I had the pleasure last Sunday of going up to Ulsan with a great bunch of photographers to shoot some of the industrial zones around the city. The Ulsan Industrial District is home to many of South Korea’s largest industrial projects, including Hyundai Heavy Industries and the third largest oil refinery in the world, operated by SK Energy.

If you’ve looked at my work, you know I’m first and foremost a people photographer. I like people even in my industrial shots to add scale, movement, and a human connection.

As we were shooting on a Sunday evening, there weren’t a lot of people around, so I mostly had to rely on light, detail, and composition to get the dynamic images I wanted. In the lead picture in this post, I was waiting for a car to come around the bend in the road to give the image a little more energy. I was pleasantly surprised when instead of a car, I got a bus, giving me two parallel tracks of red light moving through the picture.

Here are few more shots from the day:

A little about our group:

Photographer Keith Homan kindly offered a group of us from Busan a ride, and once in Ulsan, we met up with one of my favorite landscape/cityscape photographers working in Korea, Jason Teale. Jason has a lot of insights into shooting industry, and he was gracious enough to show us some of his “secret” vantage points from which to photograph the area. Also along on the trip with us was my friend Pete DeMarco from The Nomad Within, and Nathan, Dana, and Scott. I’ve covered enough red carpets and press conferences in Korea to be comfortable working with a large group of pushy and highly competitive photographers. This group, however, was friendly, supportive, and willing to share tips. I look forward to working with everyone again soon!

Here’s a shot of Pete DeMarco hard at work:

And some more of the guys. As you can see, it was cold up there on the rooftop:

Click here for more of my industrial images of South Korea and the US.