Ground Jam Promo Kit: Korea Photographer

At a recent small flash workshop I ran for Flash Light Expeditions here in Seoul, I encouraged one of my students, Damari, to introduce himself to a man sitting closeby our location who he wanted to photograph. That man was Woosik Park, and was more than happy to come over for a portrait in our three light setup of the day. We exchanged numbers after the shoot and kept in touch so that Damari and I might organise a full day’s shooting with Woosik, who turned out to be one member in a 5 man street tapdance troupe called “Ground Jam.”

After a couple of months of being rained out, trying to match schedules, and international travel, we finally managed to organise a day to shoot with the Ground Jam team. We collaborated on the style of images we wanted to produce using a Trello board (my new favourite thing!) to keep everyone in the loop and store all our ideas in one place. Everything from skate magazines to Savion Glover made its way on to that board, and we found ourselves an abandonded warehouse to work in.

Before the shoot, I spoke with them and we decided that for my part in the shoot I would produce a series of promo/editorial shots they could use for posters, flyers, Facebook, and their website. Having this approach in mind allowed me to focus very clearly on creating images for specific use. There would need to be a lot of space in the images for editorial or commercial use, but tighter shots would be needed for Facebook.

A cross-section of all of this came together on the day in a tag team effort between Damari and I. Shot for shot we used the afternoon to create images for Ground Jam. Despite a fence jumping incident requiring me to purchase new shorts (a hard task for anyone larger than your average Korean!), and a concrete nail puncturing the sole of my shoe, we came home with some great images of the guys and a great time to boot.