Pasar Badung, part 2

To conclude Pasar Badung, part 1, here are more pics of the biggest flower market in Bali.


a sleepy vendor tending a flower stall in Pasar Badung, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia



mussaenda flowers for sale


In between, I’m sharing a lesson in language which I learned when I was studying Bahasa Indonesia on my own 16 years ago.


vendors selling canang offerings



an old lady selling flowers in Pasar Badung


Then, I discovered the intertwining relationship of dialects in Southeast Asia. Take the case of the Indonesian word for flower which is bunga. I always confused bunga with buah (pronounced bu-wa) which means fruit. You see, in Cebuano, fruit is bunga while flower is buwak. Somewhere, sometime, during the centuries of direct contact between the archipelagos that are now the Philippines and Indonesia, words jumbled and blended.


baskets of exotic fragrant flowers



varieties of Lombok peppers that are also on display in the flower market


Somehow, it doesn’t really matter much. The flower and the fruit are interchangeable in a biological sense, both being bearers of progeny of the plant. First, the flower blooms, withers and ultimately becomes the fruit. One can’t be without the other. You might as well mix them up.


petals of pink and red roses that are sold for Balinese offerings

all abloom in the flower market of Antananarivo

It’s a given- tropical flowers are a riot of colors. A visit to the flower market would be enough confirmation of this reality. But the heat can be too oppressive and some species are better suited to the moderately cool temperatures afforded by the mountains. It’s no surprise then that the more famous flower markets are always in the highlands. Think of Busay in Cebu, Baguio in Luzon and Bedugul in Bali.


flowers for delivery



a kaleidoscope of colors



more helicornias, roses, anthuriums


Think then Madagascar, a country famous for its relative isolation and unparalleled diversity. Add to this predisposition the fact that its capital, Antananarivo or Tana sits on a high plateau ranging between 1200-1400 meters above sea level, and peaking above 2,600 meters.


girl playing with a flower



lilies on the go



buyers selecting the best blooms


A place not to be missed then is the flower market of Tana located at the edge of Lake Anosy. The range is spectacular, from the easily recognizable roses, chrysanthemums and lilies to the wilder helicornia, anthuriums, gladiolas and orchids.


a typical flower stall



vendor selling papayas and mangoes


The pulse of the city is the market and this one in Anosy throbs with the energy of a teeming and vibrant people who love life. An obvious piece of advice: visit early morning when the blooms are freshly picked and simply unblemished.


a full display



prepping some bouquet



wild colors

having fun with flower macros

I have an avowed lackadaisical disinterest with flower macros. I’ve seen simply too many sensational flower macros in flickr that I don’t think I can add more to this colorful form of entertainment. On occasions though, when I am idle and when other photographic subjects are not available, I give in.


a kamboja (frangipani) macro in Sukawati, Gianyar, Bali, Indonesia
Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/200s, f/2.8, 100mm, ISO 400, -1.0EV


As I would find out, macros, even when using the dedicated 100mm f2.8 macro lens, presented special challenges.

Composition. To remove extraneous elements which are distracting, I filled the frame entirely with the flower. Natural colors cannot be beat anyway and the hues of the flowers could be without comparison. I focused on an interesting point, say the pistil of a bougainvillea, the inner heart of the frangipani, or the petal edges of the gerbera, and had them swim in one singular color. I also flushed the focal points off-center to ensure more dynamic interest as a full central symmetry could be too static.


a bougainvillea macro in Selong, Lombok Timur, Indonesia
Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/80s, f/2.8, 100mm, ISO 100, -1/3EV


Exposure . In this age of digital photography, the exposure of a photograph can be calibrated countlessly and in real time. I chimped a lot, which meant that I checked the output in the LCD of my camera immediately after taking the shots and did the adjustments thereafter. What I found out was that sometimes I had to underexpose the shot by several stops to get the right amount of light.

