While on a good ‘ol fashioned trip throughout California in 2004 I made sure to spend some time at one of my two favorite places in Los Angeles: Griffith Observatory near the Hollywood Hills (the other being the Getty). Perhaps one of the most stunning viewpoints over the city, even though it was closed at that time for massive renovations.
While strolling the park behind it I saw this girl, quit some distance away, dancing in the near-sunset. Photos like these are easy to take so I just set my aperture at f10 (more than enough light anyway) and let the internal light-meter underexpose the image by itself. The reason for the f10 was to make sure that the grasses in front and behind the girl would come out sharp enough. At ISO100, shuttertime was still 1/3000 of a sec.! Thank you California light. With max zoom of 200mm this one came out just perfect.
Coolest thing was I ran into the girl later on and gave her my card while showing the photo on my camera. She later contacted me and I was able to send her a high-resolution copy. Sweet!
If there’s one country that I can really recommend for a visit it’s got to be Indonesia. For our honeymoon we decided to take up an offer from a well-known travelcompany that we simply couldn’t refuse. Exciting as it was going to be my first (non-journalist) group travel ever and also my first time Asia. After having travelled half the world I somehow miraculously managed not to visit that huge part of the world. Something that I quite made up afterwards, travelling to Asia at least six times the next four years.
Java and Bali were going to be our destinations, the latter for diving, the first for round travel in two busses filled with us, tourists! Never figured group travel could be so much fun if you’re just lucky to hit the right combination of age, personalities and the amount of people travelling with you. We simply had a great time and one of the definite highlights of the trip was an old volcano called the Bromo [Google Earth].
It’s not a volcano as you’d normally see, it’s a small but highly active volcano which is situated in an unprecedented sandy area of almost ten square kilometers, the remnants of an even older volcano that blasted itself into history many, many millions of years ago. Seeing the sunrise on that old craters edge is one of the most popular highlights of Java and attracts countless tourist that walk up there very late at night (or better: very early in the morning).
So there we are at 03:30, after a wee night of sleeping getting our tired heads up a steep hill while beeing surrounded by zillions of Indonesian salesmen and women. Hats, umbrella’s, raincoats: guess it must rain here a lot because the majority of little shops are into that sort of stuff. Food is also highly available but who needs something to eat when you’re still in sleep-mode?
As high as the expectations so low is reality: the platform where we wait for the sun to come up over the crater rim is huge and packed with tourists, oh: that’s us then. Hundreds of people from all over the world have their camera ready and wait for the sun to burst through the fog. Which, sadly for us, manages not too. Leaving us with a half-baked sunrise and a good forty minute walk back down the road where a cup of hot soup awaits us. OK, now that’s a highlight!
Actually, the sunrise is nice but it’s the crater itself that’s way more interesting. A nice carride over the massive rim into the flat area where the actual Bromo active volcano resides. And by active, I really mean active: just short over eight months after our visit it suddenly went beserk and killed two tourists and injured five! But the horseride to the edge is amazing. Still can’t understand why all these horsemen compete eachother so massively. All looked like they haven’t got a dime to spare. Guess, if they worked together they could set some overall higher prices and actually make a bit of an income… there’s probably a reason but I felt sorry for them as the competition for tourists looked pretty nasty.
The sight into the grey and yellow crater is one to behold. Smoke still bellowing and a tribe of people walking around in it to catch the flowerofferings that people can buy for a few cents after which they throw them into the volcano. Good bit of recycling I suppose!
All in all a sight that should be high on the list of things to do and see in Java, definitely on of our many highlights and a true View of The World.
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