I can't remember when I've had so much fun photographing as I did today and yesterday at the Jember Fashion Carnival in East Java, Indonesia. I've never seen as much color, as many beauiful faces, and as many truly outrageous costumes. The three pictures you see here represent a few of the scores of children that participated in the show. Some of the costumes were twice as big as they were, and some of the girls and boys were as young as five years old. My photo tour group and I had press passes that allowed us access to the area where they got made up and adorned their costumes. Many of our shots were closeups like you see here because we wanted to avoid the messy backgrounds behind them.
Fortunately, the girls were getting ready in the shade of a large building. Outdoor portraits, whether they are of normal subjects or wild fashion models, always look better in soft and diffused light virtually without exception. This makes exposure much easier, and the lighting is much more flattering to the subjects. There are no black shadows or overexposed highlights to deal with.
