Mini Photo Essay - September 2019 | South Korea Photographer

As yet another Korean Thanksgiving comes and goes, I`d like to mention that living as an expat in South Korea presents certain benefits. While everyone makes their way back to their hometowns to spend time with family, Seoul remains relatively empty. I spent a few days just photographing freely with a few friends. The only agenda or goals I set for myself was that images be kept as direct and straightforward as possible. I’m pleased to report that I’ve rekindled my love for minimalist monochrome photographs.

The process is lovely from start to finish. Finding ways to bring myself to a place of playfulness and curiosity, remain as present as possible in the moment, and see the vision solidify during the post-processing proved to be the workflow of choice. The concept of adding myself in my images is new, and one that was rather odd at first, to be honest. I felt like it could look somewhat vain, but the final result didn’t look too bad. I think as I explore this more in future, a dedicated blog post detailing my reasons for creating self-portraits would definitely be necessary.

One of the days even involved a digital diet whereby I intentionally left my cellphone at home so that I could “let go” and be less distracted. That also happened to be the day where I walked away with the most “keepers”. Definitely no surprises there.

All gear used in the creation of these photographs (for photographers):

Inspiration was also drawn from other creatives such as Irving Penn, David duChemin, Fan Ho, Vivian Maier and Christian Löffler.