This is my second camera and, like my first camera, I sell it. If you don’t know me, you should understand that I rarely buy a camera and will be hard to sell it again. In short, I’m a user, not a collector or a reseller. I buy a camera to use it for good, hopefully.
So when it comes to parting with the camera, well, it’s a bit sad. No regret though. Just keep remembering how I got it or how good it is.
Don’t forget the result. Even if you believe that you can take good pictures regardless of the camera, you don’t want to mess with old German cameras. And the lens. Oh, look! Bokeh!
I’m happy. And I hope whoever get the camera will enjoy it like I did. That way, we will both be happy. And we all know that happy people make happy pictures.
I’m wishing you another year
Of laughter, joy and fun,
Surprises, love and happiness,
And when your birthday’s done,
I hope you feel deep in your heart,
As your birthdays come and go,
How very much you mean to me,
More than you can know.
— Another Year by Joanna Fuchs
If you read this, right now I’m in Bekasi with my wife, and mother of our beautiful daughter, to celebrate her 28th birthday. Happy birthday, dear! I’m counting on Noemi’s precious laughter on this special occasion.
This year’s celebration is special indeed. This is her first birthday with a husband and a daughter. Of course, everything is different than previous years but I’m confident that we both can enjoy every second of our new life.
Now, presents. What do I have for her today? A brand new transistor radio. Made in China. Cheap but usable. And portable, obviously. To tell you the truth, what I really want to get for her (but couldn’t) is the oldtransistorradio. Very cool! But rare. Why radio? We have had enough with TV shows. While we will not completely abandon the TV, but we will turn into a better (or safer) entertainment medium. We choose radio. Why portable? After experiencing some power outage several weeks ago, we need it to operate without AC power supply. Thus, the portable radio.
Do you still listen to radio? I do. And I love it.
Another special item for today is a birthday card, designed by myself (see the pictures above). Most of the content are photos. Of her. It basically is a summary of our journey from 2006 – 2009. I know we recently talked about how we missed the good old days. When we roam the streets of Bandung. When we went to interesting places. Taking pictures. Here are the memoir of those days. I hope this can brighten our days up a bit. I can assure you that we will do that again, but next time it will be the three of us. A beautiful girl will come along. And we should be thankful for that.
And last, but not least, are special treats I bring from Bandung. Beef and chicken picnic rolls from Kartika Sari Bandung. Who need a tart if we can have some of these? We can party tonight with a couple bottles of “teh botol”.
*Raising my bottle of “teh botol” — Cheers! To our dearest & greatest wife & mother :)
“I was once like you are now,
And I know that it’s not easy to be calm
When you’ve found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Think of everything you’ve got,
For you will still be here tomorrow
But your dreams may not.”
Ever since I was a kid, I was almost always drawn into the world of mystery solving. Why? The reason itself is a mystery. Perhaps I was (and still am) a bookworm who will digest any material with letters on it. Or perhaps back then, when I grew up, children’s storytellers were abundant unlike today. Whatever it was, these childhood memories were the reasons for my thirst of adventure and mystery, albeit I’ve never had one. I even wanted to become a detective. Life is full of mystery, eh?
Here are some of what I read back then, a lot from Enid Blyton, and I can say that all of them are good reads even for today’s children.
The first three came from British children’s writer, Enid Blyton. She was and, I think, still is very popular up until today, at least in Indonesia. I’m still looking for her books on second book stores, especially the older version since I like the cover illustration better. Oh, and do you notice that in all three series, she always featured a dog in the team. Must be one dog lover, she was.
The first one is Lima Sekawan or The Famous Five. The novels feature the adventures of a group of young children — Julian, Dick, Anne and George (actually it’s Georgina but she hates it and prefer to be called George instead) — and their dog Timmy. All the ingredients for a good children’s book are there, family, friendship, adventure, mystery. I still have some of the books but wish to have a complete series one day and will certainly pass it to my daughter.
The fourth is STOP. The title comes from the name of the characters: Sporty, Thomas, Oskar, Petra, and Petra’s dog Bello. The series was created by Stefan Wolf and the original title was TKKG which stands for Tarzan/Tim, Kari, Klößchen, Gaby, and Oskar.
