I had an awesome time in NZ and made also a couple of nice trips with my buddy Ricki (cheers mate). During Easter we went on a trip to the East Cape of NZ’s North Island. Lots of windy roads but also lots of marveling landscapes.

me at work :)

and that are the results

I’ve never seen cattle on the beach before… I guess they are living the Kiwi lifestyle too

The East Cape Lighthouse

Raglan, the New Zealand’s Surfers Paradise

Hike to the Waikere Falls

And another kind of hike, this time it was a 4WD track up the mountains

Right now as I’m typing this I’m sitting at the Auckland Airport and waiting for the boarding of my flight back to Sydney… then heading straight for Melbourne.

The area around Coffs Harbour is the so called Coffs Coast and is on the mid-north coast of New South Wales for those who have the longing to know it exactly :) The Great Dividing Range meets the sea on the Coffs Coast, forming a stunning backdrop to the area’s white beaches. (lucky me having a friend living there… hehe)

So after Sydney I went up the coast and popped into my friends Kay place for a short visit (just over two weeks… lol) BTW she’s an awesome company and we had a lot of fun! Thanks Kay!

So far I’ve been all the way up the Australian East Coast, witnessed once-in-a-hundred-years rainfalls, tsunamis and a damn cyclone. What more could I ask for? lol Well, wasn’t that bad at all in the end and I’m having a blast here. And even with all that weird stuff it’s still better than the weather conditions in Germany! haha

For now I’m back again at my friend Kay for a couple of days… I dropped by as I’m heading back down the coast. So stay tuned ;)

more leaves :) looks like green is becoming my favorite color

shot on the Waterfall Way up in the Dividing Range

my very first attempt in photographing star-trails… I think it looks alright, even if I applied the wrong strategy in shooting it… but boy, never thought it can get that boring down at the cliffs if the camera is making an hour or so exposure and you can’t do anything but wait.

for this one I had to get up early, very early! And I harassed Kay to do the same :) I wanted to be at the headlands before sunrise, so it was quite a fun to climb down the headlands in complete darkness.

here I am, being almost washed away by the waves…

Staying close to Central Station, I haven’t had it far to all the places Sydney is famous for. Within a half-hour walk of here in various directions, I could plunge into the rambling Darling Harbour or marvel at the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour.

Darling Harbour

Replika of the Endeavour

snaking around the Sydney Opera

glad I took my Hoya Pol-Filter with me that day :)

now, that’s what I call an Open Air Cinema…

had to do this free handed due to the damn grid on the Harbour Bridge.

and another self-portait :)

And forget about English, too. You may find a handful of Thai in Bangkok and the tourist hubs who do speak English but their vocabulary may just enough to get you something sold. The most common phrase you will hear is „where you go“. haha

I‘ve used the time I had there as best as I just could. After one night in Bangkok I took a slow train ride up north to the former ancient capital of Ayutthaya.

The sacred city, the sacked city, Ayuthaya is complexly intertwined with Thai nationalism and religion. As the former royal capital of Siam and an Unesco World Heritage site, Ayutthaya really deserves an visit, even if it‘s just one day.

Touring the ruined temples on a bicycle and staying at a small guesthouse directly at the river puts you really close to the Thai psyche. Finding food was also an adventure for it‘s self. Sitting down in a street eatery and not being able to speak or read any Thai I could only use gestures in order to order any food. So I just noded on the first thing the owners suggested me, in their language of course. lol Well, at least I was lucky everytime and the dishes were yummy. The food was one of the highlights in Thailand for me.

