addinaf: June 2018

The Series of Temporary

By addinaf - 4:54:00 PM

I was dreaming about home, I was dreaming I'm in the car and in the familiar street in my hometown nearby my house there. Perhaps it was because I have a homesick, or because I miss some people in my hometown, or because of a lot of things recently here. I don't know, and I'm not sure either.

I also thought about where should I stay and settle down my self in the future. I always wish I could stay here, but, there are a lot of things that I should consider to decided to stay, like, forever. If I could, anyway. I will surely try my best to get whatever that I want and I think it will be good for me, but nobody knows what the future will be.

I need to think about the best and the worst scenario, which I believe that everything will be the best for myself. I still consider myself to start thinking about which stuff I should keep and which one I don't need anymore. I need to throw some kinds of stuff away and donate some clothes. As well I should think what if God fulfill my wish and let me stay here for a while? I should learn Italian, and I should consider finding another house to stay in, and so on and so on.

Everything is just temporary. Sometimes, some things that I have, I only take them for granted. In fact, I should be grateful for everything that I have now. Even all will be only temporary. At some points, I will finish my study (soon, amen to that), the happiness (and the torture) as a student will be only temporary. I should think to go back to my hometown, my scholarship will end, which is temporary as well. If I want to try to find a job here, I only have one year chance, temporary chance. Not forever.

My makeup is temporary. Clothes are temporary cover as the season and trends change. Age is a temporary number. Status is a temporary label. Words are a temporary statement. A feeling is a temporary mindset that you decide which you want to keep it or not. Time is a temporary limit.

In the end, everything is just the series of temporary. Nothing is forever. Everything has their time limit. Temporary meaning that you should be progressive, you should develop yourself in order to 'move' before the time limit. By move doesn't mean that you have to move your house, work, or city, but how you move in a better way or in a better mindset.

Furthermore, I also think that this kind of mindset about understanding that life is the series of temporary and developing yourself could make myself living better and more mature to face some phases of life, either happy or shitty. Because in the end, everything will be temporary. Life is the series of temporary.

"When you finally realize that nothing is permanent in this life, you will become more tolerant, more forgiving, and less judgemental." -- Mufti Ismail Menk

Addina Faizati

Milan, 2018

0 Comments

CiaoAddinaf

Decision, Decision

By addinaf - 1:20:00 AM

I just watching TV Series called “Fresh Off the Boats” recently, and I’m not a big fan of series or movies (if you know me, you will understand). But I have a hook with this series, eventho' it’s not a new series (currently in the 5th season anyway) and not the most popular series.

My boyfriend introduced me to this series because he always wants to watch a short movie, series, or video while we are eating together at home. Usually, we watched Doraemon (yes we kind of finished all I guess), but at some point, we got too bored with Doraemon, so he decided to re-watched this series.

This series itself has a short episode, so it is suitable for your company while eating, only 20 minutes. The genre is a comedy. This series is about a Chinese family who lives in America, the stories started when they decided to move to Orlando. That is why the series called Fresh Off the Boats, meaning that they are just ‘fresh’ from the boat, or just ran and start a new life.

Despite all the stupid, weird, and funny characters, this series has the points. I mean, the stories they had were kind of realistic, somehow we can relate, about family, friendship, sibling-hood, or neighbourhood. Really simple and easy to absorb.

Well, until one episode (or two) really got into my heart. In the second season, the sub-story started with the sibling-hood of Louis (the father) and his brother who lives in Taiwan. Louis who already have a restaurant business in Orlando thought that his brother not having a better life (or even worse) than him in America.

Main characters: Louis & Jessica (parents) | Emery, Evan, Eddy (children)

Long story short, his brother visited him in America and asked him to be his best man for his wedding in Taiwan. Louis and his family excited to go back to Taiwan and feel their heritage and back to their roots again even just for a couple of days. Turns out his brother living a way much better life than him. His brother has a huge apartment, lovely soon-to-be-wife, and expensive wedding ceremony, and be able to build a better life for the rest of the family in Taiwan (aunt, uncle, and so on).

Louis felt jealous of his brother and had a talk with his wife, Jessica, about their ordinary life in America. Jessica said that it is not a problem for her, and for their children. Because, after all, that kind of life that they built together, they decided to fight for, and that is their achievement in America, their life decision that they chose.

