Two things I want to cover here; think of this as two posts in one.
Korean Rail
Shaded Tracks
Standing by for Departure
My brother, who is working on a documentary via a cross-country trip in Russia with a friend of his, discussed the ordeal of buying a train ticket there. It was pretty interesting to me; he essentially says the sellers are not of a very cheerful disposition, don’t care to slow their speech for foreigners or otherwise make accommodations, and close without warning.
It’s a pretty big contrast to Korea. Rail–both the local subway systems and the KTX–they’re very well organized. For a start, a line usually feeds into several booths, and the wait, if there is any, is pretty short. If you’re going by the KTX and need a ticket to ride, the clerks are pretty willing to help–if not by attempting some English, then at least by showing you their screen to communicate the details and cost. I’m sure the guard standing by the subway gates would be just as willing, if you had trouble figuring it out for some reason. Or just got lost. They’d certainly never dream of closing the line on people without taking care of them first.
Ground Wire
It’s a pretty well oiled system.
Oido Station
Actually, that about sums up South Korea in general. Most people are more than willing to help. Occasionally you might get a grumpy or rushed person that swears at you though–but that’s pretty rare all said. And even with all the modern amenities, it’s still dead easy to buy a ticket. No stupid ID checks or tedious security lines of brawny guys waiting to grope you, as would undoubtedly happen if the USA tried to do something like this.
Anyway, if a documentary of the small towns in Russia and how they survived (or didn’t) the economic collapse of the USSR sounds interesting, I’d recommend following my brother’s journey. They’ve got some nice shots there besides.
A Morning at 옥구공원 (Okgu Park)
Twilight creeping onward
Last night I decided to try pretending I’m a landscape photographer. Among other things, this means creeping about around 3am, waiting for the perfect light to photograph things. But the subways/trains don’t start running until 5am; dawn would be, according to meteorological sites, at 5:10am. Twilight would, of course, be much sooner than that.
I ended up taking the last train of the night out to Oido. I’m going to sidetrack here and go off on a small tangent. People on the train were unusually chatty… Normally I always get left completely alone. After close to two months of this I was pretty used to it. So I found it odd that people were approaching me and just chatting. Most people, though, upon finding out that I attend Sogang and live near 서초역 or Socho station, looked quite baffled about why I was on the last midnight train to the far edge of the city but didn’t ask why. One guy, however, gave me his business card and asked me to contact him later.
Morning City Lights
Well, I thought, may as well, always good to have more friends to practice with. I guess this manager of the QA department of a game development company must be pretty eager to learn English. But I sent him a message today, and received a response in the form of an actual call. As it turns out, he had no recollection that we’d even so much as met–despite being well mannered and seeming sharp at the time, he had been quite drunk. Heh. He cut the conversation short and I don’t think I’ll ever hear from him again. But apparently, if you want conversations, after happy hour is the time to take the subway.ㅋㅋㅋ
Right then, back on target. I arrived at 12:20, a bit after midnight. Unfortunately the buses had stopped, so I had to walk to the area I was planning on–about 50 minutes, including getting lost. I killed a few hours in a PC-bang, a little too much as is turns out twilight starts before 4AM. Hurried my way up to the top of the mountain… and realized the rock outcropping from the shot in the last post, that thing was blocking the sunrise direction. Ran back down, haha, but found a good location.
Dawn
Incidentally, for the single person out there that might want the technical details–the sunrise shot was taken using, in order from inbound light to lens, a 10-stop ND, a 2-stop GND, and a UV filter. The 10-stopper, I found, increased the color saturation of the lateral areas a surprising amount. It’s also useful for looking at the sun when you want to see exactly where it is without burning out your eyes. Also discovered I’m not as good at handling my 50mm lens as I thought. Oops.
Lighthouse in the Distance
Dawn but with less red
Towards the end I came down off my caffeine-and-sugar high and turned into a zombie. I starting making more and more mistakes, so I packed up my gear and made my way to the bus and then subway station. Just keeping my eyes open was torture, and afterwards, well, sleep’s never felt so good. Despite that, though, the whole thing was a lot of fun, and the sights and pictures were worth every minute of it.
