The time has arrived. I never thought it would, actually. I have known for years that when I reached the age of 60 (in February), I would be forced to retire from Jakarta International School. I’m still not sure if it is an actual Indonesian law or just a school policy. It is a mystery that will live on, I guess. The school maintains it is Indonesian Law. I fought it the best I could, but when you’re going against a huge bureaucracy, the little guy (me) will always lose.

So, after 27 incredible years in Indonesia (minus two years in Korea 96-97), the Graham family is moving onto a new adventure! I was hired as a full time photography teacher by the American Embassy School (AES) in New Delhi, India. I feel very fortunate to find this job. In the international schools, it is rare to find a school that actually has a photography program, and to find one of these schools that is not only a great school but had an open position is even more rare. Someone above was looking after me and my family. My youngest daughter Kelly still needs five more years of school to graduate so the move to India is perfect for her as AES has a fantastic reputation, and will be great school for her to finish her middle school and high school education.

As a photographer, there couldn’t be a better place to live than India. India is the mecca for street photographers. Colors, culture, people, temples, landscapes, nature, mountains…India has it all. There is a reason they advertise India as “Incredible India”… I look forward to exploring every corner of the country and creating new and exciting images. Of course, I am also excited to be sharing my passion with the students (and the community) at AES, and hope to inspire the next generation of photographers!

Kayla will be graduating in May this year. She has applied to 6 schools, and has already been accepted to two of them. The rest she will hear back from in January or February. She is also applying for an AFROTC scholarship, and just had her interview this morning which she said went well.

The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. The biggest piece has been placed into the puzzle as complete…now to fill in the rest. After 27 years, we have deep deep deep roots here…pulling up those roots and replanting will not be easy, but we will make it happen.

Don’t worry, Indonesia! The Grahams will be back!!

Believe it or not, I am just now getting to my summer photos. A lot has been going on. This will be my last year at JIS, and it means I’ll be starting a new adventure in life. Kayla graduates in May, and will be off to University in the States somewhere leaving Tika, Kelly and I alone. As you can imagine after 25 years in Indonesia, it’s gonna be tough transitioning into new lives, but we look forward to the challenges that lie ahead whatever that may be.

In the meantime, I have thousands of photos to review and edit and get out to the world…so, let’s start with these two from Canon Beach, Oregon.

I had the opportunity (after 30 years of waiting) to see the fall colors in New England again. I went to High School in Connecticut and always loved the fall. Living in Indonesia for the past 25 years has prevented me from going back in October. Bad luck actually brought me to the States for the month of October as I had to deal with some medical problems (all is fine now), so between appointments, I had a week to drive North from Virginia to visit some good friends in Maine. The timing was perfect as Maine was in experiencing their peak colors!! Here are a few photos…

I’ve attended a couple of model shoots the past couple of weeks. One in Bogor and one in North Jakarta last weekend. They have been fun and it has given me the opportunity to shoot some portraits with my new Fuji GFX100s. The camera continues to blow me away in terms of image quality. I’ve never seen anything like it. The details are simply out of this world. Here are a few shots…

I didn’t think the day would come when I decided to abandon Sony, but it happened within a week of reading about FujiFilm’s new GFX 100s medium format camera. I had never given Fuji a second thought until I saw this camera. WOW!! Medium format (sensor is 1.7 times larger than a full frame sensor), 102MP, about the same size as the Nikon D850, and for six thousand dollars. I started watching every youtube video I could find on this camera, and was 100% convinced it was the camera for me. SO…I traded most all of my Sony gear for this incredible camera and two lenses…the 23mm (equivalent to 18mm for full frame) and the 45-100mm zoom lens. I did keep my A7R3 and the 24-105mm lens, so I am not completely void of Sony, but that’s pretty much it. You can call me a FujiFilm fan boy now…not sure how they have slipped from my radar the past 20 years. Incredible cameras.

