There is another hill to climb in Broga. A blunt Matterhorn; the ABC in the town market. The popular, colourful, icy dessert is not normally depicted in black and white. I thought a monochrome rendition matches the atmosphere of the vintage, tiny, one-street town. There are more than fifty shades of gray.
Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f7.1, 1/100 sec.
Broga Hill is a hipsters’ magnet the way Devils Towers was in the film Close Encounters of The Third Kind. On any Sunday, you will see hordes of people gravitating towards the hill on the border of Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. Unlike the folks drawn to the UFO landing site in the Spielberg movie, hipsters flock to Bukit Broga for a simpler reason. To camwhore for Facebook and Instagram.
Many hipsters wrongly believe Broga is the birthplace of broga (or yoga for bros who can’t touch their toes). The foothill town is actually named after the local Broga River. I’ve been up the hill before Facebook was invented. The climb then was through a little-known hiking trail. Characterised by long blade grass and embedded with big rocks, Bukit Broga had very few visitors before the advent of digital cameras.
Yesterday I was in the area and decided to take a peep from nearby Nottingham University Semenyih Campus. Using a long tele lens, I was surprised to see so many people posing up there. Social media is good for domestic tourism, apparently.
Olympus OM-D, ISO 1250, f6.7, 1/2500 sec.
The sun sets in the West but at a different spot, depending on the time of the year. From the same vantage point, I observed it going down to ‘camera left’ of the Petronas Twin Towers a few weeks ago. To oversimplify; the cyclical deviation is due to the tilt in the earth’s axis of rotation.
When in the city, you may want to juxtapose the setting sun against a landmark or the skyline. Depending on your distance to the foreground object or building, a little or a lot of walking may be required. The fine-tuning can make a big visual impact.
The title of the post is inspired by a forgotten song I heard on the radio as I was driving home. Who’s Holding Donna Now – a 1985 hit single by DeBarge. Wonder no more.
Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f11, 1/4000 sec.
