Deoksugung Guards

Photo Spot

Blue House, Seoul

Walking Seoul Fortress

I've started walking around Seoul Fortress and photographing views from various places along the way. Here are a few examples.

Namsan: After The Typhoon

More Diana Mini

Spectrum

Hurry to see this interesting exhibition that ends June 30th.

Leeum Museum

Wandered around the Leeum Museum the other day... a very cool place.

Diana Mini

I finally got round to scanning a few old rolls from my Diana Mini camera (here's a sample). This is a very handy toy camera. You can shoot 2 formats, no batteries required, not to mention it's small and extremely light.

Multi Ven

Project Namsan

Neighbors

Seoul Trees

Here are a few pics that I've taken on some of my recent walks around Seoul. Trees, with a bit of something else...

How to spend a Saturday in Seoul...

This pic shows the kind of things I like to do on a Saturday: take photos, visit exhibitions, buy and drink good coffee, hunt for old jazz records, pick up a new book. At least this is what I did today until 3pm.

Cat Cam

Today I received my cat camera (from http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/cc_index_en.htm). It comes with a collar and you can set it's timer to automatically take photos at intervals between 1 second and 8 hours. The above photo of yours truly was the first shot to be taken...

Kim Ki-Chan and Seoul's Alleys

Well worth the 700 won is this exhibition currently on at the Seoul Museum of History.

Whanki Museum

I went to the Whanki Museum in Buam-dong, Seoul last week. Unfortunately it was closed but it was worth going just to check out the museum buildings. Plus there's a great dumpling restaurant and chicken hof nearby.
http://whankimuseum.org/eng/02_museum/index.php?checkPage=museum_02

Steve McCurry at the Sejong Center

Magnum photographer Steve McCurry's exhibition has just started in Seoul at the Sejong Center. Well worth checking out...be sure to watch the short doco too.

Framed

A friend bought this photo of mine as her husband's birthday gift. I don't normally frame my photos and so in seeing this one like this, I felt it gave the image extra weight (and not only physically). Am I just old school? How important is framing? Anyway, I really like this photo, framed or unframed.

My First Cover...

I dug up this photo of the cover of Tengu magazine. Two Brits and I put the free magazine together in Japan in the mid 90s. It only survived for a few issues but it was fun while it lasted. It's interesting to look back at my photos from 15 years ago and see how, to some extent, I've come full circle.

Epson V500 Photo Scanner

My V500 scanner just arrived today. This is a fantastic machine which can scan both 35mm film as well as 120 film (up to 6 x 12). If you get lucky (like I did) you may be able to pick one up cheap on ebay. Above is an old shot I took at Seoul Zoo with a Holga toy camera, scanned with the V500.

Two Great Books by William...

"Life is Good & Good For You In New York" by William Klein
This is the 5th book published by Errata Editions as part of their Books On Books series. Here's a bit of the Amazon product description:
William Klein's Life is Good & Good for You in New York is regarded as one of the most influential and groundbreaking photo-books created in the last half-century. Published in 1956, its visual energy captured the rough-and-tumble streets of New York-a city Klein once described as "the world capital of anguish"-like no photo-book had done before or since.
Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books.

"Working From Memory" by William Christenberry
This is a lovely book full of stories by the photographer himself. Amazon says:
Working from Memory is a collection of stories by the renowned photographer, painter and sculptor William Christenberry. Based on conversations with author and critic Susanne Lange, these stories elaborate the artist's memories of the Deep South, in whose rich literary tradition they are steeped. In a lyrical but lucid prose, they set personal experience against the backdrop of important political and cultural moments in the southern states, endowing that landscape with a vividness that will be familiar to fans of the artist's photography. Christenberry's own photographs accompany these tales.

The above two books are just a couple of the numerous publications I recommend,not only to photo enthusiasts but to anyone interested in art and creativity.

bodaBOM

For anyone living in Seoul and looking for a lab that does B/W printing, bodaBOM is definitely a good option.

Cafe 2

This small cafe is located on GyongRiDan, Itaewon. It takes up the front half of a design space called Design 1. The coffee is great, as is the tea (so I'm told). And if you're after a good, cheap brunch you can't go wrong here (although there's only 1 choice).

Some things I found interesting and/or amusing in India...

More photos of India here...

http://www.blairkitchener.smugmug.com

This is my old website which I've only just added something for the first time in over a year, or two. Anyway, please check out my B&Ws of India, as well as some of my older stuff.

Locks of Love...

This is just a small section of the fence around Namsan Tower. Once completely lock-free, over the past few years a trend has led couples to declare their love (by writing on a padlock and locking it to the fence on Namsan). This has, in turn, made a new attraction (or for some, an annoyance) in central Seoul.