Skywatch Friday: A Composition against the Sky

Unlike my other Skywatch Friday posts, where there's always a story behind the photo, today's photo is purely for my photographic interest. I took this photo at Braga Fest last December. It was getting dark as I was exploring the southern end of the street looking for interesting bits of the festival's events when I saw this warm light of the street lamp falling on the tent and against the bluish grey twilight sky. I took several shots, trying to get the best composition from different angles. Here is one of them.

Please follow this Skywatch Friday link to see other photos of the participating blogs.

Colors of The Street

Last week, a couple of photographer friends from other cities came over to Bandung and asked if I could accompany them for a photo hunting. One of them happens to be the kind of photographers who like street scenes (street photography) and the other is one who is more interested in geometry and architectural photography. To accomodate their different interests, I took them to the city center (Jalan Asia Afrika, Alun-alun [The City Square], Jalan Braga, and a couple of different other places around the area where the streets are "alive" and where some of Bandung's most important architectural heritage are located.

The photo hunting tour I gave was quite productive. Each of us could get quite a great number of photographs that we are quite happy with.

I took this photo with my Canon Powershot A510, a small pocket camera that I always have with me. I was interested in the colors of these cheap but attractive belts sold by a street vendor at Alun-alun Bandung (Bandung's city square). I framed tightly to emphasize the interesting color patterns of these belts and deliberately included that card "OBRAL Rp 5.000" to give the photo an informative touch. "Obral" is the Indonesian word for "sale". At the current rate, Rp 5.000 is equal to about 50 cents US dollars. Very cheap indeed for their attractive colors and design.

Exploring Photography: Shadows

This is Maw-Maw, a Siamese-Angoran cross breed cat. She had just taken her weekly bath and was drying herself in the sun.

This picture is part of my photo exploration project that I would normally post at my other photo blog JAGAT FOTOGRAFI. Today, I post it here for my participation in Photo Scavenger Hunters whose theme this week is "shadows".

Here is another photo of her:

Skywatch Post: Four - What is Abstract Photography?

Text and picture by Eki Qushay Akhwan



The title of my post today is "FOUR". Obviously this refers to the number of lamp posts in the photo.

Although the lamp posts are the point of interest of this photo, the whole composition would not have been visually as attractive as it is if it were not for the backdrop of the amber and bluish colors of the evening sky. Therefore, I think it is basically the evening sky that works the magic in this photo. All this said, welcome to my first Skywatch Friday post and participation.

What is Abstract Photography?
Abstract photography is a genre of photography that focuses on the artistic value of a photograph regardless of the subject, composition, and/or other rules that are usually associated with a "good photograph". In other words, in abstract photography, the subject, the rules of composition, etc. are not as important as the beauty or the aesthetic values of the photograph itself.

With no definite subjects and with openly interpretable meanings of the visual, abstract photography relies mostly on the imaginary values of the visual elements such as colors, textures, etc., to achieve the aesthetic visual impacts.

This is my understanding of what abstract photography is.