Pictures of Friends in Seoul
Some pictures of the musicians performing at Cement Room (Hapjeong, Seoul) - Sunday, June 15th 2025
Prologue
Here’s some pictures of Seoul based musicians performing in an intimate space, June 15th, 2025. Sometimes I do this - take pictures.
Location: The Cement Room (Hapjeong, Seoul)
ARTISTS:
Jinu Konda - https://www.instagram.com/jinukonda/
Lydia Hahm - https://www.instagram.com/lydia.s.hahm/
Alexander Cera Schmid - https://www.instagram.com/hasareod/
Kontrajelly - (pictures will be used in a music video, soon) - https://www.instagram.com/kontrajelly/
Gear:
Panasonic Lumix GH5
Lens 1 - Lensbaby 22mm - Sol - f/3.5 (swing & shift focus)
Lens 2 - 12-60mm Lumix Vario-Elmarit Zoom - f/1:2.8-4.0
Small plastic tripod for long shutter speeds
Shutter Speeds 1/6th - 1/30th
ASA/ISO - 200-800
The feel.
BEWARE! YOU ARE ENTERING THE GEEK ZONE
Cement Room is a cafe/cultural venue, filled with kitsch memorabilia sporadically placed. They have a racing green upright piano in the corner. I like it. It feels like a place Tom Waits might call his living room.
The location was very low light. Dusk light was pouring in from the outside window for the shots of Jinu Konda & Lydia Hahm (w/ Alex). This made for a bright background (usually defeated by a flash).
The police showed up because someone in the neighborhood doesn’t like acoustic guitar drowning out their home-shopping channel. The metal curtain doors closed us in to curtail the sound bleed from the venue - and it became very dark.
Later photos of Alex (on piano) (and Kontrajelly, featured in a forthcoming video post) performing were taken as the sun has nearly down, under regular living room illumination.
The Technique.
In my grade school / high school years, my first love was photography. I mainly took pictures of skaters, but I also took images for the school yearbook. This was the last era of celluloid film (late 1990’s), so developing just a few pictures was expensive. Nowadays, I can take as many pictures as I want, without having to worry about changing rolls, losing rolls, light leaks, or mistakes - so I do. The romance of waiting to see what I captured is gone, but money is saved. Much of the same techniques still apply.
I knew Cement Room would be a low light situation. I don’t have any flash gear. I brought along a lightweight tiny plastic tripod and 2 lenses, with intention of lower the shutter speed past acceptable norms. The tripod was completely loose. I used it like a mono-pod, keeping the camera still enough for a 1/6th shutter.
I love my LensBaby lenses.
They excel at re-focussing the eye WITHIN the frame. What’s interesting is that it’s proven that our eye looks at the brightest thing first, then follows leading lines, when hunting for the subject of a photograph. These lenses do break those rules of perception. In pictures, completely blurred out images are abstract, and therefore ‘flat’, with regards to depth. These lenses allow for a ‘sweet spot’ within that blurred out abstraction. So they partially remove depth. They also make nonsense beautiful - like a a pile of audio cables. They do wild things when pointed at lights too.
Their drawback is they are VERY challenging to focus, especially with a subject in motion.
These are the nuggets…