May 22, 2014 by mysocalledcreativelife

Under a Moonlit Sky: A Night Tour of Changdeokgung Palace

About a week ago, I had the opportunity to do a moonlit tour of Changdeokgung Palace. I had visited the palace the past fall, but this was an opportunity to see the palace in a new light (literally). During this year from April to November, the palace offers up moonlit tours twice a month, on the full moon and one day next to it.

I love evening tours, and figured this would be a good opportunity to do some night photo shooting as well. The tour started at the main gate at 2000, at which point, it was almost completely dark. Luckily for us, the weather was good, though a tiny bit hazy, so it wasn’t a perfectly clear moonlit night.

At least it didn’t rain though. We were taken through parts of the palace grounds, from the main hall, to different out buildings. We didn’t actually enter any of the buildings, but we were able to look inside. We had lanterns to guide us on the trail, which was convenient for some of the stairs.

After seeing some of the buildings, we were taken back to the Secret Garden. We didn’t see the full tour of the Secret Garden like I did during a day tour, but the most scenic places of the garden, like the Buyongjeong Pavilion were shown. All the buildings were very lushly lit and it was made for some nice photography.

The actual walking tour of the grounds took about 90 minutes, and the last 30 minutes was a sampling of cultural performances. We were treated to a variety of Korean dance, opera and traditional music in an open air setting, so it was pleasantly cool by this point in the evening. It was a good opportunity to see different aspects of Korean culture you might not be able to see. We were also given some traditional Korean tea and sweets to enjoy the performance.

This tour is geared more toward cultural awareness rather than photography, which is why tripods are specifically banned in the advertisement for the tour. However, in my group there were numerous people who brought and used tripods and the tour guides did not prevent anyone from using them. I know my pictures would have turned out better if I had brought my tripod.

This is not a tour open to just anyone. This is a tour just for foreigners, so no Koreans are allowed to attend. Three languages are offered for the tours: English, Japanese and Chinese. The tickets are easy to buy online through Interpark, and you pick up your ticket at the venue after 1930 the day of the event. Tickets cost 30,000 won per person, and I believe one person can reserve two tickets at a time. Make sure you bring some form of an ID, such as a passport to prove your identity when you check in at the palace. The total tour lasts around two hours, so figure you will spend 2000-2200 in the evening there. Changdeokgung Palace is easily reached from metro line 3 (Anguk stop, exit 3), and it is a few hundred meters up the road, or you can walk to the palace from metro stop Jongno-3(sam)-ga (Lines 1,3,5, exit 7).

If you like moonlit tours, particularly of palaces, and would like to see a different aspect of Korean culture, I highly recommend the tour.

May 21, 2014 by mysocalledcreativelife

Luscious Fall Colors at Changdeokgung Palace and the Secret Garden

Last fall I took my mom to visit Changdeokgung Palace when she came to visit Korea. I had visited the palace on a previous tour, but not during fall. At the time, the fall leaves were just a bit past peak color, but they were still vibrant enough to make you stop and stare.

We got to the palace relatively early, because we had a full day planned of palace visiting and walking around Seoul. We first did the Secret Garden tour, which is to the rear of Changdeokgung Palace, and actually makes up the bulk of the complex.

You can only access the garden via a guided tour, of which there are multiple ones throughout the day, in both Korean and English. However there are only two tours in English, at 1130 and 1430.

The garden was designed for the private pleasure of the king and his family. It has a wide variety of buildings, gardens, ponds, flowers, and trees, some of which are hundreds of years old.

The highlight of the Secret Garden tour is the Buyongjeong Pavilion on the Buyongjeong Pond, which was restored a couple of years ago.

The tour of the Secret Garden lasts about two hours, and it moves at a leisurely pace. You definitely have plenty of time to enjoy the scenery, listen to the tour guide and take pictures.

This was definitely one of the most beautiful places to see in Seoul in the fall. There are many places that have colorful leaves, but the Secret Garden has some of the greatest concentration of fall beauty.

