Category: Photography

Into the Hailstorm – To Let Go and To Just Go Out Foraging

Jonathan is a very good friend of mine. i went to university with him & he taught & continues to teach me so much about how to be a person.
He’s a real Renaissance man.
i was despondent when he stopped blogging simply because he writes so well & from such an informed position on so many subjects. i mean, in this post alone we have plants, their Latin nomenclature, a foraged smoothie, a Scottish poem, with his own very funny translation & some pretty nifty photography.
If you like food, growing, foraging, life, health, poetry & pretty much everything wild & natural, Jon is your man.
When he visited me in Jeju we did a bit of foraging & i loved it. Watching his mind process everything is just a marvel.
i don’t bandy the word genius around easily, but Jon really seems to be one of those people who can just do stuff, alot of it, very well.
i highly recommend reading everything from his blog & let’s try & get him posting regularly, if only for my benefit.

Grunewald Foraging

17671117_10154351985201406_114608232_n Copyright Evey Kwong 2017

It seems I’ve neglected the Grunewald Foraging blog for some time. The truth is, my intention for this website is not to record or detail my foraging walks (though I might refer to them for some specific reason); the blog was started more to record my wild food way, my personal journey, and my attempt to navigate my life by way of wild plants and the gifts of the natural world.

If anyone was interested in Part II of the Islay Foragers blog post, I have to say that I lost all my data and photos about that week in a laptop core-meltdown, which means I only have the photos I posted on social media, which amounts to a photo of some seafoam-green sea-holly (Eryngium maritimum) and a doughty little patch of Scot’s lovage, (Ligusticum scoticum), the last of these being a…

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First steps into documentary photography

i’ve learned a great deal from John’s posts. They are written clearly & communicate a great deal on how we can approach photography not just technically, but also philosophically.
John asks searching questions about the photographer’s role in society, which i find essential & displays his consideration for the subject he photographs; especially important with tourists just clicking away at locals without a second thought for how locals may feel about it— i myself in my guesthouse get it: they see a white guy cooking their breakfast & photograph me without asking & i’m actually not cool with them doing this.
John’s photography is also first rate.

ADJUNCTIVE

I recently returned to Vietnam for three weeks to further two projects I’ve been working on since 2012. It felt like coming home.

The projects are on fishing communities and life around Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. Here I want to reflect on the former and share some new images.

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Attempts at Arrangement

i had a little less work to do one of the days this week, so rather than kip in a sunny chair i took Boreum out for a plod through my usual haunts & took the camera out. i find my eye drifts toward light & shape rather than the documentation of a going-on. i don’t know what this means just yet, perhaps it is simply an easy method: i don’t have to interrupt anyone & plead them for a snap, i can indulge myself, slowly in what is already arranged. i do find i don’t just snap wildly, i may come back after a few hours with just 30-40 photos & i’ll usually keep under 10 & each photo is almost always of an assortment of things rather than the same thing or scene laboured over to get it right. 

The onion harvesters ain’t eating no sandwiches, they are eating a full meal of rice, soup, savoury pancakes, kimchi & various other side dishes— no messing about for a grafter, they get fed right.

Onion Harvesters munch lunch
Temple Under Construction
Hallim Town from a barley field
Beads
보름, 배, 갈매기, 바다, 해변, 하늘

 

Dérives: Goethe Dies (Strasbourg)

Found something to re-blog.
Adam writes about escaping from the looming disappointment of Brexit while trying to shake his glootm by taking in the beauty of Strasbourg. Brexit feels like an unseen oppression, a daemon shadowing Adam as he tries to process his disappointment with forgetting.
i once hitchhiked through Strasbourg, so this articles caught my eye.

Celluloid Wicker Man

It came with a great sense of relief that, on the 29th of March, I had a plane to catch.  This plane that I was to catch on the afternoon of the 29th was heading to Strasbourg; a visit to ma chérie and an escape from the 29th of March or what the 29th of March now represented which was everything contrary to reason.  Exactly a week before, it was the anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s death, dying 185 years ago to the day of apparent heart failure, the disputed last words of Goethe just before he died being a simple request for more light.  Visiting Strasbourg was my request for more light or, perhaps more accurately, an escape from the darkness of stupidity and delusion that I now increasingly associate with my homeland.  Upon arriving to Strasbourg, my shame – for it was a…

