North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival

Yesterday, after dinner with friends, we visited the North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary. A cold rain fell all afternoon, but by 7 PM, the rain had stopped, although the ground was saturated and there were puddles everywhere. But that meant that hardly anyone went out last night, and it was easy to view the lantern exhibits.

This lantern exhibit leads to the stage where the evening performance of traditional Chinese dance and acrobatics ended a few minutes after we arrived.

The fish display is one of the first on the path.

Lotus flowers.

Swans reflected in the lake.

The dragon is also along the edge of the lake and is actually better viewed from the road on the other side of the lake.

A close-up of the dragon's head.

We thought the Panda Tree was the best lantern exhibit. The flowers changed colors: green to blue to red, then back to green.

A closer look at the pandas.

We enjoyed our visit, but are unlikely to return next year. If you are looking for a fabulous winter light show, we both thought the Illumination at the Morton Arboretum near Chicago was more impressive and takes much longer to see (about 2 hours rather than 30 minutes). And someday we'll get see one of the Ice Castles exhibits.

A quick note on the photos. I used the "Hand-Held Night" scene setting on my small Canon SX720 HS camera with a 1-stop underexposure. Other than some cropping, the photos are "as is". My Canon EOS Rebel T4i DSLR has the same setting, and while it has better optics, the SX720 is so much easier to just slip into a pocket that I use it almost exclusively. I call "Hand-Held Night" the "Magic Camera" setting.