Changdeokgung Palace is easy to get to, since it is centrally located in Seoul. You can reach it via metro line 3 (Anguk stop, exit 3), and it is a few hundred meters up the road, or you can walk to the palace from metro stop Jongno-3(sam)-ga (Lines 1,3,5, exit 7). There are separate English language tours for the palace (though you can walk through most of the palace grounds on your own) and the garden (guided tour required). It is open from 0900-1700 (winter) or 1830 (summer).

If you like palaces, and especially if you love beautiful gardens, this is definitely a palace to visit. And if you have the opportunity to visit it in the fall, that is even better.

February 12, 2014 by mysocalledcreativelife

Everland Snow and Romantic Illumination Festival

There are a couple things I love about winter. I love the cold weather, the clear days when I can feel the winter chill and see the cool tint of the full winter sun. Even though I don’t get the opportunity all that often, I love snow tubing. When I was a kid I used to ski on occasion, but I don’t do that now, and I never learned to snowboard. However, sledding/snow tubing is a lot of fun, and I like speeding down the mountain in a rubber tube. Korea does have its ski resorts, but I’ve never been THAT motivated to go deep into the mountains to get my sledding fix.

However at some of the Seoul amusement parks, they set up small sledding parks for fun. It’s nothing like black diamond sled runs or anything like that, but it allows you to get your winter play fix conveniently. I chose to go to Everland, which is the same amusement park I went to for my Halloween jollies back in the fall. Everland was a good choice, because they simultaneously had their Snow Festival and their Romantic Illumination Festival. And since night illuminations are another thing I love about winter, I couldn’t pass it up.

I had the opportunity to go to Everland on a Monday, which proved to be a very fortuitous choice. I figured there wouldn’t be THAT many people there, because most people would be at work or school. I was definitely right, because compared to what I’ve seen on the weekend, the park was practically deserted. Most of the rides were open (though not their biggest thrill rides, because it was winter), but I was only there for two reasons: to sled as much as possible, and to enjoy night illuminations after darkness fell.

There were three sledding runs available: the Snow Buster for little kids only, the Jungfrau a gentler sled run, and the Eiger, which is for older kids/adults. Yes, there were height requirements to go sledding here, and attendants actually had a measuring stick to ensure little kids were tall enough. The sled runs are very straightforward. You get towed up to the top of the hill in your tube, and then you slide down, turn in your tube, get in line to get another one, and do it again. The only difference between the Jungfrau and the Eiger sled runs, is that the Eiger is a bit steeper and longer, so you get more speed and the thrill is a bit greater.

I did a few runs on the Jungfrau just to warm up. This sled run had more people, because it was easier and little kids could ride it. I have a feeling that the line to get a tube and up the hill on the weekend can get rather long, but since this was a Monday, it only took about 10-15 minutes to wait.

Afterward, I moved up the hill to the Eiger sled run, where I could get much more speed. This was where the sparse attendance really paid off. Basically there was no line to get a tube. It took longer to be towed to the top, than to get an inner tube. I was able to be towed up to the top, slide down, and immediately get a new tube to go back up again. I took advantage of all this to just continually do sled runs until I got too hungry.

After dinner, the sun was setting, so it was just a matter of time before it got dark enough to really enjoy the night illuminations at their gardens. Since it is the middle of winter, there were no actual flowers in the garden, and all the delicate plants were wrapped in thick straw to protect them from the weather. This was a good opportunity to take some beautiful low light pictures. I particularly enjoyed all the different gardens around Seoul that offer night illuminations during the winter. It may be very cold at night, but it just adds to the beauty of the setting.

The illuminated gardens offered up a castle fountain, a fairy tale carriage, wide variety of trees, faux marble columns, and the like. Because it was a weekday, the park closed earlier than it does on weekends, but it was more than enough time to see everything and take it all in. And since it was a weekday, I didn’t have to fight hordes of people to take pictures.

I recently started working with the manual settings on my DSLR, because I’m taking a digital photography class to improve my skills. Up until now, I’ve only used the automatic settings on my camera, but this trip was a good opportunity to try the manual settings to experiment with ISO, shutter speed and f/stop.

