Forever City © Rony Zakaria

Jakarta is a met­ro­pol­i­tan by size, a vil­lage by cul­ture and a jun­gle by accounts of her rich inhab­i­tants & diver­sity. An essence rarely cap­tured on cam­era, Indonesian pho­tog­ra­pher Rony Zakaria shares a glimpse of the city’s heart­beat rarely seen to the out­side world.

Click the image to view the slideshow; check out his sto­ries for more.

Clinton as King Shrek by Alex Ostroy

Beyond the sim­ple yet often com­pli­cated world of visual art, lies a com­plex web of cul­tural, social, psy­cho­log­i­cal & tech­ni­cal con­text a pho­tog­ra­pher should mas­ter to be able to cap­ture the realm of per­sona, an aura of energy, the vision & char­ac­ter of his/her sub­jects in the time & space that they are being pho­tographed at.

It is that mas­tery that sets things apart. Mastering it is what makes a pho­tog­ra­pher, a painter, a musi­cian, a sculp­tor, a chef, a writer (or any kind pro­fes­sion) an artist, under­stand­ing with a touch of appre­ci­a­tion is the Art.

At the same time, what can be an extra­or­di­nary work often often gets mixed up with pro­duc­tion com­pli­ca­tions, even the best of the best can barely achieve per­fec­tion, some work gone to a bet­ter path, many shall flunk while time & money is the two things no one will ever have enough.

That’s where Alex Ostroy came to the picture.

John Goldsen, CGI online:

…with the work being done by Ostroy, extra­or­di­nary real­ism has become a given, what makes the work com­pelling is the sophis­ti­cated under­stand­ing of stu­dio pho­to­graphic light­ing tech­nique. he is one to always keep an eye on…

The key to Ostroy’s suc­cess is none other than his com­plete mas­tery of a tech­nique and intu­itive under­stand­ing where his client & his vision lies, he becomes that bridge, the inter­preter of the force that will guide him to the end of the journey.

It is mes­mer­iz­ing to see his spec­tac­u­lar art; under­stand that it is not the tech­ni­cals, nor his tools that cre­ates the art­work, but his pas­sion & his per­sis­tence to break his bound­aries each and every time.

© samu­rai: Kage-Warrior, lens: Canon.

If a Samurai swears by their swords, a pho­tog­ra­pher swears by their lenses. Nearly 8 years since the first ver­sion was intro­duced, Canon today announced a new replace­ment to their leg­endary white-bodied tele­photo pro-grade zoom lens, the Canon EF 70–200 f/2.8L IS II.

What’s so spe­cial about this lens that I bother writ­ing about it? Well, trust me, this one’s different.

Focusing dis­tance is to the lens what the shut­ter delay is to a cam­era body. One can always wait a lit­tle longer, or move aback to get the shot, but we also loose the crit­i­cal moment. Another way would be to cook some magic in the labs, and let these obscure design­ers, sci­en­tists & engi­neers move their wands around and cre­ate the impos­si­ble. And that what Canon has achieve today:

A reduced min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance of 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) and improved 0.21x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion will allow pho­tog­ra­phers to get closer to sub­jects with­out need­ing to swap lenses – greatly ben­e­fit­ting time-pressured news and events pho­tog­ra­phers who require flex­i­bil­ity. An updated Image Stabilizer mech­a­nism also offers a shut­ter speed advan­tage that’s equiv­a­lent to four stops, reduc­ing the effect of image blur result­ing from cam­era shake in busy shoot­ing environments.

What you see as a mere .2m (20cm) closer, is years-of-work of num­ber crunch­ing, glass-polishing, super-high-tech-craze back at the shop, their clos­est com­pe­ti­tion, Nikon, released a sim­i­lar lens last July, and they only man­age to cramp 1.4m. Trust me, 20cm can cost you your job on the front­line, imag­ine you’re shoot­ing the world’s most impor­tant per­son deliv­er­ing speech in a room full of jour­nal­ists, that 20cm became your most valu­able dis­tant you’d ever hope for when you fail to… ergh, focus! Oh that squeak­ing sound of failed motor movement!

