Fefe in Red Glamour

Fefe, the Juragan of Anker Bir!

Melancholy Looks

]]> http://adalrico.net/2012/02/04/the-cold-looks-of-fefe/feed/ 0 http://adalrico.net/2011/09/18/bmw-serie-5-black-beauty-photo-session/ http://adalrico.net/2011/09/18/bmw-serie-5-black-beauty-photo-session/#comments Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:35:38 +0000 Boy http://adalrico.net/?p=2777

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 24mm F1.4L II, 1/320, F2.0, ISO 500

My friends asked me to shoots their beloved BMWs. It was my first assignment shooting automobiles, but it was very fun, challenging, and fast paced – particularly on the rolling shots. This post is about the Serie 5. Next post will be about Serie 3.

Some learning points from this automobile photosession:

• Settings for rolling shots: AF Servo, Shutter speed around 1/125 for speed of 50-70kph. That’s the starting point. You can play around with shutter speed to get desired effect.
• In any possible way, shoot from lower side to get exaggerated effect of the car. Do not shoot from the upper side. For instance, try to shoot from driver’s view level.
• Shoot in the dawn or dusk. Never shoot on daylight.
• Black color creates a lot of reflections. Yellow color will normally deceive the metering system. Check the result if you rely on camera metering system.
• Clean up the cars. Dirts are visible.
• The devil is in the details. Try macro shooting for car components/interior on high noon.
• Shoot the side which receives the light. If the sun/light is from the east, then shoot from the east side of the car.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 24mm F1.4L II, 1/40, F3.5, ISO 100

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 24mm F1.4L II, 1/50, F2.8, ISO 100

Canon 7D, Canon EF 24mm F1.4L II, 1/125, F8.0, ISO 2000

Canon 7D, Canon EF 24mm F1.4L II, 1/125, F2.2, ISO 3200

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 24mm F1.4L II, 1/40, F2.8, ISO 100

Saya mengambil foto pemandangan kota Hong Kong di malam hari dari dua tempat: Kowloon dan The Peak di Pulau Hong Kong.

Kowloon mungkin yang paling murah, karena tinggal pergi ke Harbour City atau Avenue of the Stars saja.

The Peak yang merupakan tempat terbaik untuk melihat kota Hong Kong, antriannya luar biasa panjang mulai dari pagi, jadi jika ingin memfoto sunset atau sunrise dari The Peak, sebaiknya sudah antri kira-kira dua jam sebelumnya. Untuk menuju The Peak dijual juga tiket ekspress, yang hanya berguna untuk memotong antrian. Harganya hampir dua kali lipat regular. Jika memang kepepet untuk mengejar waktu, tiket ekspress mungkin bisa dipertimbangkan. The Peak merupakan resor wisata tersendiri, jadi sudah tersedia berbagai macam toko dan restaurant. The Peak selalu ramai, jadi jangan mengharapkan tempat yang sepi dan romantis. Jika ingin agak romantis sedikit, atau tidak begitu padat, sebaiknya pergi ke Avenue of the Stars saja.

Arsitektur interior and ekterior gedung ini bernuansa kolonial dan klasik, sehingga turut dijadikan juga sebagai tempat pemotretan. Untuk ijin pemotretan dapat diurus di kantor tiket Museum Mandiri. Oh ya, tiket masuk Museum Mandiri sangat murah, hanya Rp.2000,- saja. Museum Bank Mandiri tutup hari Senin saja, sesuai lazimnya Museum dimana-mana, dan jam buka-nya bisa sampai jam 4 sore meskipun di hari Sabtu.

Museum Bank Mandiri menampilkan diorama kegiatan perbankan di masa lalu. Pertama kali memasuki Museum ini akan menemui kantor kas/teller jaman kolonial.

Pada jaman dahulu, posisi neraca perbankan dikelola secara manual melalui “buku besar” atau Groot Boek. Ini dimungkinkan karena transaksi jaman dahulu tidak sebanyak dan sekompleks dimasa sekarang.

Ini merupakan meja khusus pengelola Groot Boek

Nah, bagaimana pengelolaan neraca perbankan jaman sekarang? Tentu dengan menggunakan komputer dan server yang berukuran besar. Kalo misalnya dari satu cabang saja bisa melakukan 5,000 transaksi per hari, tidak mungkin dicatat secara manual kan?

Uniknya, Museum ini juga menampilkan instrumen-instrumen keuangan jaman dahulu, misalnya seperti bilyet deposito.

Kebetulan waktu saya datang, ada kontraktor museum yang sedang memasang koleksi museum untuk ditampilkan, jadi sepertinya museum ini cukup diperhatikan dan di-update koleksinya. Untung saja museum ini disponsori oleh Bank Mandiri, jadi cukup terawat dan diperhatikan.

Nah, Museum ini juga mempunyai galeri foto para pemimpin Bank Mandiri di masa lalu. Bank Mandiri adalah bank hasil merger beberapa Bank akibat dari krisis moneter tahun 1997. Galeri disini menampilkan foto para Direktur dan Komisaris dari Bank Mandiri dan beberapa Bank sebelum Bank Mandiri terbentuk.

Tentunya foto yang ini merupakan foto yang dikenali oleh rakyat Indonesia:

Secara umum, Museum Mandiri cukup terawat dan dikelola dengan baik. Museum-nya cukup luas, mungkin 1-2 jam cukup untuk melihat seluruh koleksi Museum ini. Tak jauh dari Museum ini ada Museum Fatahillah, lapangan jayakarta, dan Cafe Batavia yang terkenal itu.

