This blog post is about my coverage of last month’s tripped to Sumbawa. An island located in West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. Sumbawa still can be consider “remote” area (not typical touristy place) and I definitely recommend to get help from local guide, to help us reach interesting places that able to show the real “beauty” of Sumbawa.
More about Sumbawa from Wikipedia.
Special thanks to Fujifilm Indonesia for lent me their newest zoom lens XF16-80mm f/4 for this trip. It is definitely a “powerful” tool for travel photography. Also, surprisingly the size and weight still relatively compact to use for street photography. Despite has OIS (up to 6 stops) and long reach in constant aperture.
Camera gear I brought:
- Fujifilm X-T30
- (My trusty old friend) Fujifilm X-T2
- Fujinon XF16-80mm f/4
- Fujinon XF16mm f/2.8
- Fujinon XF35mm f/1.4
I brought two bodies because I expected there were times I need to switched focal length at dusty or wet places. Changing lens in such conditions is simply a bad decision.
Sumbawa
Sumbawa has beautiful nature. That is for sure. What makes me like it even more is the fact that Bima and Dompu (The cities I stayed in Sumbawa) surrounded by mountains and sea. Even before the trip started, I already tried to imagine how to combined my street photography style with the beauty of landscape in Sumbawa. Indeed it would created a different looks compare to my typical city street photos, and that exactly my aim!
To describe Sumbawa in simple ways, I will divide them into five general things. For me, these are things that shape Sumbawa itself as an unique places:
Horse Tradition
Horse race is a tradition that happen everywhere in Sumbawa (at various cities). Once a year they will gather together to “celebrate” annual horse race.
The elder will give a horse (that usually still very young) to kids and/or teenagers and start to teach them to take care the horse. These young persons will train the horses and prepare them to join the battle (read: race) when the horses are ready or mature enough.
In Bima city, nature has “special habit” that at around 2 pm above, sea that surround city will get recede and create “beach” area where we can just walk freely. The horse keepers have schedule like two or three times a week to bath their horses on the sea at this moment. Not only bath them, sometimes they also train to do sparring races against each other.
Another thing that I realised while photographing at recede sea, there were some people who walked around with a plastic bag and a stick. I started to wonder about what they were doing and start to followed their activity. Apparently, they were looking for octopus!
Most of them did it to get free dinner or simply to sold it to nearby traditional market. It was really amazed me actually, these people did have sharp eyes as I could not notice even a single octopus there (hiding inside rocks or sand).
Salt evaporation pond
Salt evaporation pond become an important livelihood for those who live in Sumbawa (as far as I know, in Bima and Dompu area). Have chance to shooting “street” in such places indeed become a new challenge for me. Need to constantly watched my steps as I walked, otherwise I could just fell to the pond and I did not want to imagine what would happened to my camera if I sunk it to (high concentrate) salt water.
Like on photo above, I was shooting with at 16mm lens (24mm FF equivalent) and the reason I could easily photograph her from close distance was because people walked around there by use one small footpath. Fortunately though, all people that I met there are friendly to strangers, and they simply did not mind at all for being photographed.
Bright, clear blue sky, combine with unique terrain and friendly people. Dare I say shooting on salt evaporation pond really pleased me. I could imagine a thousand ways to get interesing creative shoots there, and definitely my short trip in Sumbawa could not cover them all. Wish to go back again here and have more time shooting!
Lariti Beach
Lariti Beach a.k.a “Red Sea Beach”. There is a small separate island and we need a boat to get there. However, at the early morning (before 7 am), water get recedes and we can reach the island by walk through a narrow footpath (feels like Jesus crossed Red Sea). The sands are a bit slippery, so be careful with your electronic device (such as camera!) if you want to cross it.
I’ve never become a typical morning person, but I still strongly recommend to any of you to visit this spot in the morning. The beauty of this place is so magical to me. Just remember to going there at (very) early morning or at dawn time.
The beach itself is quiet and not (yet) fully with any tourist crowd. Luckily, there are few activities by local people there. Some of them do fishing, or clean up boats, or open their food stalls (there are some, so don’t worry about food/coffee supply), or simply enjoy the gorgeous sunrise in the morning.
Traditional market life
Generally, traditional market is one of the most famous site to hunt for street photography in Indonesia. Hence, we “must” spare our morning time to visit market here in Sumbawa. The one we visited located in Dompu city, and called as “Pasar Besar Dompu” (Dompu Big market). Morning routine were looking so busy and it was great to start looking for for street scenes .
Plenty of different activities happened at the same time, which was good because:
- They were busy with their job, and did not really pay attention to a person with camera
- I have so many option of different gesture/activities to choose to include in my frame
Also the additional benefit of crowd market means we can going close to stranger easily. There was not much room to walk anyway, so I used my “shooting like video” technique to captured detail of people from close distance. Like in photo above, I was using XF16mm f/2.8 (24 mm equivalent) and still managed to made my subject dominate the frame.
One particular reason I like about this place is seems like people there love to create colourful ambience. Either from their outfit, or how they painted wall surround market area. Combine with bright morning sun, all of this colours becomes more “pop” and so pleasing to shoot.
Grassland
October was pretty much the true definition of Summer at there. No regular rain means grassland becomes brown instead of green. Filled with dried grass and trees. To be frank, not much of objects that able to create street photos there, and I did shot for more about documentary or travel photography instead.
We stayed in grassland from afternoon till midnight. Spent our dinner time in tents with almost pitch dark surrounding. However, the nature smile upon us, and sky was so clear that we able to saw gorgeus milky way with bare eyes.
It was my very first attempt to shot milky way, and mind you I have no tripod with me. So I use a bench and my camera bag as a portable “tripod”. I’m also fully aware my photos far from being good, and I use too slow shutter speed (around 25s) therefore the Stars start to blur a bit (not tack sharp). Nonetheless, it was my first time too to be able to saw Milky Way so clearly and it was extremely beautiful!
As bonus, I will share some of my other “street travel” photos in Sumbawa:
Local kids life
Taken these photos at my last day in Sumbawa. In the morning time while we were checking Horse Track whether there would be a race or not.
Horse Culture
To show the bound between human and horse as part of Sumbawa culture.
Life at Harbour and Shipyard
Dried Trees
Dried trees are always looks fascinating to me. It feels like full of story about a symbol of solitaire life, independent, lonely, yet never give up and keep survive regardless facing endless challenges everyday.
That is all about things that make me really like Sumbawa! It was a pleasant journey and I do really hope able to going back to there again someday.
Special thanks to Fujishopid who created this trip, Fujifilm Indonesia who supported me with useful and reliable gears, and last but definitely not the least: To our beloved local guide there who really helpful and supportive to accommodate our needs.
Keep travel, keep shooting, and never forget to have fun with your photography!
Nico Harold