Yeah this maybe a bit late, but first of all let me just say happy Eid ul-Fitr for all of you who celebrate it. :)

Like many other people who live in big cities in Indonesia, me and my family also underwent the tradition known as mudik, where people travel back to their hometown to meet family members and relatives whom they haven't seen for a year and ask for forgiveness. The travelling process is often considered a pain in the ass... quite literally too, since heavy traffic jams for hours on the main route are commonplace. Luckily we live not too far away from my parents' hometown, it only takes about two and a half hour on a bus ride.

So anyway, two days at my grandpa's house. What happened? I dunno, all I could remember was the loud screamings of my little cousins... remind me again why I don't like little kids? Oh, right.

Aside from the expected formal family shots, I didn't take many pictures. Just wasn't in the mood. Guess I'm just not so much a family person. But of course they know that already. Always been the quiet one amidst the loud crowd, I have.


Hey, that's me looking drop dead bored on the couch, so who took the last photo? My dad did. Well, all he did was pointing the camera and clicked the shutter though. To be straight, the flash is fucking ugly, I hate it, but I like the feeling of randomness in the picture... You kinda get to feel how things were going on at that time. The photo was taken before the formal family shot, by the way.

The next day we went to a gathering of our family's distant relatives in another town, meeting with people who are supposed to be somewhat related to us yet just seem to be complete strangers for me. Shaking hands... smiling face... then getting back to your seats and minding your own business... ya know. About three hours of boredom ensued.

Hey, even my grandpa was bored.


So I shot some more...


Go guess the story. ;p

Well, at least I got one nice portrait of my little cousin Fauzan and his thoughtful looking dad. :)


School started again next Tuesday. I need to start doing some assignments I haven't even touched... heh.

Hope this finds you all well!

As promised, these are the photos from my first ever self developed roll. I couldn't scan the negs cause I still need them in large strips (I gotta cut them in strips of two or three frames to be able to scan them in my scanner... bummer) to make a contact print later. So these are scanned from prints. Upon seeing them, I think the contrast is good, but just a little bit too much for my taste. I'll try a shorter developing time on my next TMAX 100.

As usual, FM2n with a 50/1.8.


I just *love* this one picture:


Heh.

That is why I love hitting the streets. You get all kinds of different shit everytime. Sometimes you find them, sometimes you don't. Or perhaps it's not that we find good moments, but rather, they found us.


This one's from Ambarukmo Plaza... I think it's pretty interesting to take pics around the mall, in essence it's not that different from traditional marketplace --you get different activities in various situations, etc. Of course, one problem is to always make sure no security guards are nearby...


Two nights ago went to Pizza Hut to celebrate the birthdays of 5 people from our gang... heh, October is always kinda like the big month of the year for us. But that night was definitely the biggest crowd we've ever gathered. ALL the gang came, PLUS some other people that we invited over. Twenty-something people in total, veeery noisy.

I wish I got the focus right on this one... -_-

Above photos are, of course, D50 + 50/1.8. Before that I also exposed a whole roll of Superia X-tra. A lot of photos from the roll suffers from camera shake... damn. I guess I'm not supposed to push my luck when shooting active people at 1/8 s. :( I'm too lazy to scan the negs or the prints (I printed the whole roll for documentation purpose), but one thing I can tell is the colors are very reddish... The room we were in was dominated by warm colors, but I didn't think it would come out really strong in film. Or perhaps it's one of X-tra's characteristics? I might have to get a cooling filter in the future...

So here are some of the photos from my first visit in Bringharjo market. I brought both digital and analog with me, but ended up only using digital that day due to the lighting condition. Having loaded an ASA 100 film in the analog, there's no way I could capture the scenes inside the market without the risk of shake. Next time I'll bring a faster film, perhaps an X-tra or even a TMAX 400 if I got the money.

The market itself is a nice place full of opportunity and endless possibilities. It's much bigger than Ngasem, not to mention there are more activities to be found. Also, what I noticed was the richer colors of the place, which makes the market a good practicing ground for color photos. I think Bringharjo's a good step-up from my previous sessions in Ngasem. Looking forward to my next session there!

