I’m sure fifteen years ago only few Indonesians know how to take a picture. Today, almost all Indonesians know how to take pictures, thanks to the person who found gadget. To complete the journey of a so-called photographer, Indonesians share their moment with their friends, acquaintance and people they barely know in social media. Based on my observation, I identified the type of photographer near us and group them. The results are as follow:

Self-potrait

Two days ago, I was attending a conference and shared the round table with some prominent persons, including a country director, a diplomat and an assistant of someone-important.  Let’s call this lady Ms. Jane Doe. Our eyes were focused on the stage, enjoying a group of kids with disability perform a traditional dance. Miss Jane Doe, like most Indonesians, took few too many pictures with her low-quality blackberry. No matter how many times she click her blackberry the result were not never good, it’s blackberry!

Determined to get a great picture, she turned herself, facing us, raised her hand a bit and took her self-potrait with the dancers as a background. I guess, by adding her face in the scene, the moment looks much better. None of us laugh but we were all awe by her narcissism. She was not the only person with narcissistic personality disorder, I spotted an old guy, in the same conference, did the same thing.

When it comes to self-photography, the shy Indonesians have no shame.

Jump Photo & Chibi-chibi

A colleague once asked me why Indonesians so obsess with jump picture. Do you know why? I honestly do not have answer to this question, but if I am allowed to guess, it might has something to do with with the fact that we don’t like taking only one picture. The first picture is usually normal picture with a nice smile, followed by free style, ugly face, chibi-chibi and ended with a jump.

The other style that people like love is chibi-chibi. The style is so famous until our president, SBY, has his chibi-chibi photo. Google it and you’ll find it amusing.

Picture above was taken from here

Food Photography

Before enjoying meal, the Japanese say itadakimasul, the French say bon appétit, while the Dutch say eet smakelij. Here in Indonesia, instead of saying grace or greeting others before meal, we take picture of our meal and post it in social media like Instagram, Path and Facebook. This is our way to thank the mother nature for the meal and sharing with our friends.  If we couldn’t share the food, at least we could share the pictures.  Remember, the most important thing is to share, the mean of sharing is not important.

I must admit that I occasionally do it, especially when visiting a restaurant I’ve never been to. Here is my favorite picture:

Vietnamnese springroll

Group Photo 

Another thing that Indonesians love is to ask favor from the Server at a restaurant to take their picture pictures. The Server must take perfect picture pictures, if this person fail to do it, then the patrons will request for another photo. To make it worse, the poor Server has to take different pictures with different mobile phones. People have bluetooth and internet to share the photo, yet they prefer to have the photo taken by their mobile phone.

Restaurant in Indonesia should start putting photography skill as one of the requirements. They should also do a test on how to take picture with DSLR, pocket camera, iphone, blackberry or other smart phone. Only a perfect one will be hired. Oh and the perfect one should never complain when the patron did not leave a tip, it’s part of their job.

Also Read:

Things Indonesian Like: Oleh-oleh

Things Indonesian Like: Dirty Toilet