2018 Year in Review Part 2

We left off last week with a roundup of the first three months of the year. With winter in full force, this was the quietest time of the year but from April, it was back to the usual chaos of Seoul life. This time around, we’ll take a look at a few more events, some family photography, more editorial photography, a photo tour in Vietnam with Pics of Asia, and some more fun from Seoul’s streets.

Let’s get this rolling with a visit to one of my favourite spots in Seoul, Donseonsa. This is a large temple complex in the Bukhansan National Park, and makes for a great place to rest and relax.

For my first commissioned session this quarter, I would head out to Gyeongbokgung with the Hudec family. For this session, we had originally planned for a park. However, the changeable weather here ended up thwarting that plan. Rain turned the park to mush, so we headed into the palace for a quick session. Thankfully, rain has the side-benefit of clearing the pollution from the air and we had a beautiful morning to work with. Check out the full blog post for more of their story and additional images.

Then were another couple of amazing days out with the George and Black families. With the Georges, we made use of the beautiful scenery at Changdeokgung but with the Blacks, we used the spring greens at Yeouido Park. Both were wonderfully fun sessions and you can check out the rest of the images here and here.

In the breaks between various sessions, one of my passions is to document the streets of Seoul and the happenings therein. The older districts make for fun areas to explore and offer the most character of anywhere in the city. Another of my favourite places to be in Seoul is the Han River. On the day you see below, the PM10 levels were at 178. This level of pollution is considered damaging to our health. It does make for pretty light, though.

Following up a little exploration were a couple of assignments from Seoul Selection. These included visiting the offices of Seoul Community Radio and a feature story on the Oksu district of Seoul. I also had the chance to work with Chef Jungsik again for the Seoul Guide.

Then it was on to the ever fun Italian Food Festival and the BCCK’s Queen’s Birthday Dinner. These are a great change of pace from editorial and family work and require a different set of sensibilities to achieve. Lots of fun to be had, nonetheless.

The month of May was a busy one before hearing down to Vietnam. It started with a fun family session with the Youngs. We spent a morning at World Cup Park together and got some beautiful images of their family as a souvenir from Korea. You can see that full session here. I also spent an afternoon making images of my friend and BMX rider In Ho for my book Flash & Fujifilm. This guide to working with off-camera flash and the Fujifilm system is available at Fujilove. I also ran the annual photobooth at the German School Seoul’s graduation party.

To round out the month, I spent a week with a group of Canadian Veterans during the Revisit Korea Program, two days with the New Zealand Embassy on their New Zealand Food Connection 2018, and a couple of days producing video for the New Zealand Wine Festivals in Seoul and Busan.

Then it was a quick flight down to Vietnam to run the Central Vietnam Photo Tour with my good friend Etienne from Pics of Asia. We had a great 5-day tour with a great group of photographers and we’ll be running it again next year! Here are a few of my frames from the tour. Head over to Pics of Asia to check out some more work from Etienne’s side.

Then it was back to Korea for a couple of summer family sessions. I had an absolutely fabulous morning with my good friends Deborah and Tam and their beautiful kids. It was so great to see them back in Korea and have the chance to make some more memories with them. To follow that up, I had a great time with the Nauta family despite the rain. We got a summer storm right in the middle of our session and so rescheduled for the following morning to finish up the shoot.

So, that gets us through the first half of the year! We’ll be back next week with another collection of images from July to September. I hope you’ve enjoyed this section of the year. Thanks again for reading. See you next week.