Sekaten Fair 2008, First Visit

It's that time of the year again, a month long traditional fair preceding the Gerebeg Maulud, the celebration of Prophet Muhammad birthday. The real Sekaten ceremony itself actually only starts a week before the Gerebeg, and consists of playing the palace ceremonial gamelan for a week long to attract people to come to the mosque. As such, the fair is originally just a mere company to the ceremony, but nowadays people are attracted more to the fair than the actual ceremony... even the gamelan sounds could be barely heard, drowned in the noise from the nearby fair.

But anyway, the fair is always crowded so it's always a good opportunity to photograph people. So one day I met up with Erik, Naga, Lucy, and Aul to snap around. I came late, everyone else already waited for me so as soon as I got there we went straight inside.











As usual families with little kids are everywhere.










This guy sat on a really sweet spot, I made a few alternative compositions out of this single scene alone:








"Men & Women" This one would have been nicer with a higher shutter speed...



"Selling clothes" The badass photographer himself. :))





As the night slowly crawled in, rain started to pour down so we stopped taking pictures and started looking for shelter. Later on we went to a nearby angkringan to grab some food and warm drink. And as expected everytime a heavy rain hits town, the electricity was out...






The fair will still be there through March so I look forward to go there again, either to take pictures or just to hang out and enjoy the atmosphere. I miss going there with the friends from architecture campus...

Oh and yes I made some layout adjustments on the blog which result in bigger pictures. Bigger! Mmmm. This layout should just fit in 1024x768 resolution and probably look as good in bigger resolutions. Hope this finds you all well!