Changes are good, but what Canon has achieved in the last cou­ple of months are more than good, they’re sen­sa­tional… big, bright 100% viewfinder cov­er­age on a not-so-high-end cam­era body? Check. Better sen­sor that doesn’t involve the buzz-selling megapixel count? Check. A weather-proof cam­era body that would not break after the rain? Check! Check! Check! Canon is break­ing the ice, peo­ple. Pay atten­tion, and you’ll thank them later.

Leica, Nikon, Apple and Sony (who helped low­er­ing cam­era costs & beauty stan­dard), you guys deserve the cred­its too, I’m happy that finally you can quit fight­ing like a baby and start com­pet­ing like a man with your lat­est toys, keep it boys! Cause we’re going to be at the fin­ish line, wait­ing for your next sen­sa­tion to come.

(PS. They even throw in a new lens case that you might finally use)

© Andy Westlake

New Year’s Greetings!

On a noble quest to rein­vent a tra­di­tion, Leica AG made a sur­pris­ing move with three of their lat­est prod­ucts. It is an expen­sive bet they are mak­ing, and it looks like they have found their path once again.

The S3, The M9 and The X1 are to Leica, what BMW offers with their 7, 5 & 1 series sedans; they are lay­ing a new ground­work for their future path and they are tak­ing it seri­ously; not only they are going back to basics to look for new answers as their core of these new prod­ucts, they are rethink­ing big at the small­est details with their lat­est incar­na­tions of Leica’s aging legacy, no longer they are rely­ing on out­side help to dis­cover what they really can do.

With the ris­ing sen­sa­tion of pock­etable pho­tog­ra­phy, Leica has crafted a unique blend of beauty with their new X1 line; mas­quer­aded on a min­i­mal­is­tic high-end (yet tiny) mag­ne­sium cast and its leg­endary opti­cal per­for­mance; Leica has suc­cess­fully unite art, sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy & fash­ion that will change the shape of pock­etable high-performance camera:

It’s impos­si­ble not to con­clude that the X1 has the best high ISO per­for­mance of any ‘coat pock­etable’ cam­era yet. But it’s also worth not­ing that in prac­ti­cal use, its advan­tage over the GF1 (or E-P1) is almost com­pletely wiped out by the stop and a half more light the 20mm F1.7 can gather

Read DPreview’s 28-page excel­lent take on the Leica X1

This year we see the rise of new ‘smaller yet big­ger’ cam­era; the Olympus E-P1/P2, Panasonic GF-1, Canon G11 and the immac­u­lately res­ur­rected com­pion Canon PowerShot S90. It shares one com­mon major improve­ment: bet­ter low-light capability.

Manufacturers have taken bold steps rec­og­niz­ing that rac­ing on the megapixel race won’t win their cus­tomers trust; by address­ing the heart of the mat­ter, they are cre­at­ing a brighter future for the imag­ing indus­try (which means both lit­er­ally and technically).

We will see newer man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­ogy that will give us even higher per­form­ing sen­sors, CCDs/CMOSes with higher ISO speed (bet­ter low-light capa­bil­ity), lower power con­sump­tion and friend­lier to our envi­ron­ment. It will give us an entirely dif­fer­ent plat­form to take pic­tures, sim­ply there will be no rel­e­vance to com­pare it with film any­more. Down the line of the food chain, higher-capacity & faster mem­ory cards (think 64gb instead of 16) will slowly pop­u­late the mar­ket, with newer file allo­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy phas­ing out the never-reliable FAT32.

We shall also see newer shut­ter tech­nol­ogy that will cope with the faster sensor—imagine shoot­ing open wide (f/2.8 with ISO 6400 in broad daylight—the shut­ter that we have today won’t go faster than 8000^th of a sec­ond (1÷8000), this will mean a rad­i­cally new approach to the shut­ter mech­a­nism will undergo some major changes.

