The first ever and biggest lantern festival in the US has launched here in Houston last November 20 and I couldn't be more excited! I have never been to a lantern festival before so when I heard about the Magical Winter Lights, I just had to go! Even though I was exhausted and it was only on a weeknight last week that I could go, my boyfriend and I drove at least an hour with traffic to get to the place. The festival was held outdoors so we also had to brave the 50 degree weather.
The good thing about going on a weeknight though was that there really weren't too many people at all so I was able to take some photos of the scenes with little to no photobombers as you can tell! The only downside for me that night was some parts were damped because it had been raining the days before.
That didn't stop me from getting fascinated by the lantern scenes though. There were too many, I didn't know where to start until I figured we just had to start from the magical entrance of the Magical Winter Lights. As we navigated through the site, I saw some scenes from Houston, including the NASA Space Center, Houston Livestock and Rodeo, the Galleria Waterwall as well as some Houston sports teams such as the Houston Rockets, Astros, and Texans.
There were also scenes from around the world such as Paris, Italy, India, Africa, Holland, China, Egypt and Australia (see slideshow at the top of this post). It's pretty fascinating to me that some of these lanterns were made of plates! The ingenuity, creativity and the skills of the lantern designers were beyond amazing. I was told that this was about 6 months in the making and they had to fly about 17 designers from Asia to put this together.
See, normally when going to an event like this, it's easier to grab my iPhone to take photos of the scenes. However, I have seen some photos from the festival uploaded by friends and their smartphone snapshots didn't do the lanterns justice at all. At that moment, I kinda felt good that I had taken my new Olympus PEN E-PL7 with me. All the photos shown here were taken with the Olympus PEN E-PL7. Can I just say that this little camera rocks my world and blows my socks off?
I mean, how can such a small camera be powerful in taking such great photos? Look at how crisp the photos came out considering that it's night time and although it's a festival of lanterns, other smaller cameras would probably have not been able to take such vivid photos in a "low-light" (no pun intended) and night time environment.
The lanterns are so friggin' amazing! They are too good for me not to take snapshots with my Olympus PEN E-PL7. They are so #PENworthy. You might want to check out that hashtag on Instagram or Twitter, by the way, to see the other photos taken with this camera by other users.
This camera is so user-friendly, even though the form, design and of course the professional name brand may seem intimidating. In taking the photos at the Magical Winter Lights, I only used the Auto Setting. If you're a beginner in using a mirrorless all-in-one camera such as this, you can't go wrong with the automatic settings.
Once you've started using this camera, you will definitely get hooked and you probably won't go anywhere important without it! If I didn't look like I just came out of bed that night, I would have taken a selfie too with the lanterns backdrop because Olympus PEN E-PL7 has a 180° Flip Touch Screen, it's definitely a lot easier to take a selfie – no need for a selfie stick with this one! It has a timer so it won't caught you off-guard. To make sharing on social media easier and more convenient, Olympus has already built in a social media technology into this compact camera.
My camera came with the 14-42mm II R Black Lens but one of the best features of PEN E-PL7 is its flexibitly in terms of the lenses. It can work with many different types of Olympus lenses PLUS you can also accessorize it. That's why you should never judge a book by its cover – just because it looks vintage doesn't mean that it's got vintage functionalities.
Once you've gone PEN E-PL7, you will never go back to your smartphone in capturing important moments in your life.
Christmas is just right around the corner, make this in your wish list! And if you're in Houston and planning to visit the Magical Winter Lights, you definitely need to take this camera with you take snapshots of the lantern scenes. They will be here for 52 days until January. You will want t to share the fun, creative, and festive lanterns snapshots in your social media by using the PEN E-PL7.
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That camera is fabulous – it's been on my wishlist for a while! Great shots :)
xxo.
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