Another shot courtesy of Flickr user m20wc51, of a fall apple market at Daegu. Shot taken by US Army Chaplain Rev. Major Edgar Tainton, Jr., in 1952. A beautiful shot, crowded with life. This era was probably close to the last time you could have seen large numbers of people unselfconsciously wearing traditional clothing. Most of the sellers appear to be women, and, in the foreground at least, they seem to outnumber the buyers, meaning they may not get very good prices for their produce; or perhaps the market is just setting up for the day. Note too, in the centre foreground, a group of six or seven women, the one with her hand extended talking, and the others listening, evidently very interested in what she has to say.

This one took several hours of cleanup, due to the quantity of small specks of dirt, but the results speak for themselves (I hope). The original can be found here, for comparison purposes.

Tags:   대구시 Daegu-si apples Korean traditional clothing South Korea market traditional market peasant society

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Another shot courtesy of Flickr user m20wc51, this one taken by an Air Force captain engaged with an air transport group ferrying wounded out of North Korea, probably to Japan. I've tried to quickly restore what colour and contrast I can. I'll post a new version later, once I've had a chance to clean up the specks and debris over the shot.

Update: I've gone through and cleaned the shot, and removed as much dust and debris as I can. The original shot can be found here, for purposes of comparison.

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Another two of Sgt Walworth's slides joined together to make a panorama; the originals, from the album posted by Flickr user m20wc51, can be found here. This is just a first try, and the debris and scratches have not been cleaned up. Some tram wires were edited out as they failed to join up properly, but other than that, the scene is as the Sergeant saw it on 19 May 1953. I have a feeling that he wanted to capture the extent of the plaza, but the only way to do it was in successive shots. He moved a little between shots, but not much, and so the join was relatively simple.

What impresses today is the sheer quantity of Army trucks and personel on view, but that most likely has to do with the location, the main Post Exchange in Seoul. It's astonishing too, the number of times Sgt. Walworth's city shots feature young women somewhere in the middle distance, not so's you'd notice right away, but, there they are. In the 1930s, the PX building was home to a Japanese department store, but nowadays it is the main downtown Seoul branch of the Shinsegae Department store, which has since been re-opened and restored; and I guess even here, it's still a store. The building across the street, with its striking red and white stone patterns, was the Seoul Main Post Office. It's gone, and even in this shot you can see it is a mere hollow presence, gutted by bombs, perhaps, though its imposing street facade seems relatively undamaged. While the current occupant of the site is still the Main PO, nowadays, it is one of those daring and slightly crazy pieces of Korean architecture, bold, brash, and big, looking like somebody has tried to "unzip" the building so as to put a letter in it.

You can see what the intersection looks like today in this panoramic view.

Tags:   Korean War South Korea Seoul urban life wartime street views Army PX department stores war damage 서울 Shinsegae Department Store 주식회사 신세계 May 1953 panoramic photos Kodachrome 한국전쟁 Photoshop restorations

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This picture was taken by Captain J.R. Coupland III, in Korea in 1952. According to Wikipedia, there is no Route 57 in South Korea today, but there is Expressway 55, which stretches from Busan to Daegu; I'm guessing this photo was taken in the vicinity of Busan. The original of the shot can be found here for purposes of comparison.

Tags:   한국전쟁 Korean War Confucian scholar traditional Korean costume Busan area 부산 Kodachrome Photoshop restoration

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I think I may have posted a different version of this shot earlier, but I can't be sure. In any event, I wanted to redo it, using the new CC tools, and see if I got a better result. I like this version better than the old one, but who can say which is "better" really? De gustibus in all things, but especially in pictures, music, food, etc etc. I also did an HDR version, but I am not a bold HDR explorer, so it didn't look much different than this, just lighter. This is near Namwon village on the south coast, a five minute walk from the pension at which we stayed.

Tags:   Jeju-do Namwon sunset panoramic photos Photoshop CC South Korea tourist destinations clouds

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