And now, for something completely different: Chinese Lantern Festival!

Going off the reservation a bit with this post, to be sure. If you're looking for something totally different, visit the Chinese Lantern Festival at the Ohio State Fairgrounds in Columbus. Despite thinking that it sounded hokey, a friend and I went down there Saturday night. Fortunately, I had a lot of camera gear with me, as we'd been doing some shooting outdoors earlier in the day. It was great fun, and offered photo subjects of a very different sort (than what I usually shoot).

All the festival details can be found RIGHT HERE.

The event fills the Natural Resources Park at the southeast corner of the fairgrounds, and this massive dragon greets visitors soon after entering the park.

A group of pandas was popular with onlookers. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of intricately crafted and artfully illuminated lantern effigies scattered throughout the park.

A giant peacock struts near some magical mushrooms.

A trip of cheetahs gallops past a giraffe.

An especially colorful butterfly.

Interesting acts take the stage at regular intervals. This man was impossibly acrobatic with that massive urn; he played it better than a Harlem Globetrotter does tricks with a basketball.

A school of fish swims by.

A few trellis-framed walkways were adorned with showy hanging lanterns.

Pearls sit in an oyster.

A flowery walkway.

A frog sits among water-lilies.

Back to regularly scheduled programming soon!