Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Learn How a Photo Studio Works!

Always wondered about how to use studio lights? Did you always think it looked too complex? Well, now's the time to learn that actually USING them is easy as pie! It's like riding a bike. Learning to ride it is the hardest part; getting comfortable means just practice. 

Designed for any photographer with a basic knowledge of aperture and shutter (and we'll brush you up if you're fuzzy), you'll learn how studio lights operate, basic theories of lighting and setup, and get actual practice with a model or two under your belt. 

For the same price, you could barely rent a studio for even three hours, let alone get instruction and a model provided to you, and for six.

After completing our two 3-hour+ sessions, you'll be satisfied with all you've learned, and you'll never look at a magazine ad, fashion spread, or any kind of set picture the same way. And you'll be hungry for more -- having full control over the making of beautiful photographs is quite addictive! No more "shooting in the dark" and just leaving great pics up to chance. Take control!

Place: Studio 11 (see Facebook page for the studio as well as the event page)
Time: Sat and Sun, 3PM-6PM
Fee: 90,000 

The Ultimate Guide to Chungmuro!

For those of you who have been asking, I've put together a pretty cool guide to the Chungmuro area over at the Marmot's Hole. As many of you already know, Chungmuro is ground zero for photo stuff in Korea, especially when it comes to doing high-end stuff requiring people who know what the heck they're doing. 

DO go check out the post -- remember to blow up the image and follow along. And good hunting over there in the 'ro!

MAY Photo Class (Beginner) Late Signup Session!

The May Photo Class is having its 2nd session on Saturday, so that doesn't mean you missed out this month. Because of various scheduling blips, the May session got a bit discombobulated.  But you benefit!

We're planning a late signup session so you can get Session #1 tomorrow (Friday), in which we talk theory until your head pops. But in Session #2, we go to Hongdae and do practical stuff until your head clears. It's a great combo, and not too late to get safely into the May cycle.

We're aiming at Friday evening around 8 -- either contact me directly through email, and/or go to the Facebook event for the class, where there is payment information, directions, links to previous classes, etc.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Opinions Are Like Assholes, So Foreigners, Too, Need to Do Their Homework

This may seem like a very clichéd thing to blog about, especially in the context of Korean society, or education, especially because it seems like such an obvious thing to criticize, even to the newbie. Even fresh off the plane, people from other countries talk about the lack of creativity here, the regimented education system, the reliance on rote memorization, and so forth.

But most of the time, the conversation is superficial and remains stuck just under the surface of the completely opposite. It remains a conversation that requires little actual knowledge about the structure of the education system here, its history, or any number of specifics that my choir someone to actually do some research or even read a book about the subject. Unfortunately, the "problem of Korean education" or "lack of creativity amongst Koreans" receives little deeper treatment than can be found in beer conversation after work.

 "They should just get rid of the college entrance examinations altogether!" Well, "they" have before. Or the other one I've heard, "they should just make hagwond illegal!" Well, they have been before. And ALL kinds of private education, including private tutoring, have also been illegal at one time or another in recent Korean history.

Oftentimes, these conversations reek with cultural condescension and outright ethnocentric arrogance. Does some noob fresh off the plane and here less than three months really think that such revelations have never occurred to Korean reformers, government officials, or specialists in education, such as teachers or principals, or to the students themselves? Take, for example, our own screwed up education system in the United States. In the final analysis, the major source of disparities between school districts and individual schools has to do with the division of resources from property taxes. Why don't we just "fix" these things and get on with it? What the hell is America's problem? The solution is "obvious," right?

Well, without getting too deeply into it, we have a particular problem of race, class, and other differences that prevent people from doing just that. "You want MY tax money going to pay for THEM?!" America. Just recently got over integrating public school systems -- does anyone really think that the richer are going to pay more than their share for the poorer of American citizens? Especially if they're black, Latino, or some other undesirable Other? And that's without even going into the very American allergy to anything that even remotely looks like what people consider "socialism." Can you imagine getting that one even past city council, let alone the state legislature, or God forbid turned into something like a national law? Forget about it.

But this is just the kind of unsophisticated thinking that many outside observers apply to the Korean situation. This is why many Koreans tend to get irritated upon hearing this kind of simple criticism. Of course, we also know that national pride stokes the fires of defensiveness, but that's not the whole story.

