Author: Mohamad Fazli

Few more before the week starts!

Little Kid at the Market

 

Cat amongst the onions….

So finally I back home and loading up some of the pictures to my hard drive. Did not shoot much (which is generally good). There’s not much too shoot (or rather I am way too picky in taking photos). But my problem is that I like to take many many photos of the same subject that create boredomness! Not even sure if that’s an English word. So the location of the market is here:

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Its a really old market, been around at least since 1980 when I first moved to Taman Keramat. Here are some of the photos that I took this morning 🙂

Nasi Madura – perhaps a delicacy from Indonesia that seems to be very popular in this market. I can see endless number of customers keep coming back to this stall. If only there’s places to sit, I do not mind to have a try. The photo does shows the Makcik looks a bit angry me taking picture of her – but in reality she seems to be smiling. I do have a couple of photos of her smiling (but not worth publishing on my blog).

Sembelih (Slaughtered) – A photo of an uncle with freshly slaughtered chicken. The next step – is for the chicken to be washed and the feathers be taken off. Then it’s ready to be sold.

Slaughtering the Chicken – The photo shows the guy slaughtering the chicken at the back of the market. The guy holding the knife recites prayers as he slaughter the chicken. Surprisingly, I don’t see blood splattering. Perhaps this chicken are industrialised chicken hence they are not as tough as the free range chicken.

Behind the shops – As we can see from the photo above, it shows a family (and friends) just lazing around on Sunday morning. This is behind an egg stall in the market.

Ah.. finally a video showing how big (or small) is the market 🙂

UPDATE:

Me at the market – Courtesy of Johan

I spent my childhood days in Keramat. Stayed here since 1980. From there on, I moved away to few places – Taping for boarding school, Cheras A Levels and UK for my degree. And now I am residing in PJ in my own place. Datuk Keramat is definitely an older place than where I used to stay. I am not sure what's the history, but I know for a fact that when I moved in, the only school that operates is Sekolah Datuk Keramat – that's where my sister went to school.

Anyway – long story short, me and a group of friends decided to go to Kampung Datuk Keramat for a quick shoot this morning. Obviously I came up with the idea. Seriously, I did not know what to expect – just come in armed with OMD and 12mm lens to shoot away 🙂

Here is a teaser on what to look for soon…

 

🙂

Another one of the photos which is shot whilst in Klang.

The original intention of this photo was to shoot the ray of light going thru the smoke that's burning the incense stick. Good idea I supposed, but it was not an easy task as the morning was quite windy. And being next to an opened window, naturally the wind will be blowing the smoke away.

There's a few ways that one can go thru this, but I guess I am not patient enough to wait. It was not some prize winning shot that I think worth waiting for. Well, that's part and parcel of shooting pictures in such places.

Personally, I am more of a people person shooter. It's a lot easier to shoot people than shoot static objects like this as people are more easier to control. Plus. The effort putting the thinking behind the story of the picture is so so much easier! That's perhaps the reason why I am more of a person that will shoot pictures like this:

There's not much story there though, its just a lot more fulfilling to have a nice chat with a other guy while you trying to shoot his life away(not mentioning posting it on Internet). Sometimes, it gets tricky because you don't converse the language, something like this:

I definitely don't speak Hokkien, and conversation will need to go through translator a.k.a Francis da lawyer. Appreciation of the subject is limited to my visual observations and explanation from Francis. It's even tricker when you don't even have a form of speech communications with the subject, something like this –

The picture above was shot in Bangladesh, about 2 years ago in my trip there. The only medium of communication was my smile 🙂 and of course the LCD screen of my camera. You'll be amazed at how far a smile and LCD screen can bring you.

Though sometimes, taking shots like the above could be damn risky. The photo above contains a subject which is extremely sensitive. It's child labor. If you notice the shiny skin, that's because the room that the kid is standing in is at the side of a hot oven. The kid was supposed to shove those rice kernels into the fire so that it'll burn. Was there any communications involved, definitely no. I guess the kids was more stunned looking at me carrying the big ass camera pointing at his face.

Seriously, I always enjoy taking shots of people on their most natural way. There's just so much character and happiness all around 🙂

In fact, this was the shot that made me started years ago. A photo of a homeless man, who lost everything.. And now resorting to people's donation to be alive….

 

On the way down from the lake somewhere in Padang, there was this makcik who was washing the dishes for her stall….

In my recent trip to Klang over the weekend, we(me and my photo kakis) visited an old school coffee factory. Unfortunately, there the factory was not roasting the beans as the workers were sick. Thus we only managed to capture the machines.

Interesting enough, one of the usage of the roaster is actually a clothes and shoe dryer – as seen in the photo below:

And this!

Well, I guess when the machine is under wraps, thats what you do 🙂

I really hope that I will be able to visit the factory again!

One of that you can see when you visit the market in Siem Reap. Its definitely a difficult light situation, but always fun to be able to capture one.

I wish i have a reflector on the table that will illuminate his face. It’ll be a better picture…

An old photo taken during crossing bridges organized by me in Sampoerna and Tawau.

A malaysian version of preserved fruits – some are sour, and some are sweet 🙂

Its a must try if you pop over to any of the local sundry or market.