After watched those two episodes, I felt like, that was kinda true. That was really into my heart. I mean, everybody has their own decision, has their personal preferences. That doesn't mean that Louis's brother with bigger house living a better life, on the other hand, maybe his brother living in a let say 'easier' experience rather than Louis.

His brother stays in China, same language, same culture, better connection and networks. While Louis took a big leap by moving to America, studied there, and start and family and own his own restaurant there. Every decision has its own pros and cons, no?

Decision, decision, decision. In the end, life is about making your decision, whatever it is. It is your decision whether you choose to stay in a big city but ordinary life, or in the smaller town but bigger house and more succesfull life. In a more strict and challenging office, but more significant salary, or smaller and easy job but less salary. That is what you need to decide, and what you need to go through in some period of your life.

Sometimes, at some points, I felt like, why I decided to go to uni rather than find a better job and more significant salary? Why I choose this major, why I decided to leave my bachelor's major? A lot of possibilities could happen if I decide to find a better job in the capital city, I might have two digits of salary, or maybe not as well. What if I choose to go further in my previous field? And so on and so on.

I honestly don't know what will I become in the future, but I do have goals, and I believe that to reach those goals, I need to go through this. Whatever I become, it will be a compilation of my previous decisions, no? And this is what I fight for, this what I need to pass before I go to the next step of life.

The episode of Fresh off the Boat taught me that we can not judge people's decision, what we see is only the tip of an iceberg, not the whole cake of life. It may sound cheesy and naive, but you are a compilation of your decision in the past, and people don't have the right to judge you and vice versa.

Louis may have a smaller house and cheaper car, but who knows what was happening behind? He might be living his best experience by running his own restaurant. Because, baby, we never know what is in people mind, no?

Decision, decision, decision.
At the end of it, everybody needs to decide what is worth for them to fight for.
And who are we to judge their decision, anyway?

I don't know, you decide.

Addina Faizati,

just a casual Saturday in Milan

0 Comments

CiaoAddinaf

How to Edit Photo for Instagram: Warm and Pinkish Tone with VSCO

By addinaf - 6:54:00 AM

Ciao!

It's been a quite long time since I planned to do this post about how to edit the photos. A lot of people asked me about how I edit my photos? What type of camera that I use? And so on and so on. Well, actually, I never really think about it before, I mean, I never make a concept that my photos must look pinkish and warm. I'm pretty sure about it, I just love to take a picture in that kind of vibe, and I put a filter to emphasize the tone.

If you take a look at my Instagram, I've been through a lot of photos to become this kind of style. I did street photos, nature photos, and a lot of types before until I feel comfortable with this style. Moreover, I must admit that in Italy, all the situation, cities, the sun, and the vibe are really supporting me to do so. So, finger cross with this kind of style if I'm going back to Indonesia, I perhaps need to adjust the tone again :)

Anyway, in this post, I will give you some of the tips and before-after of how I edit the photos before I upload them on my Instagram. So this is my Instagram account: @addinaf if you wonder how does it look like.

#1 My favorite presets

So, first thing first, I will introduce you to my favorite tool and preset. I usually only use VSCO as the primary tool to grading and adding preset to my photos, and I use the free VSCO (I will upgrade to VSCO X soon, perhaps), so no worry guys, I assumed that you can have all the presets that I have in my account.

For Instagram feeds, I usually use repetition presets as in to maintain the tone in my feed (yes, after all this time, I just realized that I almost always use the same presets), but other than main feed, I can also play with different presets and apps too.

These are my favorite presets series: Analog (A6), Portraits (G3), Hypebeast (HB1 / HB2), Krochet (KK1 / KK2), Levi's (LV1 / LV3). They make the best warm, pinkish, and orange-ish tone out of all the (free) presets (in my opinion). Of course, how you use it will depend on the photos that you want to edit.

My favorite presets

#2 Prepare your photos

Next part is choosing your pictures. I mean, not every photo are suitable for the warm and pinkish tone. I would say beaches (or ocean in general), gloomy/cloudy weather, too vivid colors (or too white), and night photos are two types of the photo that I rarely use for this kind of tone. Well, again, it depends, but usually, I avoid this type of picture for this kind of mood.

