I decided to take this opportunity to publish a couple of pictures that never quite made it out of the "edit" pile, as there were technical problems with camera shake, focus, or shutter speed. Both shot were taken on the fly, and there are many failed shots in my large collections of negatives.
The first image was the result of a seeing a woman in a kimono walking down the steps of the main area of the Kyeongbokkung Palace, happening to strike a pose that seemed poignant at the moment. What with the history of the place, the memories of Japanese colonialism, and this rare moment that allowed for a really interesting composition, I took the shot, but my haste resulted in camera shake ruining it. Still, the shake kinda makes the image look like a watercolor painting. But I couldn't use that rationalization to convince myself that this was an unmistakably good shot. I don't know - I wish I had had the time to take multiple shots, but as it was, this was a one-shot deal. I knew I'd only get one shot before she noticed me, and after that first one, that the question would moot. The naturalism of the moment would be lost. Unfortunately, my shutter speed ended up being too slow, as I usually shoot in aperture priority, and I believe I remember that I had just been shooting at a closed-down (high number) aperture for deeper depth-of-field (the zone of clear focus), which made the camera choose a speed too slow to catch her walking even slowly down the stairs. *SIGH*
This picture was part of my ongoing series about constructions of femininity (talked about in-depth in previous posts) and women in Korea. For my faithful readers, you'll remember me talking a lot about how I unapologetically let my "heterosexual male gaze" guide my photographs. Well, I caught this young woman looking and licking lascivious (at least in my mind's eye), striking a Lolita pose with the ice cream cone. In any case, this photo has several problems for me, the first of which being that I don't think the apparent obviousness is apparent nor obvious to anyone but me. Also, as I had been using my backup point-and-shoot Olympus Stylus Epic (a highly-recommended, stealthy, and not-to-mention cheap backup or alternative camera). I didn't have time to turn on spot metering didn't want to use a flash, so the background fooled the meter a bit, resulting in a dark image in front. Also, she's out of focus, which is problem (although it isn't all the time). I did capture the moment I liked, however.
I wonder what you readers think of this, however. Think these shots were too quickly thrown in the edit bin, or perhaps are they as problematic as I thought? Sometimes my editing decisions are based on too technical decisions or, being the photographer, I am often a bit too hard on myself. I don't know – I leave this up to you and your posts.
