Spent the weekend in Boseong-gun, Jeollanam-do hanging out in the tea plantations for the April issue of SEOUL.
Here are a couple of photos for you — you can see the rest in all their glossy glory when the magazine comes out at the end of the month. In the meantime, check out the Flickr slideshow for larger pics.
Took that at Boseong Bus Station. Love the old folk at country bus stations — there’s a lot of character there.
I’m going to the destination in green.
The very famous Japanese cedar-lined path to Daehan Green Tea Plantation.
OK, so the tea fields weren’t yet as green as I’d hoped — as you know, those fields can get quite verdant come April and May.
One of the monks isn’t be very mindful now, is he. Or perhaps he is. What the hell do I know?
Another happy couple strolling about the hills of Daehan Green Tea Plantation.
14 Comments
I absolutely love your photo work here. You have really gotten better and it shows. Great job!
Marmot, Nice spread. I need to get down there now!
Nice pictures.
When were those cedars planted? They don’t look old enough to have been planted before the Korean War.
Love those “cedars”.
Once again, the Marmot shows us some great stuff. Thanks.
i am waiting for some to call you on the word plantation as not being politically correct!
Thanks!
“Love the old folk at country bus stations—there’s a lot of character there.”
I greatly enjoy meeting and conversing with middle-aged and old folks in the country…including Daegu, which from the point of view of y’all who live in Seoul, is the country
. Salt of the earth, and no pretense about them.
Okay, my last comment is a broad generalization, but it’s a greater pleasure than dealing with the stressed-out, keeping-up-appearances folks who live in Seoul (like any other big city).
We went there in June 2005 at 5 o’clock in the morning. It was very foggy but the place was so lovely. The green tea cookies sold at the souvenir shop were delicious!
Robert– Some nice pictures there of a fascinating location.
This seems like as good a time as any to say what I’ve been thinking in looking at your photo work over the last two years or so. Please take it in the constructive and friendly spirit in which it is offered! You have come a long way, and I think if you persevere you have the makings of a good photographer. This batch in particular shows you are quite capable of breaking away from your typical spread of rather static and highly repetitive architectural photo studies. Don’t get me wrong, I like that subject, and you often do it justice, and I have suggested before that you seriously plan to do a photo-and-extended-caption book on modern Korean architecture (i.e. mid 19th century to the present). Although to really do high quality photo architectural studies you will need to use a perspective-shift lens or a larger format camera with tilts and shifts to get rid of all that barrel distortion. But that is an aside.
The two things I want to say are, from my perspective, first, you need to learn to EDIT your own work ruthlessly. Posting multiple versions of almost the same scene because you like them all or can’t decide which is better is a classic symptom of amateurism. How many images do you really need to tell a story? Hint: look in Geo, National Geographic, or Vanity Fair. The other thing is to take more pictures of people, and that means engaging them, not sneaking photos from afar with a telephoto lens, but interacting with them to the point where they are comfortable being photographed or forget you are there. Professional photojournalists take most of their people shots with wide angle, not telephoto lenses, which means they are right next to them. I realize this may present special cultural and legal problems in Korea… but believe me, it’s easier there than in Latin America or France!
The strongest suggestion I can make is that you seriously consider investing the time, energy, and money into one or more high-powered professional photography workshops with one or more world-class working photographers (anybody at National Geographic or Magnum for starters, but the choice is yours). What you’ll find is the workshops at that level usually aren’t much about technique, they’re about engagement, style, philosophy, story-telling, refining and advancing your own style, and merciless editing, editing, editing… And I think you will be amazed and gratified at what you can learn in a five-day workshop with a really good teacher and interacting with other serious students.
Anyway, best of luck and I look forward to more of your photos from Korea and your development as a photographer.
Thanks a lot for your advice, Bad Monkey. I’ve definitely got a long way to go.
These are such great photos, thankyou!
Robert: Not that long a way to go. Okay, I don’t have Bad Monkey’s professional eye, but the first couple of photos you put up here—the old lady at the bus depot and the place name signs on the bus—look like something out of National Geographic.