A young man helps shield a companion against a sudden and chilly March evening shower, on a rare occasion when many Seoulites were caught off guard and without umbrellas.
OK, that's the picture and caption.
But as a photographer, one is often caught in a maddeningly tough set of choices before deciding what to "print." In the age of Photoshop and the Internet, this choice is lessened, since one can always put up the alternates, publish the b-roll, and add value to the product with "special features."
Second guessing oneself, in the digital age, is actually "value-added content." Or something like that. And I'm going to continue with the trend. I chose the above shot as my "official" choice, but since this is a blog, I'm going to give ya'll some "special features" and a "director's commentary." I won't torture you with too many "scenes from the cutting room floor," but one alternative is required to do the trick of giving you more to chew on.
The above picture is clearly the better choice photographically. I took about 20 pictures of this couple, and was standing really right on them, as this was taken with a 20mm lens (effective lens length with the EOS 350's digital enlargement effect is about 32mm) and the help of a friend who gave me an excuse and a reason to be standing all up on this pair at a bus stop.
To my direct right stood my friend, while I shot with my left hand, using the vertical shutter button, while I was "nonchalantly" cradling the camera in my arm. Takes some practice to master, and having a digital to get cover shots keeps from breaking your budget, but a good trick. You also have to have practiced quite a bit to see how much others generally pick up the sound of the shutter. On a street like that, though, passing busses and motorbikes offer good sonic cover.
The problem with the photo above is that it leaves the photographer open to Korean "right to one's image" laws. Now, taking their picture isn't illegal, contrary to popular opinion these days. [Read my post "Korean Photo Paranoia, 초상권, and Legal Inexactitude"] for all you never wanted to know about Korean photo law.] Nor is publishing their picture, technically, illegal. However, if the publishing of their picture results in demonstrable, concrete harm, I can be in trouble in civil court, as they can be awarded damages that stem directly from my picture, which I'd have to pay out of pocket.
What damages? Oh, like if that woman, in perhaps not being his girlfriend nor being described as such, happens to piss off his girlfriend, who then breaks off their engagement and causes him to sink into a well of depression, which in turn causes him to lose his job and begin living a life of misery.
In Korean law, that can be my fault. In American and most other democratic countries (with the major and notable exception of France, which has killed its own tradition of street photography by making it actually illegal to publish any picture without expressed, written permission), people standing in a public place have no explicit rights over how the image is used, unless, of course, you use their image commercially or misrepresent what is happening in the picture, or you portray them in an excessively "bad light" or what have you. But if your street shot just happens to catch two people together who shouldn't be (according to his wife), then that's his problem, not mine.
As it should be, since the photographer shouldn't be liable for someone else's immoral or illegal (in Korea, adultery is illegal and can carry criminal charges) acts. And realistically, no one is going to be harmed because you took their bad side in the morning, or caught them without makeup (oh, the horror!) No one's going to lose their job because they were caught not looking their best, which in Korea, would involve hours in makeup, a photo studio, and heavy photoshopping. Or simply overexposing to the point of obscuring basic facial features, as they do in the little couple-oriented "Star Shots" photo studios that were all the rage from the late 1990's.
It almost never happens, Korean photographers tell me, and the only place you're really going to get into trouble is if you use their image commercially without their permission, which is, to be blunt, just plain messed up. If I used the picture above to sell my brand of umbrellas – "Don't get caught without a Michael Hurt™ fashion umbrella!" – then they should sue my pants off.
If I use the shot for artistic or news purposes (and the latter is even more protected), then it would be harder to sue. There are other concerns, though, if you are a newspaper reporter, since "John Doe Kim and Bobby Sue Lee work hard to fend off the rain" is much better than talking in generalities and not getting the names of the people in the picture. However, for a real news story, if there were a fire in a seedy motel and two people were seen together who shouldn't have been at 2 PM on a work day, well – tough luck. Chalk it up to an act of God, not the fault of an unethical photographer; after all – who's the one really being unethical here?
Anyway, these are some legal issues to think about in Korea. As for aesthetic ones, in the picture above, there is the fact that both of their faces are shown and their expressions indicate they are waiting for something, most likely a bus, as anyone who has lived in a city anywhere in the world could safely assume.
Compare the above picture with the other candidate, which I've included below. There, their faces are actually not visible, which lets me off the hook in terms of the Korean law in the unlikely event of a lawsuit, but it doesn't convey that additional piece of information about what it is they might be doing. In the picture below, there is this implied sense of intimacy, especially since it's implied that the woman below is smiling, with her expression being lit up and silhouetted by the overexposed street sign (I always shoot in center-weighted metering mode for situations just like this, since the exposure reading is set by what's in the center of the frame, as opposed to averaging the total amount of light in the frame, which is the default in most cameras. If this were a standard point-and-shoot on full automatic, the street sign would probably come out relatively readable and the couple in the foreground unusably dark).
Most of the other pictures were actually devoid of other visual cues indicating why either of them might be holding a bag over their heads. The street is wet, but the fact that it was raining doesn't just jump out at you. So what helped make these two picture the final candidates was the presence of other picture elements that contextualized what the couple was doing. In the picture above, it's obvious as day, since the ajumma passing by has an umbrella; what's more, and what makes the picture even stronger, is that she is seemingly looking over in their direction. So she adds spatial depth, performs an explanatory function, and gives an element of human interaction.
In the picture below, the other man standing off to the left offers some of this, but not as obviously (no umbrella!) and not as strongly (he's smaller and not as obvious).
I know it sounds like a lot of analysis and fretting, but writing it out (or even reading it) requires a lot more effort than the couple of minutes it takes to look at several pictures, compare them, bring them down to a final few (or two), and then deciding between them in the way I've described above.
It may sound like work, but for me, it's fun. And that's why I love being a photographer. And if you think it silly to carry one's camera with you, unsheathed and ready to fire at any time, even in the rain – then let this picture be another testament to that. You wouldn't be looking at these pictures if I wasn't obsessive-compulsive with my camera in my hand.
Gotta love it.
