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By David Smeaton

I always have trouble shooting indirect sunlight. My shots are toobright and overexposed. What can I doto correct this problem and improvemy photos? Jason, Busan

Its ironic tha t a photogra pher s bestfriend is light, but our worst enemy isdirect sun light. It s easy to overexposephotographs. However there are anumber of useful tricks to avoid uglyphotos caused by harsh light.

The best way is to shoot in themorning or afternoon. Avoiding themidday sun is a common photograph-ic philosophy. Cloudy days are greatfor general shooting, as long as youarent photographing landscapes.Alternatively, shoot in places awayfrom glare. Water, glass, shiny metaland bright clothes will all create an-noying reflections.

Generally, the best way to controllight is through shutter speed and aper-ture. Keep your shutter speed high andyour apertur e low to reduce the am ountof light coming into the camera. If youhave to shoot in bright conditions, trylowering your ISO to ma ke your sensorless sensitive to light.

You can also use a circular polarizeron your lens, which will reduce theamount of light and glare by two orthree stops. Polarizers are very handyto keep in your kit. They can makeyour colors more vibrant, as well ascut straight through water to photo-graph what s beneath the sur face. Alens hood is another useful accessory,which can help reduce the amount oflight hitting the lens and remove un-wanted lens flares.

A useful tip, where possible, is tomove into the shade. That will helpyou control th e amount of direct sun-light. But be careful: If its reallybright, you might need to use fillflash to prevent your subject from be-ing hidden in shadow. If you dontwant to use a flash, then a small lightreflector would serve the same pur-pose.

The hardest part of shooting insunlight can be metering your shot.Spot metering is a good method be-cause you can meter directly off yoursubject. Or, pick an area in your shotwith mid-tones so that you can ex-pose everything evenly. Be carefulnot to meter off dark or bright sur-faces, which will drastically overex-pose or underexpose your photos.Take multiple shots and check yourmetering a nd exposure. You can alsotry a technique called bracketing taking a series of shots at differentapertures.

If you want to have some fun, takeadvantage of the bright conditionsand shoot silhouettes. Put your sub- ject between yourself and the lightsource, keep your shutterspeed high,and enjoy the dramatic silhouettesand negative space that can be creat-ed.

Happy shooting.

Send David a message atdavidsm eaton@gmail.com or visit hiswebsite at www.davidsm eaton.com. If you want to be a part of the weeklyPhoto Challen ge, join the Seoul Ph otoClu b gr ou p a t fli ck r (flickr.com/ groups/ seoulphotoclub). Ed.

Photographers

great dilemma

bright sunlight

The law draws remarkably littledistinction between expatriate andmigrant. All foreigners are neatly di-vided into those who need visas tolive and work in their host countryand those who do not. Expatriatesand migrants invariably fall underthe fir st cat egory. Legally, theres nodifference. Socially, th eres all thedifference in the world.

This brings us to this funny oldplace, South Korea, which hasrather a lot of foreigners living andworking long term. Some are mar-ried to Koreans, still more are guestworkers on fixed-term one-year re-newable contracts, filling gaps in thelabor market or at the behest of for-eign corporations investing directlyin the Korean economy.

The English field as a whole em-ploys about 30,000, who are engagedin ELT and related fields. In fact, wecould probably better describe youraverage EFL instructor as a white-collar migrant worker. Certainly,their experiences here more closelyresemble other migrant groups thanthey do those of the well-heeled cor-porate expat: they are subjected tododgy recruiters and unscrupulousemployers; counterproductive gov-ernment officials and a biased or un-caring media; they experience abuse,non- or late-payment of wages andunreasonable dismissals.

The difference between white-col-lar migrants and blue-collar mi-grants is mostly seen in terms ofwages. White-collar migrants feel possibly by virtue of the fact thatthey hail from developed countriesand therefore have much less to loseif their foray in Korea doesnt workout more comfortable about com-plaining openly or seeking redress.

Perhaps some of the exasperationfelt by corporate expats t owards theubiquitous moaning Englishteacher is down to a failure to un-derstand that migrant workers get adifferent deal when working in for-eign countries. Unfortunately, Koreaprobably has one of the worst recordsfor th e treatment of migrant workersin the developed world.

Why is the experience of legal mi-grant workers so negative in Korea?A number of solutions to the prob-lems of white-collar migrants havebeen touted recently in the KoreanEnglish-language press implyingtha t it is t he foreigners lack of cross-

cultural management skills thatlead them into trouble with Koreanemployers. One person, thinking ofthe teaching profession only, calledfor compulsory cultural training ofincoming English teachers.

