Sunday, November 15, 2009

2009 Seoul Lantern Festival — Saturday night pictures . . .

Julianne and I returned to the 2009 Seoul Lantern Festival on its final night this past Saturday . . .

It was pretty cold and windy outside, and there were thousands of people there . . .

I was using my Canon D400, a Sigma 10-22mm lens, and my Speedlite 580EXII flash . . . I think I got some pretty nice shots.

I guess some things I might mention about the festival are . . . I was shocked to see a pretty significant safety patrol/police presence along the stream’s icy water. At one point a police officer began yelling across the stream at a father with a baby in his arms for stepping down onto rocks next to the stream to get his picture taken–I was VERY IMPRESSED to see a police officer doing something about a high risk behavior because during the five years I’ve been in Korea I have NEVER seen a police officer do anything remotely like this.

A friend of mine commented on how she liked that about 50-60% of the people were trying to be respectful about not bashing into each other, and especially if you were taking a picture. All too often in Korea the higher social rank person (or someone who “thinks” they’re a higher social rank, or often is just walking around in a ‘bubble’ oblivious to others not in their social circle) pretends not to see you and just ‘walks through you’ or rams into you/bumps you/shoulders you aside as they walk by regardless of what you’re doing at the time. The crowd that was out at the festival was less push and more respectful than is, unfortunately, the norm at festivals with large crowds (at least in my own personal experience).

Another thing that shocked me was that there was a LINE UP at the stairs next to the small waterfalls head of the stream concert stage area–I was really surprised by this, and the fact that no one was trying to bud in line or pretend not to see the 100-200 people long line up. WOW is all I have to say about that too–apparently there are some major cultural changes going on somehow in terms of street festival etiquette or something . . .


Click on the link below to see pictures and read more at Kimchi Icecream: The Second Serving . . . . I've moved over to wordpress.com and will be blogging there from now on.

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