Season 3 - Episode 9: GuruShots Exhibition in Seoul

In this episode I go over my experience working with GuruShots for one of their exhibitions in Seoul and working with Dylan Goldby.

Check out Gurushots here

Click here for photos from the exhibition

If you want to purchase some of my photos, you can find them here on Wirestock

Transcript

JT: 0:06

Hello and welcome to season three, episode nine of the Sajin photography podcast. My name is Jason Teale and today we're just going to do a quick and dirty episode talking about the gallery that I did. Dylan Golby last Friday for the guru shots exhibition in Seoul. Now this was a really good opportunity for me to actually get out and see real live people. All two of them that came out to the initial opening of the gallery, and that's mostly due to the COVID restrictions up in Seoul. And this was something that I was quite concerned about going up there because, well, when you look at the statistics here, Most of the cases are centered around Seoul. And a lot of the alerts there were coming from Seoul. But when I talked to Dylan, he assured me that it's, you know, 400 cases spread out over 12 million people. Yeah. You get the idea. That's it's, it's not the zombie apocalypse as we talked about in the last episode, but it was on the back of my head. Now my experience here was actually pretty good. The trip up was amazing, and I was able to get a few shots for this other project that I'm doing. And that is I'm slowly getting into stock photography. So to briefly touch on that before we get into the gallery part, I came across a invitation to do with stock photography from a company called wire stock. And I know that a lot of people think that this is just, you know, nickel and diming to get a few sales and whatnot. And honestly, I'm just treating it as that because I've worked with stock companies like Getty in the past, and I'm not looking to make a lot of money. But the thing is, is that I have gigs and gigs actually more or less terabytes now of photos, just sitting on my hard drive. And I thought that I would just kind of go through and see which ones will actually sell. And if I can make a bit of money on the side, well, that's good. And with wire stock, they have a little bit different of an approach. They'll actually do the keywording and boost your post to all of these. There are pluses and minuses to this approach because your photos go under their profile, which some people do take issue with. But for me, I'm just looking at this as a way, hopefully to make a little bit more extra money on the side. Because as I said before, and previous podcasts, I have been struggling. I still am struggling. And I'm hoping that this can provide a little bit of extra income over time. So with that being said, when I got up to Seoul, I got some of the standard shots of the chunk catch on and whatever I could before heading over to the gallery. So the gallery was held over last weekend at a place called art delight, which is in sort of the end tip of Itaewon which is closer to the Baker's table. If you're familiar with that area, I'm not exactly sure. Name of that area, but it was kind of the trendier area now that, uh, Itaewonhas been hit with the blunt end of the, of the COVID blame stick. And as well as there's lots of gentrification pushing the, what I call the original essence out of the main Itaewon and into these little pockets. Now, the gallery itself was actually really well put together and I could tell a guru shots. Are pros at doing these exhibitions. And it was actually great to see one of my photos up there. And if you're unfamiliar with guru shots, basically what they are is a platform that provides people with challenges to. Yeah, just have fun. The app is really good. I've been playing around with it for about, I dunno, I think just over a year now, maybe just about a year now, and I find it really fun that, you know, you can get yourself on a team and you guys can compete challenges together and things like that. Yeah. But these exhibitions were something new for me, because I always thought it was just a little bit of a money grab, you know, to be honest, it was, you know, every other challenge was a, an exhibition or, you know, you had to apply to get into the book or something. And I thought, well, you know, this was kind of a money. And in reality probably is that's maybe how they make their money, but this was a good challenge. When I saw Seoul come up, I really pushed my posts to the top of the heap as you can do, because it's sort of gamified, you know, you can put boosters and stuff like that. You know, he got the idea. It's a, it's a photo game, but I managed to get printed and I was very happy to see my work at the exhibition and also. Reached out to guru shots and they were looking for a volunteer to help do the livestream on Facebook. I managed to actually get approved and they liked me, I guess. So I did the live stream, which is something that really sort of is new to me. And it was a little bit uncomfortable because there's yeah, there, I think there was about like, Uh, at one point in time, uh, close to 200 people, maybe a little bit less, I think on average, it was about 75 to 100 people watching and, you know, you're getting all the comments were like, show my picture, show my picture, show my picture. And I was really trying to sort of manage everything in a yeah. Kind of, uh, an organized way. And I think at the beginning I was a little. Turned around trying to get just situated. But other than that, I think the live stream went very well. It's something that maybe I'll try. I do outside of the podcast at some point in time, because I think people do like to sort of see, I don't know the locations or something when you're out there doing this stuff and I can see now why sort of tick talk and even Instagram are moving towards a video. Platform, which, you know, there's some pluses and minuses, but you know, the demand is there. So I guess that's why they're doing it. So all in all the gallery itself sort of centered on two main exhibitions, one was the portrait photographer of the year, which the portraits there were. Wow. That was amazing. And then the second part, which one of my photos was in, which was just yours. Best gallery exhibition shot or something like that. And it was a good mix of architecture shots and a lot of just beautiful shots. Like that's the only way I can really describe the style of images. Cause there was a little bit of everything there. And what I really liked about this was I was hoping that there'd be more people to actually visit and check out. But with the COVID restrict. Um, nothing you can really do about that, but actually how having an exhibition I've done them in the past and they've been kind of expensive. Like, I mean, I've got a stack of framed photos that, you know, fit the theme, but they're not really something you want hanging on your wall. You know, it's just a lot of money to throw away, to put a feather in the cap, but walking around and seeing the hard work of other photographers from all over the world. I realized that there is some sort of charm and benefit to actually hosting and having a gallery. And this is something maybe further on down the road. I may look at doing, but the one thing that I was talking with Dylan about was the fact that there's a lack of social. Like in person stuff happening in Korea these days, just because of the COVID and you know, it really, and truthfully, when it's over, I want to get back into hosting events like photo walks and things like that, because. Yeah, it's just, there's one thing to be able to go out and take pictures. And I do this mostly by myself. I find, you know, if there's other people around me, it's a little bit of a distraction, but then there's the social aspect of it. When you're walking and talking with people who like to do the same thing as you, and, you know, you can talk about the gear or just talk about the art and the craft. And with these events, I really. Enjoy them. And I remember the last time I did an event with pizza Marco for the Busan light stalkers group. And I remember going around the event and I think we ended up, oh, where did we go? Uh, there were some. Restaurant that we ended up at as well. And it was just good being around people and having a good time who all appreciate good photography. So hopefully in the future after COVID, I can put together something, one of the ideas I've been kicking around. Uh, for a while is just doing a film, photography, photo walk and sort of mini exhibition. But you know, the logistics are a little bit tricky and you know, every time I say, okay, we're going to do it this weekend. There's a spike and new COVID restrictions. So I'm going to put a pin in that and hopefully, maybe by. 2022. I can actually pull it off. Now, getting back to the actual exhibition. Uh, this was a very busy weekend for me. I shot up on Friday for the opening and did the filming and then scooted back. Later that evening.

I think I got home at around 1: 9:35

00 AM, but overall I was really happy. The way guru shots set everything up and they had a 3d photographer getting sort of one of those like Matterport walkthrough sites set up and then they had Dylan there to take the stills. So overall, if you didn't get a chance to see the exhibition, I'm sure there's going to be something popping up where you can actually do like an online, uh, tour of the event. Will be absolutely amazing. And with that being said, uh, this is a shorter one today. So, uh, I bid you adieu. I've got to run to class. And so with that being said, I'm going to say goodbye. I wish you all the best and get out there shooting for the weekend. I think it's going to be some nice weather. Take care.