World Gamelan Festival (2)

Sarawak's energetic and spectacular traditional dance at the World Gamelan Festival 2010 in Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. It was perfomed by dancers from Peninsula Malaysia.

This show is a camera's metering nighmare. The lighting changes all the time. Both intensity and colour. There are very dark areas and very bright spotlight. It makes your meter goes wacky. The dancers move all the time - which is a challenge for focussing. I use manual exposure for all the photos. Camera is set at ISO 1600, f/5.6. To adjust shutter speed, I wait for a bright scene then take a reading off a light coloured dancer skin using spot meter and add one and a third stop. That turns out to be 1/100 sec. That's it. When the lighting is right, shoot. Sometime the light intensity change and you made some adjustment. This is the opposite of what I normally do - which is to meter according to a scene. This time I set an exposure and shoot when the scene lighting changes to your exposure setting!

The Canon 7D and 17-40mm f/4L lens focus very well in this condition. I use single point focus with expansion. Focussing method varies between "One shot" and "AI servo". Sometime I do pre focussing. There is some noise reduction applied for all photos. There is one with a little tweak on colour balance. Other than that, all are straight from camera JPEGs.

Tangkuban Perahu

One of the main attractions in Bandung is the volcanic craters at Tangkuban Perahu. There are many small shops selling souvenirs near the main crater which is known as Kawah Ratu (Ratu Crater). A trail along the rim leads you to the other side of the crater. It is an interesting walk. Don't miss it. A casual walk while taking photos may take about half an hour to reach the other end. Highly recommended for nature lovers.

We arrive early. Most souvenir shops are still closed!

The other side of the crater.

Black tree trunk near the rim.

 Benches are provided for visitors along the trail. Cool surrounding.

Part of the trail around the rim of the crater.

Mosses covered rock along the trail.

Bandung, Indonesia

I went to Bandung, Indonesia, after the World Gamelan Festival. It is only 2 hours flight from Kuala Lumpur.

With a population of around 3 million, the city center in Bandung is very crouded. In a traffic jam, even motorcycles cannot move.

Chess is a popular pastime on the sidewalk.

People in Bandung are not camera shy. I took the shot above after this guy made a request.

World Gamelan Festival 2010

I was at the World Gamelan Festival in Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia, last night.  Gamelan is a traditonal music and dance in Indonesia and Malaysia. Fabulous performance by groups from Malaysia, Indonesia and even Japan. A very entertaining show.

Praying alone

I was travelling in a bus across the Syrian desert. Miles and miles of dry empty space. Than a lone figure standing motionless caught my attention. I took a few shots as we went past the man. There was only about three seconds time gap from time I spot the man and the bus speeding by. Checking the image later, I realised that the man was praying. In Islam, praying is mandatory five times a day. Somehow looking at this image of a man standing motionless alone in a vast dry desert feel surreal.

Rare and exotic fungus

This rare and exotic tropical fungus is commonly called long net stinkhorn, crinoline stinkhorn or veiled lady. It is normally found after an ovenight rain. The scientific name is Phallus indusiatus. The photo is currently licensed for an advertisement on TV in Japan.

Alien mothership

Once in a while you may see rare cloud formation when you look up to the sky. Normally it don't last more than 5 minutes. I saw this "alien mothership" cloud in 1999 and was lucky to have my camera ready to record it. That was the last time I saw that type of cloud formation.

Sulking orangutan

I find it very fascinating on how similar is the emotional expression of orangutan to human being. They can appear to be happy, angry or sad. I caught this one biting its finger - sulking.