easy C-41 processing black and white I usually just get that for cheap and throw it in my camera.

   This time however, I picked up some rolls of Ilford mainly because Matt Day switched to it and I like his work, so I figured it couldn't be too bad. But I didn't know what to expect from it really. What he gets from the film and what I get are two different things entirely. I shot both rolls of 400 and I haven't yet found a proper place to use the roll of 3200 I bought. (I'll explain why in a minute.) I was pretty impressed with the look of the 400. It is quite grainy especially compared side by side with the Kodak 400 I usually get. In hind sight, I guess the grain is just different between the two. In any case grain is not bad. It's part of what makes film special, and I loved the look of the Ilford grain.

Kodak BW400CN

Ilford Delta 400

   I am not disappointed with the film in the least. In fact from now on whenever I get the itch to shoot film again, I will definitely grab a few more rolls of Ilford. It just performs really well. 

   What I will NEVER do again is send my film off to a lab. I thought, since I don't have the chemicals or equipment readily available, I'd just send it off to a lab to be processed. My thinking was, yeah I may pay a little extra and it will take them a bit longer than it would take me, but so what? It's the convenience. I was wrong. It was just downright painful.

   It took them 3 weeks to develop the film (where it would have taken me....30 minutes?) and I ended up paying over $60 for high res scans and slow processing! For $60 I could have just bought all the chemicals and developed all the rolls I have laying around that I shot a long time ago! This was completely ridiculous I thought. It's no wonder film is fading away. It pains me to say that but no one wants to do this any longer. We know that with film you must be patient. But $60 and a 3 week wait? Yeah... I don't think so. From now on I will just develop my own film and take them to a lab for scans.

   Anyways I am happy with the results of the Ilford 400 film stock so far. I haven't used the roll of 3200 yet, and I am dying to get my hands on their Ilford 50. I really like that Ilford is keeping traditional B&W film going. It's a bold move, and one that many photographers appreciate I am sure. I know I appreciate it. Hopefully this will be another film stock that finds its way into my bag too often. I won't really know until I shoot a bit more with it, but so far I like it! Tell me what you think.

Talking About TaLK

   Hello everyone.

   So not much of an exciting post today, well... it is for me, but I just wanted to share some news with the people who read my blog and especially to those who liked to see my vlogs (video blogs) when I was travelling in Japan. If you haven't seen those, you can see them here.

   At the beginning of the semester I applied for a job (for lack of a better word) in south Korea teaching English through the TaLK program. When I applied I kind of did it more with the thought that, if I didn't do it, I might be missing out on an opportunity. I really didn't expect to be selected for the job at all really, but I know the importance of just trying things no matter what you may think might happen. (some people REALLY need to learn this lesson...) In the back of my mind I told myself I was probably not the most outstanding candidate on paper. I know that whatever I want to do, I can perform with the best no matter what, and that's not false bravado or bargain bin self-help book teaching. I really believe that anyone can perform with the best if they want to in anything they do. Not just myself. But how do you convince a stranger of that who is across the globe? Anyways I digress.

   After I went through the quite extensive process of tracking down documents, I had my application complete and... I waited... and waited some more. This, needless to say, only added to my doubts about being selected. But I just really wasn't getting my hopes up for anything. Finally last month I got a Skype interview which was a first for me. Everything seemed to go pretty well but still, anything could happen I knew, so I went about my life the same way, really not thinking about the TaLK program much.

   Now is where my story comes to the point where all that preparatory talk up there ^ seems to be worth something other than rambling.

   What I am trying to say with this post is that I got selected for the TaLK program along with 4 other students from UTSA. I feel honored to put things lightly. I really can't express how happy I am.

But what does this mean for my readers?