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Photographs & a message to readers

i’m back to a packed regime due to our old, stubborn cleaner-fella ditching us for a spring trip out of the blue. i like working but it limits my writing time & blogging time & makes me drink, boy can i drink when i am busy & though i actually write pretty well with a head full of booze i simply don’t, which sounds like a cue to call bull shit, but it is true, if i get out of myself & think about writing while on the creature, i’ll churn out something ample enough for the feed of history.
So my reply time may be longer from here on out— & to new followers, i appreciate your interest & i am sorry if i don’t follow back, but i can’t follow everyone & read them qualitatively, & i am not in the habit of clicking ‘like’ on something passively; if i like something, i like it & at some point i will usually engage that blog in conversation or have already done so, so that the like carries weight from an already established relationship.
In addition, i have decided on a blog schedule:
Mon-Thur i will focus on re-blogs, that is if i can find something that jumps out & grabs me, if you think something you have written might be up my alley, email me at danielpaulmarshall85@gmail.com & i’ll consider it.
Fri-Sun, i’ll be blogging my own stuff— i still have a back date of poems & photographs & the slow trickle of my new writings will reinforce the future, with fingers crossed & a prayer in the post.

The Vine Reclaims
Panels of Light
Light at the End
Beast of the Bushes
A boy & his Dog

Crossing the Yellow Sea for Seoul

i made a trip to the mainland by ferry the other day to make an Ikea run for our new pension. Though being inside Ikea literally makes me feel like i’m being crucified while a crow pecks at my viscera, i at least had an opportunity to take some photos of the ferry & Seoul— gotta make the best of a skull numbingly dull situation such as any situation involving Ikea.
The ferry gave me ample chance to use the windows for reflection-shots & people were pretty off guard. In Seoul i was only interested in the buildings, as they provoke so varied a response in me & in people generally, but i was so busy in Seoul i didn’t have much of a chance to take as many photos as i’d have liked.
On returning i haven’t been all that well, the schedule was a bugger, having to sleep in a public room over night, next to snoring ajeossi & then having to cook breakfast for a full house as soon as i got back; plus, Seoul’s overbearing noise & pollution always does a number on me— i don’t know how human beings have come to develop a tolerance for thriving in cities, they are vile places. i am on the mend now after walking down by the sea & drinking in some sea air. Enjoy the fruits of my 2 day trip.

Have you got you gold coins
The modern coop?
Post
Say goodbye to paradise
The red brick gone AWOL
The ruffled
Vesper song on harp
Call of the wild: the dolphin turn
Natter
목포시
Vortex to thought

there’s ∞ a photograph going on

tips: look everything up & down. look into things. looks around them. try to see beyond them to anything on the otherside. hold still. hold breath. keep your eye out. sometimes be patient. know you may have to rush. be ready. imagine your head can swivel 360°. become light & shadow. know the seepage of light. up. down. in slants across n’ up. so much is happening at every moment. there’s ∞ a photograph going on

craning over a wall
eye blemishes
blind crossroad
kettle
lantern bell
this was a bed & home
the reflection in the sky
power driving
teach us being still
wavey couds
old apartments

∞∞

a mishmash of photographs

i’ve got a thing about windows— the depth of focus they offer is staggering at the correct angle. i thought i’d plaster a mish-mash of stuff here rather than focus on a particular style.

i. am. so. tired. the. weeds. are. unending. but. i. love. them. somehow. they. help. my. concentration. studies. but. down. side. is. my. brain. won’t. write. properly. so. have. pictures.

such a lot happens in windows
clear up boughs
eye lashes of god
Teskooana
sea slapped
unfinished sympathy
tourist industry

a handful of photos

just a handful of photos from the last goodness knows when— mostly recent & one from quite a while back: the one of the flower man was taken in summer.
there is a variation of feeling here i think, something to illustrate Jeju’s diverse weather & landscape.
all of these photos have been shot using either the faithful or neutral setting on my Canon, then edited to make the colour of natural objects or the sky, to pop out at you, giving you uneasy dullness in contrast to colour evoking something like what can be seen if you look close enough. i’m really not very good yet at articulating my photographic purposes, but i know what i feel, but that isn’t very simple to articulate.

decay of morals
dirty ol’ sun
5000 spirits or the layers of Jeju
snow swept temple
village by a dry stream
the vines that went in search of religion
the flower seller

day out with wife & Len(s)

went for a little outing with the wife today & she actually agreed to be photographed, which she usually forbids. i think she is encouraging me with this photo lark as i have been doing it for the advertising company we hire & we have been getting more reservations because of my efforts, which is cosmic for me as i get a puppet to practice on & she’s photogenic, so job’s a gud’n.
went to a gallery by a deceased sculpture & photographer Kim Yeong Gab & his work is astonishing, his sculptures say a lot about him, he died of Lou Gehrig’s disease & they seem to be a manifestation of how the disease made his body feel. i am working on more work about him, a longish poem, so i won’t labour the subject of him here.

koji lighthouse
Ji hyeon
yin n’ yang
cold
figurines of Kim Yeong Gap
healthy & atrophied