I have to be honest. I love film, always will. My dream is to have my own darkroom at home to develop and print my black and white fine art photography. 

But until then, I like the idea of "doing something impossible" with polaroids. One of my ideas involving the creative uses and applications of polaroid photography was recently published in The Impossible Project's new book, "101 Ways To Do Something Impossible." You can purchase the book here and get inspired by all kinds of ideas you never though possible with impossible film. 

Tumblr seems like the place to be on Friday night for art. Grateful to SFMOMA for posting my work "Surreal Venice" on their blog. Cheers to many hours of Photoshop - it is such a powerful tool. 

The breakdown of Surreal Venice:

1) Alleyway in Venice, Itay (film)

2) London police officer (film)

3) Train tracks in Treviso, Italy (film)

4) Sky & Clouds in Santa Monica (film)

5) Einstein Art (digital)

6) Dog Art (digital)

7) Vincent Van Gogh Art (digital) 

I scanned the analog images and opened all of the photos in Photoshop. The challenge was not only in manipulating the perspectives to look right but adjusting the various light/contrast of the images to make them appear as if someone had taken a photograph of this scene... making the surreal look photo-real. 

I am really excited to share that Michael Shanks, Stanford University Professor in the Archaeology, Design and Science, Techology and Society departments, agreed to write the foreword to my Public Pay Phone Project book.

I am more than thrilled because it was from his class, "Science, Technology and Design," that I saw products and things not just for their elements of form, function and engineering but as artifacts with deeper socio-cultural implications.

The education I received in this class continues to influence my photographic lens. Professor Shanks responded to my request to write the foreword with the same enthusiasm he approaches his courses. When in lecture, one will be sure to feel teleported as if in a London theatre where a melange of ideas come to life in unexpected ways rather than a mundane classroom in California.

The foreword is below and on Professor Shank's wonderful blog, where I invite you to become part of the discourse.

Look for the book to come out later this year in both physical and digital formats. For further news and updates visit the Facebook Fan Page for Public Pay Phone Project.

The updated current book cover design: 

FOREWORD:

Maybe they were never quite where you wanted them to be, but away from home, out of the office or workplace, seeking anonymity perhaps, or simply without a phone and needing to make a call, the pay phone offered its services. Now they are so little needed; mobile phones have taken over.

Without serious reflection, I have begun in the past tense: this is what public pay phones were. Deborah Yun’s photos carry the narrative of the end of the pay phone.

Mobile phones accompany us. Pay phones offered a convenience on the street: to stop and make a call in our comings and goings. In this, though fixed in place, pay phones were part of our experience of mobility, as, indeed, are mobile phones. Located media devices, pay phones and mobile phones are features of our engagement with place, with the street, street flow, comings and goings, encounters. In extending our reach, connecting us even globally, phones have become essential prostheses, material appendages to our modern selves.

The mobile phone stays within reach, within our personal space. When we lose it, we might typically experience a personal loss, even though the phone may well be less than a year old and is exactly the same as millions of others. On the street the pay phone may draw more or less attention to itself, being a subject of more, or typically less, respect in the hands of its users. Rarely, after but a short time of use, few standard pay phones remain looking exactly alike. Attached advertisements, graffiti, wear and tear, minor acts of vandalism, litter and grime, odors of specific and nonspecific origin, all accumulated through everyday use, added individuality to each pay phone. And, of course, pay phones were all different by virtue of being fixed in different places. There are pay phones I know where I grew up in the north of England that have been there for as long as I remember and probably for decades more. Pay phones were part of the landscape.

Now the evolution of media is bringing about their disappearance. Not quite yet: some hang on, little cared for, and empty hutches and booths remain. There will always be some: internet enabled in an airport, for example. But the neglect, rot and ruin is terminal; we have moved on.

We are encouraged to forget the materiality of media and their instruments and devices. The digital coding of our messaging may seem abstract and disembodied in contrast to the physical translation and transformations of analogue media, where our vocal cords move the air in micro vibrations that are picked up by a diaphragm and converted into electrical impulses carried down a cable. The words carried down the line, and for which, of course, we acquire our phones, may seem to have no tangible or recognizable material form, other than what we might understand by the description I have just given. And however much we understand the technology of telephony, the ideal is transparency, where we don’t notice the medium. We don’t want or need to know about the medium as mechanism. It seems a problem, a dysfunctional feature of a phone, interference or distraction when we notice the crackle of a poor line. And we certainly don’t wish to notice during conversation that the handset of a public pay phone is sticky from we know not what. And while the physical allure of a device such as the iPhone is so much part of its design - touch interface through the dark gloss of glass, the rapid cycle of innovation in consumer electronics guarantees that desire and obsolescense will soon lead to the purchase of another.

Deborah’s wonderful photographs testify eloquently and profoundly to this materiality of media. Here are the material textures of the way one particular medium, telephony, still inhabits our everyday lives. We are directed to see what we overlook, the matter that carries the message. Here, unpacked for us in its quotidian banality, is the material expression of the relationship at the heart of all communication and information—signal and noise, the messages sent out by virtue only of all that carries them. And in the demise of this particular system of mobile telephony, the noise is rising. Deborah has us contemplate the sedimentary accretions and local associations, the ghostly figures in the background, passing by, the architectures and locales.

