Exhibition: Korea Photographer, gallery at Gwangwhamun Station, Seoul

This exhibition had lots of landscape images taken around Korea. They showed the beauty of the countryside, something I haven't seen yet.

http://koreaphotographer.com/xe/

I love the colours in the images; although many focus on just one colour this is beautiful and really emphasises the beauty. The flowers moving in some of the images show how the weather affects the flowers and gives added beauty. Many are not the average composition of a landscape photo which I like, not showing the top of a tree for example.

Exhibition: To see Life to see the world, Sejong Centre, Seoul

This exhibition was another popular one! There were many images taken from Life Magazine over the years.

The first image that struck me was of a man on the moon, which had a small amount of colour in it. This was near an image of the Yangtse river near Magic Mountain taken by Dmitri Kessel which was quite mystical.

The image of Koreans mourning the death of Kim Koo was interesting as this assassination happened in my neighbourhood. The image was taken in the garden of his mansion  by Carl Mydans in 1949. The bullet hole in the window is evident although not the main focus, it tells a story in itself.

Charlie Chaplin as clown in the dressing room on the set of Limelight taken byW. Eugene Smith 1952 was a different view of the comedian, a new perspective.

A portrait of Hitler taken in c.1932 is a very clear portrait by an unknown photographer. You can really look into his eyes but there is no sign of all the evil.

Actors and actresses are the main focus in the portraits, showing them in their place of work.

Muhammad Ali 1966 Gordon Parks close up with sweat - the lighting on this image was intense and I got the feeling of how hard he works.

Pablo Picasso then Henri Matisse painting with light pen taken Gjon Mili 1949. This showed artists creating more art in a photo where we can also see the artist, a totally new perspective.

Some images were very grainy, giving a different quality to them.

Exhibition: Robert Capa 100, Sejong Centre, Seoul

This exhibition was really popular and it took me a few visits to Sejong to actually get in as there were huge queues!

Once I was in, it was great seeing these iconic photos printed large on the walls. The first one that struck me was of a man greeting the first American troops. There were photos from 1943 with wounded people and American troops landing along with a bombed church in Normandy taken in 1944 which gave me an insight into the second world was and the devastation it caused.

There was then a series of American masters in love and war, including Ernest Hemingway holding a pheasant he shot, taken in 1940 or 41. There was an image of Pablo Picasso on the beach in France in 1948 and one of Truman Capote and his dog taken in Italy in 1953.

The last one I looked at was one depicting the death of a loyalist militia man taken in Cordoba in 1936. This image is the one I always remember being Capa's and it was captivating to see it printed so large.

Seeing all the images and remembering wars that took place close to home always gives new perspective and makes me think about the wars occurring around the world still.

Assignment 3: A photographic commission

I looked at the ‘Lonely Planet Magazine Asia’ to get ideas for the layout for this assignment. One thing I noticed about them though is that whilst on their website they say that they accept photos in landscape format only, a significant amount of their content is portrait orientation. I initially took photos in landscape with only a few in portrait, and ended up returning to try and get a shot that could be used as a cover shot potentially.

I chose the palace at Gyeongbokgung because it is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Seoul, and I really enjoyed visiting it when I was on holiday there in December. I also used the photos from my December shoot for the layouts that come before this project, and liked how they looked. I needed to do a whole new shoot for the assignment though, and so set up some trips there. the main issue I had was weather, I would have loved to have blue skies like I did in winter, but that was not to be until I went back for the cover shoot! The palace was closed then however, but I was able to take photos of the gate. 

The palace grounds also includes the National Folk Museum, which I decided to dedicate 2 pages of the 5 to. The first page is the main Gwanghwamun gate, then we move through into the grounds, and page 2 is a double page featuring Geungjeongjeon, the main throne hall. I made lots of images the right size for a double page spread, but this was the one I chose as it was the most striking, and it also seemed the right position to have a double page spread. The magazine seems to either use double page spreads for the first or second pair of pages. I wanted my first page to be of the main gate but to also include the title information with it. The throne hall is also a part that most visitors stop at as they go through the palace, before getting swallowed up in the vast grounds where you never quite know whether you will see everything or not! There are also still some parts being renovated, but there was definitely more open than when I first saw it. I chose to focus on autumn colours and picked out photos with reds to illustrate this. I love the pavilion on the island, and although disappointed that it wasn’t as bright as it was on my first visit due to the lighting, but it was still reflected in the water and looks peaceful. Pages 4 and 5 show the National Folk museum, page 4 the museum building and statues outside, and page 5 the old street that is preserved there. I found the various statue collections fascinating and have a lot of images of them. 

To prepare for my shoot, I looked at the work of a few photographers. The first was Steve McCurry as he is a well-known Magnum travel photographer, and he has striking images of many Asian countries. The main set I looked at was of Japan, and although different topics, I liked the way he showed people in some of them, parts of people and people going about daily lives. Martin Parr is someone who’s work I have always admired, I like the way he uses close up shots to give a different view of traditional British pastimes. Again, he depicts normal daily life, but in eye-catching images. RJ Koehler is a photographer who has done some work around Korea, and I love his Autumnal shots. He has some interesting shots of the palaces from high places, and I need to go and find these places too. http://rjkoehler.tumblr.com/ Trey Ratcliff is a photographer that I listen to on podcasts, and I love his photos of New Zealand where he currently lives. I looked at his Korea collection http://www.stuckincustoms.com/category/travel/south-korea/ which are mainly HDR images. I am still not sure about HDR and if I like it, but found some of these images intriguing. For a magazine general travel shoot though, I decided HDR was not appropriate. 

I used my Lumix GX1 for the shoots, with the 14mm lens only as I didn’t want too many distractions. I also did take a few on my Samsung phone, although did not use them for the final edit. 

I then edited according to what pages I felt images were appropriate for, and looked through the magazine to determine image sizes. There was a lot of playing around and I finally settled with the images after changing a few around. I decided to use Helevetica neue as a font for the title and introduction, at a size of 36 for the title and 18 introduction. Initially I thought about using a coloured font, but then went back to plain black. Captions were in Verdana 12 point throughout apart from page 1 which I kept as Helevetica neue, and the main text in Times 14 point. I found putting the text in quite challenging, as I kept managing to delete layers, but then worked out what had gone wrong. I am not good at writing this kind of text, and so took it mostly from wikipedia and travel websites as I believe it is an assessment mainly of the photos telling the story.