So this was our last day doing stuff in Ubud. The Ubud Monkey forest is half cultural preserve and half wildlife preserve, although its success at either seems dubious. It is good at extracting money from tourists, though. I sound really cynical, but in reality, it was a pretty good experience, wandering through a forest with ancient temples; the swarms of monkeys were funny, and left us alone entirely. There were warnings not to take food in, so we were careful not to.
Posted by matt on 2015-12-21T08:42:18Z GMT
note: this started out as a lens review, and there was a paragraph in the middle that wanted to be a whole essay on why fixed focal length lenses are better, artistically, than zooms. So I let it be that, and cut out the review parts. Sharpness is a bourgeois concept, and we will not speak of it further.
Posted by matt on 2015-12-15T07:19:46Z GMT
So, onto the breakthrough, the big idea, what have you: I realized I’ve been showing too much with the construction pictures. I had this impulse to get it all in, to show the whole, giant job site, as if that was the way to convey the scale of it. Unfortunately, none of those pictures really worked. There was something missing, and the compositions were never good enough. Then, last week, I was looking at Peter Turnley’s book on paris, French Kiss, and realized that the compositions shouldn’t be perfect, and that you can’t show everything. You have to cut some of it out.
Posted by matt on 2015-12-15T06:54:38Z GMT
So, second day in Ubud, we did considerably more walking. Markets, some temples, lots of tourists. The first three pictures are what most of the town was like. Stores selling things to tourists. There were some shops on the outside of town that sold statuary and furniture, but I’m not convinced those weren’t also for export. We walked, we drank beer, we walked some more. Didn’t buy anything but food and potables (potent and otherwise).
Posted by matt on 2015-12-10T06:11:47Z GMT
I think I’ve mentioned it here before a couple times. I’m doing a series of pictures of the construction site around the new transbay terminal. I also thought I should break up the monotony of beautiful island photos. The mood and the scene really has something working there, but I think it’ll fall flat unless I get more photos of the people doing the work. The real meat of photographic legwork is getting access and gaining trust. That and schlepping gear. I’ve got a lot of that still to do.
Posted by matt on 2015-12-07T08:01:29Z GMT