He was thinking like an expat, nota migrant worker. Had he consideredhimself lumped in with the plantworkers from Indonesia, Thailand,and the Philippines, perhaps hewould have arrived at a different setof suggestions. While undoubtedlyimportant, qualified instructorsteach in nearly every country in theworld, yet only in Korea is so muchmade of their poor culture skills.

Cultural awareness is withoutdoubt important. Far more impor-tant though, are h aving effective ad-ministrative and legal frameworksfor managing guest workers, astr ong enforcement of civil law, clearcontracts, and most importantly, theemployer should never have toomuch power over the individual.

Employers are interested primarilyin profit margins, not in the humanrights of those they employ. One func-tion of employment law in mostAnglophone countries is to keep in-dustry standards high by making it fi-nancially viable for employers to tr eattheir employees well (or financiallysuicida l if they dont). This concept re-mains underdeveloped in Korea.

In 2006 Amnesty International re-ported many of the abuses that mi-grants complain about here, squaredor cubed in severity for those foreignworkers who, employed legally, experi-ence appalling treatment at the handsof employers and r ecruiters in Korea.

They mention one case where threemonths of non-payment of wages wasdeemed insufficient t o allow a Chinesemigrant worker to leave her job andseek employment elsewhere on thepeninsula. Unable to return home,and unable to leave her abusive em-ployer, and aban doned by the Koreanjustice system, she committed suicideby throwing herself under a train.

The experience of being unable toleave your abusive, unethical em-ployer and having to fight for yourwages is a nigh-universal one here.The difference between migrantsfrom rich countries and migrantsfrom poor ones is that the latt er have

everything to lose if their sojournhere doesnt work out.

Korean immigration law binds themigrant worker regardless of na-tionality to a single employer, andin doing so gives that employer enor-mous power over the individual.

For th e well-heeled corporate expatin Korea ther e is no problem. Her con-tract is robust, signed in her home ju-risdiction, is drafted to global indus-try standards and subject to more rig-orous employment laws of her coun-try of origin and her superiors areforeign. She works with ratherthan for indigenous companies.Where disputes arise, they are dealtwith in the country of origin. (I cannotimagine, even for a second, a foreigncorporate manager seeking redressfor non-payment of wages at t he locallabor board). Not so for the migrantworker, who must often deal with em-ployers who do not have str ong ethics,poorly drafted, unconscionable con-tra cts, and poor working conditions.

Korean civil law is notoriously weak,leaving little room for redress throughthe courts for contractual breaches.

International Treaties do exist topromote good labor practices, espe-cially as the global workforce be-comes ever more mobile. Korea issignatory to several InternationalLabor Organization Treaties, andalso the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights and other instru-ments which could, in theory, protectthe fundamental rights and free-doms of everyone on the peninsula,Korean and foreign.

One could question, however,whether Korea is truly taking its re-sponsibilities under internationallaw seriously, even as a Korean hasascended to th e lofty position of U.N.secretary-general, or intended forforeigners to enjoy the same protec-tion of their fundamental rights asKorean citizens do.

The fundamental rights of free-dom of movement (if foreigners leavetheir jobs, they lose their visa statu s,and are t hus illegal workers) and as-sociation seem to be reserved forKorean nationals, and there was nointention of extending these rights t oguest workers.

Migrant workers pointedly cannot form trade u nions to negoti-ate collectively. Even after a Seoulcourt did rule that they do have thelegal right to form a union, the Labor

Ministry refused to recognize theruling, which is pending appeal. Infact, the entire executive of theMigrant Trade Union was arrestedand deported late last year.

Fundamental rights, though, arerecognized under international lawto apply to everyone. Though notcommonly acknowledged, makingvisas dependent on the employer isarguably a form of indentured, bond-ed labor, widely recognized as a hu-man rights abuse and certainlysomething which Korean nationalsare not subjected to when they seekemployment in the U.K., UnitedStates, or other developed nations.

Without knowing, when a Koreanenterprise employs a foreigner theyare engaging in an international busi-ness activity, and that foreigner willjudge Korea on the basis of their expe-riences with Korean companies.Every unethical act committed by aKorean employer against a foreignworker influences the internationalimage of the countr y, and for th is rea-son alone, the state should seriouslyreconsider t he visa issuan ce practices.

Making a migran ts visa count ry-wide, as it is in neighboring Japan,and permitting foreigners mobility isa relatively cheap and simple movewhich will effect sweeping, positivechanges over the long term, as itmeans that migrant workers canleave bad employers and invest theirskills with good ones. Among otherthings, it will have the effect of en-couraging employers to clean uptheir acts, and reward ethical busi-ness practices.

Aside from serving business inter-ests in the long run, freedom ofmovement and association are fun-damental rights which are upheld inmost liberal democracies can only re-flect well on Korea as it moves to-wards a service-driven, globally fo-cused economy, and increases itsstake in the international arena.