And more. Deborah presents us with images captured digitally on her own mobile iPhone, and those, the black and white series, produced through conventional film and silver chemistry. The juxtaposition of analogue and digital is, of course, so appropriate to the changing forms of mobile telephony. The photographs themselves witness the palpable materiality of media in the grain and pixel, the viewpoint of lens, the processing and manipulation of both silver chemistry and digital sensor data, and their delivery through print in this book before us.

We are invited to consider the implications of these metamorphoses as the future takes hold and the past recedes into junk on a street. This is the media archaeology of the public pay phone.

Michael Shanks

Hoskins Professor of Archaeology Metamedia, Stanford Archaeology

Center Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University

August 2012

Excited to share that I was chosen as an Emerging Artist on One Kings Lane, with some of my personal favorites of my Santa Monica and Santa Cruz photography. See my work here, I'm in the company of some talented artists!

"We love your Santa Monica photographs on One Kings Lane! Glad our beautiful city can inspire you. Can't wait to see what you capture next!" - The City of Santa Monica Travel Bureau

While in San Francisco covering the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge for the Epoch Times Newspaper, I stopped by Chinatown and saw this amazing mural of the American flag.

I'm not sure what I felt when I first saw it. My first thoughts were, I love the light... as if the rays were highlighting the American Dream.

My parents immigrated from Korea. They didn't go to college and are still working on their English but they worked hard to put us through school. To them that was their greatest accomplishment, giving us an education they never had.

I wonder what this American Dream means to immigrant families today, or if it has just become what it is in this photo - a passing backdrop - waiting for some light to set the stage for a new generation of dreams.

It was quite the experience celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some of my personal highlights were visiting the International Orange Artists' Exhibition at Fort Point, to see the life size camera obscura exhibit by photographer, Abelardo Morell's Vertigo, and of course the fireworks! View more of my photos of the event here.

I recently just received the first print of my Public Pay Phone Project, which is a 2 in 1 book! It was tons of work. I'm looking forward to making it available to the public soon! The first part of the book will have my black and white film photographs of pay phones I have taken around the world. Public Pay Phone Project II is really the back cover of the book - turned upside down to make another front cover.

In Part II, I use the very technology that is rendering these pay phones obsolete - iphones - as the modality through which I document them. The iphone series also serves to contrast the black and white analog series with vibrant colors and digital iphone filter treatments.  To learn more about the project read here.

I visited Fresno City Hall with my brother to see my work displayed on the second floor. Here are the pieces that were chosen for the exhibit:

"Fall Up" - Japanese Gardens

"Once Upon a Time" - Historic Millerton Courthouse

To my delight, I also discovered what once was a grouping of pay phones... off to the side on your way to the restrooms. Will be sure to add this to my growing pay phone iPhone series!  I wonder what will happen to these vacant spaces. 

My brother zens out while I got a little carried away taking pictures of the pay phones! 

My image, "Reaching Out," taken with an iPhone 4s, was selected to be a part of the iSPY: CAMERA PHONE PHOTOGRAPHY Exhibit at the Kiernan Gallery. The book of selected works is now available for purchase through Blurb. 

I shot this using Instagram and the X-pro II filter. Hooray for Instagram! You can follow my Instagram feed @deborahyun. 

My photo, "La Mia Venezia," is featured in the 2012 Love Exhibition on Lenscratch along with a diverse group of artists today. Come to think of it, I've taken quite a number of pictures of gondolas in Venice but never enjoyed being in one myself... I guess I was just too busy shooting! Next time I think I'll savor the experience without the camera. Dreaming about being in Italy on this Valentine's Day, hope you all have a beautiful one :) 

I recently shot some product photos for YourBeesWax on Etsy and learned quite a few things. For one, these Christmas star ornaments are no ordinary stars... they are made of 100% pure beeswax, straight from a local bee-keeping supplier. They will not only leave your tree looking stellar, but smelling like holiday honey :) They come in a box of 10.

Cube candles!! They look so yummy like mini appetizers :) See more here: "Cube Bee Votives"

Did you know that "beeswax is the only wax that is 100% clean burning and naturally emits ions that clean the air and invigorate the body?" See that bright flame below? Beeswax also has the highest melting point of any known wax 149 F / 65 C!! This particular tall all natural candle burns 11 hours of warm honey essence and can be found here.

If you are out and about in the area today and up for some live music, holiday cookies & hot beverages... hop on over to:

Intermountain Nursery - 30443 N. Auberry Rd. Prather, CA 93651 from 10am-4pm 

I have been working on shooting pay phones in black and white film for several years now. It's quite a bit of work to shoot, process and print film. I think I need a mini project that I can finish quicker to sustain my creative mojo. Just got my new iphone4s and inspired to shoot a bright color version... that's not so technical and s e r i o u s. To see the original black and white film series click here: PublicPayPhoneProject

Thanks to Tim for going strong 14+ hours to live stream the Occupy Wallstreet Protest. Watch it here:

Live streaming by Ustream

pigs play next to garlic & sunshine.  To see more in this series: inside a korean mom's house.

The year I spent living in Italy was one of the best years of my life.  My first visit to Venice, Italy was during the annual Carnevale di Venezia.  I submitted this photo to Lenscratch, a wonderful blogzine by Aline Smithson.  Just a couple more days to submit, (Theme: Masks, Costumes & Halloween) enter your photo too!