Just As I Thought...


...this month is going slow after all. *yawns*

Some old photos just to catch up. Kodak Ektacolor 160. Yep, from the TLR I borrowed a while ago. Very soft images, no contrast whatsoever, and to top it off the lab decided to do a very crappy scanning job. Some arts indeed. It almost looks like as if these images came out of some toy camera. Except this 'toy camera' isn't exactly point-and-shoot like many of them.





Yugo trying to cover Andes' face with his hand but got blurred himself instead, haha.






I kinda like this one though.


Second roll, went with Aura to some clubs expo in the Gadjah Mada boulevard.



The guys from marching band club. They performed really well actually, too bad I couldn't get any frontal shot so I had to settle with this.


I think that's a blurred bird on the lower left.


The guy from the karate club stand... he looks like one of those guys in martial art movies where they would go saying "peace, peace" to the bad guys but of course end up beating the shit out of them instead.


Nothing really interesting in the expo so we walked a bit further north to the GSP building.






I wonder if there's any repair shop around here who can do some clean-lube-adjustment to the TLR... This thing looks like it's still pretty usable if only the lens weren't in such bad condition.


And since currently I don't have anymore street shots or other fancy stuff, we'll just skim through some digital snapshots.


Jeki and Galih cleaning up a glass box that would be used to cover some building model they were making. Like the first one for Galih's reflection on the glass, and the second one for... well you can figure out yourself.


About two weeks ago I was helping out some friends to make promotional materials for their clothing company, Freesoul. Two sessions, indoor and outdoor, with three models. I won't show the photos from those sessions since I don't feel too confident about the photos... But I can share these.



The night before the shooting. Izul helping me checking the flash.


Goofing around with flash and umbrella. Borrowed from a friend. I suppose one can get some good results even with the most basic lighting setup if he knows what he's doing... but alas, I don't. I just kept moving the flash around until I got something that I like. :p Oh yeah, upon seeing this photo someone said the umbrella resemble a giant tit... Perhaps it's just him being a pervert, but hey at least I get to use the word "tit" in this blog. Hmm, it sounds kinda weird in single noun. Tits. Titties. There you go. Now let's see if that can bring in more visitors to this blog.


Still playing with flash. Ari leaving some message for Ira cause she gotta go to watch Opera Jawa. Later on she would tell us how she fell asleep after just 30 minutes into the movie.


Ira reading the message Ari wrote earlier, just a couple of minutes later. Funny how I almost got the exact same angle here.


On the way to the Boko temple to do the second session. Built-in camera flash!


Oh, how you just gotta love.... reflective surface? Yes. What? The pretty girl? Okay, that too.



I need to get new glasses too... not that my sight gets worse, but because the lens is already full of scratches that it starts to annoy me.


As for a more recent news... I just bought Krisna's scanner, the Epson Photo Perfection 3490 (pretty much with the money prize I got from JPG Mag, heh) Many thanks to Ivan for letting me know about the sale *and* even getting as far as taking the scanner to my place himself for a test run. :D Obviously this flatbed scanner is nothing like a dedicated film scanner such as Nikon Coolscan, for example... but at least now I can scan my negs myself. Scanning in the lab costs too much in the long run. I still need to learn about the setting of the scanner to get the best result, but so far I'm not disappointed at all by its performance. It actually can handle some negs that weren't scanned properly by the lab scanner. Like this one:



From an old roll of a Lucky SHD 100, the negative is rather thin.


The Epson's rendition of one of my personal favorite frame. Not bad, though the printscan of this frame is still better (obviously!). This one's a TMAX 400, btw.


From the same roll of TMAX 400, though this one is underexposed. One of my first attempts at hipshot.

That's all for now, now let me get back to slacking off...
Hello all! I know... August was a rather slow month for me, there wasn't any interesting update in this blog. And now that Ramadan is coming this September, I'm not sure either if this month's gonna be any better since I'm not really fond of the idea of shooting in the open as usual while fasting. Well, just expect simple snapshots and stuff.

Anyway, here's some recent news:

I am currently borrowing Naga's TLR, the Yashica 635:



It looks pretty cool in a glimpse, but in reality the optic has already been infected with fungi... and from what I've gathered the lens isn't exactly the best quality lens anyway. But every basic function still seems to be working so I'll be doing some test rolls with this thing... I've already exposed 2 rolls of Kodak Ektacolor 160, actually. I'm not expecting something amazing from them, but still I can't wait to get them developed. The camera itself is pretty fun to use. A bit annoying cause I have to meter with another camera since I don't own a handheld lightmeter, but still, fun. And I love how people stare with curiosity at the weird black box hanging on my neck everytime I go out with it. Makes me feel like a badass old school photographer or something. Hah, I'm such a poser.

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Basuki came back from Japan. And he brought me a roll of Neopan Acros100, 2 rolls of Neopan400, 2 rolls of Neopan1600, and 3 rolls of Tri-X. Thanks, pal! Can't wait to use them, now let's just hope my mood for shooting will be back soon.

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One of of my works will be featured in the next issue of JPG Magazine. You can download the sneak peek of that issue here. Thank you very much to you guys who voted for it. :)

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In a non photography related topic, my friends will be coming back to town after 2 months of student community service all around Java. Oh how I've missed them. Thought they were all going to do their final project this semester but turned out most of them would be taking more time to gather up references and stuff. That means more hangout time in the campus for us, I guess.

Well, that's all, hope this finds you all well!