Here’s one of my favorite youtube videos on the GFX100s…

And here is one of the first images I took…this is a jpg straight out of the camera. Adobe LR does not yet recognize the files from the GFX 100s. I did download the free version of Capture One Express for Fuji, so I can at least do basic edits of the RAW files.

In normal times (before Covid), this place would have people all over it hiking and swinging on the many swings that have popped up over the years. On this morning, we had the place to ourselves. I guess one of the advantages of Covid…right?? Bali was REALLY quiet in most spots. The only place buzzing with activity was Cangguh. Cangguh is where all of the expats that live and work in Bali live. Traffic there was a nightmare, restaurants hopping, and people everywhere. I’m not a big crowd, partying type, so avoided that part of Bali.

I have been wanting to visit this waterfall for about three years now. There was always some reason why I COULDN’T go, but I don’t like “no” for an answer, so I finally made it happen. It is not an easy place to get to. I booked flights to Malang, hired a driver, booked two rooms (Tika and Kayla came with me) at a homestay, and ventured out just before Christmas. We were met at the airport by our driver, and made the two hour journey into the mountains arriving at night at our homestay. The route in the mountains was the main route that trucks take to the volcano, Semeru, to collect volcanic sand. The trucks, when fully loaded, travel at about walking speed up the mountain roads. Needless to say, the trip was a slow one getting stuck behind hundreds of trucks passing three at a time when possible.

On the way, the clouds were thick and dark. This was very concerning as to get good photos of the falls, you need clear skies in order to see Semeru behind the falls at sunrise. I had only ONE shot. If it was cloudy the next morning, I would have to return at another time to get the shot I was looking for. It rained most of the night, and I had a terrible time sleeping thinking about the clouds. I was also going over and over in my head how I was going to shoot the falls with my drone. What camera settings to use, how high and far to fly to capture the scene I wanted in my head. Sunrise was at 5:00, so I wanted to be there nice an early.

The next morning, we awoke to clear skies!! YES YES YES!!!!! Man, SOOO lucky!! There were clouds around, but we could see Semeru, so I was very pleased and relieved. It took us 5 minutes to drive to the entrance to the falls, and then a 5 minute walk to the look-out point. Without a drone, you can only just see the top of Semeru on the right side of the falls. The only way to get a shot of the falls with the volcano in the background is to use a drone.

I immediately got my drone all set up, calibrated the compass, and took off. Once I was in the air, I had a look with the camera….damn!! The camera was wobbling all over the place, and I got an error message saying my gimbal was overloaded. What??? Flew the drone back, and landed. Quickly looked up on google what to do….found out I needed to re-calibrate the gimbal. I calibrated, and took off again. Damn!! Still wobbling….time was being wasted as the sun and light were changing by the second. Flew the drone back, and landed again. Shut it all down, and re-started…re-calibrated the gimbal….took off again. Yes!! Finally working. Took a few shots, and then moved the drone into position to capture a panorama. I lowered the gimbal, took 4 shots of the bottom of the falls rotating the drone from left to right…then lifted the gimbal half-way up the falls, and did the same thing…then tilted the gimbal up and took four more shots from left to right. By the time I finished, the light had changed dramatically, and clouds moved in…GOT IT…I HOPE.

When I got home to my computer, I merged all of the shots together using Adobe LR. Took a bit of work blending the photos, and blending the colors and light so that it all seamlessly came together….here is the final shot…

I have a new logo!!

It all started a few weeks ago when I decided to make a photography book on Raja Ampat. I am still working on that book, by the way, and will save the story about that for another post in the future. Anyway, I had chosen most of the photos for my book, and then started to work on the cover of the book. I soon realized I didn’t have a good logo for “Last Flight Out Photography”. You know, it’s always cool to put your logo on the cover of a book to promote yourself. So, I put the book aside, and started researching the best way to have a logo made. I came across this company called, Design Crowd . It is really cool. I wrote up what I wanted to have done, and Design Crowd sends out the request to designers all over the world who submit their ideas and compete for a contract. Within hours of my request I had over 50 designs sent to me from places like Pakistan, India, Philippines, Micronesia, The US, Indonesia, and several other places. In a week’s time, I had over 185 designs sent to me. You can comment on the designs, and have the graphic artists make changes and submit new ideas. It is incredible but overwhelming!! With so many fantastic designs, I had a terrible time deciding which I liked best.

