On Photography

Photography is copyright of
www.theredshutter.com

I want to start by telling you of how the photography business is carried out here in Indonesia particularly Surabaya - my hometown. The business photography is all about price tags. What does it mean? Well, you get a potential client, and you quote your price - say $100,- And then your potential client gets news from his cousin/friend/whatever that this photographer can do the same for $50 only. That's half the price. Upon hearing the news, he's not convinced with the $50 photographer, so he gives you a call back... excuse me, your $100 package, what do I get?

And you tell him you get so and so pictures + an album it's our best package sir. He ends the phone call.

Now he's going to call the other photographer and asks the same question - so your competitor tells your potential client that you get almost twice the amount of pictures, a much better album and your competitor says that he is currently using the best camera there is out there.

Being a customer with no photography background and thinking how expensive the wedding already is, he decided to go with the $50 photographer. Few months later, the couple gets the result of the photography and finds that the pictures are absolutely fine. So he starts telling other people that your price tag is too expensive and that people should find your competitor instead.

It's sad that your customer has no way of appreciating the art of photography.

Why is this happening? Because in my city, the appreciation of art has not been too developed. The customers are not able to differentiate what is a good picture and what is a bad picture. I'm so glad that this trend is soon changing with the next generation but not for another 15 - 20 years...

So the question now is:
If you had the opportunity to explain your $100 tag price to that customer? What would you have said?

I would have told my customer that the difference is in the quality of the pictures. Your $50 will go into my effort, my skill and my experience of documenting your precious event with the best possible outcome. And if you have awards, you might mention your achievements also. But of course this explanation doesn't click with them because as I've told you, they are not able to tell the difference. So you need another way of explaining it.

It's just like my cousin's wedding. You see they decided to invite a famous singer to come sing at their wedding. They wanted their wedding reception to look nice. But the parents feel like they've coughed up too much money inviting this singer. The groom tells his dad that the concrete walls are ugly and that the least they can do is cover it with plain fabric or something...

The father doesn't like this idea, he feels the audience will focus on the singer, not on the surrounding walls. At the end, the groom had to give in.

When the wedding finally took place, the groom is surprised to find fabrics dropping down surrounding the reception building.. no more ugly concretes. He was happy about it and asked his dad why he put the fabrics?

The father told him, " Honestly, I didn't do it to make your reception more beautiful, I did it because the sound system operator told me that without the fabrics, the voice of the singers will bounce off the wall creating a lot of echoes and won't sound nice."

So the father had his own reason.

I imagined myself that if i were to tell my customer that my pictures would look better than my competitor, it will not click with him as well. I needed to tell them something concrete.. something practical that will connect with the left brain, not the right brain.

It's really tough carrying out an art as a business. It's all about price tags and finding someone to do it for cheap. There's no union to set the standard price or to gauge which photographer belongs to which class deserving a minimum price tag...

That's my share for today.

Inspired by The Dark Knight

I had recently watched the Dark Knight - that batman movie. I was awed. That's my personal opinion. Why was I awed? It was a great movie. Great storyline, great actors, delicately directed and other things I'm unable to describe in such short paragraph. Only one negative point- there were too many kids watching that movie thinking it's the typical superheroes movie.

Man oh man.. I'm still replaying scenes from the movie in my head.

How does it work? What clicked inside my head that I liked it so much? What is it that get us attracted and what is it that make us repel? Why a picture will win an award while others are not even worth a second glance.

I know there's no absolute answer but if any of you have a thought on this matter then why not share them?

As for me - I'm always driven by ideas.... Call me a dreamer or a fool... hey it's true. Donald Trump in his book "Think BIG and Kick Ass in Business and Life" started the book by telling us how to dream. Dream BIG.. stop dreaming small. In that book, the content is surrounding financial security. I might not necessarily agree with a philosophy purely driven by power and wealth, but I do agree to get somewhere we must at least know where we are and where we want to be.

We can apply this concept to every part of our life: Becoming an artist, becoming a man, becoming a student, becoming a businessman, becoming a mother, a son, a daughter, a boyfriend... it all starts with a mental image of what we want to become.