Dufan – stands for “Dunia Fantasi” or “Fantasy World” is the main attraction of Ancol Park.  Above are the Hysteria towers in Dufan.

Seaworld Ancol is a family magnate, especially during weekend. Above is the shark feeding session.

Ancol Piers are also favorite hangout place for everybody, especially young couples. People can enjoy sea breezes, sunset, and sunrise.

Visitors can hire boat for a short trip (about 30 minutes) in the afternoon.

Or night boat for romantic night trip (it becomes less romantic if the whole big family join the night boat trip ;p )

Ancol also maintains big fields to accommodate various outdoor activities, such as music concert, or even flying kites….

There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

~Steven Wright

LLW feat. Dira Sugandi

Java Jazz is an annual Jazz festival held in Jakarta, Indonesia. It is often dubbed as the largest Jazz Festival in the world, although I can’t verify this. Java Jazz has been able to attract more than 120,000 visitors for three days and making it as one of Jakarta’s main attraction. The participants are international and local Jazz musicians. It has special performance from certain artists and usually there are 1-2 well known international artists who are not a “typical” Jazz musician but they are really visitor magnet. For instance, in Java Jazz 2011, the special performance was from Santana (latin rock) and George Benson (jazz).

Since I am not really into Jazz music, I didn’t really enjoy all of the shows, but there are some interesting performances, particularly Dira Sugandi. It seemed to me that she got a powerful and unique sounds. In addition to that, her expression really showed her appreciation toward the song she sang. I have created a specific gallery of Dira Sugandi in Java Jazz20110.

Dira Sugandi

The overall experience of this event was good. The event was entertaining, safe, and well organized. This event was worth visited. The official website of this festival is www.javajazzfestival.com and it also provides information about the event and artists.

Acoustic Alchemy

Sr Mandril

LLW

Tohpati

Andien

Luckily, the girls are “banci kamera”, so it wasn’t hard to direct them all.

The challenges of photoshooting with many models are to get the best group pose; to have each of them occupied while waiting for single photos; and to keep up the mood while waiting for each other.  In this part, there were two important things I learned: planning is crucial, and less gear setup/changing (this is very important for prime shooter).

Planning is crucial and it goes without saying. I should have thought about the concept before the session because there were 11 models and it meant, at least 11 individual photos and several group photos. Less gear setup/changing is important, particularly for prime shooters. I brought 2 lenses, 24mm and 100mm, but I rarely changed my lenses because I had to keep the flow moving and manage their mood. I also rarely use my flash gun, because I had little time to setup and think about the lighting. This was were proper planning would kick in.  Zoom shooters would be benefited, but I prefer the quality and creativity drive of using prime lenses, so I stick with prime lenses here.

Nevertheless, the session went well and everybody seemed happy with the result. Next time I should do better. A dedicated 9 images gallery can be seen here. There are images for private usage only .

In this occasion, we held our meet up at Potato Head, Pacific Place as it is easy to find this place. From planned 10 participants, only 6 showed up. There were me and Yudieth, Anita, Maureen, and two bloggers I just met: Lynda Ibrahim and Veny Lai.

Left to Right: Lynda, Anita, Maureen, and Veny

Lynda: I found out that she’s a contributor to Jakarta Post and used to work with my gonna-be-ex-employer. She seemed comfortable with us because by the time she arrived, she started talking and apparently forgot that she just knew us for…few minutes . She’s a good friend of Veny.

Lynda Ibrahim

Anita: Gorgeous lady. She came to Jakarta for a wedding party of her acquittance, and she ignited the idea for this bloggers meet up. She will be back to Indonesia by the end of this month, so I expect more bloggers meet-up

Maureen: The inspiring Lady. Her blog has been inspiration for many moms out there. Apparently she got an appointment after this meet-up. Hmmm….I’ll just keep an eye on her blog

Anita & Maureen

Veny: She works at the same place with me! And later I found out that we have several mutual friends. Banking is such a smallllll world…

Veny Lai

Yudieth: My girlfriend. I have nothing to say here. I’ll keep it just for myself

Yudieth

Me? Oh, I am just the organizer and the photographer. What I did was mostly taking picture like this

Martini Coffee…with weird glass

or this

Candid Discussion

We talked about many things, including the FPI and Indonesia’s recent international laughing stock – Mr. Tifatul Sembiring. Well, since I am the only male at that time, there  was a lot of discussion about girl things. I also found out that I might have the coolest fingernails among them. My fingernails are original and I was born with it!

Anita brought cupcakes which made by her cousins. The cupcakes were simply delicious and I think it is one of the finest cupcakes in town. If one would like to order, one could visit her blog here: http://hernov.wordpress.com/ , email her at hernov.info@gmail.com , or sms her at 0818926088 (no phone call, sms only). Some pictures of the cupcakes:

Cupcakes

I also did some tests with my G12 like this (it got the Tilt & Shift effect!) :

So it was very fun to see Anita and Maureen again, and to know Lynda and Veny – both are very interesting characters. I am looking forward for another meet up since Ivy, Toni Wahid, Parvita, Therry & Yefta, Cn, Devi, Wiwien, Juin didn’t came.

His photographs are simple, engaging, and with very good composition. Simply lovely. You can check his website at http://www.ronyzakaria.com/ .