Clickity Click Expat Trick

Note- Everything you're about to read is true. But it's truth as filtered through a brain that can barely remember last week, let alone twenty years ago. This is different from flat out lying to save face.

____

 

Suyu-Dong, Seoul. 2007(?) Pentax ME

Making webcomics made me take up photography. I needed a new hobby after I stopped making webcomics. There are many reasons for that. I'll be kind and just say, "irreconcilable differences".

Writing an Expat Blog (one of thousands at the time) made me take up photography. I wasn't happy with the images I was using to document my life in East Asia. My little Dimage Z5 was a good camera but it wasn't up to some of the tasks I was asking of it and I needed more flexible gear.

Also I had more money than brains and everyone was buying DSLRs so... Hello, Canon D60!

Which died when I went to visit my good pal Greg in Busan and I had foolishly forgotten my battery charger back in Seoul. And he said, "I am a film evangelical and I will not rest until every man, woman, enby, and child has converted their toilet to a darkroom."

Or something to that effect. He suggested a few film cameras and the following weekend I hopped on the subway...

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Quick translation for Canadians and Americans: A "subway" is a form of public transportation. It's like one of those train toys you had as a kid but bigger and runs underground. People in nations who didn't plow acres of forest to build parking lots use them to get around.

Like a car. But good.

______

... and went to the then photography hub of Seoul, Chungmuro. After a bit of poking my head in and out of shops and comparing different famous models, I went with a Pentax ME.

Chungmuro Station, Seoul. Before the suicide barriers were installed.


The first photo! Ooo! Lookiedat! I was a street photography savant! 

Greg made me take up photography.

Years later I stopped trying to do street photography because other street photographers were being assholes, sexual crimes were being committed with smartphones, and the public turned against anyone with a camera. Then Covid hit and I stayed inside with nothing to do but start drawing comics again.

Then I returned to Canada and still didn't go outside.

Location: Seoul, South Korea

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