Extreme Photographer

Who iz diz xtreme photographer?

We started shooting even before we landed in Solo and all the way to Yogyakarta we shoot at almost everything. There are so many interesting things here. It`s like travelling through bandar Mentakab in the 1970s with horse driven carriages everywhere. There are paddy fields here and there, farmers working the field with their hands and sometimes assisted by water buffaloes. People are very polite and friendly, the town very clean, trishaw everywhere and we can see volcanoes at a far. Ikelah`s eyes got locked to the volcanoes even from the day we arrived.

Mine were more on the sunset and just for the sunset I brought a tripod all the way from home.

The coconut was good. Tea? Bad bad bad.

We had dinner at a nice restaurant on the way back from Parantritis. The restaurant have individual huts but it`s for makan bersila only. The food especially the Gurame dish was too saucy for our taste. I didn`t like it. Overall if you are going to Yogyakarta and you are not so familiar with Javanese food, my advise is stick to Minang food. There are many Restoran Padang in Yogyakarta and Solo. You sit at the table and they fill your table with small plates of all sorts of dishes almost everything they have. However they only charge you for what you eat. We usually just choose the ones we like and sent back the rest to make some space on the table. Very exotic foods they have there. On the last day I ate goat brain masak lemak. Ikelah`s favourite is the limpa.

Ikelah is waiting anxiously for the famous teh tarik Borobudur.

We walked to the nearby town from our Manohara hotel in Borobudur to have dinner. The shops closes early but there were some stalls and a few small restaurants open. We didn`t opt for the Padang restaurant though and settled for a warung for nasi goreng. Bad bad bad decision. Ikelah asked for teh susu. Worse decision.

This is the team and there`s Anang our driver cum guide. Very knowledgable, read Hamka also.

I took this photo just before we part with Anang. This is not the last photo though. There`s still the happy beca ride photo of Ikelah and DITH. I realised I didn`t take many photos of ourselves. There were probably only 25 photos of us and the rest of about 200 frames I shot are of Parangtritis, Merapi, Kotagede, people, animals and other nice scenes but not of ourselves. Photo of myself? Only 4 in my camera with 2 of them silluette just to show people that I really did go to Yogyakarta and Solo.

Photo Makeover

I have developed an interest in some post production work after I came across some award winning entries in the graphic art category organized by a photography magazine. Before this I never bother doing any post production works even the basic ones like enhancing colours, adjust brightness, saturation, hue or contrasts.

The photos are beautiful and very different. Some looks like oil paintings of Monnet, others resemble crazy works of Salvatore Dali and some looks unreal like animation figures. I started to ask how and now in the process of finding the answers poking around jabbing the tools inside photoshop.
So for the last two days I spent some hours to become familiar with photoshop functions and did some testing.

Probably this is how they do the Cuti cuti Malaysia brochures. It`s actually not very difficult.

This one is a bit complicated. I finished this last night.

Travel With A Purpose

We got back from Yogyakarta last Saturday morning after 4 days of travelling. DITH got her backpacking dream come true. Ikelah got his back pain healed, Mrs Moss got to climb the Borobudur steps front packed, I was the fully geared packed back and front for the trip. Got some good shots and stories but I`ll leave the stories to DITH and Widhus Gembel to Ikelah.

Borobudur

It rained heavily the day we arrived in Borobudur. Stayed the night at Manohara and the next morning a thick mist surrounded the temple contributing to the poor lights.

( Nikon 18-55mm lens at focal: 26mm, ISO 800, f8, 1/400sec, manual )

The sky brightened up only after we got down from Borobudur. But we were already late for breakfast and we had an important appointment with Mt. Merapi.

( Nikon lens 18-55 at focal : 18mm, ISO 800, f8, 1/500sec. manual)

Prambanan Temple

It was a hazy day and the lights were lousy.

( Nikon 18-55 at focal 55mm, ISO 400, f8 : 1/320 sec, manual )

Sunset at Parangritis

This is a sight to remember. The rays shone straight to the clouds over Parangritis beach.

( Nikon 18-55mm lens at focal :28mm, ISO 400, f8 :1/5sec, manual )

Coconut tree in Parangritis

Paul Moss and M. Yamashita fought over this spot to capture that single coconut tree. M. Yamashita won but not before Paul Moss managed to catch a couple of shots.

( Nikon 18-55 at focal : 26mm, ISO 400, f8 : 1/5 sec, manual )

M. Yamashita Siluette

Captured M. Yamashita in the act.

( Nikon 18-55 at focal: 26 mm, ISO 400, f 8 : 1/3 sec, manual )

Burung Kakak Tua

The Javanese love for birds can be seen everywhere. They have bird market and all three hotels we stayed have birds.

( Nikon 18-55 at focal 55mm, ISO 800, f 5.6 : 160 sec, AF, TTL Flash )

Lastly thanks to Pang5 for driving us to the airport , Khin for picking us up and Anang our driver for the guidance.