The same scene, a few minutes later a wider shot. The light has gotten more direct, and thus more contrasty, and the sky appears darker.

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We went over to the island on a quick trip. This is overlooking the harbour, about five minutes or so before sunrise (which will come from the right side of the shot). This time of day and just post-sundown are fascinating times for light because while there is light, there is no direct source but merely a waxing or waning glow, so, shadowless light. Always to be treasured.

Original shot was quite noisy, so I used Camera Raw's new de-noiser, and it did a fabulous job. As always with Flickr, however, the colour space is not identical to my monitor, so this looks much more pale than the actual shot.

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Another shot courtesy of Flickr user m20wc51, taken by an unknown US serviceman, on furlough in Japan in June of 1953. By July, he was back in Korea, I think with an artillery unit.

This shot was easy to clean, not because it was undamaged, but because with foliage lilke this, and spots and speckles tend to fade into complex patterns of the leaves and shadows. Also, I love trees, and I love the multitude of different greens you get from the different sorts of trees. People often forget that many of our words (e.g., "green") denote very large categories rather than specific things.

The original shot is here, and as you'll see, all I've had to do here is adjust the contrast, and try to make sure the shadows are actually black (there's no lost detail in them; I checked) rather than rainbow coloured or purple.

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Another shot courtesy of Flickr user m20wc51, also taken in July 1953, no location specified, but based on another shot by this same photographer, this site is likely about a dozen miles from wherever the front line was on 27th July, when the ceasefire went into effect. The fact that the photographer labelled several of these slides "July 1953" suggests that he wanted to memorialize the end of hostilities.

Like others of this photographer's shots, this slide was quite damaged and dirty. I've not attempted to "repair" the damage (mostly cracked emulsion) but simply removed the bigger spots. This particular photographer also loved skies and clouds, and seems never to have met a dutch angle he didn't love at first sight. I've done what I can to straighten the image without losing too much on the lower edge.

The original shot can be found here, and as will be seen the colours had faded with some shadow areas shifted towards purple. The trick to dealing with these is to select a couple of pixels of the correct colour (likely the selection tool will highlight many more) and then choose Select –> Similar, to pick up as many pixels of that colour and nearby colours as you can. At that point, you can place those pixels on a separate layer and then shift the colours away from purple, and desaturate and darken to taste.

Update, April 2024 The previous shot I had in this location was dark and unfocussed. This one is at least bright enough that the details of an artillery battery are visible. There are, I think, three gun emplacements here, but all of the 155s have their barrels lowered, perhaps because they are no longer needed. As well, I have edited out the several sets of telephone and power wires that were in the foreground of the shot because those are the kinds of things we don't see, very often, when we take a shot: we see only the vivid blue sky and the base. So this now approximates not what the eye saw on that July day, but what the mind perceived.

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Another shot courtesy of Flickr user m20wc51, this one of a relatively undefended entrance to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea in the summer of 1954, that is, one year after the armistice went into effect. This is likely not the actual DMZ, but the entrance to it; the actual zone probably a mile or more distant. No hint in the photo of exactly where along the DMZ this might be, but it looks pretty remote.

Note that the sign is rendered in English, hangeul, and hanja, the latter in case any scholars might wander on by. The lettering was actually the trickiest thing to resuscitate, as a first round of colour correction shifted the lettering significantly away from red.

Original shot can be found here, for purposes of comparison.

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