Mamiya 7 photos in Changwon, South Korea Photographs

vphill,

Welcome to the forum. I have some comments, which are about the 'photography', which I assume is what you were after:

Most of the images are very pleasant but suggests that you need to find things that interest you - fewer perhaps - and work more creatively with them.

The images have a very full tonal scale but in some cases lack solid lower values (blacks and dark greys) resulting in quite a 'flat look'. Were these scanned? FWIW this is one of the reasons I often dont work with modern films like TMAX 400 or D400 as they tend to produce more a technical (digital) look instead of a juicy grayscale with stronger mid tone separation rather than a very linear look. Thats purely personal, however!

Many are smack on from a technical perspective but don't pull me in.

This sort of photography is very tough IMO as you are in a place for a limited amount of time and have to get beneath the skin. You are evidently able to wield the camera with confidence, but think you could try to be more flexible and variable with the images. Some details, abstracts/semi-abstracts etc would have been good.

My final bit of advice? Walk lots, shoot less. Think less about photography and let your eyes do more work on their own. Find what interests and excites you and then think about photographing that. This way your images will be more developed from a mental perspective and take the viewer a little deeper into the place, and you as a photographer.

Keep shooting and enjoying what you are doing! My comments are intended to help as best I can having grappled with many of the same issues. The more I shoot the better I get (for me) and perhaps like martial arts, its largely about the mental process not the physical one once you reach competency.

PS I use a Mamiya 7II and find it absolutely fantastic, much as you evidently do!
 
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Pretty much what Turtle said. I've had plenty of problems with this before: I see all aspects of a scene and try to photograph them all before I have to leave... which results in photos that don't have that "it" factor, which Turtle attributes to mental development of your photography. When this happens, I stop to ask myself, "What in this scene catches my attention? What can I do with my camera to capture that aspect of the scene?"

Not that your photos are bad, they definitely aren't! They just don't have that je ne sais quoi that draws me into a photo.

Keep shooting! Photography is all about practice.
 
Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome to the forum! 🙂

Some nice images in your set. Especially like the image of men playing a board game on the road - not the usual setting I'm used to seeing. Also like the #5 and #9, a nice candid environmental portrait.

Gary
 
Pretty much what everyone else has said. But I know the feeling (or at least I think so) you are experencing. The first time I went to Korea, everything was new and excitingly different to my eyes. As I spent more time there, I got used to some things that weren't so different any more, and I didn't feel they needed to be documented. And of course, Korea has changed and isn't the country I knew 20 some years ago. Korea has been changing rapidly. My wife (who was born in Korea) and I don't know that we would even enjoy going back there.

Still, that isn't meant to say none of your photos are good. They all alre, but many don't grab me either, but then as I said, I was there a total of 7 1/2 years at different times. And I am not you. I tend to like the older Korea. But if I went back, I know I would be photographing what I saw as differences. Perhaps that is what you were doing too.

Anyway, welcome to the forums. I hope to see more of your images. Especially with the Mamiya 7. How did that travel? I have the Mamiya Super Press 23. I love the 6x7 negative, but it is a heavy beast, even with the 100mm lens. Go and carry and put a 150mm, 50mm or 250mm lens, and you need 2 men and a boy as assistants. 😀 😀
 
I enjoyed the set. I've never made it outside the airport in Korea. The street vendors and high rise apartments were an interesting mix.

Your photos remind me of my Mamiya 7 / XP2 Super images in that, as said above, they haven't much bite. In fact, I've concluded that I would rather shoot color and convert where needed should I want that look. I've since moved on to all silver based negatives. I haven't any advice there since I'm still working on my own film/developer combination, but I'm moving towards faster films to counter the slow lenses and narrow depth of field. Working with such a large negative is a real joy.
 
All helpful and constructive advice, thanks to everyone so far.

I think it is difficult to drop yourself into a new environment with the expectation of taking photographs, on this trip I spent half of it at a conference where I walked exactly half a mile from my hotel to the National Library and didn't have the opportunity to really see anything. When I headed down south in the country I was able to spend hours a day walking around and seeing things that you just don't see all the time in Denton, Tx.

One thing I think I would do now, after posting this set would be to limit it down to even a smaller set than what I have now. I put up 43 which is a rough (flip through lightroom and the ones I keep looking at throw up on flickr) group and instead should have probably edited things down to twenty or less, possibly even twelve or so. This way I think things might not get lost as easily. Thoughts on that?

I am trying to figure out how I want to process the final images that I am taking. I have been focusing for a while on getting good consistent exposures that capture as much of the tonal range as I can get, in my mind it is "learn the rules, then you can start breaking them" this way I can take a shot, know I recorded it adequately and not have to wonder. When I looked at the rolls I had from this trip, I really started to feel like I can control my camera and have a good idea of what I will get. Now I need to figure out what to do after I scan them and and how I want to process things for print and the web.

As far as the camera, I really do enjoy working with it. For the past few years I would travel with a digital slr of some sort, usually one of the canon variety, now the pentax variety. I jumped into the rangefinder world with an XPAN and then the Mamiya 7. I find quite easy to handle and walking around with it all day isn't a problem at all. I started to travel with only one lens because I kept bringing more and never using them so my "kit" is super small. Random: I used a beer koozie as a sort of lens bubble, put the 80mm lens in there just fine it was tight and had an extra level of bump protection in my luggage.
 
I think a dozen to 20 images is a more manageable number for sure. Less pressure and more time for you at every stage.

You have clearly an excellent control of the camera and the technical side. The slight flatness of some of the images is likely a product of getting a good scan (full tones) and then post processing (not something I am good at).

A new location with limited time is really tough, for sure, but I suppose a lot depends on ones goals: develop a set of representative images giving a good overall feel for the place or// produce a handful of strong images. I tend towards the latter because I am driven by what I can hang up and enjoy and tend not to worry a while down the road whether I had a few or a lot.

Do you print and frame images? If so, whats your process from scan to print? Yourself, at a lab etc?
 
Right now I am getting my film processed in Dallas at BWC, from there I scan everything in using an Epson V700 pro. I do try to get the widest tonal range when I am scanning. I haven't quite arrived at "a look" that I am trying to go with, that is the next step I suppose, knowing how to process an image for the final presentation. As far as output from there, I typically dump everything I shoot on a website I've had for the past few years and then pull an image here and there and put it up on flickr. I've been doing a bit of printing with an Epson 9900 I have at work. A friend of mine is letting me try and do a bit of palladium printing here and there which is quite fun. I think I probably to get more images off of the computer screen to get the full process into my head from initial image to final print.
 
Jumping in late to this critique but have you tried using the Silver Efex Pro plugin for Photoshop? It does amazing things with B&W images. It can really turn an average image into a memorable one with less work than if you tried doing the same thing by hand in PS.
 
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