And that's where the problem lies. As outside observers, we should think about the limits of our observations, the fact that probably many Koreans have had them already, in combination with the fact that, in general, our actual knowledge about the details of the situation, "problem," or what have you does not run very deep. So that's why, when one throws one's hands up in utter frustration, while saying, "This is just so freaking obvious! Why doesn't anyone change the system? Why isn't anyone doing anything?" Well, that's probably because you're right. It's IS absolutely, positively, FREAKING obvious. And yes, we need more than the observations that even a non-educated outsider can make in order to solve these mostly complex and intricate social problems.

Because the reason that social problems remain entrenched is not because of ignorance of their very existence, but has to do with that very fact --- they are ENTRENCHED. They are not easy to fix because, and I know this seems obvious, they are not easy to fix; it is not usually because Koreans are woefully ignorant of the problem's existence. To the extent that some Korean folks are not looking at the problem from a particular angle, or a new approach, the outsiders point of view may be useful.  Additionally, people in their own societies tend to be like fish accustomed to the water in the bowl: air show in your society and the system that there may be something that go unnoticed, or willfully ignored. For example, it seems that many Koreans don't like to talk about the scale of prostitution in society, the large role it plays in the economy, and the resulting cultural embeddedness of prostitution as a normalized societal institution. Often, in that case and in my own classes that I teach on the subject of social problems, the screens. I talk with find themselves quite shocked when forced to confront the issue openly and without embarrassment.

But that particular social problem is linked to embarrassment about not only the topic of sex, but a very deep cultural shame about this being a public topic of conversation that puts Korea in a negative light. But the education system issue, however, does not suffer from some deep rooted social stigma against people talking about it. It's simply a deep rooted societal problem with no easy, obvious answers. And pretty much what any new to Korea, fresh foreigner is going to come up with in his or her head as a grand solution to one of Korea's fundamental social woes is probably something Koreans have already thought about, and more often than not, something that has already been tried.

In the end, it's quite arrogant to assume, as a foreigner and a newbie, that after 2 weeks of thinking about the subject, all social problems would be solved if people just thought like you. It's also arrogant to keep stubborn and unwavering opinions without having done much thinking about the subject, nor any background reading, anything. You just sit there at the bar with your beer and have the answer. 

Isn't that what we often get on Koreans' case for?

Just something I've been thinking about lately.

On the Radio!

I've somehow fallen into these two really nice "music corner" gigs on the radio, one on TBS eFM (101.3 on your FM dial) and one on EBS radio (104.5 in Seoul and here are frequencies for other cities). Here's the breakdown:

"The Back Catalogue" -- every Monday night on 101.3 TBS eFM from 10:35-11:30PM, as a segment of the "On the Pulse" show, it's around a full hour of music I select, usually a fun assortment of stuff from back in the day. From old school rap to cheesy movie soundtracks you forgot, we're playing 'em all.

"Musical Notes" -- every Wednesday morning at 9:30 on 104.5 EBS radio, as a segment of the "Morning Special" show, I play 3 songs or so for a decidedly more Korean audience, with interesting commentary and even a little translation help for the less able English speakers. The theme usually has to do with some aspect of American culture  and I try to surprise the audience with stuff they might not have heard before -- nor you all, neither.  

Take a listen, and write in to the shows!

Kudos to Fat Man Seoul!

Recently, I've become involved with some pretty cool folks trying to get a lot of things started on the web named Nanoomi. In fact, Feetmanseoul.com has become a Nanoomi partner site, since they're really interested in Korean content produced in English. One of the sites I produced, which friend and food blogger extraordinaire has developed, is FatManSeoul.com. Now, Fatman Seoul has gotten enough attention that she was been invited to speak at TEDx Seoul, about her ideas on blogging and Internet culture in Korea. All great, right? Wrong. Here's what bothered me about the talk:

The problem is not in Jennifer's presentation, but in the Korean audience's reaction.

The little self-deprecating jokes were spot on, and laughter seemed appropriate. But why the laughter every time Jennifer mentioned a Korean food name? Or a word such as dica? I understand laughing in the joking context, but this is why I sometimes hate presenting to general Korean audiences -- many Koreans still find it absolutely unfathomable that foreigners are conversant in basic Korean words and concepts, to the point that it's apparently REALLY funny.