All photos taken with D50 and 50/1.8. The rest of the photos can be viewed here. :)


Should have made the above pic slower... 1/15 s would've made it a kicker, I suppose.


A few nights ago went eating with some friends, gotta be my first dish of fried rice after a looong while. Didn't really enjoy it though, it was too spicy for my taste. :( D50 + 50/1.8, 1/8 s at f/1.8 in ISO 1600... quite the dark place, it was. o.O

Here are some leftovers from last Sunday when me and my ADVY friends went to Borobudur. We were originally trying to get some sunrise pics from above the temple, but the plan was cancelled because the entrance fee for entering the temple during sunrise is waaay more expensive than the standard rate. There's no way we'd pay that much... for now anyway.

Visiting one of the seven wonders of the world, you'd think there's gonna be a hell lots of photos, but sadly these are all that I considered blog-worthy... All taken with D50 and mostly 18-55mm kit lens.


A couple of days ago the folks at archi campus also held a little gathering in The Corner cafe, finishing that day's Ramadan fasting. Only brought the 50/1.8 attached to D50 since I thought it's gonna be cool to use it in low-lit place like the cafe. Boy was I wrong. Where most of the people gathered, the lighting was so low that even at ISO 1600 and f/1.8 wide open, I only got 1/4 or 1/8 sec... wtf. But that wasn't even the main problem. I was forgetting the little space they got on the cafe, and a 50mm attached to a digital body with a crop factor of 1.5x made it a 75mm effective lens. So there I was, backing myself away against the wall over and over again just to try to get an angle wide enough to cover a scene I wanted. Fuck crop factor.

Holy really loves getting his picture taken

I didn't take the above pic. I think it was Gem's shot. A nice job, he did. :)

Today was nice. This morning I developed my first roll! Yay! The result looked pretty good, I'm gonna scan it (or print it then scan) and put the photos here in near future. Not before yesterday's hunt to Bringharjo market though. ;)

My scanner is definitely troubled. I don't know what's exactly wrong with it, but at least I know it's not normal to spend HALF A FRIGGIN DAY just to scan THREE rolls... is it? I won't even get into the quality of the scan.

But anyway, here are some recent negscans I did. All taken with FM2 + 50/1.8. First is from Lucky SHD 100, taken around the studio in archi campus when they were having some group presentation about generating some kind of satellite city around the outer perimeter of Jogja. Or something. Whatever it was, it sure sounded pretty difficult. Looking at all these, I'm kinda glad I won't have to do those bothersome things again. ;p


Next is from Superia X-tra 400. Tried this roll simply for the ASA, but turned out it delivered some pretty nice colors too. I think this is the roll I'll have in my pocket when I want some colors in my film photos. Gotta try another lab for the processing though. Artha sucks. I hope Central's color processing is as good as their B/W, might try there later.


One day we wanted to play basketball in the usual court, waiting for maghrib to come, but there's already people playing and so we were just like sitting there, waiting for them to stop --which just didn't happen.


So we played in another court. When maghrib finally came, we went to get some food... after the usual where-are-we-going-to-eat process, it's settled that we're gonna go to a place called Arto Moro, some grilled chicken restaurant.


I didn't order food since I was saving up money for films... so I just had a bottle of Frestea, and then a bottle of Sprite. And they charged me... Rp6000!? Dude, WTF? How could you charge Rp3000 for a bottle of friggin fresh drink?? You just don't do that, not in some lousy place like yours anyway! Even the outpriced drinks in tourist places don't cost that much. What a dirty rip off. Down on my list of "places I won't go to for some grub". Guess now I know why it's called Arto Moro (-> Arto = money, Moro = come). Heh.

Also did some street with the X-tra.


And then the journey continued with a Neopan.


This roll was supposed to be the roll that would be used in my developing practice, but the teacher came up late so the practice was postponed to next Friday. Couldn't wait that long to see the result, so I took it to the lab. I personally love the second to last shot, though the focus is a bit off. :)

That's all for now, hope you're all well!