Bali Photographer / Thoughts and Portfolio

After postponed a number of times for various reason, I finally had a chance to go to Taman Ujung, a historical sites on the coast of Karangasem, East Bali, which was the heritage of ancient kingdom of Karangasem. My main intention is outdoor model photography instead of either landscape or architecture. It was actually the reason why I desperately insisted my girlfriend to go along as the model, whose out of a sudden seems to loose her camera mood in the last few weeks. It was actually cloudy when we left home, but thinking how rare the chance was, I decided to go and hope that sun would eventually come up.

Winding trip through scenic country road took us about an hour and a half, plus an awful breakfast break at a little cafe on Candidasa beach. Candidasa water garden which normally quite a scenic place for landscape seemed rather dull, so we just passed. Getting to the destination without any hassle we found the weather was quite nice, with deep blue sky especially on the direction towards the sea. The holly Mount Agung behind the site remained cloudy though.

Shit happened when we I started to took my gears out of the bag to prepare for a few pre-shots after a little orientation. I realized that I left the memory card in my computer back home. Fortunately mu girlfriend had her D40x with her, so after a little while elapsed to calm myself down. She refused the model session, I did not know why, maybe she did not confident enough with the camera setup or she had something else in mind. I had no other choice than taking a few architectural and landscape shot.

I used to use the same Nikon D40x before I got my Nikon D200 with a few better lenses and finally change my whole setup into Canon. Now I found myself disappointed by resulted picture. The picture of the main house taken through the frame of an old window here took me some time and five masks in post processing to gain rather desirable dynamic range and tonality. Still not comparable to supposed result of my Canon though.

I will definitely come back with my Canon EOS 5D full-frame camera, Canon ultra wide 17-40mm F/4 L lens, and at least the CPL filter for better landscape and architectural shots. Of course if I am lucky enough to get a model coming along, my favorite lens Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm F/1.4 will get its turn as well.