Ranan Samanya Photography
fashion runways, portraits & personal branding, environment, and documentary photography
Tambelan girls in action
You have seen them acting in front of the camera in my previous post. Now here they are in one of the early dance during the opening of Bintan Cultural Festival 2011 in Bintan Resorts, Indonesia.
The dance told a folklore story, alas I couldn’t get what it was (focusing on my camera focus I guess, as usual).
Dave, one of the MCs, added spice at the end of their performance.
Girls from Ipanema, not!
Tall and tan and young and lovely…. But no, not from Ipanema, but from Tambelan Island, a few hours from Bintan. They came and joined the fleet of dancers for the Bintan Cultural Festival here in Bintan Resorts.
During the opening of the event, they were very popular by with crowd; people asked them to take picture together. I just watched from a distance and shot a few frames. Two of them apparently noticed my unusual white colour L lens and looked to my direction. Click-click, with Aperture priority f/4 set and AF point selection set to spot focus (my favorite).
a Spiky Erection
Pardon my language, but I just couldn’t resist. I have seen many poses when people di all sorts of positions to get their best shot on something. This is by far the most interesting one. But hey, any position as long as we achieve our ultimate goal of producing good pictures is justified, right?!
Taken before the opening of Bintan Cultural Festival 2011 at Bintan Resorts Reservoir Park yesterday, he was one of the dancers for that event.
Zoom in up close and personal after the click on the image.
Playing with Aperture and Nik Color Efex Pro
A quick note to say how easy it is to enhance photos using Nik Color Efex Pro. it’s a great plugin for Aperture (also available for Photoshop and Lightroom). Pity the roses were not fresh, but I hope you do get the picture. Thank you for stopping by and have a great weekend ahead!
Original image below.
And Nik Color Efex Pro user interface:
Twilight at Bintan Resorts reservoir
It was 18:20. I was just finished watching the first rehearsal for Bintan Cultural Festival 2011 at the Reservoir Park, when the twilight across Bintan Resorts’ reservoir caught my eyes. Bintan Resorts’ pump house, part of its whole potable water treatment process, was lit-up with security lights, and the reflection on the water was almost perfect.
I didn’t have my tripod with me, but lucky the fencing around the sound-system podium is photographer friendly: It was made from square iron bars, not the usual rounded ones. I set my camera on the fence, set the Live View mode, adjusted the focusing area, and fired a few shots. This one below is by far the most beautiful frame produced (also the first from the four frames taken).
The image was not edited at all except reduction of size and for the borders and watermarks. Click on it to see the beauty of a Canon L-lens sharpness quality (worth every cent of my salary!).
And here’s how the camera was set on the fence, pictured with my HTC Legend handphone.
Karina and Aldi: a Javanese wedding ceremony
My family was honored to be invited to a Javanese style wedding reception by Yuskar Indra Utama, a good friend and probably one of the most humble and loyal staff in our company. It’s not every month that we have a Javanese wedding reception here in Riau Archipelago, Indonesia. I wasn’t expecting such a ceremony, so all the cameras were left in the house (bummer!). Relying on my HTC Legend camera was, at that point of time, the best option available.
The bride (Indra’s eldest daughter) and groom were beautiful and handsome. Their parents were a little tensed, but still managed to smile. The traditional Javanese costumes were superbly colorful and glamor, and the make-ups were excellent.
Here are a few frames from the ceremony. I don’t know much about Javanese wedding culture, so I will just keep my mouth shut and let my Javanese friends comments here if they are not lazy (grin). All I know is that every move has got a meaning, every gesture is a symbol of life.
Karina and Aldi, all the best for an ever-lasting marriage!
I feel that a black and white tone befit most of the frames more, but it might be a personal choice.
At 15:30 it was hot, but the sun eventually gave a good lighting for my minuscule toy camera. All pictures were taken with flash forced on (not that it helped in any way, but just to make a peace of mind in me). Post processing was done using Aperture. I first sharpened all the pictures, adjusted the color using color punch preset, adjusted the shadow/highlight, and then created a paper-toner color using Nik’s Color Efex Pro pugin.
Comparison with the color pictures from the gallery below.
Live to die
That’s right. For crane flies, their purpose of getting into adult stage is to mate, hatch eggs and die afterwards. Most adults do not eat, or eat nectars. With more than 15,000 species worldwide, it’s a bit surprising that we do not get to see them everyday, but then again, they like moist environment, definitely not in our homes.
This particular one was found when I was setting up a tropical rainforest nature walk. It was resting on an arboreal termite nest.
I needed to use manual focus as even with spot focus it was difficult to get a sharp image. Flash use on the first frame was set down by 1 stop as it was too close to use full power.
Fruiting lichens in HDR
A revisit of the fruiting lichens from previous post showing the spores, this time in (faux) HDR using Nik HDR Efex Pro for Aperture.
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