Fred Mount Photography

The Dark Heart of Seoul: The Destruction of the Seoul

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 06:26:00 -0500

For this installment of the Dark Heart of Seoul series, I bring you the Destruction of the Seoul. I discovered an area filled with older housing at the base of Mount Ansan. This community had been slated for destruction so that high rise apartment buildings could be built. The cost of moving towards a brighter future is that some eggs have to get broken. The area is littered with broken glass and piles of trash from the homes of people who have already left. Many of the people left and went to other older and cheaper areas. Some people, mostly the elderly, lived among the destruction, waiting for the police to come and forcefully move them out. Posters litter the walls with offers from moving companies as well as evection notices. I have been told from Koreans that the government hires and encourages the gangs to come into these areas to terrorize these people and break everything that they can. With only one goal: to make the area unlivable so all the people leave. I don’t know how true it is, but after asking many people if they had ever heard of this none of them had heard. Also, none of them were surprised. These photographs are from the Destruction of the Seoul.

The Dark Heart of Seoul: The Homes of the Dark Heart

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 11:29:30 -0400

My second installment of my Dark Heart of Seoul series is: “Homes in the Dark Heart.” The housing in the city varies as much as the people themselves. The landscapes are the same through the city, there are high rises dwarfing the pockets of poor areas. As the poor areas are redeveloped and torn down these behemoths rise to the sky. The older houses are made beautifully out of brick, giving the poorer areas great character and a life of their own. The people who cannot afford to live in the poor areas make houses of their own in little pockets. These houses conditions vary from being crafted of bricks and hastily done fresco to wood and cardboard, which can be seen in the second last photograph. The last photograph shows what happens in the period after people are forcefully moved out and before the demolition begins.

Mark Eaton's blog post on my photography

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 23:43:29 -0400

Mark Eaton wrote a killer write up about my photography on his blog check it out!

http://markeatonphotography.blogspot.kr/2012/10/fred-mount-adventurer-of-life.html

The Dark Heart of Seoul: From the View of the God's

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 05:41:00 -0400

Night photography is something that I have always done; it started 6 years ago when I picked up my first film camera. The night holds special qualities for photography; it has the ability to transform the mundane into something special. Just like any other time you have the option to use ambient light or to add your own. In my night scape series I added light with speed lights. In this series I only used available ambient light.

Before coming to Korea I knew that I wanted to do a night series of Seoul. Simple Black And White Square photographs of the city. This quickly turned into something much more. I began to look for the underbelly of Seoul in different parts of the city. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for until I found it. The Dark Heart of Seoul is the city itself. The poorer areas are starting to be destroyed so that large corporate apartment buildings can be built. I set out to juxtapose the old housing of Seoul with the new housing.

I have shot over 100 photos for this but I am only releasing the best 26 photographs . Each photograph is a large panorama cropped into a square. For this exhibition the photographs will be printed in a large format of 3’x3’, larger than I have ever printed before. I will be releasing the photographs by content The Dark Heart of Seoul:

From the View of the Gods 10-7-2012

Homes of the Dark Heart 10-21-12

The destruction of the Seoul 11-4-2012

Leaving the Seoul 11-18-2012

This is my journey into the night: From the View of the God’s.

Angels over Seoul

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 20:50:29 -0400

I have started a new conceptual project here in Seoul. It is called “The Angels over Seoul. Here is a quick teaser photo from my first shoot of the series. I’m positive that there will be many more to come!

A great video of Von Wong’s work with a master...

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 22:16:03 -0400

A great video of Von Wong’s work with a master pyro-technician Andrey Das. A must watch!

Nightscapes

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:33:07 -0400

Before I left for Seoul, South Korea a weekly tradition of mine and my good friend Zach Rose (http://umbrielfinite.tumblr.com/) was to haul our camera gear out into the woods, inner city and sides of thruways to experiment with night photography. Often as a photographer you will see something that you find interesting and are only let down when the photograph does not match what you see in your head. These mundane subjects were brought to live by the night. Enjoy the Nightscapes:

The Dark Heart of Seoul preview

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:02:30 -0400

Here is a preview of some of the work you can expect for my new series of work The Dark Heart of Seoul

Exit Through the Isolation

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:17:04 -0400

I recently put on a show at 464 gallery in my home town of Buffalo, New York. Exit Through the Isolation contained The Floating Orb series and The Giant Balloon Series. Both of the series deal with concept of isolation in different but related ways. Isolation in something that is not found in any other animal the way that is in humans. We isolate ourselves from each other, those around isolate us with their thoughts and actions, we are even isolated by the media and corporations telling us we are not good enough we need to fix or buy a,b and c.