At 00:50, note the guy in the bottom corner just TICKLED PINK that Jennifer knows about wingbus and menu pans or whatever. *I* don't know about them because I'm not interested in Korean food. Is it surprising that Jennifer knows about them, as an avid blogger of Korean food? Looked at another way, SHOULDN'T THE AUDIENCE EXPECT that she, as a TedX speaker about Korean food, know about such basic ideas as "wingbus" or "dica" or whatnot.

And extend that -- just how low are Korean expectations of foreigners who are called upon to be experts on something? That's why Jen's up there and the audience are in the little chairs, right? What else were they expecting?

It's like a presentation I gave on Korean nationalism, related to my dissertation research, focusing on public intellectuals in the 1980's and the Olympics. At the afterparty, some Korean undergrad was oohing and aahing about how I knew how to read Korean. TO READ KOREAN. Think about that. I had just given a paper on a very specific topic in Korean history and society. It requires that I had read the writings of the person in question, newspaper articles from the time, items from popular culture.

Yet, she's impressed with me because I can READ, like I'm a trained seal.

Anyway, I get a lot of that as an "expert" -- and the low expectations of what can be "known" about Korea reflect not only the general cultural chauvinism of the Korean audience, but the condescension with which foreigners here are generally viewed, because the base assumption IS that non-Koreans can't really "know" anything about Korea, unless proven otherwise.

Or that some clueless, unintentionally annoying undergrad is complimenting a trained academic that he can READ the language in which he is supposed to function.

"Wow, invited guest and implied expert on the field of food blogging -- you know Korean WORDS? How funny! OH! You also know Korean food blogging sites?! So hard to imagine -- because you're white!"

Irritating.

Back to Blogging!

I've been doing a lot of thinking these days. And not a lot of blogging, obviously.

And I think I've figured out why my blogging has been so sporadic over the last year or so.

1) Obama made it. (Yes, I admit that I became an Obama-blog for about a year).

2) I'm all cried out. I've said a lot of things that I've wanted to say, and yes, that venting helped. But I started to feel like I was repeating myself, or becoming my own cliché, by being "that angry guy" or "the over-analytical dude." And other people have taken up the mantle. I won't name names. ;-)

3) Facebook. My realization is that a lot of my desire to publicly write/vent/blog has been taken up by Facebook. I bet if you did a chart with two lines, one marking Facebook posts and one marking my blogging, they'd do a two-legged dance across the board.

4) Shooting chicks. Well, can you blame me? I've been getting hardcore about getting my longstanding photo project done, and with my recent exposure to studio skills and the growth of additionally-embossed brass in my special place, I've been getting out there, getting models, and taking more risks. And simply spending more hours in the studio and not on the computer.

But I've been rethinking a lot of things, realize that I still have a lot of things to say (and about topics that are diverging, as my own life progresses and interests change), and that even my increased photo activities give me more to share with you all, more food for everyone's thought.

So with that, I'm going to try and blog more, continue to try to offer some opinions and analysis of Korean society and culture, while also trying to keep my writing up in conjunction with actually FINISHING my dissertation. Therefore, some of my writing will be affected by topics coming from the diss. Ain't that gonna be interesting?

And here's to you all -- my readers who have always made things fun and/or...interesting. And for the sake of opening back up more conversation, I'm opening up the comments section again, so you don't have to have a nasty Typepad account to sound off.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing more of you again, more often!

Broke-ass Bloggin'

I've been offline for some time.

But not because I'm lazy -- Feetmanseoul.com is still rocking, and I'm shooting more than ever.

No, it's because Typepad, with which I have a love-hate relationship (mostly hate), is stuck in the early 1990's, as they don't accept PayPal or any other kind of legal tender that have become standards on the thing known as the Internet. 

But because I have PayPal money, and not real money, in my account over in the US, I can't pay them. Oh, and my American check card from BofA expired. Oops! I've been gone a long time!

So, I was left with few options and running around to other broke-ish friends, who weren't able to help me this month. But the one saving point was that I succeeded in getting two Korean credit cards in the last couple months, which I barely use for anything, since I want to save for emergencies. I just never thought to try to use one of THEM to pay my bill. Because, of course, it wouldn't work.

At the suggestion of another broke-ish friend, I just tried it.

Since you're reading this, it worked.

And it means I am a dumbass for not even trying them a MONTH ago.

Sorry about this -- blogging will continue now, in earnest. Since, if you're reading this, my account's in good standing!

I love it when a plan comes together!