Choong Ahn High School, Seoul, South Korea -- Fall pictures, a soccer game, and a magpie . . .

Today was "Open House" at the high school . . . but I also heard other variations on the idea: parents day, parents visiting day, and a few others. I didn't really see many parents myself as I spent most of the day at my desk because classes my classes had been canceled due to a controversial nation wide test (see here for more info).

I put the time to good use, though, and did prep work for classes tomorrow, and next week.

When I finished work I headed outside to see a beautiful fall day. Here's a shot of the main building on the campus.

I was using my Sigma 18-200 lens, and should have switched over to my Sigma 10-22mm to get the whole building in the shot--but it's still a nice picture, I think.

The trees are beginning to show their fall colors . . . I can't wait until there are large patches of trees in fall colors. I've been told to return to Chang Deok Gung/Palace (see here for Part 1, and here for Part 2 of my pics of the palace) in a week or two because there are a lot of trees on the palace grounds and in the fall it's really awesome.

I then walked around for a while taking pics . . .

I'm beginning to explore black and white photography more on my camera . . .

This tree lies in a court yard that is behind the main building with 3 other buildings that surround it. This tree could be in a Harry Potter movie . . . I love its lines and character. I'll take more pics of it later.

After taking pics here I realized that the guys were playing a soccer game on the massive astro-turf field that sits on the rear part of the campus.

I turned on my camera's Artificial Intelligence Servo setting, and began taking shots and trying to tweak the settings so that I might get some good shots with my 18-200mm lens (I think a bigger super zoom lens would work better but I don't have one--yet).

The guys were playing hard, and it was fun watching them while trying to take some good shots.

I'm hoping to do a fall photo shoot of the entire school grounds over the next couple weeks--you can get an idea of how nice the campus is from the background here in this shot (below), but The Marmot's Hole has a gorgeous set of pictures here that I'll be hard pressed to top.

Anyways, I took shots for about 40 minutes . . .

After the game ended I began to walk off campus but ran into my favorite Korean bird . . .

I've been trying to get good shots of the magpie for 2 years now, and finally think I managed to get some.

He looks really different from the front when you can't see the blue coloring on his wings.

After wrapping up my photo shoot with the magpie I headed to Yongsan to meet a friend who wanted some camera shopping tips . . .

Well, time to go to bed . . . g'night all.

J