So this one’s a bit different. Very different, really, from the images I usually share. In fact I’d go so far as to say I can’t think of another photo here on Weekly Fifty that looks anything like this. A running theme here on the blog, especially in recent months, is that of building on what I have learned so that I can improve over time, but for this image there simply is no precedent. And that’s partly why I like it so much.
In late 2024 my wife and I took our kids on a trip we had been planning for months, which was well beyond any family travel we had ever done up to that point. After months of planning and preparation, we boarded an airplane and flew 14 hours to South Korea, in order to spend five days in Seoul with her brother and his girlfriend. It was, in many ways, the trip of a lifetime, at least up to that point: we had never taken our kids overseas, and never immersed ourselves in a completely new culture, in a manner quite like this. Everywhere we went, and everything we did, was different in some way from our lives here in America–specifically, small-town Oklahoma. And when we returned I had a conversation with a friend who remarked at one point “You must have taken some incredible photos!”
I did, but not in the way you might expect. The only camera I brought was my Fuji X100F (aside from my iPhone, which did get a fair amount of use as a secondary photo-taking device) and I took well over a thousand pictures during the five full days we spent exploring Seoul, but most, nearly all, were of my wife, our kids, or her brother and his girlfriend. I just wasn’t really interested in capturing the city through the lens of my camera, but rather the people with whom we were spending time in the city. I did take a handful of shots like what you see here but mostly what mattered to me, and what I ended up documenting with my camera, was the people.
That brings us to today’s photo of some skyscrapers on the Han river near the Mubit Square, just southwest of the National Assembly. We were walking along the riverside on a chilly afternoon when I saw these huge structures backlit by the sun against a clear blue sky, and thought it would be fun to take a picture. This is so far outside my daily experience in Oklahoma that I wanted to capture the scene for posterity, and I’m glad I did. It’s a fun and unique scene, for me anyway, that reminds me of an incredible time spent with loved ones on the other side of the world.
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