Can’t believe it’s been three years since I ventured out to the rooftop of The Empire Hotel & Country Club for a breathtaking panoramic shot of the hotel’s gorgeous beachfront. I happened to have just finished a photo shoot that day and had some time to kill before the hour long drive home. Directional shadows from the evening sun added an extra dimension to give this beautiful landscape a surreal, high contrast and dramatic finish. But something was amiss — the hotel’s very popular Pantai Restaurant was undergoing a full tear down renovation work at the time so the iconic roof isn’t in the picture.
Three years on, I made arrangement to revisit the rooftop for a fresh shot of the landscape this time with the inclusion of Pantai Restaurant. I coincided this shoot to fall on the morning my cousin and I had planned to hike Bukit Shahbandar. During the entire time I was on the rooftop, the sky remained overcast which explains why the image isn’t nearly as dramatic as the previous one — sun direction and timing makes all the difference. We were pressed for time so I wasn’t going to hang around to wait for a better moment.
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My host Hafiza preferred to stay near the door away from the unnerving edge where I parked the camera mounted on a tripod.
I kept the camera bag in the car and brought along the PowerShot G11 for the shot below taken from the top deck of the observation tower at Bukit Shahbandar. I’ll have to drag my 5D Mark III and EF100-400mm lens up to the tower some day in order to get a better quality view of the Empire rooftops above the forest canopy. I think that would make the distant landscape more interesting when viewed close up.
A view of The Empire Hotel & Country Club landscape from the top deck of the Bukit Shahbandar observation tower. The white arrow indicates location from where I composed the hotel’s beachfront panorama. Photo: PowerShot G11