   Well put simply, I am going to Korea at the end of July. This means that those who read this blog because of travel interests will get to see more of that here. Those of you who read this because of photography, you will of course see a lot of that. But those who just enjoy my pretty face (I know there are a lot of you out there...) you will undoubtedly see more videos to come on this blog. The only reason I didn't blog after Japan was because everything up until now was pretty mundane and I don't think people really care to see that. If you do, then you are just weird like me, because I like very mundane blogs/vlogs too.

Maybe we should start a club.




Keep your eyeballs glued here. I'll be making a scene... in Korea!

Beginning Photography Blunders

 

   If you like any of the photos I post on this blog, you are seeing the result of many years of practice. I did not get to where I am today overnight and I am surely not anywhere near my limit. I have tons and tons (and tons and tons and tons...) of stuff to learn about photography. I am nowhere near some of the masters of my craft, and I am willing to bet that even they would say they have room to learn. Photography is a massive and complex mix of science, technol
ogy, and art. Photography has evolved arguably far more than any one art form over it's history. It is impossible for one artist to have completely learned everything there is to know about photography. If in some way they have, then tomorrow I guarantee they will need to learn something new.

   What you are seeing me produce has come from a lot of practice and many many blunders. Now I am at the point where I am consistently producing a technically correct image almost every single frame, but this wasn't always the case.

   Look, getting out of auto mode on your camera is tough. I know this. Sometimes you may even ask yourself, "Why even bother?" I could argue against that forever but to some degree I can see where some people are coming from. Camera technology has come so far that for some people getting out of auto really isn't necessary. If you just want the image to remember your child's soccer game and not as a piece of art, then yes there is no point to getting out of auto. If you are not wanting to spend hours at the computer editing your image, then yes there is no point. There is nothing wrong with that. But if you want full control over every aspect of your photo and have the ability to make a conscious decision to bend and break some rules, then you need to get out of auto. There just simply is no other way.

   Other than when I had point and shoots that didn't allow manual controls, I never shot in auto. In fact my first SLR didn't even have a light meter, so auto was impossible on that camera. Some would argue this is the best way to start out in photography. I can argue for and against starting this way. On the one hand, I wasn't using the camera's auto settings as a crutch because there simply weren't any. But on the other hand, I wasn't even aware of the mistakes I was making. Let me explain a little bit.

   So my first SLR I bought off of eBay not even knowing anything about light meters or the lack thereof. I knew really nothing about cameras at all. I knew the basics of how to expose an image correctly and that was it. That small bit of information would prove to be highly useful but I did not really know it at the time. So when I got my camera I immediately went out and bought some rolls of film (I bought some 400 speed film not even knowing what the 400 meant), I located my shutter speed dial, and learned how to change the aperture on my lens. From school I remembered the relationship between the shutter speed and aperture but I had forgotten, or perhaps never learned, what film speed(ISO) brought to the equation. So that was my first blunder.

   Then comes my second blunder. On my shutter speed dial there is a little red x near the 1/60th spot. For some reason completely unknown to me I mistook this x to mean a "normal," or "all purpose," shutter speed. I reasoned that this x meant that if you leave it at this speed and the scene isn't too dark or too bright, you were pretty good. Looking back now I can't even believe I could think that and I have no idea where I got that idea from. So for most of my photos I was leaving my camera at 1/60th of a second and of course using the largest aperture I could which was f1.8. But here is where the real confusion starts to set in. When I took my camera out, I was taking it out on overcast days. I have always liked the quality of light that comes from an overcast day. It just does something for me. Even if the images are slightly under exposed, the mood is what I am looking for. So every time I went out, what should have been completely washed out images in bright sunlight, were actually fairly well exposed images. This simply added confidence to my "all purpose" shutter speed theory. Later I would start to see that I was wrong when I started to get back over exposed images because I was shooting in brighter sunny days.

   My list of blunders does not end there but you get the idea. It took me a lot of wasted rolls of film to understand that I was doing something wrong and I needed to change something. My point is however, I would have never made this mistake if I simply had an automatic mode (or a light meter for that matter). But if I had never made this mistake I would have never seen the importance of evaluating the light in a scene and then changing my settings.