I took screen shots of my top 10, and posted them on Facebook to see if my friends could help me out. I was thinking there would be a couple that stood out and got most of the votes. How wrong I was. Votes were all over the place. Every design got several positive comments and votes. I ended back where I started. No decision. I drove my family absolutely crazy asking them which they liked better. I couldn’t even get consensus with my own family. My daughter liked this one, my other daughter like that one, my wife liked a different one. I would settle on a design that I liked when a friend would write to me and talk me out of it or into another one. Oh my God, impossible to choose!!

The process through Design Crowd had time limits. I only had a few days to choose my winning designs, and once the designs are chosen, you have only a few days to request changes. Time was clicking away, and I had to make a decision. For a hundred bucks extra, you could choose two designs, and for another 100 bucks, you could choose a third one. I think you can guess what I did. Yes, I bought three designs. I couldn’t decide between three different logos, so I just bought all three of them. I had decided on some text I liked from one designer, and wanted to combine that text with one of the other “symbols” that I liked. I wanted a symbol that looked like a camera, that was unique, and one that you could clearly see “LFO”. I narrowed my choices down to three. I wanted the symbol to be used as a watermark on my prints…kind of my “signature” to the print. You know, branding!! I needed something cool and unique.

Below are the three symbols I had narrowed my choice to…

Many of my friends liked the middle symbol, and I liked it too. In fact, I liked all three VERY MUCH!! So, I placed each symbol at the bottom right of the same print (where my signature would normally go), and looked at each print to decide which logo looked the best as a “watermark”. The symbol on the left looked cool, but you can’t clearly see the letters “LFO” written, so I eliminated that one. The other two was really a toss-up, but in the end, the logo on the right looked the best on the print, so I chose it as my final logo. I think it is also very cleverly designed. Can you see the camera?? Hint: the “O” is the lens, and the red parts are both the side of the camera and also serves as a “focus spot”. Genius!!

So, combined with the text, you can see the front page of my website…I can also put the symbol to the left of the text to look like below…

Now, I need to put my new logo on my new book, and I can make some new name cards, and maybe even make some new t-shirts!! That would be cool!!

I am SO DONE with Covid-19

As most of the world is confined to their homes or their city or their own country, it has been super frustrating for us photographers that love to travel to the remote parts of the world to take photos! It is hard to believe that the entire travel industry has been stuck in limbo now for nearly a YEAR.  There are so many places I want to see and photograph before I leave this planet (I’m not getting any younger), and I want to go while I am healthy and able. This year has taken its toll on so many of us. It’s tough to stay motivated when you can’t go anywhere.

Having said that, I am fortunate to live in one of the most photographed countries in the world, Indonesia. Places outside of Jakarta are finally starting to open up for us locals, and I am taking full advantage of that, and jumping at the chance to again travel to my favorite destinations here in Indonesia. Of course, my number one spot is Raja Ampat. I just returned from a week in Raja Ampat, and it was fantastic as usual. Making it even better was that we had the entire place to ourselves. No tourists, no liveaboard dive boats, no other people. It was awesome. It was like the old days back in the mid-90’s before Raja Ampat became famous. We were the last visitors in Raja Ampat back in March, and the first visitors back.

Our next break is Christmas time where I have another 3 weeks to travel somewhere. I’m thinking of taking a road trip through Java all the way to Bali. That could be a very fun adventure…just have to talk my family into coming with me.

Some Drone Shots From Raja Ampat…

Some Underwater Shots From Raja Amapt…