nanoomi

OK, so coming home from work Friday, I noticed they’d turned on the fountain for Gwanghwamun Square.

I guess that means it’s finally spring. The yellow dust in the air simply confirmed it.

To mark the arrival of this joyous season, I took the camera for an evening walk in Gwanghwamun, the heart of Seoul’s old downtown and a nice place to shoot photos at night.

Gwanghwamun Fountain and Yi Sun-sin Statue

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I went to Gwanghwamun, City Hall, Lotte Department Store, and Shinsegye Department Store, and took some film of the Christmas lights on display there.

Unfortunately, the new video camera stores photos in a format that is incompatible with iPhoto.  Yep. That’s what I said.  Good ol’ Mr. Steve Jobs has created some of the best video and photo editing, organizing and storing programs out there, that are easy to use and all… and then picked a few arbitrary video and photo formats that won’t work with them.

Yeah, I can buy the decoder program… but I’m pretty choked that I have to, especially when it’s a flippin’ CANON video camera – we’re not talking about some obscure company from Whoknowswherezystan.  Get with the stinking program, Mr. Jobs.

Anyway, without photos, but WITH video (already bought THAT converter)…I give you Christmas lights, 2010.

There’s a lot happening because of the G20.  I haven’t been down to COEX, but my favorite iteration of the G20 so far is this one:

The cute older folks holding up signs are cute…

but I LOVED the stuffed creatures:

Finally, I don’t know what this guy’s deal was, but I’m sure glad he drove by while I had my camera out.

Old news, I guess, but I was just looking through this article and came across this statistic about the rainfall last Tuesday:

The Gangseo region in southwestern Seoul and Gangnam area in the southern part saw 293 mm of rainfall[.]

I live in Gangseo, and had had no idea how bad it really was until later. I woke up to the wild sound of the wind and rain and went back to sleep, opting to stay in until it had mostly stopped. I’d noticed that the ground floor of my building was quite wet, and figured water must have gotten in (it’s on an incline, where you need to go down two steps to the back door, and up four or five steps to the front). There didn’t seem to be any sign of flood or water damage in the area, however (including a nearby basement supermarket).

A few days later, a friend of mine showed me his cell phone photos of his trip back to Banghwa-dong from Bucheon that day, which revealed streets that resembled rivers, and shots taken from the rear door windows of the wake of the taxi in this river.

I decided to look around and found this article which has quite a few photos of the effect of the rain on the Gwanghwamun area, Gwanghwamun subway station, and Kyobo bookstore, as well as Cheonggyecheon.

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And this is one of my (new) favourites:

ISO: 400, Exposure: 1/4 sec, Aperture: 3.5, Focal Length: 18mm

It was Sunday night and I wanted to grab some images of the newly restored Gwanghwamun when it rained for about 10 minutes. Once the shower had cleared Admiral Yi was reflected on Gwanghwamun Plaza.

Not to be outdone, King Saejong was also reflected in the rain puddles:

ISO: 400, Exposure: 0.8 sec, Aperture: 4.5, Focal Length: 30mm

And in another piece of interesting reflection, King GoJeong’s memorial was reflected in the glass of The Kyobo building:

And of ourse I got the gate:

ISO: 400, Exposure: 1/6 sec, Aperture: 5.0, Focal Length: 35mm

ISO: 200, Exposure: 1/2 sec, Aperture: 5.0, Focal Length: 18mm

Who knew I had such a steady hand?

Here are some more images from Sunday:

ISO: 400, Exposure: 1/6 sec Aperture: 3.5 Focal Length: 18mm

This is another favourite. The one sixth of a second exposure and high ISO allow for a fair amount of light to hit the mirror. The result being that the sky looks much lighter than it does to the naked eye. (And I think that is a result of refraction of the city lights.)

ISO: 400 Exposure: 1/10 sec Aperture: 5.6 Focal Length: 40mm

ISO: 400 Exposure: 1/4 sec Aperture: 5.6 Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 800 Exposure: 1/10 sec Aperture: 5.0 Focal Length: 35mm

ISO: 400 Exposure: 1/5 sec Aperture: 3.5 Focal Length: 18mm

Looking back towards The Kyobo building from Gwanghwamun – again the lighter sky effect in play.

All of these were taken without a tripod – I always feel like a dick in the subway carrying one – and I am surprised the half second exposure of Gwanghwamun came out so well. The joy of digital photography of course being that I had more than one go at pulling that shot off. It’s also a testament to Sony cameras. Say what you will about them, those of you in the Canon Clique, but in my experience they perform really well in low light conditions – even Sony’s point and shoot offerings.

…in 1968.

(From Seoul Through Pictures 4)

You can read the original post at Gusts of Popular Feeling.

Between where I stand and the mountain on the horizon is Gwanghwamun. The front gate to Gyeongbokgung has been under renovation since 2006, but the wait is over – and now we can all appreciate Korea’s foremost palace in its entirety.

The event also celebrated Liberation Day (also called V-J day if you’re from the UK), or August 15th as it’s known elsewhere. If you’re from the US, you might be familiar with September 2nd as ‘V-J day’; if you’re studying holidays you don’t get off of work or school, check out this Wikipedia article for more information.

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The Joongang Ilbo reports on the unveiling of Gwanghwamun, including this quote from President Lee:

“Gwangwhamun was blocked and neglected, and the flow of our national spirit was choked off,” he said, adding, “We incessantly endeavored and struggled for the country’s independence.”

Obviously he (or his speechwriter) thinks that destroying the old Government General Building was a good idea, as it was the first step in unchoking the geomantic axis of energy flowing between Seoul’s major mountains that determined where Gyeongbokgung was built when the city was founded. It seems a bit much to call the lines of energy on which the capital of the Joseon dynsasty was built the “national spirit,” but then I’m no speechwriter.

An article from a week or so ago looked at some of the controversies surrounding Gwanghwamun’s restoration (such as whether the sign should be in Hangeul or Hanja) but had some errors, such as saying that “it had been destroyed by the Japanese” 300 years ago (actually, most of the palaces were destroyed by angry mobs of Koreans who burned slave registers, among other things, after the royal family fled north before the Japanese troops arrived). It also says that:

During the Japanese colonial era (1910-1945), the Japanese moved Gwanghwamun to the east side of the palace to give the new General Government Building a clear view down Sejongno in 1927. In fact, the Japanese tried to destroy the gate outright, but Korean intellectuals successfully petitioned for its preservation.

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