Tag: bus
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An Alternative View of a Hotel
Next to Ayajin Harbour is a thin wedge of a hotel on a narrow piece of land between a cliff and the road into town. The ground floor has parking for two vehicles and an office. The four floors above that have one room each. Each room is about 200,000 Won a night – expensive.
I tried photographing the building from the narrow end to show it standing tall and thin between road and cliff, but guests kept appearing in the windows to photograph the sea. So I gave up and went into town. When I came back that way a little later, I noticed that I could see the whole hotel in a traffic mirror across the road. It wasn’t possible to show well how the architect had cleverly used a very small piece of land, but I thought it was interesting to see the hotel in the mirror next to the light pole and breakwater. I set the exposure and composition and waited about ten or fifteen minutes for a local bus to add colour and interest.
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One New and Sixteen Older Pictures of Buses
The first photo in this series is from a roll of film I had developed and scanned at the end of last month. As I was preparing it to share here, it occurred to me that I have quite a few pictures of city buses. Possibly enough good ones to share a series here. Typing ‘bus’ into Lightroom produced 144 results. I cut that down to 25 because ‘bus’ includes bus stations and intercity buses. Then I cut out eight more because I wasn’t satisfied with them. So here are 17 pictures of local buses, starting with the most recent and continuing somewhat chronologically to the oldest.
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Hahoe Village
When I was working on my hipsta-traditional project, I made a trip down south to visit Hahoe Village. The village was founded in the 16th century by the Ryu clan and the village is still only inhabited by members of that family. We used to joke about small towns in Newfoundland by saying, “They’re all cousins there.” In this case, it’s true.
The village is quite famous in Korea. Queen Elizabeth II visited in 1999 and planted a tree. (She probably didn’t come by the bus in the photo). Then the village became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010 after they got rid of all the souvenir shops and tidied it up.
The hamlet is very nice if you can avoid tourists by visiting on a weekday or in the chillier seasons. I used my iPhone for the project, but I also brought along a film camera and made a few snapshots like this one. I would like to go back again with tripod and multiple lenses. Maybe in the winter when the sun gets up at about the same time I do. ๐
It’s pretty easy to see that this photo was made when the sun was high. The whites are very bright and the tree shadows very dark. Of particular note is the big blob in the bottom left. But it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to remember the paint job on the bus and the old people waiting for it to depart.
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Back to the Bus Stop
I visited King Myeongju’s Tomb this morning with my Minolta X700 and a roll of HP5+. I brought a digital camera along in case the Minolta’s batteries died (Forgot to buy spares. Stunarse.) and to use as a light meter if I ran into some very tricky lighting. The digital camera stayed in the bag while I was using film because the Minolta’s meter is pretty good, there wasn’t too much contrast in the scenes I photographed, and I know a bit about when to use exposure compensation. (So I’ve probably buggered everything up).
I used up a whole roll and didn’t want to start a new roll just for the walk back to the bus stop, so I put Mr. Minolta in my backpack and took out Mr. Fuji. It’s convenient to use the digital camera, but making photos with a manual camera is a real pleasure by comparison.
But I digress. I made a bunch of photos on the way back down the hill and I’m happy enough with three of them to share here.The city’s bus system application said that no buses would arrive for another hour, so I decided I would have to call an expensive taxi to get home in time for lunch. But while I was having a swallow of tea a bus did show up. I’m not surprised. The schedule is often wrong. I sometimes think Gangneung’s bus schedule application uses the data from some other city.
It was a great morning up in the hills with old King Myeongju and I’m looking forward to going back there soon. Maybe after I buy a short telephoto for the Minolta. There were a few photos I couldn’t get this morning because I only had the 50mm. The Minolta photos will show up here in a couple of weeks, after I get the film developed and scanned. If I didn’t screw them all up . . . .
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Practice
I decided to stop downtown yesterday on my way to the supermarket and practise a bit of photography. My goal was to make photos that didn’t require any adjustment after I pressed the shutter button. I was sure I could do this by selecting an appropriate film simulation for each scene, recording as JPG so that the Fujifilm X-T4’s processor would do its magic on the pictures, and by making sure that exposure and white balance were spot on. Here are the three photos I kept from my little walkaround.
In case you’re curious, the film simulations I used are from top to bottom Negative Pro High, Velvia, and Acros. I confess that I reduced the exposure of the market photo by one third of a stop in Lightroom to make the colours a bit nicer. Otherwise, I’m happy with the results and even happier that I didn’t spend time in Lightroom’s develop module fiddling with tone curves and sliders.
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What’s Missing?
There are things to like about this photograph. The layers of light and shadow from top to bottom, the brake lights of the bus peeking out of the darkness like a cat under a blanket, the relative simplicity of the composition, and, um, it’s level.
But it’s boring. Flat. Static. There’s something missing that would turn this decent photo into a good or very good photo. But I couldn’t see it when I was there pressing the shutter button. I saw a bus, a bridge, the light and shadows, the apartments in the background, and the brake lights in the patch of light. There was something there, I’m sure, that I could have included or excluded to transform this bit of documetary into art. But I’m not skilled enough to find it.
How do I get to that level? Keep looking at great photographs, I guess. And maybe I need to spend more time looking at a scene before photographing it. When I was younger I could sometimes get a good poem to appear by staring at a blank sheet of paper for half an hour. (Being hopped up on many mugs of sugary tea probably helped as well). I just need to stare at things more.
The next time I go out I’ll make a point of choosing just one subject and working on it for more than a minute like I usually do. And bring some tea . . . .
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Geumsan Village Rice Straw Bales
The only two surviving photographs from a bicycle ride through Geumsan Village. It would probably be better to walk through the hamlet so I can find interesting subjects more easily.
This photo looks very low resolution on WordPress but fine in Lightroom. Maybe I made a mistake when converting it.
The same bales of rice straw from a different angle and a bus flying down the highway.
Some time ago I wrote about choosing the Nikon D810 as my main camera but mentioned that I was very wishy-washy about the cameras I use. Well, that proved to be true because I’m back to using the X-T3. The photos above are from the X-T3. That said, my next post will have a photo from the D810. Probably I should just stop talking about cameras . . . .