I ran over to Deoksugung Palace yesterday during lunch to photograph the autumn foliage before the ginkgoes become totally bare.
The sky was a bit hazy and grey, unfortunately. Of course, I look out the window today, and the sky is full of billowy white clouds, as it always is the day after I go out to shoot.
(Click to view larger photos)
Those ginkgoes are really magnificent. I used GIMP to warm up the photos and bring out the colors a bit—still learning this whole “layer” business.
BTW, does anyone know how I might get Linux to display my photos better? They always look a bit, well, crappy on Ubuntu, but decent enough on Windows and my iPad. Odd.
At sunset, I ran back to Deoksugung—or at least a rooftop near Deoksugung—to take some blue hour shots…
That last shot, of course, is of the traffic rotary in front of historic Chung-dong Methodist Church. I love my 50mm Nikkor—cheapest lens in the bag, but takes the sharpest shots.
For more about Deoksugung Palace and the Jeong-dong district, see this post.
Hello there sir. Your work is always simply amazing. Despite the less than pristine conditions, you seem to have the knack of producing the very best. Well done indeed.
BTW, psst, psst: at Chung-dong, it’s the First Methodist Church, not the Presbyterians. The Presbyterians are up the hill and down the road a little in Shinmoonro, at the Saemunan Church. (This is not a criticism ~ I simply wanted to let you know, seeing as I know!)
As always, keep up the good work and thank you for the inspiration you always provide.
My bad! Got my Protestant denominations mixed up in my head!
Thanks for the head’s up. And thanks for the kind words, too.
Protestants have lots of sects.
Try Gqview or ImageMagick…
http://gqview.sourceforge.net/view-shot.html
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
If that’s not better, different screen resolution or color depth can be set.
Thanks, will give them a shot.
It’s a major pain, actually, since I do most of my photo editing on Ubuntu with a BTC Zeus 5000 monitor (1680—1050px), but I don’t really know what I’m getting until I look at the photos on the iPad.
Did you really run back at dusk?
Well, no, I didn’t actually run…
Do you have a hanbok designed for running? Is there such a thing?
While the ginkos are in their full technicolor glory, you should take a walk along the road that skirts the southern slope of Namsan to get some pictures there.
Or maybe you’ve already done that.
Will have to check if the ginkgoes on Namsan still have their foliage.
My home is near Seoul Station but my long-time girlfriend lived in Hannam-dong, so we often drove and walked along that street. It’s got cherry blossoms in the spring and loads of ginkos in the fall, making it one of Seoul’s rare “pleasant drives.” When you’re driving, though, you have to be careful of the ajumma brigade picking up the gingko nuts from the ground and in the street. Yikes.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about the road that comes down from the N-Tower and ends up near the An Chunggŭn Memorial (I’m not sure if there are a lot of ginkos there, but it would be a pleasant walk nonetheless; deep inside that park, on a marked trail going off the main road going down, there are forested areas where few people go that might be good for a nature picture or two).
Rather, I’m talking bout the thoroughfare that would run, west to east, from the Hilton Hotel, along the northern edges of Huam-dong and then Haebangchon and Itaewon, past the Seoul Grand Hyatt, to Puk-hannam-dong.
I’ve read that the iPad screen is 1024×768.
In the Gimp the deoksugungwarm3.jpg scales to 1024×768 and 2048×1536 (2x).
Rescaling may work,
on the Gimp menu try >image >scale image (on FreeBSD anyway)
then enter a new format.
best luck,
Dave
Hugin – Panorama photo stitcher!
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
Spectacular. As always. Thank you for sharing these.
Thanks for taking the time to look at them!
Gorgeous shots. We visited that palace a couple of years ago, while visiting the wife’s family. Hope to go back someday and take a proper hike of so many historic places, before they get developed out of existence.