I decided to take pictures on my night landscape setting and then experiment with manual settings to see the difference. Since this was a low light setting, it was critically important that manual settings allowed for the camera to capture enough light. This was my first go at it, and it was OKAY. I quickly discovered that using an ISO setting of 800 with my other manual settings wasn’t getting the job done, so I bumped it up to ISO 3200. I knew this wasn’t ideal, because the higher the ISO setting, the more grain in the picture. I ended up adjusting the f/stop down as low as my camera lens would allow (f3.8), which certainly did have a noticeable positive difference.

I didn’t realize my biggest mistake until later when I was able to examine the settings on my pictures taken with the night landscape setting and compare them to what I had for my manual setting pictures. I knew that my ISO was higher than desirable, but I had the f/stop correct. However, I was WAAAY off with the selected shutter speed. I had my camera set for 1/125, which is way too fast for a low light setting. My night landscape setting photos had a shutter speed of 1/8, which is much slower to allow more light in.

So the day was a productive one. I got all my snow tubing jollies out of my system. I got to enjoy the delightful night illuminations that make me feel that I was walking in a winter fantasy land. And it was a good opportunity to learn more about what my camera is capable of, and what I need to do to take beautiful night photos.

February 10, 2014 by mysocalledcreativelife

Holiday Decoration Fun in Korea and New Zealand

From a decoration standpoint, Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. I adore the gorgeous lights that adorn the cities. It makes everything so beautiful. I had time to enjoy holiday decorations in Seoul before I went to New Zealand for the actual holidays. One evening was spent touring the downtown area and got quite an eyeful. Many parts of the city, particularly major department stores, had a wide variety of holiday decorations and illuminations, plus there were the Christmas street stores at local markets, like Namdaemun.

The department stores were bright with exterior illumination and both real and fake trees were lit up.

The nearby Hilton Hotel also had plenty of beautiful interior decorations of trees and one of the biggest holiday train sets I’ve seen.

I got to New Zealand a little over a week before Christmas. While I was out on the hiking trail for actual Christmas day, the decorations were still up for everyone to enjoy later in the month.

The storefront decorations at the Christchurch department store, Ballantynes, were particularly interesting. It was like a cross between Candyland and Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory. They were kind of odd in a pleasing way. It was nice to see decorations that were sort of fantasical, with a hint of creepy, instead of gooey sweet decorations.

I spent New Year’s Eve in Christchurch. I had hoped to do it in Queenstown, because I heard their NYE celebrations were insane (though some of that insanity was mitigated by the ban on alcohol in public places), but my vacation schedule didn’t really work out that way. I arrived back in Christchurch from Arthur’s Pass in the early evening and enjoyed my final meal of 2013 at a local Korean restaurant (though the Korean food seemed a bit New Zealandized).

If you want to have a crazy New Years celebration, Christchurch isn’t the best place to do it. The public celebration in Hanley Park was specifically designated alcohol free, and there was a city-wide liquor ban on walking around with booze outside. So I hung out in my hostel room enjoying my bottle of sparkling wine until shortly before midnight. I didn’t really care to sit in a park listening to bands I didn’t know. But I was interested in the fireworks display (fireworks pretty!), so I showed up shortly before midnight. Fireworks went off, people scattered and I went back to my hostel. It was very sedate NYE, and once again, it was a NYE on my own in a foreign country.

June 26, 2013 by mysocalledcreativelife

Seoul Grand Park Rose Festival 2013

The month of June produces many different rose festivals across Korea. The one I visited this past weekend is hosted at Seoul Grand Park Rose Garden. It’s only a 2o minute subway ride on Line 4 from central Seoul, and about a 10 minute walk from the subway stop.

Since the month of June is winding down, peak rose blossoming had already hit, and the roses were slowly dying. However, there were still plenty of beautiful roses to be enjoyed in their bright, delicate, fragrant beauty.

I was at the garden right when it opened, so there was plenty of peace and quiet to enjoy the utter beauty of all the roses. Plus a soft rain had fallen earlier in the morning, so all the roses were sprinkled with delicate water droplets. All of the roses were very fragrant, but it was interesting to notice all the different fragrances. Many of them were the traditional rose scent, but I was very fascinated by the roses that had a sweet, lemon scent to it, because I had never encountered roses like that. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of flower closeups. I kept imagining turning these pictures into beautiful, closeup flower paintings. Let’s see how well they turn out when I finally get my art supplies into these projects.

