[Kombisaurus]

I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks on holiday in the Indonesian island of Bali with Tina during December just gone.

As well as a chance to relax and have a proper holiday, I took along a bag of photo gear and had a camera handy with me most of the time (thanks to Tina for her patience). I resisted the urge to take my notebook computer with me however, and just took a portable hard drive with built-in card-reader to dump my photos onto each evening. I then had a big job of processing the photos after returning home to Australia, which is one of the reasons I haven't posted any photos of the trip until now.
I took about 3000 shots over 2 weeks and sorted it down to around 250 "keepers". Overall I'm very happy with the photos and the gear was faultless for the entire trip. Everything about the trip was actually a great success.
I'll put up a number of posts over the next few days or so showing various aspects of the trip.

Tina and I spent a week in the central Bali village of Ubud. It is a place steeped in Balinese culture, with traditional dancing performances held every night of the week in various temples and palaces around the village.
We attended dances on two seperate nights. The first was a Kecak Trance and Fire Dance which was performed at the Pura Batu Karu temple, and the second was a performance by the Chandra Wirabhuana gamelan orchestra accompanied by seven different dances, each telling a different traditional story. The second performance we attended was held at the Lotus Pond in Ubud.


1. The Kecak Trance included a group of about 30 men chanting throughout the entire performance while the dancers performed around them.


2. The dancers were illuminated only by a candelabra holding about a dozen candles. Tough lighting conditions to say the least!


3. Fortunately the dancers often froze and held poses allowing slow shutter speeds to be used. But here I wanted to capture a sense of their movement too.


4. When arriving at the performance I asked about taking photos and was told it was encouraged and that flash photography was fine too! Numerous other people in the audience were taking flash photos, and it was obviously perfectly acceptable. I happened to be standing underneath a large tree with lots of foliage, so I pointed my flash straight up and bounced it off the tree to provide some fill-flash to illuminate the shadows a bit. Although giving a slight colour cast, it provided a nice natural looking light and Tina said the bounce flash was also a lot less distracting to the performers and audience than a direct flash, so I didn't feel too bad about using it.


5. Another shot using the bounce flash to show the detail in the shadows.


6. Although hard to make out details, this shot provides a sense of the movement of one of the characters and you can also see the men chanting (arranged in an inner and outer circle) and the central candelabra with its candles.


7. The costumes, masks, and makeup of all the performers was stunning.


8. After the Kecak Trance dance had finished, the stage was cleared and a fire built out of broken coconut shells.


9. A performer wearing a horse costume then proceeded to run backwards and forwards bare-footed through the fire many times, sending sparks (and burning coconut shells) everywhere. A lady in the audience beside me fell off her chair in surprise when a burning coconut shell rolled her way and went under her feet. She wasn't hurt at all, but obviously not expecting the show to involve the audience quite so much!


10. A few nights later we went to another performance at the Lotus Pond in front of the Lotus Palace in Ubud.


11. A beautiful setting with, as you might expect, a wonderful water garden.


12. The lighting was much better for this performance (no naked flames), so I concentrated more on getting interesting expressions.


13. The gamelan orchestra had a very unique sound and is very percussive and perhaps not as melodic as western orchestras. I would describe it as many elaborate church bells chiming with a few wind and string instruments played over the top. Perhaps not the most "accessible" musical style, but after listening a while it had a hypnotic effect on me which was cool!


14. This performer stood out in particular to Tina and me. The control she had over every minute movement and facial expression was remarkable. I don't pretend to know anything about Balinese dancing, but I could certainly appreciate the skill involved in doing what she was doing.


15. One of the dances re-created a battle, and this is one of the soldiers.

Oops.. this post wasn't supposed to be anywhere near this big. I was going to just post a "few" pics. Hope I didn't bore you all.
Nevermind, I'll be a bit more selective with my other posts. And I'll just throw all the keepers in a gallery on my website if anyone wants to browse them all.

[Rabid Penguin]

Holy culture, Batman! Great shots, Kombi.

[Wedding Shooter]

Great shots Kombi - number 2 is the real stand out for me. I loved Ubud when I was there.

[smarti77]

Another amazing series Adrian... you shots never fail to captivate and inspire me.

[NT73]

They are all terrific. They brought back memories of 91 when we went to Bali as part of our Silver wedding celebrations. I just wish I was a photographer with your talents.
The girls were nearly all very slim and exquisitely made up,. Which made our western culture of jeans and trainers seem very scruffy.

[TheBishopOfSligo]

Excellent shots.

Thanks for posting.

[Kombisaurus]

Thanks for all your feedback.

[Toad]

Again - wonderful - #8 really does it for me...