The fifth is Alfred Hitchcock & Trio Detektif or The Three Investigators. I love the introduction by Alfred Hitchcock on each book which was actually written by each book’s author. Apparently the creator Robert Arthur, Jr. believed that using a famous figure would attract attention. The publisher paid Alfred Hitchcock to use his name until 1980, after he died, when he was replaced by Hector Sebastian. Never mind though, because I was attracted more by the adventure of Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews. I think there were times when I thought it’s very cool to live in a junkyard, driving around in a truck to pick up some junks to sell later. Oh, don’t forget their uber cool headquarter which is hidden in an old trailer. They have secret doorways and seems to have all the cool stuff in there. I’ve always wanted to be as smart as Jupe, as strong as Pete, as diligent as Bob, have a business card with three question marks on it, and win a 30-days Rolls Royce ride. Awesome. Anyone still remember the ghost-to-ghost hookup?
The sixth is Hawkeye Collins & Amy Adams, Can You Solve The Mystery? series. This series is different because it invites readers to take part in solving the mystery using the sharp observation and the excellent sketch by Hawkeye Collins (How come he can sketch *that* good as a kid? Ah, never mind). The answers are provided on the last part of each book written backward, so we must use a mirror to read it.
Now, slightly out of topic, I think it’s only natural that when I was in high school I moved to a more mature mystery novels by Agatha Christie. I love to follow the story of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, but eventually I think I have to admire the genius Sherlock Holmes. Apart from his eccentricity, bohemian habit and lifestyle, I think he is one of the greatest (albeit fictional) detective of all time. I should have read Arsene Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes (note the name parody due to Conan Doyle’s objection). If you’re into manga, you may also want to follow Meitantei Conan and Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo. And if you love mystery or problem solving like I do, you must have watched the entire episodes of CSI.
Back to the children’s books, my favourites are The Famous Five and The Three Investigators. There are so much that I can learn from them. I think that today’s children will also benefit more from reading more books rather than watching TV.
Now, some pieces of advice from me (and for me): keep the curiousity alive, keep looking for adventure (no matter how small it might be) in life, read more books, always keep what’s most precious to you (family, friendship), train a pair of sharp eyes for a sharp observation, develop a positive hobby, go out and have fun, and teach your children to do the same rather than watching a talking yellow sea sponge and a girl who talks to her backpack.
“I can only speak for myself, but documentary photography and photojournalism are based on perception, not on technology. It doesn’t matter to me if my pictures are shot on film or digital. Photographs are a product of heart and mind and the ability to connect. But technology is absolutely essential as a delivery system, and in journalism the delivery is vital. From a strictly job-oriented, professional standpoint, it’s critical to be able to deliver on digital technology. The qualities that make a good journalist, however, have not been programmed.”
“I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner.”
“Situated at the base of sacred Mount Fuji, the dark, grotesque and eerily silent forest of Aokigahara is the worlds leading suicide destination. Often depicted in Japanese literature as haunted and deathly, it was described in Waturu Tsurumi’s The Complete Manual of Suicide as ‘The Perfect Place To Die’.”
“The book by Kayo Ume describes witty or slightly perfidious moments that you come across by chance in ordinary life. Over 100.000 copies have been sold. To understand why Kayo Ume’s book is so amazingly popular, we have to be aware of the amateur photo culture in Japan. We have such a huge number of older and younger amateur photographers. Ume’s humorous and slightly ironic work embodies the most popular aspect of Japan’s photo culture in her visual style and her motifs. For the audience Umeme is not seen as art, but rather as something to share and to enjoy. There’s a certain amateurish aspect to Japanese photo culture.”
“When was the last time the biggest rock star (Bono) on the planet interrupted one of his signature songs in a stadium full of screaming people to give a shout out to a fine art photographer (Hiroshi Sugimoto)? There can’t be any equivalent moment in the entire history of photography.”
“I noticed there were numerous text-only books by Japanese photographers out in the market. It was really remarkable to me that they were writing so much because at Aperture even to get a list of captions from a photographer was like pulling teeth. Nobody seemed to want to write anything, or to commit to putting any words on paper, I should say.
[...]
I became very curious as to what these photographers were writing about so profusely. I soon came to realize that what these photographers were writing was quite integral to their photography as a whole; it was part of the project and the process of photography. Words and images were quite closely linked in Japanese photography.
[...]
The photograph in Japan doesn’t exist in a vacuum, isolated from other elements. Context, as provided by texts or the medium by which the image is distributed, is integral.”
“October 5th, 2009 in shock and disbelief, using garbage pails for long exposures, I took these photos of the last days at Gourmet. Although at times it was hard for me to shoot the common places in the offices at Gourmet, I knew I needed to document where I loved working for the last 8 years.”
“These charts show movie character interactions. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the lines indicates which characters are together at a given time.”
“Polaroid will re-launch the legendary Polaroid One Step Camera and is therefore commissioning The Impossible Project to develop and produce a limited edition of Polaroid® branded Instant Films in the middle of 2010.”
