Photo Journal #003
6.25.2025 | Evaluating Old Photographs from Seoul May 2017
Over the past couple of days, I’ve been reviewing photographs taken in Seoul in May 2017 on six different occasions. From time to time, I review images from my massive archive of images searching for something that stands out to me that I can share or prompts another thought process for me.
I think it’s good to do, it’s interesting to compare what stood out at the time of photographing a scene and what stands out in the present. Although I’m not getting into the comparison side of things, I’m happy to share a set of images that stood out to me today.
Color is generally not my cup of tea; however, at times, it makes sense. Since I rarely do so, editing in color proves to be a challenge for me. I’ve always had a liking for high-contrast, black-and-white images, and so I’m more comfortable with that. (My editing is minimal.) With that said, here is one that I edited in color.
Some more images from walking around exploring the area:
One thing that I enjoyed in South Korea was exploring and documenting. This included more than simply photographing images, which include people. Sometimes it meant simply documenting the scenes of an area, objects hanging around. Anything that caught my interest. This didn’t happen as frequently until later on, when I gave it more intentional thought. While reviewing older photographs, I find it interesting to see the roots of this pattern started.
The brunt of the images I reviewed was from an evening at Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza. I photographed over 1400 slow-shutter images to capture the motion of people. (It was quite the task to file through 😅) Here are some of the results.
More rare color images. When you intentionally capture a slow-shutter speed image with red motion-blur, you’d be contradicting yourself to convert it to black-and-white!
Now, two of my favorites:
This last image, I thought, was incredible. How specific the timing needed to be. (Honestly, it’s likely a happy accident. I may have pressed the shutter expecting him to walk through the frame.) But nonetheless, the way that we can see enough of a face in the image, along with the wavy motion blur of his movement from that point, makes this image stand out to me!
What are your thoughts?
Today’s Journal:
Review of 1,679 Images from May 2017.
Re-edit of 34 Images.