Goodbye Pohang

I hate coming across a blog that's died.  Post, after post, after post for months and years, and then nothing.  So now it's time to officially close this blog.  To say goodbye to all the people who supported me, who read my posts, who looked at my pictures, who left comments, and who reached out to me to tell me that you liked what I was doing.  It meant a lot and it kept me going. 

Thanks.  I hope this blog helped other people as much as it helped me.  Through these posts and pages I grew as a photographer, a writer, and I grew into Korea.  I let Korea in in a way I hadn't previously.  I spent every weekend searching for the beautiful, the amazing, the photo-worthy.  I found beaches and temples, I climbed mountains and discovered sunrise.  I stood on sea-green rocks, slimy with algae, trying not to fall into the icy cold East Sea as I waited for the sun to rise, as I waited for the perfect moment.  Sara and I drove down every little country road we could find, into rice paddies and up mountainsides. I saw Korea, I experienced Korea, I learned that Korea could be beautiful, could be amazing, could even be, after all these years, home.

I learned how to take a picture and make a photo, to make something I wanted to share, something I wanted to see again.  I learned how to use my camera so that the moments I want to have forever, the moments I never want to forget, the moments I want to share most came, I was ready.  My wife, seven months pregnant, more beautiful than ever, Ziggy, only hours old, still so pink he was almost purple, his tiny hand wrapped around my thumb.  The years I spent working on this blog meant that when those moments came, I didn't miss.  

I want to end with a post about people.  The people I've tried to photograph the last three years, the people who opened up when they saw the goofy foreign photographer with his big camera hunched down in a rice field, or bent over a fishing boat at four in the morning, or standing in a hospital overflowing with happiness and pride.  These aren't the best pictures I've ever taken, but they're some of my favorite.  Each one was a moment I shared with the person or people in the picture.  Where I gestured that I wanted to take a picture and they smiled, or nodded, or laughed, and the fact that I'm a visitor, that I don't speak the language, that I can barely say a convincing hello in Korean, melted away.  And then, the moment over, a quick thank you, a goodbye, we went our separate ways.

For the last time, 10 pictures and some foolish comments.

In the land of Samsung and constant techno upgrades, curved TV's and phones with no edges, refrigerators that talk and use the internet, some things, a lot of things are still done by hand.  

One of my favorite sunrise shots.  Living in in-land Daegu now, I do miss the water from time to time.

The fisherman were completely unfazed by me creeping around at four in the morning.  

Sara says this is one of the most "Korea" pictures I've ever taken.  The rice field juxtaposed with dozens of wires, the adjumma standing alone.

Truth, Sara took this picture from the car as we drove down a one lane road in a rice field.  The pollution can give you some weird light.  

Ziggy!  And his nurse.  One of the best moments of my life.

Like a gentle nightmare.   

I'd gone 30 something years without seeing a scythe in action.  Always something new/old in Korea.

Yay!  Pesticides!  I feel like this tool would be important after the zombie apocalypse, maybe turn it into a flamethrower or something.

And of course, thanks to my wife and son, whose patience with my photography nonsense is a big part of this blog getting made.