Chinese Zest at the Auckland Lantern Festival

Everybody likes lanterns. They’re attractive at night, unintimidating, and unoffensive.

Organised by the Asia New Zealand Foundation, the Auckland Lantern Festival isn’t the usual kind of place I would find myself. Intended for happy families and Instagram moments, without a single beer tap in sight. What the festival does, is supply in abundance, a variety of Asian cuisine, namely Chinese. At the absolute peak of fashionable ‘gluten-free’ diets, I discovered “gluten noodles” which are exactly as it sounds. Pure gluten, fried up and slapped on some noodles. Frankly, it was delicious and I am now an advocate for tasty fried blobs of gluten in my noodles.

Recently the festival has been in the news because one of the more miniature, cuter lanterns was nabbed in what must be considered, one of New Zealand’s most daring heists. Whilst we have no real information on why the bear cub went wandering. It’s safe to assume that international spies had captured and enforced information out of the four-legged light bulb. I’m guessing a bunch of kids stole the bear cub and when outraged citizens contacted the news stations. The kids realised the gravity of their mistake and dropped their prize off at the police station, fortunately unharmed.

Fun for the fam

Visiting the Auckland light festival for me, was a walk through the park (after work). For a young family, however, it could be an inspiring evening. With fireworks, lights, kids’ attractions, and lots of delicious food. There’s something for everybody at the Auckland Lantern Festival.

To get the shots below I’ve used a few advanced techniques. Firstly, I took my tripod so I could gather as much lantern light as possible without blurring my subjects. I’ve muted some of the colours to give a distant, old feel to the otherwise modern creations. Lastly, I used a brush in photoshop to darken and remove any distracting elements from the background.