May 15, 2013 by mysocalledcreativelife

Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival 2013 Cultural Experiences

Sunday was the third day of the Lotus Lantern Festival, and that day is all about cultural experiences. The street in front of Jogyesa Temple is turned into a street fair dedicated to all things Buddhism. Over 100 different booths are set up enabling participants to learn many different things.

Examples: different forms of Buddhism in different countries.

Try different tasty Buddhist foods, like Mongolian cookies and rice dishes:

There are also many opportunities to try a wide variety of crafts. There are more crafts than one can do in one day. Participants can make paper lotus flowers. They can craft a bracelet of Buddhist prayer beads. You can make Korean paper or lotus shaped candles. You can decorate masks or make clay objects.

But my absolutely favorite activity at this festival was making a full size paper lotus lantern. The festival as an area marked off for foreigners to make lotus lanterns.

The activity is completely free and you are given all the materials you need to make a lotus lantern in a variety of colors. Some people made unicolor lanterns that resembled a real life lotus flower. And other lanterns were a rainbow of bright colors. Making a lantern is rather time consuming, but pleasantly contemplative.

It’s actually a bit more involved than you might think having to twist and glue every sheet of paper onto the lantern.

But it’s all worth it at the end when you have your very own colorful lotus lantern to take home with you.

Overall the Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival is one of the best festivals I’ve ever been to. The setting in Jogyesa Temple, decked out with thousands of colorful lotus lanterns is beautiful. The parade is quite a sight to behold. And the cultural experiences day is an enjoyable learning experience.

May 13, 2013 by mysocalledcreativelife

Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival Parade 2013 part 2

My favorite part of the Lotus Lantern Festival was the abundance of lantern floats that look absolutely amazing at night. These floats ranged from traditional images like dragons and tigers to more contemporary images of children’s cartoons. These floats are just a select few that I particularly loved.

What was interesting about so many of these floats is that they were pushed by hand for the entire parade route. There were some outsize floats that were driven by a vehicle, but more often than not, you would see a group of individuals pushing the float.

My favorite floats were the abundance of dragons. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for dragons. Partly because they are just so exotic and beautiful looking (especially Asian dragons), but also because I am a Dragon in Chinese astrology

Capturing these floats at night was an interesting challenge. I have a pretty good camera with an excellent night landscape setting. What it doesn’t do as well (or should I say I haven’t found the right settings) is capturing images at night in motion. More than once, my camera would take too long to focus and either the float passed me by, or the image was blurry. The amount of ambient light from surrounding businesses didn’t help either.

I would highly recommend the Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival Parade (well, the entire festival, but more on that in a follow on post). As I mentioned before, this is probably the longest parade I have witnessed, and there are so many beautiful floats to marvel and enjoy.

May 12, 2013 by mysocalledcreativelife

Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival Parade 2013 part 1

Saturday, May 11th 2013 was the annual Lotus Lantern Festival Parade held in conjunction with the Lotus Lantern Festival. The festival is to honor Buddha’s Birthday and this year the main festival was held May 10-12. The weekend is packed with a variety of religious and cultural experiences that are a lot of fun and informative. The highlight of the festival is the parade held on Saturday night. This parade is one of the best and the longest I have seen. The parade starts at Dongdaemun, the old east gate of Seoul and current home to a large market. It continues west down Jongno Street to the final destination of Jogyesa Temple, the center of the Lotus Lantern Festival. The parade lasts about two hours and consists of a wide variety of lighted lantern floats and marching groups carrying many different types of lanterns.

I decided to view the parade closer to the ending point about a 10 minute walk from Jogyesa Temple. When you’re short like I am, it is highly critical to get a good vantage spot to view a parade. The city actually sets up a couple rows of seats for people to sit in and watch the parade along parts of the parade route. I initially assumed that they were reserved for tour groups who paid for them, only to discover (a bit too late) that anyone can sit in them. Even when I get higher up, it seems to happen that someone much taller than me stands right in front of me, so I spend the entire parade jockeying my camera for a good position.