   Not having a light meter or auto settings taught me how to look at a scene and guess my settings from there. I am not always 100% correct, but most of the time I can look at a scene, and guess within a stop over or under what my settings should be. This is absolutely invaluable with the type of photography I like to do. There is no way I could have learned this from leaving my camera in auto.

Blundered (unedited)

Not Blundered (unedited)

   So that's the point of this post. I want to say that auto settings are okay for certain situations. If you don't care about how your images look, you just want them to look reasonably good, then auto is a great way to do that. Also, if you are just beginning, being in auto is not bad per say. But a word of caution: do not rely on auto. If anything just rely on your light meter and your digital screen (for DSLRs). Getting an image wrong 3 times but seeing what is wrong with it is much better than never getting it wrong, but never having to think about your settings. If you are trying to advance your photography, GET OUT OF AUTO NOW. It is crippling you. If you don't know where to start, how about taking a look at my past Photo Basics posts? Links below. Go create a scene people!

Beginner Photo Basics posts:
Photo Basics: So Many Buttons
Photo Basics: Aperture
Photo Basics: Shutter Speed
Photo Basics: ISO
Photo Basics: Rule of Thirds

Photo Basics: Rule of Thirds

   Hello everyone, back with another "Photo Basics" post and in this one I'll be going over a composition "rule," called the rule of thirds.

  These posts are meant for those interested in learning photography. I have other posts on the topic so please take a look.

Photo Basics: ISO
Photo Basics: Shutter Speed
Photo Basics: Aperture
Photo Basics: So Many Buttons

   Composition is important to master. When you have mastered your camera, can pre-visualize your settings, and feel comfortable with all the technical aspects of photography, composition will become the thing that is on your mind every time you think about an image. Once you understand it, your eye starts to see the world as a series of photographs from then on. Once you have gotten to this point, this is where your images start to stand out and creativity is born.

   When you read this post you will see the word "rules," thrown around a lot. Please understand that in any form of art there are no real rules, nor should there be. The "rule" of thirds should really be called the "guideline," of thirds simply because these rules are in place to be followed until the artist sees fit to break them. In other words you do not HAVE to follow these rules to create a good image. However when these rules are broken there should be creative intent behind it.

   That being said, following the rule of thirds will produce the results you are looking for more often than not, and it is very simple and powerful if used.

   "Ok Alex, so stop ranting and tell us what it is."

  The rule of thirds splits a photo, which is usually rectangular (square formats are also used but they are just not as common), into 3 equal sections horizontally and 3 vertically. Take this image for example. I have drawn red lines on it to show where the "thirds" are. Please forgive me if the sections are not equal, I just eye-balled it for demonstration.

   Basically where these dividing lines meet, that is where you want your subject to be. Notice that in this the speakers eyes are basically on the top horizontal and right vertical with the cross section almost completely on his closest eye.

   Our eyes naturally travel around an image in this fashion. We generally do not look at the center of an image first, instead we look at these cross sections. When you place your subject in one of these you are drawing your eye's attention to that subject. In this way, even if the background was cluttered with people or distracting things, your eyes would have an easy job of picking out what they should be looking at in the image.

   This is not limited by orientation of the photo either. It will work whether in a horizontal or vertical orientation. This is also not limited by subject matter. Here you see two of my own photos with people in them simply because that is the subject matter I look for, people. However here is also an example of an image not taken by me that shows where the horizon of a landscape was placed for dramatic effect. Here the horizon is in the bottom third of the photos to show a vast stretching landscape and big blue sky.

Photo NOT by me link below

   There are many other ways to use the rule of thirds, and many ways to break this rule. Try using the rule of thirds in your images and see how they transform from regular snapshots, to works of art worthy of a magazine. Really, its that powerful and the great thing is that it's easy to do. All you need to do is move your camera. Get out there and try it!

Horizon rule of thirds example: thephotographicangle.co.uk