As in most of photography, daylight is your best friend. I could not shoot with a flash anyway as I often leave my Speedlite 380x behind when I travel. There is one indoor macro here though – the mum macro in Jakarta – and I had to jack up ISO to 1600. I was not about to setup my tripod inside the restaurant where I was having breakfast.


gerbera macro in Jakarta, Jawa Barat, Indonesia
Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/60s, f/2.8, 100mm, ISO 1600


Manual focus. The macro lens has a pinpoint plane of focus and beyond this plane, the foreground and the background come to a blur. Autofocus then becomes a problem as the lens had trouble delineating sufficient contrast. I had to go full manual. To select accurately the focal point that I wanted, I had to move towards or away from the subject. This to me is the greatest challenge.


adenium macro in Pantai Mengiat, Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia
Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/500s, f/2.8, 100mm, ISO 100


Although I still don’t find flower macros a photographic pursuit of my choosing, I have to confess that the pictures come out appealing, especially with the collage of the four macros. A final homage to the visual power of flowers I say. T’was definitely fun, if I may complete the verbal pun.


a collage of the macros presented below using picasa3

Pasar Badung, part 1

I’ve always been fascinated by public markets. They are a generous window to the psyche of the people. Markets throbs of teeming humanity- crowded, noisy, smelly and flashy. Now imagine that the market is Pasar Badung, the city is Denpasar and the island is Bali.

In the last 15 years, I have visited or shopped at Pasar Badung several times. Reasons were mundane. I would not even want to recall what pedestrian items I was buying. This time however, I went there with another mind set. I brought my camera. Difficult it may be but I wanted to present in photographs the cacophonous sounds, the heady aroma and the clashing colors that unabashedly are Bali.

As in most markets in Southeast Asia, Pasar Badung is a hive of commerce all day long. However, it is busiest late in the afternoon stretching into the night. I was there at 3PM, a bit too early. The courtyards around the building were just starting to fill up with vendors setting up their stalls.


Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/4000s, f/5.6, 155mm, ISO 400, -1.0EV
fresh produce at the Pasar Badung, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia


We wandered around the four storeys of the building but most animated are the activities outside, in the open areas, and not inside.

There are lots of things to preoccupy me at Pasar Badung. But a market experience would not be complete without sampling local goodies. My friend sought out the local ice sundae. I sampled it too and it was appropriately sweet, replete with fruits and local homemade condiments.


Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/200s, f/5.6, 18mm, ISO 400, +1/3EV
local ice sundae at the Pasar Badung, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia


I preferred fruits though. I was looking for mangga manalagi but this terribly sweet mango variety is more common in Central Java. The Balinese version, the mangga harum manis (literally “sweet aroma”), was the one in season, so we gladly bought some. Price was cheap and was ¼ of the tag in supermarkets.


Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/80s, f/5.6, 18mm, ISO 200
buying mangga harum manis (“sweet aroma” mango) at the Pasar Badung, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia


As I roamed around the fresh produce section, I found myself gravitating towards my favorite vegetables: chillies. Plump and ripe, they screamed for attention. They are always highly photogenic. Eagerly, I tried to capture two varieties of lombok peppers in one frame to maximize the contrast of the deep red and the yellow orange.


Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/1250s, f/5.6, 51mm, ISO 200, -1/3EV
varieties of lombok pepper at the Pasar Badung, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia

Another particularly interesting and unique in Bali markets is the canang section. These are the offerings that every Balinese household offer without fail early in the morning and late in the afternoon at their altars, places of work or just about any place of consequence. Literally millions of these tiny cradles of flowers and food are offered and dispensed with on a daily basis so the commerce of flower petals, the preferred ingredient, is brisk everywhere.


Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/160s, f/5.6, 55mm, ISO 400, +1/3EV
canang offerings for sale at the Pasar Badung, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia



Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/125s, f/5.6, 30mm, ISO 100, +4/3EV
rose petals by sackfuls at the Pasar Badung, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia

The flowers are cultivated in massive scale in the highlands of Bali so they actually are reasonably cheap. Moreover, you would be hardpressed to see places where petals, in mind-boggling colors, are displayed by sackfuls. Color mad, the Balinese are.