It was interesting to contrast the traditional beauty, meaning and celebration of the parade with the neon signs for modern businesses like Starbucks Coffee and Dunkin Donuts right in the background. Seoul is a very modern city with pockets of traditionalism tucked within it.

Tourists even have the opportunity to participate in the Lotus Lantern Parade through a special program that consists of lantern making, dinner, walking the actual parade, and the after parade festivities. The catch is that you have to register for it in advance. I didn’t do it this time, but next year I want to experience the Lotus Lantern Parade as fully as I can.

April 28, 2013 by mysocalledcreativelife

Bukhansan National Park Red Autumn painting

Autumn in Korea is my favorite time in the country. The weather is cooler and less humid, which makes hiking so much more pleasant than during parts of the Korean summer when the humidity makes you feel like you just took a shower after stepping outside, and sometimes the monsoon rains gives you a real shower. But most of all, the reason I love Korean autumns is that the landscape come alive with bright, beautiful colors. Korea is a very mountainous country and there are numerous forests populated with trees that change color and foliage for the seasons. These bright colors of nature inspire me to create art.

The art my eye is drawn to, either as a viewer of art or as a creator of art, is bright and colorful paintings. I’ve never been a fan of dark, dreary realist paintings and preferred paintings that pop with color. Likewise the art I want to make is the colorful world around me. This makes autumns the perfect time to capture images to create paintings later.

The mediums I used for this painting were a watercolor under painting in greens and browns, watercolor pencil for the trees, and hard pastels for the foliage. I felt the combination of mediums would be ideal to achieve the effects I wanted. This was the first time I used an under painting, and I was really pleased with the result for the most part, though next time I should fade out the colors of the under painting more to make the colorful leaves pop to a greater degree. In the past, one of the frustrating things about using white paper for paintings is that the teeth of the paper showed through and marred the overall effect I was trying to achieve. Putting down the green/brown under painting enabled me to build the trees and leaves on top of the under painting and thus achieve a greater illusion of depth. The viewer can see the green poking through in parts of the painting to look like real nature. The big lesson I did learn for improvement with this painting, is that I should use an under painting for the leaves as well. This became readily apparent when I started to apply the pastels for the leaves. I prefer hard pastels, because I personally find soft pastels to be rather messy. Even though the pastels are hard, they have varying degrees of hardness and softness. The whites, yellows, and even the oranges to a certain degree were reasonably soft and therefore easy to build up layers of color to produce realistic-looking leaves. I ran into trouble with the red pastels though. That color was substantially harder and it was more difficult to apply the red color to the existing under painting. The reds didn’t pop the way I wanted them to, unlike the yellows and oranges, because they didn’t layer well. It was also more apparent for parts of the painting where the leaves overlaid branches. I initially used masking fluid to block out the tree branches before applying the under painting, so when the fluid was removed, the paper was white. Due to the hardness of the pastels, it didn’t build up layers of color easily and the whiteness of the paper can be seen behind parts of the painting. Overall though, I was rather pleased with this effort, since it was the first one like it that I painted. I think I mirrored the reference photo well enough (though it wasn’t a complete duplication), and captured the brilliant reds, oranges and yellows of this landscape.

This is the reference photo used for the painting. It was taken in Bukhansan National Park on a fine sunny October afternoon. The park is located within the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area, which makes it readily accessible for urban hikers. Visitors can easily reach the park by taking subway Line 3 to Gupabal station, exit 1 and then Bus 704 or 34 to Bukhansan National Park. Just follow the hordes of people in hiking gear to the trailhead and follow the signs for the trails from there. The park’s location within Seoul means that this park is convenient not just to you, but to everyone (approximately 25 million people) in the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area. While beautiful, particularly during autumn, this is not a place for solitary hiking, so know before you go. Crowds are numerous on the weekends, though if you want to beat them as much as possible, start very early. Yes, there will be early hikers, but they are the serious hikers and not the slow family walkers. You can walk as much as you want and turn around at any point, since the trail is well marked with signs and distances. The trail can be a bit uneven and steep in places, but for the most part, the trail is suitable to regular hikers. One word of advice though. Since this park is reached via a bus and not a direct subway stop, there is a high potential for running into long lines at the main bus stop for the park. When I went, I made it to the bus stop not long after sunset, and it took me an hour to get on a bus to go to back to the subway. The smart hikers in the know walked further up the road to catch an earlier bus stop and avoid the main bus stop with the very long lines. After all, once a bus was full of people from the early stops, it would just drive by the main stop. If you like hiking and love beautiful nature (particularly in autumn), Bukhansan National Park has much to offer for hikers, nature enthusiasts and landscape artists to be inspired.

