Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Brisbane Sky Scrappers

Brisbane is a pretty little city, the sun light is always great for taking picture (except during winter, when everything looked grayish). This picture is an example of it. It was Sunday, and after a quick breakfast, I just strolled out the city sidewalk, and take as many picture as I could.

I looked up, noticed the intense tall building overlapping between each other, and wallah, this is what I got. The sky was actually blue, but I adjusted to grayscale for dramatics impact. Like it ?

My two little cousins

This is one of my favorite picture of all times. It was taken sometime before in before new year, but not quite sure when was it exactly.

I recalled that this is one of my big family holiday where almost all my cousins gathered in one of my family beachside villa, and do nothing for days but chatting, eating and playing.

In of these days I was assigned to watch my lil cousins who were up for swimming. Expecting my self to be half bored, I grabbed my pocket camera, sat on the pool side, and start capturing the moment while watching about a dozen ( yes a dozen) of my lil cousins enjoying splashing the water around.

This is one of it, in it, one of the older cousin, holding my younger cousins while she splashed the water around. With the sun shine harsh and bright, I use high speed, which in effect froze the water particles and the joy it brought into eternity.

Lonely Tree in the field over the Toowomba Ranch, Queensland

It was either 2006 or 2007. I was traveling a lot for field work during my masters degree. One of it was to Toowomba, a smallish town at South East Queensland. It was a kind of town that surrounded by farms. And it was in one these farm I took this picture. It was mid afternoon, so the light supposedly harsh by Jakarta standard. But Austalia is picture friendly country, the light is always soft  and the sky is always bright with occasionally bold clouds painted the corner.

It was seldom smoggy, nor crushing bright, so taking a good picture there is relatively a painless exercise.

I wake up this morning, and happily surprised as I found the Jakarta sky is clear and blue unlike the usual. This kind of scenery reminds me of the Jakarta where I grew up years ago, when the weather was much friendlier, the temperature cooler and the world was more quite that today. Jakarta that I knew of, and so very much loved.

By any means, I was initially intended to put up a post about my love wih the city, but lately decided to do it next time. So for now, you oughta be content with this bright picture of Jakarta, one taken from my apartment’s 27th floor window, the other from my 22nd office window.

Jakarta after the rain, from my apartment window (source: personal archive)

Jakarta after the rain, from my office window (source: personal archive)

My principle in practical photography is rather simple. That is ,”one should put more attention to the scene rather then the techniques.” Hence for this particular reasons, I found that finding the right equipment is very critical, so as you can rely on the piece at any given time, without care so much about the limitation that may bound your imagination.



A homeless man feed the birds at the King George Square, Brisbane (from personal archive)

The Camera

Regardless of the brand, there is a very simple rule that you need to follow, when buying a camera:

1. It should be small enough, that you don’t need separate bag to carry it along the day
2. It should incorporate reasonable range of zoon so as flexible to accommodate your photography style
3. It should allow manual control to the extent of you normal usage, so as to allow you exercise your technique when special condition arisen
4. I would prefer camera that have a shooting window, because I don’t like to rely on live window
5. A macro is essential, even more than tele
6. Would be very nice to be able to use normal batteries (AA) so that I don’t rely on charger or special batteries that cant be or too expensive to replace

For you who ever heard about LOMO photography might hear the sound principle behind it, which is don’t think just shoot (or somewhere along that line). Now, after years of hobby in photography, I found that such philosophy are the underline of good picture.

Have you ever find yourself loosing many of the scenes because you are too afraid to take chance and take a picture anytime, even if its bad one ? Well don’t. Sure there are some Leica masters who only take a picture when they are sure, and hold tight the principle of 1 shoot 1 pic. But this is digital era, mistakes are made to be fix, and everyone need to remember that good picture does not lie son the technique alone, but on the subject, that is the story behind every take.

The Guide

7. Focus on people and place
8. Just simply point and shoot
9. Make sure that it focused on the subject you intended and make sure its not shaking
10. Remember that everything in BW looks beautiful
11. Remember that all pictures tells story if you intended them too
12. Remember that 88% of your shoot is worthless, hence take as many picture as possible.

What’s your take on this ?