Flower Shots for the Non-Flower Person

I have nothing against flowers but it is just not my style to populate and sow my flickr photostream with blooms. But today, in one of those rarefied moments called for by the occasion, I am posting a flower in flickr. This is in dedication to my mean sister, whom I and my meaner brother affectionately call Lall.


0.013s, f/5.6, 55 mm, ISO 200, +1/3 EV
Dakak, Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, the Philippines

Chemist that I am, I always approach photography like a laboratory experiment. This is not to say that I don’t succumb blissfully to the occasional stock photo syndrome. Case in point is the I-can-take-that-kinda-photo above. There is always something universally pleasing with a direct vertical-drop shot to isolate the starburst form of the lotus and frame it with an unblemished leaf floating on the lush moss-laden evergreen pond.

Colors and shapes will always be your friend. Here are a few more phototips.

Be aware of subject-background distance to create the DOF blur
Even with regular dSLR kit equipment – and I don’t have a macro lens – you can create the beautiful background blur by using the widest aperture. In terms of “f” value, the number must be at its lowest. The blur is visually most attractive, if the background is sufficiently far from the object. If too near, the background will be too sharp and distracting. If too far, the background will be just an indistinguishable haze. In the image below, I shot the flower with the purpose of making the pink makopa flowers on the ground blurry. The orange flower, the subject, was only secondary, and was chosen precisely because it was some distance from the ground, about 3 feet I guess.


0.067 s, f/5.6, 41 mm, ISO 400, -1/3 EV
Talisay City, Cebu, the Philippines

There is actually an optics formula to calculate the desired distance of subject from background to create those little diamond-like compression spots or bokeh blur. I probably could improve the blur to make the spots more classically circular, but I was not in any mood to climb on a chair to photograph another flower more distant from the ground. In the real world, you take what you get.

Create varying background and foreground layers
Again, set the camera at its widest aperture to create the narrowest DOF (depth of field). For the kit lens of my Canon 350D rebel camera at 50mm, this would be f/1.8. Then, choose a flower subject that is crowded with other elements (other flowers, leaves, shrubs, whatever) that are several feet deep. The different layers behind (background) and before the subject (foreground) would then appear in varying levels of blur, from just unsharp near the point of focus to a complete blur at the field’s most distant end. The shot below is from a corner patch in Kobe where pansies were planted to form the word K-O-B-E. I have to bend and shoot along the direction of the row that is more than eight feet long. This is easier said than done without stepping into the flower patch. In this shot, the red pansy is in sharp focus and the others behind it blur out until they disappear completely.


0.005s, f/1.8, 50 mm, ISO 100, -1/3 EV
Kobe, Japan

Incorporate motion and use slow shutter speed
In my travels, me and my tripod are a happy pair. Even if flowers are my subject, I try to capture them in slow shutter speed and capture motion. If there is no movement, create it! One time after having breakfast in my hotel in Bali, I passed by a stairwell landing with standing basin of water strewn with rose petals. I could pictured it flat but the image would just be like a commercial spot for a spa. Then it came into me that I can create a whirlpool with my hand. I varied both the speed of manual swirling and the time of exposure and shot photos of various combinations. I found the shot at 2.5s taken at the top speed of the swirl to be quite fascinating - a vortex in red and pink.


2.5s, f/9, 28 mm, ISO 100, -1/3 EV
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia

I still thought that there is one thing missing above. The whirl may resemble like a dreamlike giant rose but it lacks an anchor to deliver context. What, where and how the photo was taken? I then realized that the human element I can add is me. So I whipped the water aggressively, dipped my left hand to interrupt the water revolution and frame the shot. So here is my hand, as guilty as can be.


0.6s, f/5, 27 mm, ISO 100, -1/3 EV
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia

Now, while I was doing this, passersby must have thought of me mad. But I’ve done worst things other than playing with water. Like calling my brother and sister mean for instance.