April 21, 2013 by mysocalledcreativelife

Seoul Cherry Blossoms 2013

Springtime in Korea means many things. It means longer days, bright sunshine, an end to bitterly cold winters. And my favorite thing- the blossoming of Korean flowers. All throughout the countryside different flowers start to bloom beginning in March and continuing throughout spring. Among my favorite flowers are the numerous cherry blossoms that are spread throughout the city. This year I went to two different areas of Seoul to partake in the amazing beauty of the cherry blossom trees- Yongsan and Yeouido. What I love about Yongsan is the view of the urban landscape surrounding the area of the city broken up by bright, beautiful cherry trees lining the roadways.

I think this photos sums up the contradictions that is South Korea at the moment. It is a very beautiful country, with a rich history, fabulous temples and palaces and ancient ruins, gorgeous nature, mountain views and colorful trees and flowers. But it is also undeniable that just to the north lies their sister Korea, separated by the Demilitarized Zone since 1953 and technically still in a state of war, though there is an armistice in place (now whether or not North Korea REALLY abides by that now remains to be seen). The greater metropolitan area of Seoul is well within the range of North Korean long range artillery, and security is often in the back of your mind (particularly nowadays with North Korean rhetoric at a particular fever pitch). This picture juxtaposes the delicate, ephemeral beauty that is the Korean cherry blossoms against the cold, hard concertina wire designed to protect both military and civilian alike and provide security.

It’s hard not to delight in the innocent wonder of the massive amounts of cherry tree blossoms. I wanted to capture all the images to create paintings from them later.

What I like about Yongsan is that it is comparatively empty. It’s easier to get up close and personal with the cherry trees in relative peace, quiet and solitude. For a different experience, I recommend attending the Yeouio Cherry Blossom Festival. Yeouido Island is another excellent location for cherry tree-lined streets in Seoul, just south of the Han River. In fact, part of the Hangang park runs along the northern area of Yeouido Island, and is an excellent area to enjoy a picnic, walk, run or bike along the Han River, and enjoy the gorgeous views of Seoul. Every year the Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival is held-this year from 12-21 April 2013. The bulk of the festival is held around the road surrounding the National Assembly on Yeouido Island. It is easily reached by taking the Seoul subway, Line 9 to National Assembly stop. During the festival, the road is blocked off from traffic, which makes it easier for the thousands of visitors to enjoy the cherry trees, take pictures, enjoy musical performances and just relax with the sunny beauty of a Seoul springtime. This is a beautiful area, though it is definitely not for those who don’t particularly like crowds, since the festival is full of them.

You have to take advantage of the cherry blossom season, because it certainly isn’t long. Cherry trees blossoms last about 7-10 days and then they are gone. Already, the cherry trees are shedding, spreading their delicate petals in the wind like pink-white snowflakes along the sidewalks. Soon all the branches will be bare, and you must another year for spring.

Next year, I want to get farther afield to enjoy different cherry tree festivals, particularly the one held in Hwagae near Jirisan National Park. But if you live in Seoul and just want to see some cherry trees, it is very easy to do so without ever leaving the city.

My So Called Creative Life

Independent world traveler who loves art, food, books and photography

Tag Archives: Seoul

Under a Moonlit Sky: A Night Tour of Changdeokgung Palace

Luscious Fall Colors at Changdeokgung Palace and the Secret Garden

Everland Snow and Romantic Illumination Festival

Holiday Decoration Fun in Korea and New Zealand

Seoul Grand Park Rose Festival 2013

Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival 2013 Cultural Experiences

Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival Parade 2013 part 2

Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival Parade 2013 part 1

Bukhansan National Park Red Autumn painting

Seoul Cherry Blossoms 2013

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