faye osman - photographer writer

We are heading back to KL! This time we are bringing our two cats to Sarawak. I missed those two fellas so much.

Hubby is attending training in KL next week. While we couldn't wrap up some unfinished business the last time (the cats etc), we decided to return to KL to coincide with hubby's training. At least we can save on one airfare (hubby's) .... sigh, with how things are at the moment, prices are skyrocketing so fast!! We have to look for ways to economize as much as possible. @%$!#^* you, Pak Lah!!!

Anyway, plenty of stuff to take care of: microchipping the cats (poor babies), getting export permit from Jabatan Haiwan, repair the kitchen cabinet in our house at Puchong, stock up on some toiletries (Watson's and Guardian in Miri are both pathetic), and also some clothes for my kid.

By the way, I gotta get me a big glass of REAL MCCOY mamak teh tarik and a couple of crispy roti canai with fish curry when I get back. My favorite mamak spot used to be Rahim's Bistro in Cyberjaya. Would be great to go there again.

There was also a mamak spot at Pulau Perhentian (located at the back of our housing area) that serves killer Tandoori chicken. I wonder if that Bollywood-actor look-alike tukang masak from Pakistan is still there. I've always wanted to capture him on camera, heh heh.

To my friends, sorry if I cannot go and visit some of you guys. Transportation is a problem, because our car is already with us in Miri :(

Someone sent me a message in Flickr asking me how to take "great shots from good angles".

I replied to her. Then after a while, I thought I might share my reply on this blog. I mean, who knows, maybe some of you may think what I wrote made sense :P.

Here was my answer to her question: 

Actually, I never consider much about angles and the technical aspect of photography. Knowing about it helps a bit, but if we are too concerned with composition, angles and technicalities, our images would look the same. Betul tak?

So, when I take photos, I always make it a point to tell a story. When they say pictures tell a thousands words, it's really true. I always try to capture emotions and gestures in my shots. This way when people look at my photos, they have a feel on what the picture is trying to convey. Indirectly it involves the audience participation as well. I hope I'm making sense :P

Also, going out and taking your camera to different places to shoot things that people do not normally see would make your photos interesting. Think about it, how many times have you seen a picture of a sunset or a flower? Or a pretty model? Many times, right? So seeing another one is not going to be unique anymore.

I never like to get caught up in the technicalities of photography. Sometimes, when you meet other photographers, all they talk about are f-stops, lenses, cameras, composition rules, specifications ... they never talk about the finer, 'innate' qualities of an image, on how to give photographs a SOUL.

Yes, I believe each image should have one: a soul. It is what makes it come alive and tell stories to its viewers. 

Getting well-versed technically is good. Heck, it sort of makes us feel macho and pseudo-intellectual in a way. But really, if everyone abides to the same photographic rules, the world will be full of cookie-cutter, generic images.

Well, that's my two cents anyway.

At Long Napir, with the lack of anything else much to do, we followed the Penans upriver to fish.

We started out from the village and trekked for a short while in the secondary forest before we came across the Medihit river. Eversince the Magoh trek, I am not too fond of river crossings (I fell so many times in the river that time because it was dark, slippery and my backpack was so heavy). However, this time, I only had my Think Tank Speed Demon pack strapped around my waist instead of a 14kg bag on my back (but still a Nikon D300 + 18-200mm VR lens + SB-800 speedlight combo is quite hefty). I had a walking stick with me, which is an absolute essential when crossing a swift current river lined with slippery rocks. And most important of all, I ditched my horrid La Sportiva trekking shoes (can't bring myself to throw them out because they were a gift from hubby) and wore my Teva sandals. In such wet and slippery conditions, my feet never better!

In some parts, the river was deep and swift, and we had to scramble up ridiculously steep slopes (I'm talking 80-85 degree incline here) off the river bank to bypass the rushing water. There was also a point where we had to jump to the river bank from a huge rock in the water, where in-between was a superfast mini-rapid which looked both menacing and threatening at the same time.

The Penans that went with us were a motley bunch: from elderly aunties, children, youths, young women and to middle-aged men. I think they were amused that we city-slickers wanted to follow them fishing. From the look on their faces, they were not very convinced we would last ten minutes out there. But hey, after surviving an 11 hour trek to Magoh through the forest until midnight, these are a hardy bunch of city slickers they were dealing with, heh heh.

During the trek, one of them explained to us that there are no more fish downstream, that was why they had to trek a considerable distance for a catch. 

It took us about about two hours to reach the ulu (upstream) part of Medihit river. The ladies immediately started a campfire, while the men went further ahead upstream to fish using nets and harpoon. 

About half an hour later, the men returned with the catch of the day, and the ladies immediately proceeded to scale and cut up the fishes for grilling and to make soup.

After the meal, we quickly packed up to return to the village. This time, we took an easier trail through the forest which only took us 1 hour (wondered why they didn't use that route in the first place). The trek back was interesting because the Penans kept pointing to us the various plants they use to treat common ailment. The lady guide in front of us kept plucking leaves for us to munch on. Eventually, I declined.

"Kalau saya makan daun ini daun itu, nanti saya mabuk sudah!" I said.

Back at the village, I cannot help but admire these folks. As with all Penans, they have very little. One of them aptly explained to us:

Kami Penan, dari dulu tidak perlu wang. Hutan itu bank kami. Apa-apa yang kami perlu, kami ambil dari hutan. Akan tetapi, bank kami makin tiada. Hutan makin pupus.

Yes, they have very little, but they shared with us whatever they had. It was a humbling experience for me to meet such friendly and hospitable people who didn't ask anything from us. However, we brought with us some clothes and essentials to give them. We also got rice and eggs as our ration back in Limbang and shared with them.

On a personal note though, next time I should bring bags of dog food with me. The dogs at the village are seriously emaciated (while the cats are fat and healthy). It tore me apart to see their sad eyes and their ribs poking out from their torso. It would be great to get a vet to come along next time too. Sometimes we are so concerned with the welfare of other humans, but we always forgot that of animals, who cannot speak for themselves.

Okay now, on to the pictures:

The picture above was taken on the way upstream. There were two kids with us, and they unceremoniously jumped in the river to play. The kids were facing the riverbank, which was shaded with trees (that explains the shadow).

When the above picture was taken, it was noon, and the sun was directly above him. It was luck on my part, because when he threw the net, the sun highlighted the details of the net nicely.

For both pictures, I dialed enough ISO to get a reasonably fast shutterspeed (to freeze the motion of splashing water), set to continuous shooting mode and jammed my finger on the shutter.

Now, on to post-processing.

For these series of images, I desaturated the image, while maintaining the vibrance. I then added a wash of sepia and a vignette.

I use Lightroom a lot. I mean A LOT. Editing my images in Photoshop takes a lot of time. First, because a 12 MP .psd file is huge, and waiting for it to be opened in Photoshop takes forever. Even more so when I have adjustment layers in them. Heck, I can even go to the kitchen, boil water in my small kettle to make my superkaw teh halia, and the darn thing would still be loading! And we are talking just one image here. Imagine if you have 10 or more images to edit!

I only use Photoshop when I want to run a noise-reduction or sharpening filter on my images, or when I want to do spot-editing (which is rare). 

For more images on the Medihit series, click here.