Walking Around Jumunjin – June 15, 2012

Kindergarten closeup.A wallCylindersThe back of a buildingHalf and halfShutter down
Another closed door.Minimalist gardening.Sneak a peek.Big and smallGreen doorsGrowing through the concrete.
Old fashioned window box.This is not a flower shop.Roses fenced in.Almost symetricalYeongjin sea wall.An alley - note the old style houses.
The East SeaShowersWallIrishEvacuation routeRestaurant

By no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a photographer, but I do like taking pictures, and I do like sharing them with others. Before I wrote my last post on Jumunjin, I spent an hour or two walking around a small area close to Herself’s folks’ place. As usual, I took my camera with me.

I’ve been hearing from other more accomplished photographers that this is one of their favourite ways of taking photographs. Some even find it meditative; they take their camera and walk around snapping what they see, with their attention focused entirely on the tiniest of detail. Recently, I’ve been doing this and I’ve found that I am getting more and more satisfaction from the pictures I take. If someone could only inject patience and the know-how to use Photoshop, I could actually get quite good at this. For now I remain 100% amateur, and that’s the way I like it, for now.

I can never resist taking my camera with me on this short stroll down to the beach. I’ve probably taken the same photos of the same things over and over again, but fortunately different weather and different seasons always bring out a different image. This area, despite being quite old and somewhat neglected, has a certain charm. The weather hadn’t been particularly good up until that point, so the beaches weren’t fully open for the summer. There was a typically tourist free laziness about the air.

The streets on the walk up to the beach were quiet, except for the occasional old lady or car passing, and even though it was mid-week it felt like a Sunday. This may have been because the only sign of activity came from a small redbrick church covered in bright green ivy, where inside someone was practising their drum solos. Many of the buildings were empty but more had signs of life about them, although these signs were mostly bright flowers in pots outside the doors or small clumps of vegetables growing in a patches of earth in the corner of a yard.

There waiting for me at the end of this short stroll there is always the long beach with the sea stretching out from its edge with its waves forever foaming at the rocks speckled along the sand’s edge. Like any ocean, as soon as I come close to it I am drawn even closer and can only resort to looking at the width and depth of the expanse of water. I feel like I could stare for hours sometimes.

The water here is always a dark blue, but close to the shore it is a pristine and transparent turquoise that I’ve only ever seen on the east coast of Korea. Still, dip your toe in and you will find that in June it is still icy cold thanks to the northerly current.

It’s only a small space that I photograph here, and it is not a beautiful place, but I hope that you can see the small beauty that still exists in this rough looking patch on the outskirts of small town. Like any space where people make their home, the individuality shines through only when you take the time to look at it, and the more you look at it the more you start to really appreciate it.

Click here to view these photographs as a slideshow on Flickr.