After 2 long years, finally, managed to visit a fantastic location with full of photographic interests - over the border! Back in early August 2021 teamed up with my two photoclub mates, Zsuzsi and Andi with my travel-to-photograph 'old' friend Roszi with the goal to drive to Transylvania, Harghita (cca. 700km) from our location, Hungary. There we planned to photograph primarily Carpathian brown bears from hide, and also, discover some of the rich beauties of Transylvania including the Fogaras Mountains over the Transfagarasan pass.
Had a tight schedule, so shrinked to only 3 days there with photography. However, due to the admirable knowledge about nature, high skills and experience of our young local guide Norbert P. Moraru still was able to build a considerably worthy photograph collection I am quite happy with.
One of the highlights of the trip was an experience when we met a brown bear along the trail when we were walking to the hide. Actually, the animal got more frightened to get so close to out small group than some of us, so was no need to use bear spray or other self-defending technics :).
Worth to mention the open mindness, helpfulness and friendly behaviour of both the székely Hungarians and the Romanians we met all over our trip and spent especially happy times when enjoyed tasting Hungarian plum palinka from Szatmárcseke, together ;).
Another funny experience was receiving repeated alerts by loud mobile phone buzzer at the Transfagarasan pass about the presence of potentially dangerous bears nearby us while were about to catch some nice moments of the life of marmots.
Having increasing interest to wildlife photography I felt the strong need to upgrade my Fujifilm X photography equipment to the proven Full frame Sony imaging technology, so at the same time it was the debut or say dirty test and verification of my decision.
Will share my thoughts in another post about the advantages, real World capabilities and limitations of the APSC Fujifilm X system I used intensively during the past 3 years vs the Full frame Sony Alpha ecosystem.
Enjoy the selection of my photographs as visual summary of the tour to Romania by this link: Transylvania | Mysite (zsoltvarankaphotography.com)!