The Giant Balloon series deals with the physical isolation from the world around us. At first isolation can feel good, it can be a break from the hectic world. But after some time the darkness of the isolation starts to set in. Isolation can give you new life or it can drag you down the deepest darkest alleys of your mind. But once you find your light you can make your way our of the darkness that is the isolation. The Floating Orb series deals specifically with the light in the dark world and the exiting of the isolation. For some people their light is staring them right in the face but it takes them some time to realize it. Others have to search out and find their light and hope that it doesn’t disappear.

Some technical notes:

The Giant Balloon is actually a giant 5’ tall latex balloon, no Photoshop.

For the Floating Orb series I have received a lot of comments on how my post processing was sloppy to just cut out a white ball and leave it at that. The white balls in the photographs are actually back lit balloons with the stands removed in Photoshop.

On a personal note I am now living in Seoul, South Korea teaching English. I have been here for a week and have quickly fallen in love with the city. I have a few concepts that I am working on now, as they come along i’ll post more about them.

When I moved I was limited to what I could bring, instead of bringing my external hard drives I burnt all of my photographs to CD. Unfortunately I grabbed the wrong CD when it came to the Exit Through the Isolation photographs. They may be viewed on my deviant art.

The Floating Orb Series: http://fredmountphoto.deviantart.com/gallery/35896486

The Giant Balloon Series: http://fredmountphoto.deviantart.com/gallery/35896494

Water Balloons and Mayhem

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:53:05 -0500

I decided to do a one day photo shoot with as many people that I could round up. With winter weather descending on Buffalo I decided to do a light hearted photo shoot of a water war. Some of my favorite childhood memories were arming myself with buckets, balloons, sponges and squirt guns to soak everyone in the neighborhood. To be fair I think this eight hour of shooting this water war was infinitely more enjoyable (Because I didn’t get wet :-D)

Welcome to the Water War!

"Torn"

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:26:31 -0500

We all find inspiration in our everyday life; we all find it through and in different things. I find much of my inspiration for my photography comes from music. I listen to music all day at work and most of the time I spend at home. This is probably why my music collection has grown to 100GB. This series was inspired by the song “Torn Between Scylla And Charybdis” by Trivium. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS9Z0rDj4MA&feature=fvst)

History Lesson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Scylla_and_Charybdis

This series for me is a symbol of letting go, this is me doing the type of photographic work that I want to do. For to long I have done photography that others have done (fashion, beauty, ect.) but I have not enjoyed shooting those things. I don’t know why I was shooting these things when I did not particularly enjoy them. This is my independence, shoot what you love. Even if it’s just a white wall at least you’ll love what your doing.

Torn - the first installment

The Remembering Warrior

The Lost Innocent

The Time Keeper

The Fallen Angel

The Wandering Man

David and Goliath

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:43:09 -0400

For those who know me well I have an obsession with flowers and photographing them. Many people photograph flowers at some point and time because they are all around us while the weather is nice. Others like myself probably started off photographing flowers. I have been working on a series of photographs for some time now that I have named The Death of a Flower. It is a series of dead and dries flowers, yes every one of them is past their expiration date.

Growing up I was always told to fear time, there is only a finite amount. It is to be feared and respected, not to be wasted. This series like much of my other work is searching for beauty and intrigue in death. To me flowers share so much in common with the human condition. Both are soft, delicate and can be wiped out by anything at any time. While from a distance we/them all look alike, but it isn’t till you get close and see the details that their character comes out. Finally we are both doomed to rot, some of us just happen to look beautiful when they rot (The flowers). I am excited about one of the recent shots I did for this series so I thought I would share it on here.