Until then, we are all indentured.The difference is the length of thechain that binds us.

Lucy Johnson has an MA in inter-national law from Handong Inter-national Law School in Pohang.Nothing in this column should be in-terpreted as legal advice. The opin-ions expressed here are her own. Ed.

Lucy Johnson on Law

The indentured foreigner

18 COMMUNITYWEDNESDAYJANUARY 23, 2008

Happiness is a positive cash flow,wrote Fred Adler. While money is noteverything, expatriates generallythink about living and working inKorea through comparing their in-come at home and abroad. This long-term view is extremely importantwhen considering potential maximumincome.

Through increasing your capital in-flows, you can realize your desire tospend which is, after all, a happyside effect of being an expa tria te. Letsface it, most of us are here because themoney is good. Improving your cashflow or income is all about adjustingand focusing time-related goals.Controlling your monthly cash flowmay often appear difficult, but formu-lating and maintaining a budget willhelp you realize where it is all going.

There are several useful budgetcalculators, spreadsheets and free-ware programs available online thatyou can use to give you a better un-derstanding of where you can r ealizeincreased cash flows. Try theConsumer Credit CounselingServices online budget calculat or atwww.cccsatl.org

It would also be a tasty tidbit of self-realization to assess your comparativebudgeting requirements at home andin Korea. If you were working in thesame field at home, how would yourcosts and income in Korea comparewith the same situation at home?

One source of comparative salaryimprovements is in th e housing bene-

fits offered in some employment con-tracts, or the quarter or annual per-formance-based bonuses in others.

In addition, some child-care bene-fits such as full or part ial educationalallotments may be available, depen-dent upon your employer, to furthersweeten your financial standing.

Health and medical costs for insur-ance are often comparatively less ex-pensive here than in other developedcountries.

Extensive subsidized public trans-portation makes vehicle ownershipmuch more of a luxury than a re-quirement, while entertainment andrecreation options are often of mini-mal cost.

Cost of living indices such as thoseavailable at the OECD suggestKoreas consumer pr ice index gains,

at 3.99 percent, are only slightlyabove the overall average at 3.76 per-cent, which fares well for any long-term plan of retaining work here.

From a financial view, the first yearof employment in Korea can often ap-pear to be a neutral or even negativecash flow proposition, especially dis-heartening for new graduates. Buttha t, of course, pr obably isnt th e caseif your stay in Korea involves workingfor a m ultinational corporation.

Too often, it seems a short-termcommitment to work in Korea is madeon the ba sis of ones first em ploymentexperience here, which is often tenu-ous, but which acts as a provingground for whether or not you want toextend your stay here, move on else-where, or head back to your country.

It is of course important to view op-

portunities in Korea as an investmentof time, but it is just as important toenvision a long-term financial futureindependent of short-term imposi-tions, challenges or difficulties. Thebetter you are at seeing the light atthe end the tunn el, the greater the po-tential of positive cash flows, despiteserious impediments such as t he dai-ly challenges of living and working ina foreign country where the cultureof working a nd doing business is com-paratively, if not entirely unknown toyou.

Unfailing optimism will improveyour chances of success in movingfrom a short-term to a long-term fi-nancial perspective, whatever yoursituation.

Tending to the maintenance of posi-tive cash flows often leads to a desire

to increase them through findingmore lucrative positions, attainingmore education and making a greaterpersonal investment to your own fi-nancial future regardless of yourstarting point.

Moving from a short to a long-termview on your working life in Koreamay be exactly what it t akes to moveyou along your expatriate evolutionfrom spender to cash flow manager.

AceMoney Lite 3.10 is a well-regard-ed and reviewed software availableat www.download.com/AceMoney-Lite/3000-2057_4-10747170.html?tag=lst-5

To contact Daniel, visit his website atcrossculturalreviews.blogspot.com Ed.

Analyzing the long and short term costs of living in KoreaDaniel Costello on Finance

Expat living is a page dedicatedto the issues that affect foreigners'daily lives. It is your page,where you can share stories aboutyour life in Korea. Send storyideas to Matthew Lamers

at mattlamers@heraldm.com

In Regina Waltons interview with Dorothy Nam published last T hursday, acopy editing error resulted in a spelling mistake. The correct spelling shouldhave been Berklee School of Music. The Korea Herald regrets the error. Ed.

PHOTO CHALLENGE This September 2007 photo was taken during one ofthe daily performances of 24 marital arts in Suwon.The performances run fromMarch until December.The styles involve the use of spears, swords,unarmedcombat, and horseback archery. Derek Winchester/ www.flickr.com/photos/Derekwin