Leaving Ayutthaya, I headed then southeast to the tourist region of Pattaya. Pattaya, a heavy-breathing and testosterone-fuelled testament to holiday hedonism, a place I usually would never even mind to go near on my backpacker trips. But, as I wanted to do some scuba diving and due to the lack of time there was no other choice. I stayed at a backpacker hostel in Hat Jomtien, just south of Pattaya. Well, actually a quiet nicer place to stay than the overcrowded Pattaya with it‘s even more crazy traffic. If you ever get there and you dare to, get a motor bike. Thai‘s put the word traffic chaos to a whole new level. And don‘t forget to wear those useless helmets you get with the motor bike, otherwise you will be fined. Speaking out of experience! lol

Lucky feeling about leaving Pattaya I waved down a bus heading to Rayong. From there I took the ferry to Ko Samet. A small island blessed with more than a dozen of white-sand beaches. To explore the island via it‘s rough dirt roads I rented a motor bike, again. It takes quite a while to drive the just 7km long island from north to the south tip. But you get magnificient views and pristine beaches as you go further south.

P.S. And no! I’m definitely not missing snow! :)

Btw! Since I haven’t posted anything in a year. Here are just some pics from 2009!

]]> http://blog.arthur-hoffmann.com/?feed=rss2&p=769 0 http://blog.arthur-hoffmann.com/?p=658 http://blog.arthur-hoffmann.com/?p=658#comments Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:26:10 +0000 artjom http://blog.arthur-hoffmann.com/?p=658 The Tulip Club is the first club in Germany in Style Art Amsterdam and belongs to the biggest house clubs in Germany. International impressions were in the emergence as important as the collaboration with renowned designers from various fields and countries.  The Tulip Club celebrated its opening in December, and literally just before the grand opening I shoot this photos for the website of the club.

Stitching this 360° panorama together was quite a pain. An automated stitching with a panorama program did not really work out, so I had to do it by hand. And that is a real annoying process if you got to put more than 30 pics together. At least if you are doing it for the first time ever.

Hope the panorama will work, just click and drag the pic… if not, try here!!!

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

the rest is self-explaining

It looks like 2009 should be a damn interesting year for me. This year I’m (hopefully) going to finish college and start writing of my Thesis. Besides that it seems there are coming up some more little things that gonna change my boring life:) a little.
I’m not sure yet wheter I will manage to visit some friends in Australia this year. Otherwise next year.
At least I had a pretty good start into the New Year… look, what Arthur got for him yesterday :) The agonizing time with the most crappy OS Windows is finally over, at least for me… what shall I say, I don’t wanna do any commercial for Apple but well, It’s an Apple … It’s a Mac… It’s a blast!

Zion’s towering sandstone monuments, dubbed “natural temples of God” by 19th-century Mormon pioneers, rise 3,000 feet (914 meters) above the Virgin River and the canyon floor.

Eons of erosion created Zion’s jaw-dropping landscape. A long-gone inland sea left behind huge deposits of porous sandstone like the one pictured here, and water, ice, and gravity have carved them for millions of years.

]]> http://blog.arthur-hoffmann.com/?feed=rss2&p=580 0 http://blog.arthur-hoffmann.com/?p=527 http://blog.arthur-hoffmann.com/?p=527#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:34:24 +0000 artjom http://blog.arthur-hoffmann.com/?p=527 Maybe I should stop playing around with the source code of my blog and post instead some photographs. Some may have noticed, that I’m changing my blog, again… I still haven’t touched most of the pics I shot on my trip thru the western USA. Just a few! The rest is still waiting on post processing. Hopefully I will get to them in the next time. I’m probably just scared of the review :) Spending weeks in one of natures most beautiful heritages with only your camera, well let me put it that way: There will gather some pics. Won’t be a easy job to review thousand of shots and then to decide which ones are worth to be post processed.

So far, I just have those ones to offer…

great old SanFran

breathtaking Yosemite National Park

‘dry as a bone’ Death Valley

P.S. Hope the tinkering on the new layout was worth the time/work

The waterfall photo I took in June on my trip to New York got selected to be part of New York’s “Museum Mile” guide.

Here is the link to the guide:
Schmap New York Guide

For those people who are freakin’ love there iPhone (and so I do). They have also a iPhone version:

iPhone Version

This little step may will help to boost the publishing of my photographs. :)