[2023] Sending Off the Year of Gyemyo

If last year was an initiation period, this year felt like a growth period. I took the photos I wanted, took photos of others, and tried different concepts for each photo — some from far away, some from close up, some emphasizing complementary color contrast, some with long exposure, or even leaving them entirely in black and white. Watching photos transform at my fingertips was fascinating every time, and especially from when I started touching color grading and tone curves, I genuinely enjoyed the process of giving photos a transformation.

This year saw the following changes. First, reading posts like “photography is ultimately capturing the landscape the photographer saw with their own eyes, and a photo is the landscape the photographer found impressive” on this Naver blog became a starting point for developing my personal photography philosophy. Second, I became fascinated with image sensors as a semiconductor product category, and searched through papers, blogs of PhD students and graduates, tech insights, etc. like crazy for related knowledge. Honestly, I couldn’t fully understand it without the background knowledge, but the impression that many engineers’ efforts are needed came across well.

Thinking that the reason I started photo editing was to preserve the same memories more beautifully, the initial goal seems to have been largely met. Thanks to that, I could intentionally make even the same place feel different, which was nice. However, the attitude of taking every photo seriously started to feel a bit tiring, so I’m trying to let go of that obsession going forward.