Pinhole on the cheap

I was running a few errant in Seoul yesterday. One of those took me by Myeongdong and since that is right next to Chungmuro, my new favourite photography related area, I thought I would go there and look for this little beauty. Behold, the PinholeArt 135-Tiny. It is made in Korea, so no English instructions, but easy enough to put together. Everything you need, apart from film provided with the kit.

On the fhere is a piece of board that slides left and right. This is, in effect, your shutter. You open it, count, close it. High tech stuff. What I haven’t figured out yet is how I know where the next exposure starts. I’ve been unable to find information online, so at the moment I am assuming that the film is just one long exposure and the photos are placed and positioned by the camera. I’m guessing I there will be quite a few overlapping photos on this first one.

On the back you have a quick reference that tells you how long you need to keep the shutter open. 90 seconds when you are inside with the light one. Scary. Because I bought 400 film, I am using the pinhole on my DSLR with the ISO at 400 as a gauge. As of yet I have no idea if it will work. We’ll know when the film is developed.

Uniform Cuteness

Here in Korea the Pre-School students, not the middle school or high school student, wear the best uniforms.

This little guy was waiting for the bus at our apartment complex. Love the shorts and socks/stockings/hose.

Cherry Blossom hunting in Gyeongju

Yuna’s Hole

Apparently Yuna's Hole is now a matter of public consumption. Now, now. No jokes about how you would be willing to do the eating. I suppose it is Tour le Jour's way to celebrating Kim Yuna's Olympic Gold with this bagel. It is actually quite clever and just me being a dirty old man, but hey, who's going to stop me?

Hair

What do you get when you let an wind carrying actual icy snow to hair exposed for a few hour?

Taebaek Snow Festival.

 

Cake Cup

I discovered this coffee shop slash bakery a few days ago. The coffee is not the best (still Bliss Coffee), but it is good, and however little the coffee is lacking in taste is made up for by the very low price and the setting.

Cake Cup is a charming little place that bakes and sells mini cakes, cup cakes and biscuits along with the standard hot drinks. I might be spoiled with South African prices, but paying more than R20, about US$2.50, for a single little cup cake seems a bit much for me. Then again, I might also just be ignorant of prices back in the RSA. Soon, however, i will taste one.

What follows is basically just a dump of photos that I took at Cake Cup. If only I had a very wide angle lens to capture the whole place in one shot.

At the Entrance

Solar Power

The view from my current apartment is just so much more interesting than from the previous one. That, and water does not freeze during the day.

How Beautiful?

The less flattering side of snow. Once everyone has woken up, gotten in their cars and went to work, we are left whit this brown mess on the roads. As the days go on that mess will spread outwards to the walking areas.

Snow Day. A REAL one this time.

Korea was hit by snow on Monday. I am not exactly sure which areas were hit, but Gyeonggi-do git it big time. People who have lived here in Icheon for a long time said that they have never seen so much snow in this city and I recently heard that it is the highest snowfall since 1937.

Fashion

Heart

Go, Go, Go!

The traffic lights just outside my school. This particular intersection is the source of much frustration and confusion. I'm surprised no students have been run over yet.

I took the photo as I left school at about 4:45. it is winter, so by that time the sun is already very low and created a slight background colour which is helped along by the colour processing action I ran.

Tous Le Jours

지하주차장

A sign indicating the underground parking. Like signs all over the world, this one is pointing in the wrong direction, unless you are looking for the stairs that does to the underground parking, maybe then, if you look around a bit. Take care to avoid the waste food bins at which the sign is pointing.

POSER!

More than just Pop

I’m trying to get to know a bit more about the Korean music scene, and no, I’m not trying to get to know my students better. I’m just trying to get to know what is out there in this Gug.

What I found over the last week is that there is much more to Korean music than Mista and the Brown Eyed Girls…

Children need to be entertained.

I went to Holly’s Coffee to study. As I was getting to the end of my session I noticed a boy looking at me, making elaborate moves to attract my attention. I ignored him.

There weren’t that many people in the coffee shop to distract him, so I stayed the focus of his attention. He moved closer and talked softly, but just loud enough for me to hear, for me to notice. I ignored him.

He moved back to his initial position and looked at me again. I glanced up; he saw me, smiled and ran. “Oh, no! I made eye contact. I’m going to be the foreigner for entertainment.”

A few seconds later he came back carrying two of those tiny plastic cones from the crackers you get here in Korea, the ones where you pull a sting at the bottom to have a spray of paper, along with a loud crack, happen to you. They were already used and he stood in his “talking spot”, banging them together to make soft plopping sounds. I knew we were past the point of no return, so I looked up at him.

He said something while extending his arms to show me the thing. I gestured him over to “see what it was”, and the last half hour of my studies were down the drain.

After showing them to me, and me pretending to be interested, he rushed of, stopping to wave at me, stopping to peek around the corner, and came right back with this little treat…

 

Believe it or not, he actually asked me if I was a foreigner. Seems he only saw me as someone to talk to and not as the “foreign entertainment”. That is him, peeking around the corner on one of his return trips to home base.

 

The Bored One himself.

 

Somehow we got on to the topic of my camera. He saw me change the lens for I can’t remember why, and was completely amazed by it. I showed him how to change a lens and let him hold the camera. A quick pointer on where to look and what button to press produced this shot, no cropped with colour processing.

I was just amazed that The Bored One managed to hold the camera up. The Sigma 30mm is a really heavy lens. I have held other prime lenses and few are as heavy for their sizes.

The Notebook

“Oh, man, I like going on tours.”

“Yup, yup... I wonder what’s over there. I’m going.”

“OK. I’ll  wait over here at the back of this line of this line of 100 people so that I can get my lunch 30 minutes from now. Maybe I will see or experience something that I came on this trip for right here, in this line, of 100 people, waiting for food.”

I would love to know what the story was with this book. It was a rather nice notebook with only the first few pages used. The notes were in English, on English, and I didn’t see any Korean translations of anything. The handwriting was neat and clear and the notes did not seem to have been done by a female.

Why would someone want to burn a book like this? Was it the note taker who did this? Was it a bored teenage boy who found someone’s lost book and thought that it would be better to destroy it than leave it where it can be seen? What it an accident that was just taken to far?