In the movie Batman, the Joker has an idea of what his life should be. Nevertheless his idea is corrupted by his childhood trauma. He couldn't take it and began painting a mental image that is psychotic.

Harvey Dent also has a mental image of what Gotham City should be. A city where there's no criminal, where everybody can live safe and free of corruption.

Each one of us has our own ideals, however our ideal world is not always accepted by other people. If you want to put it bluntly, some of our ideas will not be successful commercially - meaning no one would ever want to spend money for your ideals.

At the very essence, I guess life is about the battle of ideas. Yours against mine. Some of us will make changes to our ideas to fit our needs in life. While others are unwilling to compromise for integrity purposes.

It's always inspiring to see an individual who are unwilling to compromise and later find out that they find success. I think that is why I really like The Dark Knight because I feel the vision of that movie is uncompromised and true to the story that need to be told.

And I notice such is the case with many other inspiring stories of individuals fighting the flow of society, fighting the norm values, rising above them, taking the challenge and overcoming them with success.

For me art when uncompromised will reach a new height and communicates so much more than just a picture. It is the bridge between our idea and reality. Through practice we get better at making our ideas into reality. And our skill grows with the challenge of our new ideas. With time, we will become a mature artist with a mature work and a mature vision. Someday I hope to be that.

How to take a good picture?

pictures are copyright of www.theredshutter.com photography

For those of you that know me.. hi everybody - leave comments please but i know you all are too lazy to do it. But those who don't know who I am, apart from my motion graphics, I'm also a film writer wannabe, a film director going-to-be, and last but not least, I'm very much into photography.

So hey that's the other side of me. I've decided to give this blog some content and decided I would share photography tips with you here in this blog.

How important is equipment? I'd say a proper equipment is important as it helps you to take better quality pictures, but not neccesarily a good picture.

For me, a good picture at the very basic should capture a moment in time worth remembering. Which is probably why in the old days our parents used to force us to smile as wide as possible - the purpose is to make us look more than ordinary. So we look good, and worth taken a picture of.

I'd say the same concept still plays strongly in this day and age. If you look at the picture at the very top, one of the reasons why I post that picture is the emotion of the bride. I could have taken a picture of them simply sitting in the car tired from all the ceremony going on, probably interesting - true - but I decided to take pictures of more upbeat moments which is more appropriate to the event..

I guess what I'm trying to say here is moment. Capture the right moment and you have yourself at hand the very basic of a very good picture

It's easier to take a picture of a naughty boy than a shy boy. Have you ever seen macro pictures of bugs? They are usually on leafs, but you hardly see pictures of just leafs. A lion jumping towards its prey will make a more interesting picture than a lion sleeping in the afternoon. All these convey the message of moment. Find that moment and click it! What moments are worth remembering? well you decide.

Showreel

I'm glad that I finally can present my showreel for my families, my friends, for other artists and also for just about anybody who has an interest in motion graphics :)

storytelling

Storytelling.

There is storytelling in every part of life. Lives will someday be a story to our children, to the next generation, or even to ourselves. But today the topic is going to be music. I recently shared with my friend a video on youtube of Yo-Yo Ma with Bobby McFerrin.

Wow.

Yes - wow!

Around 3-4 years ago, I stumbled onto a piece of classical music... CLASSICAL you say? Yes Klasik Musik.. which upon hearing I was rather awed. I have no idea who this person is and unlike what you think I'm not one to be deliberately looking for classical music to kill time. But I knew this guy is different. There's power and feeling in his music. Yes, it is Yo Yo Ma's performance. (Ma Yo Yo my friend told me in Chinese.)

Recently I have been looking for destiny in life. What is it? And I started typing his name on youtube which brought me to the video of Yo Yo Ma and Bobby.
To make it short, I would like to quote what Yo Yo Ma said in that video:

"the most important thing about performing
is to make magic - to make a special moment in time
the whole process to me is never about proving
but its about sharing something"

It's a concept. It's a way of thinking - a very humble one coming from someone of such prestige. There are too many things to talk about just on that sentence. But life in its own lifespan is also a performance. You cannot take back a performance. You cannot undo a performance.

Day by day we write our own stories - some darker, some brighter. At the end we are all learning the art of storytelling. I wonder who will we tell it to