New Kids On The Block



If you're a street photography enthusiast from Indonesia, I have a good news for you. There is now a group/collective called Unposed which deals with anything that has to do with street photography, especially those which come from Indonesia. At this moment there is still not much to see, but later on we plan to post articles, news, features, and perhaps interviews with photographers who engage in the practice of street photography. The group also accepts picture or article submissions, the details of which can be found on the site. Unposed is only available in Indonesian (at least for now), but even if you don't speak the language don't let that stop you from at least visiting and take a look at the gallery --more photographers to come! We hope that the birth of this group could contribute to the development of photography in the country.


Oh, and I hope you are appreciating the irony that a post which promotes a site called "Unposed" is accompanied with a picture of a guy striking a pose. Heh. I really wish I had a more badass street picture to go with this post but unfortunately this is all I got. :o

13 comments:

Sebastian said...

Abbreviations are the new thing, right, MJR? :p Is "posed" intentionally abbreviated to PSD as in PS-D - photoshopped?

The host of unposed.org seems slow. First I couldn't load the CSS, now I don't get a response at all. Meanwhile it works but it's terribly slow and the connection gets lost all the time.

I understand that you want to attract readers from Indonesia who are not necessarily fluent in English. But since you want to promote your photography, why not also do it internationally by also writing in English? This could help you in marketing your blog by getting links from English sites which otherwise might not link back to a site which they and their readers don't understand. The Sonic Blog http://blog.sonicsites.de/ has a good solution to this by posting both in German and English.

I browsed a bit throught the blog, of course couldn't understand much. I see in the first post you're linking to a dA-article about street. That's really bad. dA is cute, but it's not a serious source for photography. And explaining street photography with an article that shows mostly photographs of bums and street portraits is not a proper explanation to street. It's a bad article illustrated with bad photographs of some snappers who'd like to call themselves photographers. There'd be enough good photographs and photographers you could have shown, write a good article which has some relevance. With the first articles you're setting a standard, and it happens to be very low at the moment.

I like the idea of you guys forming a collective and blogging about it, I just think you'll have to put a bit more work into the blog to actually make it interesting to people with a serious interest in photography. Nevertheless, I wish you good luck, and I'll follow your progress.

Sebastian said...

Oh, and, Wid, don't you want to move your blog headline into one line :p .. I have Firefox opened atfullscreen on a 22" screen and everything I see of the article is the collective logo and the first paragraph. In a 1024x768 you'll barely see the logo. Think you're using the space a bit too generously :p

nugi budianggoro said...

can i join? is this really heading towards photographers collective? or just a collective blog?

iqbal said...

hhuehehe, keren potonya!
sob tambahin foto mu di gallery unposed dong

Wid said...

@Seb: Sharp critiques as usual, guess I can always count on you for that. :)

Ok, to clear up some things and answering the questions...

First off, this group isn't my brainchild. I simply got invited to join, and since I'm pretty much in agreement with the founders' main concerns I'm just trying to do what I can to promote the group.

I don't have anything to do with the name of the group nor the idea of abbreviating it, including the logo (It's not even the 'official logo' yet, it's just what the tiny icon on the address bar of the website looks like --I just made it bigger) I do however, notice the photoshop reference in the abbreviation as well and I personally think it's pretty funny. :D It wasn't intentional, I told this to the one who did make the abbreviation and he didn't even realize it. Oh, and I don't think the founders of Unposed even know what MJR is... perhaps abbreviating one's group name really is the new buzz. ;)

The instability of the server is confirmed, it's been reported by other visitors too... the webmaster is working on it.

As for language concern, I agree using English is the best way to get the widest reach possible. But that just isn't our top priority for now. The reason we use Indonesian is because it *is* directed to Indonesian audience. You see, while the whole world is sharing and exchanging photographic information through blogs, Indonesia is pretty much dormant. There are a huge number of photographers here, professionals, serious amateurs, weekend hobbyists... thing is, they (or should I say, *we*) seem to keep everything to ourselves. The pros are too busy getting jobs, the artist photogs are nowhere to be found/heard, and amateurs like me pretty much only share photos on their personal blog (heh, how's that for a self-criticism..) There's an online photography forum, the biggest in South East Asia for that matter, but the discussions mostly only talk about technical stuff and how to make images look good and all that. Serious discussions mostly don't last long and the participants are generally the same usual suspects, with other people throwing "I don't get it" here and there. Any informative links to English sites would pretty much only result in "thanks for sharing" commentary or worse, "could you translate that?" It's that bad.

I guess we want Unposed to be a sort of 'wake-up call' for photography communities in Indonesia, to show that photography can be used more than just making pretty images, to tell ideas, to provoke thoughts. It just happens that street photography is something we have in common so that's the way we go. Heck, I'm not even sure that we're the 'right people' to do this but we believe something needs to be done about it so why not?

Perhaps later on when things are more organized we'll consider the idea of going 'all out'. :)

The first post about overview... yeah we need to work on that, it's basically just a hastily prepared post to fill the void. We still haven't decide who should write the introduction post.

All in all, the site is still a mess, but I think it's better to start and fix things as we go than just forever preparing and planning the perfect place.

Anyway thanks a lot for all the suggestions! (and I'll try to think of something about the header ;p)

Wid said...

@Nugi:
Send your email to mail@unposed.org with some of your photos which you think could represent your view on street photography and it would be great if you could also provide some short writings as to why you want to join and what you want to achieve by joining. :)

We're still very fluid at the moment, if you're not sure where this is all going you could always check first how things go and see if it fits your preference.

Karolus Naga said...

un what ?!!

hehehe ... eager to surfin there !

yuwono rahman said...

first impression: nice choice of name... short... and describe most of it... it's easy to remember too like "in-public"...

congrat for unposed.org !

Hopy said...

wid, mau kerjasama ama kantor gw gak, huehehe...
s*kalo yg ini seriusan*

Tommy N. Armansyah said...

I think the new kid is having to much make up and hair cut...every now and then the lay out of the site is altered and I am being too often reading "under maintenance".

Nevertheless it keeps me going back and back again....

Wid said...

Tommy, well you know kids... they always don't know what it is they truly want. ;)

It'll settle down eventually, but for the near future at least, expect some more bumpy ride. :))) Thanks for letting me know though, I'll notify the webmaster about it.

Tanya said...

That is a fab picture! I do love your photography.

As for Unposed - that seems quite interesting, but it a shame it's not in English, as Sebastian pointed out.

Even if it's directed at mostly an Indonesian audience, it will simply alienate those who cannot understand the language, and will not encourage people to follow it.

Hopefully as time goes on, English will be incorporated into it.

Tommy N. Armansyah said...

I like the current lay out...but after a brief stint in the so called discussion thread, I feel that my old dumb brain couldn't keep up with the enormous amount of brainstorming and mind throwing...intinya aku mulai nggak mudeng sama yang diomongin disono, mboten understand, tetapi tetap memantau, weird isn't it.

mungkin aku terlalu banyak bercanda dan omong kosong...tahu ah gelap...