Beyond the tech­nol­ogy, pho­tog­ra­phy is both an art & lifestyle, there­fore fash­ion will come into the pic­ture, old trends will reap­pear (retro fin­ish­ing, film look, LO-FI like images) and what was the future look will become clas­sics. Computer images will never be the same again (read about Avatar here).

Popular Photography asked a group of pho­tog­ra­phers in 1944 about what the future might hold for and one com­ment stood out from the crowd:

The war will bring pho­tog­ra­phy out of its ado­les­cence. In matu­rity, it will be an excit­ing, prof­itable and expand­ing profession.

Today’s the last day of 2009, tomor­row will be the first of 2010, happy new year, Joy and Peace for all beings!

(like the deer, this will also make a good iPhone wall­pa­per, go and grab it!)

Read:

The Future of Photography as pre­dicted in 1944 via aphotostudent.com, kottke.org

On the extreme side of fine-tuned, high-res & prop­erly composed/framed/exposed pho­tog­ra­phy, lies a genre that begets joy. Most of the time, every­thing is acci­den­tal, com­po­si­tion is point-and-shoot-lucky-if-you’re-in-the-shot, expo­sure is hor­rid by your instructor’s stan­dard and out-of-focus is the new focus. But it’s fun. So much fun some­one decided to res­ur­rect an old phe­nom­e­non of another lo-fi cam­era sensation.

The result is some­thing purely orig­i­nal, yet sig­ni­fied by a bril­liant sets of feat that’ll make grandpa proud, drop dead sim­ple you wish it arrived much sooner, it’s envi­ron­men­tally green too, so green I’m sure Al Gore & his pho­tog­ra­pher wife, Tipper will be snap­ping around their christ­mas din­ner with this lovely gem. Yes, films are needed but is not lim­ited to 36 frames.

So how do you recre­ate a hip­pies’ free­dom of ana­log joy — with all the organic ele­ments — for the 21^st cen­tury vowel-loosing era? Put the iPhone to the pic­ture, throw in a designer & a devel­oper and you’ll get your­self a per­fectly usable dig­i­tal incar­na­tion of this fad­ing sensation.

Enter Hipstamatic.

Pixel per­fect graph­ics puts a pseudo cam­era into the screen of your iPhone, the front side to swipe lenses, films, gels & flashes; and the back façade gives you the plas­tic feel viewfinder, a flash on/off switch and its sig­na­ture yel­low shut­ter button.

One final touch of this finely crafted graph­ics? A drop-dead-realistic sound effect that makes every­thing feels natural.

So what makes this app so spe­cial? Clearly, pretty face alone can’t do jus­tice, but throw in a hand­some look­ing pic­tures — it’s 100% film like, the best I have seen on any dig­i­tal media, a bril­liant pro­gram­ming — it’s 100% ana­log cam­era like, the best clas­sic to digital/iPhone trans­fer I have seen on any dig­i­tal media, you got your­self a nice christ­mas gift. Thank you Santa.

Too bad, the $1.99 pur­chase only gives you the basics, you gotta pop in addi­tional $2 to make it game: $1 for the BlacKeys Film Pack (B/W film, pixel per­fect film bleed to wrap your 6×6 frames) and another $1 for Williamsburg Bundle that gives a you a Helga Viking lens, 3 color-gelled flashes & the bril­liant Pistil Film that gives your hipsta-print a nice black border.

It’s a per­fect $5 christ­mas gift for your­self, or your iPhone-using-paparazzo friend, yes occa­sional crash still hap­pens and opt­ing in high-res out­put gives you the never-ending wait to snap another around, but you’re in for a dif­fer­ent kind of iPhone-photography game, peo­ple… and this time you might want to stay a lit­tle longer cause dig­i­tal never felt & looked so finely analog.

Hip Hip Hooray!

update: Someone from Japan posted a very nice com­par­i­son of Hipstamatic’s dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tion of lenses, films & gels.

Update: Here’s the story behind Hipstamatic, and how the iPhone ver­sion came along.

Joy and peace to all beings.

PS. (psssst!) This deer will make a nice iPhone Wallpaper, tell every­one about it =).