How Photographing The Pacu Jawi?

By Barry Kusuma

Note:
Barry Kusuma is a travel photographer, he has many adventures to various tourist sites in Indonesia. His works can be easily found on the alambudaya.com website or his other personal website.

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In the Land of Minang, Pacu Jawi or the so-called Cow Race is one of the cultural attractions are now very well known from West Sumatra. Pacu Jawi in the begining is the farmers and communities activities around Tanah Datar to fill the time after harvest.

Pacu Jawi typically held 3 times a year in Tanah Datar. The photographer did not want to lose the opportunity to perpetuate this attraction. Here are tips on how photographing the Pacu Jawi.

1. Wear hiking sandals, not shoes or sandals. The reason, the Pacu Jawi area occupied is an area of wet rice fields, everywhere trampled mud feet if it would go deep enough feet.

2. The ideal lens is for closeup photographing is 400 mm, if there is no 200 mm minimum still able to get a closeup. But it should be close to the rice field.

3. Wide lens and flash to photograph the Pacu Jawi atmosphere, because the weather is very hot in the flash needed to fill in.

4. Although wear a trivial hat or jacket that is not too hot, because Pacu Jawi ranging from 12 noon to 4 pm.

5. Bring drink enough to prevent dehydration, so we can take a lot of moments.

6. Do not forget to bring a tripod or monopod to support the lens and the camera during shooting the Pacu Jawi. Both are useful functions to make us not get tired and does not shake when shooting.

7. Bring quite a lot spare batteries and memory cards, because we will be a lot of shooting with continuous shoot that takes a lot of battery capacity and memory card.

Enjoy the aura that occurred during the race! You'll be surprised later on ...

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(Sumber Barry Kusuma, travelKompas /Image Antonius Yuniarko)