Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I am impressed. http://photo.net/photos/rarindra

I am very impressed

I am very very impressed. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, thanks for sharing.

its all in the light, and what you do with it.

Good light but also skillful post processing, composition and talent.

Wow! Its been a looooooong time since I have seen such a well rounded shooter. Who cares what gear was used

this once again proves that it is not the camera that takes the good photo, but the photographer. who needs to hide behind expensive gear when you have talent?

Plus a very unique theme! Kids in such beautiful landscape. Not to discredit the photographer from his/her talent, but the subject is very unique. Not very often photographed which helps make the images captivating.

Found an old thread reverse engineering his work. Very interesting.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=24971754

Totally agree with this comment "He separates the image into foreground/subject/background elements. Almost like a theatrical stage or a diorama."

Really quite beautiful- thanks for sharing....

Glad to share .

Those are really neat photos and as said, a really talented and creative person!

Ditto all above comments. Thanks for sharing.

Great find. Thanks for sharing. Unique

very beautiful and unique indeed~~~

He captures rural settings. A unique cinematic style with superb tonal range on most of his photographs. There is an attempt to lead the viewers eye and he is very good at it.

The water buffalo images is real in rice farming you will see boys tending to them grazing, water or a mud bath after a day of work.

It would be good to see this photos featured in Burn http://www.burnmagazine.org/about/

Clearly gear matters.
All the great artists had the best gear. Picasso had the best brushes, Beethoven the best piano, Frank Lloyd Wright had the best drafting table, Browning, Boitano and Witt had the best skates, Hitchcock had the best cameras and editing studios, Shakespeare and Tolstoy had the best pens and typerwriter, Bernini and Michelangelo had the best chisels....

Agreed. They're very pretty but I'm not necessarily impressed. If these images were created using mostly a camera then yes, but if they were created mostly with a computer then no. Since I don't know I default to unimpressed. Pretty though.

would you be?

sure, good gear helps - but i'm almost hoping that you are being sarcastic here. if you put a good pianist on a bad piano, i'm sure that he/she would still play better than a bad pianist on a good piano would, on any given day.

I wouldn't as I'd be doing all the creative work when developing negatives, just like what photoshop does to digitals

Fear not, for sarcastic I was aplenty.

Gear matters to a point. I'll presume you won't argue with that.

I don't know how to feel about his stuff. His style is quite consistent and honestly, I wonder if the only reason we feel so strongly about his photos is because it is outside our normal experience.

So the reasons I see why they seem so interesting to me is 1. it's mostly of Indonesia. 2. It has great tonal/composition/style.

If you take away 1, would I be impressed? For example, if he did Toronto urban landscapes. Certainly. But probably not as impressed because I've seen it before.

As for his style, while I like it, it does seem a bit artificial, even though Rarindra in his comments on photo.net states that it's all real. As I look through his photos, I do note that he has one consistent style. I just don't know if that style would be as useful or even applicable anywhere else that doesn't have a lot of trees/sidelighting.

I did see one normal portrait where he just gave it a black and white treatment. It just seemed like a normal picture that I was not particularly wowed by. I just sometimes feel that he seems like a one trick pony.

phew - it's hard to tell sometimes on the computer.

Did just some quick research via teh googly and found this thread to be helpful for those wanting to bite the style:
http://www.photomalaysia.com/forums/sho ... p?t=103506

That said, it would appear the photos are staged (they look it imho) and that the setting does play a part as does, obviously, where the light is and how it plays with the subjects/scene.

You just can't show up and expect the light to be where you want it, so, if you have a scene set in your noggin, that is, you visualize it, you can visit the location to check the light - this may have to be done a number of times during the week/month/year to determine the best lighting conditions. Then, make note of that date/time and, all things being equal and similar weather conditions exist the following year, you head back and set up your scene.

Cheers,
Dave

I'm not so sure the hazy light isn't more due to haze added in Photoshop than it is due to being at the location at the right time in the right conditions. But ultimately it doesn't matter to me if it is real or photoshopped.
The work looks to me as if they are classical painted studies in light. It matters not to me if an artist chooses to use paint & brush or digital capture & photoshop to create their image. Good composition is still required.
I enjoy looking at the images. They evoke a pleasant emotional response from me. They owe a lot to photoshop but that doesn't bother me. It makes no difference to me whether PS or paint brushes are used to create the image. If it did, I'd have to seethe at every photo where a woman's skin has been smoothed. a background blurred to artificially accentuate motion or a sky has been darkened and saturated.

Is this the work of a one-trick pony? Maybe. But is that so bad? Is it bad to be a master of one trade rather than competent in several?

I believe the world would be such a friendlier happier place if someone could develop a SARCASTIC font.