Tropical beauty

Kuala Lumpur is a colourful blend of old British colonial influences, multi-Asian traditions, Malay Islamic and natural religion inspirations, modern and postmodern lifestyle mix. A busy town with trendy high-level architecture and outmoded two-storeyed residential areas. Countless elegant skyscrapers where ever you look. Architects from the entire world worked there and created buildings with impressing glass and steel shells, the most prominent example being the outstanding Petronas Towers. Life is busy floating through, business rolls on and times are changing fast.

But still it is a purely tropical town. Moving around a corner even in the very middle of the city centre, you unforeseen can find a vivid and wild variety of growing trees and bushes. An old wall can transmute into an own opulent world of wonderful vivid structures of unknown meaning for a western eye. Plenty of little creatures as ragtag birds and candy-striped squirrels live there and unknown kinds of insects and spiders. They know much better the hidden denotations of all these arms and branches, these mixtures and amalgamations of boughs, roots and creeping plants. They know all the exact routs between them and up and down to go. All I am reverential able is to be astonished and impressed about this utterly treasure of tropical beauty.

you have to look a little bit closer ...

and a little bit more closer ...

Canon EF 300 mm 1:2.8 L

Canon EF 300 mm 1:2.8 L, late first version, built at the Canon Utsunomija factory, Japan in Oktober 2003. I got it for a good price in the Jungmuro area in Seoul, a little paradise for used photo equipment, for finding any sort of film, for framing photos and any printing jobs.

This Canon lens got enthusiastic reviews from it's first entry on in 1988. For Nikon it took nearly 10 years to launch an equally fast 300 mm. 

This tele lens is my first lens, where I have to mount the camera to the lens, not the other way round. Quite a heavy photographic challenge and I took it serious. 


First real test in my most nearby surroundings. Mounted to the Canon EOS 1 Ds III as in the photos above. The shots are hand held, this combination is still great to hold. Although I do not want to carry it around more than about half a day.  

Nest building Magpie's, it seems that spring is coming. The above photo is a quite small crop from this one aside. The comparison shows the sharpness of the lens.

This 300 cm lens turned out to be as incredible sharp and has fast autofocus. Traditionally it is used for wildlife photography, birds, sports and even by Paparazzi. 

For the next field test on Nansam hill I combined the lens with an extender Canon EF 1.4x II, resulting in a 420 mm tele lens and mounted it to my EOS 5D III. To increase the picture quality I used a tripod. My Gitzo Series 2 Traveler seems not to be the right one for this weight and lenght, but turned out to be helpful anyway. 

Further reading:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/300mm-f28.htm

Mödling Klausen

The Klausen valley between Mödling and Hinterbrühl is since centuries a favored recreation area full of scenic attractions. Prince Johann Josef of Liechtenstein, who bought the 'Herrschaft Mödling' in 1809 planted the black pines on the before bald rocks of the valley. He planed his whole Mödling possessions as - at that time fashionable - landscape garden with artificial ruins, temples and castles. 

The eye-catching black pines are the reason, why I feel so familiar in the mountains of Seoul. 

All these photos are from 27th of December 2014, a very unusual Austrian winter look.

View in direction Hinterbrühl

The aqueduct is part of the water pipe line for Vienna

View in direction Leithagebirge

Hiking Seoraksan National Park

The Sanwooro hiking club of Siemens invited for a one day trip to the Seoraksan National Park. I accepted and on Friday, the 26th of September we started in a bus to the west coast of Korea. I was the only expat within a group of 13 hikers. After a three hours' drive we arrived at a leisure pension nearby our hiking startig point at about 500 meter above sea level. A dinner was prepared at the pension, lots of meat, rice, tofu soup, various vegetables and Soju. All the vegetables were from fields growing around the pension and home prepared. Some of the food ingredients take a long time to become proper food, up to eight years. I liked especially the variety of chilies, fresh ones, dried ones and fresh green chili leaves. The hot and tasty dinner was long and with a lot of Soju even loud, the night became quite short. 

Breakfast early in the morning at another house, nearby the pension. Here all food home-made too and delicious likewise. After breakfast the bus brought us to Jangsudae Ranger Station, our entry to the huge Seoraksan National Park. From here we followed the path to Daeseungnyeang, than over the Eungbang Falls to the Namcyori Park Ranger Station. A six hours walk, three hours on mostly steep wooden stairs up to a high point of 1370 meter, than three hours down on mostly gently sloping, but pebbly paths. Wonderful sceneries and best weather for such a hike made my first approach to Korean countryside to a great experience.

our leisure pension

pickled food ingredients

chili field

various vegetables

breakfast lodge

sun comes out

our starting point

hiking colleagues, I was the only expat

two of the 'Twelve Fairy Bathing Springs' in the Sibiseonnyeotang Valley

the most famous 'Bathing Spring'

beneath the road on the way home