If you want to see some superior and supurb flower photography your first stop should be Christopher Beane’s web site then his book which represents much more of his work : http://www.hothousestudios.net/#!

Let the Games Begin

Tue, 24 May 2011 23:19:51 -0400

Art is not meant to be made in a vacuum, we all make art for ourselves for one reason or another but we also want to share it with everyone out there, well at least I do. For the past 8 months I have spent working on a series of portraits and interviews that explores why people get tattooed. This was a project that caught me off guard, originally started when I was asked why I get tattooed. After explaining my reasons the reaction was not something I expected. I was just told “I just don’t understand why you would want to do that to yourself” so I set off not really thinking much about this all to often encounter. It wasent until my way home when I was listening to Lamb of Gods “Grace” when the idea for this project hit me. It all started with the lyrics “Forgiving the father, Read the story on my skin, I’ll be the martyr, falling from his grace again” which have a lot to do with my personal reasons for getting tattooed. Inspiration can come out of nowhere and hit us like a freight train. Don’t ignore these little bubbles of inspiration that you get throughout the day. These little ideas for well anything, you never know where they will lead you. On my iphone I have a note pad for all the little ideas I get and I always write them down, many I do nothing with but all of them would have been forgotten if I had not written them down somewhere. Moral of the story: If you get a creative idea write it down because you never know what will come to fruition.

This is new territory for me, I don’t show off a whole ton of my photography because I am quite self conscious about it. Many times I’m to busy looking in the future of where I want to be that I don’t enjoy the here and now. My feelings of wanting constant growth often leave me feeling that things I have done are substandard because it can always be better. Regardless I have decided to put together a show and have been promoting it on the web and in print through various forms of media and handing out show cards. I have learned a few things that are important to keep in mind when putting on a show.

It is a lot of work, not only do you have to make sure your creative work is the best that it can be (Which is something all artists should strive for regardless of end intent) but then you have to find a place to show it. Which can be easy if you know people or it will end up being a few more phone calls than originally anticipated. The most amount of work that I did for my show was the promoting, news papers, event forums and handing out show cards to every coffee shop, tattoo studio and art gallery that would let me leave them there. I learned one important thing during this; people are willing to help you if you come up to them confidently and with a smile tell them what you are looking for. I was nervous about walking into tattoo studios and asking to leave show cards for my show that was at another tattoo studio (their competition). In truth I had nothing to be afraid of, not one person turned me down and I went to a lot of tattoo studios. The part of my show that I am currently struggling with is now that everything is done there is nothing for me to do. I have advertised every where possible, I am waiting to get my prints from the printers. The only thing left to do is mount the photos when I receive them. It’s a great feeling to set out to do something an actually do it.

Now that this project is finished I am looking forward to a summer of traveling with my good friend Mark Baker (Mhbaker.com) I am hoping to photograph New York City, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Toronto and with all luck Boston. We’ll see what happens on the home front. Regardless it’s time to unpack the hiking boots, gas up the motorcycle and get out there and start photographing every chance I get when not at work. I am determined to not waist this summer, Let The Games Begin!

Failure Rate

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:04:00 -0400

For me photography is more of a concentration on failures rather than successes. I am always trying to move forward in one way or another. Unfortunately sometimes in order to take that step forward we have to take a few steps backwards and retrace our steps forward just to take that extra step. Once I finally nail something I have been working towards its time to move on to the next thing that I feel I am lacking. This can and often is extremely frustrating, I often find myself saying that I hate photography and I’m done with it. After a short period of time, usually less than an hour I’m right back at it hammering away until I get to where I want to be. It’s important to remind myself that it’s better to be in the game and loosing than to not be in the game at all. That is one thing that I truly believe. In order to succeed you have to think positive and act positive, this can be hard but it’s important to keep positive as much as possible. If your able to do this then you’ll be just fine.

This is a recent shot from an Urban Exploration trip in Western New York. There may be little to no money or exposure in urban exploring but it is something that I truly enjoy. Shoot what you like and you’ll be just fine.

Rogelio Lopez Marin a great cuban photographer, Definatly worth taking a gander through. http://www.fotogory.com/