Date: 20 February 2010

Woke up early at 3am and waited for Chee Wah to come pick me up from my house at 4am. Haven't been hiking for almost 6 months, and I always thought that I wouldn't hike at Broga Hill anymore after my last experience there - it was so crowded at the hill top and the ecology was so bad compared to the first few times I was there. Anyway, this time I decided to go because a group of people from myphotocity (www.myphotocity.com) is going over.

We reached the foot of Broga Hill at around 4.30am. Since many are still not there yet so we decided to start our hike first. 6 months of slack really did bring down my stamina a little but still it was still no issue to reach the first peak in roughly 30 mins. There were already people there, respect!

The stars in the sky shone so brightly and I was totally amazed by it. I quickly set up my tripod and thought of taking photos of star trail. This thought was quickly shot down as there are more and more people reaching the peak, which means there are more and more light source from either the torch light or flash from camera. Really not a good idea to do long exposure shot. So I just shot a regular photo of the stars in the sky.

So no star trail photos. While waiting for the sun to rise, I decided to try something that I've not tried before - light trail photography. I set up my camera with a fisheye lense, used my torchlight as light source and asked Chee Wah to push the trigger for me. This is the result:

It seems to be a failed shot. Firstly, the characters are totally mirrored. Secondly, my writing is just awful. In case that some of you would like to know what I was trying to write, I wanted to write my girlfriend's name - Valerie.

Waited till around 6.45am and we can see the sky turning bright. I quickly set up my tripod and fisheye for my main mission of the day - timelapse photography, which in the end, failed miserably after I've looked through the photos when I was back home. So no timelapse video this time but I will definitely try this again. I was taking the photos at a 30s interval from 6.45am till 7.15am, which seems to be insufficient for a timelapse video.

Since my main mission was a failure, I the changed my focus in snapping the major "landmark" of Broga Hill - the lallang. These are my shots from that day and I hope you enjoy looking at them.

Before that this is a photo of the sunrise...

And now, it's lallang time...

And some withered vegetation...

We reach the foot of the hill at around 9.30am, took a half group photo and the 20+ of us proceeded for dim sum as breakfast at Taman Connaught, Cheras.

Group photo

For more photos please visit my flickr @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/mauinsons/sets/72157623352182597/