flyin' over london: PIF 2015: Moments Captured

As I found the right time and finally managed to gather my mood up again to write a brand new blog post, I decided to simply write a light and simple post. Let's consider it is my comeback to the blogging life, the shelter where I can easily share my random thoughts, words, and even works to the cyber world. I apologise to my readers—whose existence is now pretty much questionable—for leaving this blog seriously neglected for nearly two years. But I've been reading numerous interesting blogs from my friends' daily life blogs to travel and fashion bloggers' blogs, until I started to miss the perks of blogging very much.

I could not find any kind of things that I really love lately but photography. I've been very active on Instagram lately and getting various intake of visual inspirations from visual artworks such as architecture sketches, to photography works. And today, I am to share you some of my photography works shot at Padmanaba Islamic Festival 2015 on the past May 16, 2015.

A loving mother.

A little glimpse about the event, it didn't only show Islamic performances on its stage, but they also held Islamic competitions for children ranged from kindergarten to junior high school students. My works featured here would be my photography works of the children that I met during the event. I found some of my works cute and heartwarming, as I could see their natural activity with their surroundings in the pictures.

The event took place at Masjid Kampus UGM Yogyakarta that I considered the most appropriate place to hold events like PIF 2015. Food and fashion bazaars filled up the south yard, and at seven and a half in the morning I could already see many children running all around the front yards. Some arrived with their parents and family, some others came with their school friends and teachers who would accompany them practicing for the competition. It really was a sea of children.

The perks of shooting children's natural behaviours is simply because you can see them doing what their hearts told them to do. Kids with various sizes ran around the yards and some even played hide-and-seek inside the mosque. And yes, they did eat and drink inside the mosque and didn't even throw away the trash. I have to say it's true that kids are at times annoying, but you know you can't hate them anyway.

I had this moment when I just stared at them doing the stuffs they thought were fun, and my cheeks were simply lifted up. I smiled and laughed quietly until I decided to shoot them with my camera. The next second when they found out that I was there, watching and shooting them, they stopped awkwardly and turned red with embarrasment. I found this moment very cute, and I guess this is what you will find oftentimes when you shoot children activity.

There are some kind of serenity you will find in every laugh they share, in every face expression they make, in every silence when they read a book. They live an innocent world, and we all just basically love children.

Their nervous faces were quite obvious.

I also had the breath-taking moments when I saw the children enthusiastically went through the competitions. I had goosebumps all over my body while hearing some tartil Qur'an participants aged six to twelve reading the Holy Qur'an carefully with certain tunes and songs, when I myself still assumed the tajwid is a trivial thing to notice in reading Qur'an. The adzan participants in the southern part of the mosque led me to another goosebumps with their loud and beautiful voices. And so did the little da'i competition participants with their bravery and funny renditions of religious lectures.

They however brought me to another spirit to look back to myself, whose self is actually no better than a six-year-old. I was just a sinner yesterday and there is always a big possibility for me to commit sin today and tomorrow, even the little ones. They're just very young, and courageous, and bright. And one more thing about every child in the world according to their natural demeanours, regardless of their different characters from each other... is that every child is inspirational.