Ranan Samanya Photography
fashion runways, portraits & personal branding, environment, and documentary photography
Beneath Jakarta’s flyover
Graffiti. Always my favorite object of photography whenever I stop by Jakarta. This one is under one of the flyovers in Slipi area. It was a little bit after 08:30 in the morning. I was early for a rendezvous. So I went around with my compact LX3. Its compact size didn’t attract the criminal minds as much as a 7D. And 24mm is just great for this, enhancing the perspective of the concrete structure. I made it into B&W to make it more dramatic, in Aperture, using one of its presets, then adjusted the color level manually to add contrast.
The graffiti below is the most striking one with its mix of colors. Sort of demonic thing. I needed to wait a few minutes to get the thin line of sunlight penetrated through the flyover and made an angle at the base. Just in time too: after the shot cloud was covering the sun, and my company arrived.
Singapore MRT enhancement
Singaporeans are being spoiled by their government. The already IMO super-save MRT (mass rapid transport) got another safety precautions – they have been erecting glass walls all over the place along the perimeter (funded from their relatively high tax, I suppose). But I have to admit, they always do this sort of things in style. I like the overall picture and color variation of most of their MRT stations. We’ll take a look to more stations in the future as a photo-theme.
To highlight the dark corners and far objects, I set the exposure compensation to +2/3 stops.
Oh, and this is also my first attempt in using BorderFX plugin for Aperture. And if the color on your screen looked bleached, that’s because this mbp screen where the image was processed is so darn sharp. Here’s an edited version of the same picture.
Are you still using a phone box?
This Singapore’s Singtel phone box always caught my eyes with its dominant red colour, and while it doesn’t resemble the British red telephone box, it does remind me of them. But in this era of smart-phones and all sorts of gadgets, do people use them? Are you using them? Help me out here, if you feel like clicking.
the Art of loosing you
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
To all the families of the victims of earthquake, tsunami, and now nuclear threat in Japan, my heart is with you.
a Big phallus in Singapore – Swissôtel the Stamford
78 floors, protruding 226m towards the sky; with 1261 rooms, 16 restaurants and bars. This is Singapore’s tallest hotel: Swissôtel the Stamford.
(what’s the matter with all these the …est issues, and in this case, are they trying to show their masculinity with this giant modern phallus?)
I zoomed in a bit instead of using the full 24mm the LX3 is capable of as other unwanted objects were obstructing. Using f/2.2 was actually a mistake, but it appeared to be the best in composition, and was neither too bad in lighting nor sharpness. The sky was very bright at around noon; I needed to do post-processing with GIMP to adjust the colour level to reduce the background brightness.
If you come to this hotel, don’t forget to visit the 70th floor. They say you can even see Indonesia from here!
Singapore’s oldest church – St. Andrew’s Cathedral
I had the chance to visit the oldest church in Singapore. Its all white paint has always intrigued me, but shopping had always won. Until last Saturday, that is. Travelling light with my daughter to meet my wife who was already in Spore, I brought only my Panasonic Lumix LX3 pocket camera. I almost forgot how good it feels to point and shoot with aperture priority mode without the bulk of DSLR (at a mere 265g, it is almost 10X lighter than my 7D plus lens!).
An Anglican Cathedral, the church was built from 1856-1862. The design was created not by an architect, but by a military man, Lieutenant Colonel Ronald MacPherson. The construction was done using Indian convicts as labour. It underwent several modifications, including the north Transept in 1852, south Transept in 1983 (both extended to have meeting halls and offices), and an underground extension which included an amphitheatre in 2005 (and cost around SGD 12.5 million!).
I didn’t have enough time to explore the underground extension, and there was a wedding mass going on, thus I only went around and observed half of the external building features.
Don’t forget you can always click on the images to get a higer resolution ones (and witness the lens quality of LX3).
View from the amphitheater showing the North Transept. Originally the Transept was only used to park carriages
Its towers always remind me of medieval time and epic movies such as Lord of the Ring.
The bell tower from the south lawn.
Melasti – a prelude to the Day of Silence
Yesterday the Hindunese performed Melasti ritual. This ritual includes cleaning all their sacred items in the sea, and is usually done 1 day before the Day of Silence, Nyepi.
Here’s a glimpse of the procession by the Balinese community in Bintan Resorts.
Higher resolution images below.
Remembering Christchurch – Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica
Remembering those who were taken back to heaven in the recent earthquake in Christchurch, may you all rest in peace.
Below is Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Cathedral. Built by the French between 1877 and 1880, all materials for this cathedral were imported from France. Le Place Pigneau de Behaine, the square in front of the cathedral, holds a statue of the Virgin Mary. This white granite statue was erected in 1959 and has the title Regina Pacis (Queen of Peace).
Ranan Samanya Photography 
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