I’m not really a fan of groins, poles, or Tori gates in water. It isn’t my thing.

But I did find these pillars a little out of the ordinary. The rust colour was also unusually appealing. Which is why I think I followed through to actually finishing the work and presenting it here.

These were the only photographs that I made whilst in South Korea last October that I am happy with. They also feel sufficiently strong enough for me to include them on this blog. I see photography as a diary of my life, and my blog is a mirror of that. So here they are.

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The follow through test

To me, there are several stages in the birth of images where the process can come to an abrupt end, or to put it another way, becomes still born, and if I manage to get through to editing the work and presenting it, then it has had to stand up to several tests. Here are my thoughts on what they are:

I have to be interested enough to shoot it

Judgement on whether something is of worth is there from the very beginning. I don’t just shoot anything, and I’ve found I’ve become more selective over time (this does not mean it’s a good thing - as I think being overly selective can result in myself missing out on potential images). But I have come to realise that if I’ve shot the scene, I think there is something there.

I have to be interested enough to scan and edit it

Again, this seems rather obvious, but I have found myself still pursuing something for a while and even trying to convince myself that the work is ok. I have many failed collections of images that have never been published, but I would say that I rarely get to this stage now and still reject the work.

I have to be interested enough to actually publish it

I’ve even got to this final stage, and decided to hit the reject button on individual images, but rarely these days do I get to this point and reject an entire collection of work.

I have to live with it for a few months or maybe even a year

This is the ultimate test. This is also perhaps the test to see if whether the work wasn’t rejected simply because it was fresh and new, rather than being interesting enough.

I feel connected to the work

This is the test that isn’t working for me right now. I feel the work is emotionless, but I’m not sure if that is actually a bad thing. I cannot see how tetrapods / slabs of concrete and iron poles can be anything but emotionless, so perhaps this is more a statement of symmetry and architecture. In a way, this isn’t me. But I also recognise that the compositions are clean and they work.