Blast From The Past – Jinhae Gunhangje (Cherry Blossom) Festival.

---

  The Japanese Cherry Blossom Tree of Prunus semulata is a harbinger of spring in many countries in Asia, after the bitterly cold winters in Korea, many cities in Korea celebrate week long festivals to celebrate the blossoming of the Cherry Tree’s and the first sign of spring.   The festivals include parades, souvenir booths, Korean traditional and pop performances. While there are spring festivals all over Korea Chinhae hosts the largest and most popular.  I had wanted to check out the festival since my arrival but until this year never had the opportunity.

  We booked tickets from Yongsan Station direct to Masan on the KTX, Korea’s high speed rail service.  We then took a city bus (# 162) to downtown Chinhae.  We got off the bus after about a 45 minute ride and went straight to our Hotel.  The Hotel French Code.  The room was spacious and had a large bathroom with a Jacuzzi bath.  

  After a short nap it was time to go exploring!  It was not hard to locate the festivities, I just had to let my ears be my guides and follow the sounds of drums!   

Here are marching bands from various districts of Chinhae opening the festivities.  It was really fun to watch, and the bands encouraged the bystanders to participate, I was even pulled into one of the processions to dance with entourage,  I cannot dance on a good day, trying it with 20 lbs of camera gear on my back made it even less of a coordinated spectacle.

  The Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8 is one of my favorite lens, and it’s versatility really shown here.  It was a lot of fun being able to walk unhindered through the parade.  You almost got the sense you were in the middle of a protest.  I am not exactly sure what this guy was supposed to be representing, but It certainly made me take notice!

and here is a bystander dishing out some Jinhae justice.

  Though we are here for the Cherry Blossoms, and here is a picture of the “Romance Bridge” with the cherry blossom trees in full bloom.

    After Sundown around 7pm we were presented with a fireworks display, marking the opening of the 2017 Jinhae Gunhangje.  I attempted to get some creative photo’s of the fireworks through the cherry trees but was only partially successful.  Providing a quick photography hint.

 

• Try and be aware of EVERYTHING in the view finder. If it does not ADD to the photograph, then it is a distraction.  The light post in the middle of the photo here is a total distraction.  You need to move and get it out of the picture.
• Move around, even if you think you got the perfect photo, try the photo with a different perspective, angel, and location.

  Here is a photo that I shot of the fireworks.  That may be the same light post, but it is covered up partially by the cherry tree’s,  the cherry tree’s are not much of a distraction in this case, because after all we are at the Cherry Blossom Festival!. The big distraction here is the powerlines.  The only way to have gotten the perfect picture in this case would have been to find out ahead of time where the fireworks were going to be shot from and scouted it out ahead of time, which was not possible for us.

  Mi Jung got some pretty good portraits,even though for the most part she was shooting without a flash.  I have cropped this to a 1:1 aspect ratio.  Mi Jung does have a good eye for composition, If she was not impeded by not having a Speedlight for a just a tiny bit of backfill, very little in the way of exposure correction would have been needed, and it would have removed the motion blur.  The other option here would have been to crank up the ISO, or use a higher speed lens (Mi Jung was shooting with the Canon 24-105 f4L). 

Here is Mi Jung and I near the entrance to the “Bridge Of Romance”.

The event did allow me to get some portrait practice, which I desperately need more of!  This is a great portrait, I like the good separation of the subject from the background, but I should have asked the couple to take just a couple of paces to the left as the two street lights behind the man’s head complete ruin the picture!  Though I will try and remove them later in Photoshop.  This was taken with the Canon EF-50mm F1.2L lens.

This picture is a little better, but again not paying attention to the background lighting, introduced a ton of lens flare on the man’s chin and the side of the face.  The lens flare would have been hard to pick up on the LCD at night, but I should have seen the big globes of light in the first picture.

The next day we took the festivals free shuttle bus to the closed Gyeonghwa station, as they have a famous static railroad display setup that I have always wanted to get pictures at.  They had another live cultural perform that Mi Jung took pictures of while I photographed the train.  Sometimes it can be difficult to get a good portrait with all the crows, but if you and your subjet are both patient you will finally get one that works out.

 That afternoon there was a scheduled performance and fireworks show down by the harbor that we went to.  Here are some photo’s of the afternoon practice session.  The performance turned out to be a disappointment due to poor planning and lack of security at the event.  There was no elevated stage setup, and security did not keep the late comers who did not heave seats from standing in the isles, completely blocking everyone’s view.  We gave up as we could not see anything.   So we walked around, took some pictures of the harbor, then went back to the hotel.

Here is a reflection portrait of Mi Jung taken from  a puddle of water.

It was time to wrap things up Sunday, take in the last couple of attractions and then head back to Seoul.  Our first stop was the Chinhae Post office which had a really interesting Korea Postal system museum.  One of the exhibits allowed you to press print historical Korean postage stamps.  This was a lot of fun! 

Our final stop was Jehwangsan Park located on stop of the mountain of the same name.  To get there we had to take this bizarre looking mono-rail.  It would almost be considered a funicular, but there is no second tram to offer a counter weight.

The view from the park was amazing.  Here is Downtown Chinhae, with all of the festival tents setup.  Here is the main downtime parade ground with the protected harbor in the background.

The park and observatory where peaceful (When I was not being pressed into being a mobile phone photographer..) 

Then it was our turn.

There was some really nice topiary characters that I had a great time taking photos of.

Our final stop for the afternoon was the Korean dancing display.  I thought it was a good performance, but Mi Jung was quite bored.   Though to be fair, she has seen more Korean dancing then I have.

I also cannot claim I was paying attention to the performance the whole time either, was I began to talk around, taking random pictures of other things going on in the background, like the police officers directing traffic.

Or these officers having a chat.

I would like to say that the Chinhae Cherry Blossom festival was all that I expected it to be.  I did have a good time, it was great to get away from Seoul for 3 days.  Our hotel was nice, and within walking distance of the festival.  Maybe because I have been in Korea so long that I am festivaled out.   They all seem to offer the same things!  

Chinhae looks like a great place to visit even outside the big cherry blossom festival, so if you are looking for a weekend getaway I would recommend checking Chinhae out!  Though the window of the Cherry Blossom festival is over, there is always next year.  The festival usually takes place the first or second weekend of April.

How to get there.

KTX from either Seoul, or Yongsan Station – Masan.
Then take bus # 163 from Masan Station (This is an additional 48 Minutes)

From Gunsan
Traveling from Gunsan involves a bit more transfers, but easily ticketable on the KoRail website www.letskorail.com!  I was unable to find routing (even as a transfer) from Gunsan Station, but if you search from Iksan Station to Masan being sure to select the transfer option (Not direct!)  you will be able to book tickets to Chinhae!   You can either book separate tickets from Gunsan to Iksan, or take the free shuttle from Gunsan station!  Once you arrive in Masan take the #163 bus to Jinhae.

 

Where To Stay

I recommend checking out Hotel French Code. 

It does have quite love motel in appearance, but they have large bathrooms with Jacuzzi baths and is centrally located to downtown.  As the name has recently changed, you will not be able to locate the hotel address on the internet.  I had to search for Chinhae Pasta Hotel which is right next door.   Another word of caution.  The GPS signals seem not be accurate, when I pined the hotel before leaving it put me almost a half a mile off course!  So, use with caution.

Mappable Phone # 055-547-9812

Thank you for visiting Brent’s World!  Please come back next week for more great content!
If you wish to be notified by email when new content is posted, please consider registering by clicking HERE!