Location

Indonesia
  [ ] Bali

Travel Dates

2017.03.05 - 2017.03.12

Camera

Mamiya 6

Film Stocks

FUJICHROME PROVIA 100F(expired)

Travel Notes

Bali is amazing. I remember kicking myself multiple times throughout the trip for not coming like 10 years earlier. What's not to love about cheep delicious food, beautiful people, warm weather, and a rich history of spirituality?

TBH I didn't know much about Bali before visiting. I was expecting lots of drinks with chia seeds and yoga villas, with the odd full tatted mid-aged hippy who stayed much too long after the party ended types you sometimes see kicking around beach towns in South East Asia. Australian friends back in Tokyo painted these horrible mental pictures of the Las Vegas of Asia, where bored and privileged Aussies would go for trips of debauchery.

A number of years later while traveling the Safari area of Sri Lanka I remember a well traveled guest at my inn commenting, "In 10 years this place (he was referring to the small town we were in), will be the next Bali". Of course he was referring to the amazing tourism infrastructure for visiting foreigners, welcoming attitude of locals, and the beautiful natural landscape slightly adjusted to be more instagramable for gen z timelines.

And there were times when I found myself in a modern(in terms of Tokyo) local cafe surrounded only by rice fields, drinking fairly traded single original coffee and thinking to myself, "WTF I hate myself". But what trip in the modern era doesn't sometimes bring up those types of questions? I am as much part of the problem as part of the driving-the-tourist-industry, albeit as responsible as I can, solution. I remember one other time during this trip where I went to a beautiful Hindu water temple called Tirta Empul Temple. Place is stunning, built in 962 AD (!!) with fountains splashing out holy spring water. I remember waiting in the que to dunk my head under one of the fountains for a holy bath and every person in eye sight were all deeply red sunburnt foreigners in traditional clothing. I immediately had an allergic reaction to the situation and took a mental note.

I was very excited to field test my new baby, the Mamiya 6. I had experience with 6x6 medium format with the Bronica SQA so I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. I figured the Mamiya could be thought of as the Rolls Royce to my beater Bronica. The Mamiya is a beautiful camera and I found it such a pleasure to use. To be able to rely on the light meter to select all the right settings and the user to just focus only on the focussing sounds easier said than done. In my years of owning the camera I had found the lens was so sharp that most of my photos would be out of focus, even when metering at F8 or above. In hindsight bringing only expired slide film was a silly gamble and not the first time I made this mistake. A gamble after seeing the results from the photo lab was the equivalent of tripping in public.