I would prefer the city, the street, and golden hour is my ultimate favorite! The key is finding the right lighting, sun flare, and 'moment' to capture. I personally avoid mid-day photo because the sun will be too harsh (too white), and for the night picture, better with warm light from the lamps (city lamps) or not too late night photo will be perfect.

Choose the right moment 1 hour before sunset/sunrise - sunset/sunrise moment - 1 hour after, perhaps that is the trilogy for the warm tone. The natural lighting from the sun will be diagonal so the mood of the pictures is warm enough already so it will be easier to process.

The 'warm tone trilogy.'

So, for me, the right season to take better pictures are obviously not in the summer because of the sunset too late I'm sleepy and tired already. Hahaha

#3 Make it warm with presets!

As I already mentioned it before about my favorite presets, I would like to give you some examples of how I use the presets to achieve a specific color tone that I wanted with those presets.

Analog (A6):

Portraits (G3):

Hypebeast:

Thus, by taking a look at the photos that I give as an example, you can see that the presets did change the vibe of your picture. My personal review of those presets are; Analog give you more 'white-ish' tone, Portraits will add blue-green shade to your picture, Hypebeast is more fade tone, for Levi's and Krochet add a lot of orange tone to your picture, so you need to be careful with those two presets.

#4 Add the pinkish/orange-ish tone

The next step after choosing the preset is; add the warm tone with two primary tools: Temperature and Skin Tone. I always use those two tools to adjust the vibe. Other than that, you also need to change the exposure and saturation as well.

In my personal experience, I always adjust the exposure in general because I like my picture to be bright and light (I don't really like the dark vibe in my photos). And add more saturation to it to give attention to the bright colors (but not too vivid, otherwise you need to make it less saturated).

For the temperature, I almost always add it to the right side (more orange/warm), because I'm not a big fan of the cool tone (opposite side). And if you like pinkish tone, you need to slide it to the left side to make it more pinkish (the opposite will make your picture yellow-ish). It is also useful if you edit pictures with a face on the frame so you can give a different mood.

Again, it's a personal opinion. I really like to make the skin tone -4 to -6 (really pinkish), and the temperature depends on the photo, it could be -1 (to balance the skin tone) to the +3 or +4. You can see the color tone changing from these photos below.

Skin tone -4 | Temperature +2

Skin tone -6 | Temperature +2.8

Skin tone -4.3 | Temperature +1

Skin tone -4.2 | Saturation +1.2

#5 Adjust

Last, but not least, adjust the photos with additional tools such as cropping, straighten, sharpen, add some grain if you like to add analog or edgy effect (kind of). I love to crop and straighten the photos a lot, so it doesn't matter if you are not able to take a perfect frame for your picture, it's better to take photos in the bigger frame so you can crop/skew/straighten it later.

I used to not liking the grain effect in my photos, but people change, no? So now I really like to play with grain and fade effects to give analog vibe to my photos. I called this kind of style is Faux Analog. (I uploaded one blog post full of my photos collection in the spring season with this style, please check it!)

In this part, it will depend on your photos, style, and your own preferences. But I personally like the close-up details, alley (it's Italy, no?), and buildings' facades. I will crop the pictures depending on the geometry and the composition of the pattern. I have no problem with any photo cropping (1:1, 1:2, 2:3, 9:16, landscape, or portrait).

My adjusting style

Perhaps I could share about composition and pattern more in another post.

That's all guys, I hope you can somehow understand how I edit my pictures. Ah, I forget to tell you that I use Canon EOS M10 and iPhone for almost all of my photos. I bet most of you have the same quality of camera/phone, or evenmore.

It's a matter of sense and how you train yourself in this field, and I'm not the best either. I just love to take pictures and edit them in order to make it better photos to represent the places that I have visited. My background as an architect made me pay attention more to the buildings, city, and details too!

Hope you enjoy this post! :)

You can leave a comment and give me suggestion what would be better for the next post. I really really appreciate your comments and critics!

Addina Faizati

Milan, 2018

Middle of the night, awake

Disclaimer: all the photos in this post are taken by me, edited by me, and layout by me. Please give some respect and not to use it for your own/commercial purpose :)

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The Series of Temporary

Decision, Decision

How to Edit Photo for Instagram: Warm and Pinkish Tone with VSCO

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