Local Photographer Travels to
Indonesia to Capture Otherworldly Images
Story by Matthew St. Amand
Photography by Todd Ternovan
When LaSalle photographer, Todd Ternovan, stepped out the front door of the Grand Barong Resort in the city of Kuta in Bali, Indonesia, he was confronted by a scene from a dystopian movie: a torrent of traffic pouring down a street hardly as wide as a high school hallway, pedestrians and shops in every direction, and a cat’s cradle of hydro wires criss-crossing overhead.
“More than ninety percent of traffic were scooters,” Todd recalls. “I saw kids driving them. I saw a guy double-riding a goat that had its hooves on his shoulders. A woman flew by with one hand on the handlebars, the other holding an infant like a football. It was insane.”
Camera in hand, Todd took in the scene.
“I wanted to capture the flavour of the people, the food, shops,” he says, “taking pictures of signs, traffic—just the locals going about their lives, the kids piloting scooters. From there, I ventured down to Kuta Beach.”
Todd was in Indonesia with his eldest son, Jordan, who organized the trip so that he could get a highly specialized tattoo. It seems incredible, but it was more cost effective to fly halfway around the world—well over twenty hours in transit—to get a Balinese tattoo in Bali than sitting for one in
Toronto.
“It was also a great chance for some father-son bonding,” Todd says.
At Kuta Beach, Todd waded into the Indian Ocean, reflecting upon the fact that, thirty hours before, he had embarked from Metro Detroit Airport, flew to San Francisco, traversed the Pacific Ocean—the onboard flight tracker indicating the flight’s passage over the Mariana Trench, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki—before finally landing in Indonesia.
“I had a few days with Jordan before he sat for his tattoo, so I hired a driver,” Todd explains. “Mully, our driver, was recommended to me by friends who’d been to Bali years before. He met us on our second morning there.”
Todd continues: “Mully took us to a temple that had beautiful gardens, where we attended a show by Balinese actors wearing traditional costumes, re-enacting an epic story of good battling evil. They were accompanied by musicians playing bamboo flutes, gongs, drums. It was beautifully done!”
After that, Mully took Todd and Jordan to a nature reserve and temple in Ubud, the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, which is home to over 1,260 long-tailed macaques, who are considered sacred by the local Balinese people.
“It was a big forest,” Todd remembers. “Mully put an apple on my shoulder and a monkey jumped up there and took my glasses! You look in the monkeys’ eyes and you could see they were intelligent creatures. There was one who took selfies with people. As we walked through the forest, we came to a bridge where we saw monkeys jumping off and swimming in the river, below, like people.”
The day before Jordan went off to have his tattoos done, Todd asked Mully what their itinerary looked like for the next day.
“I’m picking you up at 4 am,” Mully told him. “Have you ever seen a sunrise over a volcano?”
The early hour ensured they were on the scene long before tourists began to arrive.
“We left Kuta and went north, uphill toward the volcanoes,” Todd says.
They trekked two hours northwest up to Mount Agung. This was no idle, dormant location. In late November 2017, Mount Agung erupted five times, forcing thousands of nearby residents to evacuate.
“And finally, there we were, above the clouds, on the volcano, looking out at the rice terraces, as the sun was coming up,” Todd says. “It was a breathtaking scene!”
Mully then took Todd to a Hindu water temple.
“Water is very important to the Balinese. Fresh water is sacred to them,” Todd says. “The water temple grounds were manicured. It was absolutely beautiful.”
Soon, the tour buses flooded in and Mully said to Todd: “I hope you’re ready to see some waterfalls…”
They journeyed to a spot that only a few tour guides know about. “We don’t bring buses here,” Mully said.
To see the waterfalls, Todd and Mully descended the other side of the volcano. A man nearby provided this service for ten Rupiah, which involved Todd hopping onto the back of his scooter and holding on for dear life as his driver navigated a plunging, winding path paved with patio stones no wider than thirty inches.
“Bye Todd!” Mully called out as Todd and his scooter driver shot down the side of the volcano.
After reaching lower ground, they had a twenty-minute hike to finally reach the waterfalls. The journey was worth it.
“Utterly breathtaking,” Todd says about the experience. “You couldn’t believe the wildflowers.”
To capture the beauty of the scene, Todd did long exposures with his camera.
“There was almost too much to see,” Todd continues. “At one point, a monitor lizard—about three feet long—crossed the path in front of us. It was an experience I’ll never forget!”
When he was not snapping photographs, Todd enjoyed the local cuisine.
“The staple meal in Bali is called ‘Babi Guling,’ which is a roasted pork roll they serve with rice—they eat lots of rice in Bali!” Todd says.
Breakfast consisted of exotic fruit, such as snake fruit, dragon fruit, mangosteen fruit, jackfruit, durian, rambutan, to name a few. Todd tried everything.
At a coffee plantation, Todd sampled many exotic blends, including Kopi Luwak, a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and ferment as they pass through the digestive tract of the Asian palm civet.
“It tasted like really good weak coffee,” Todd says. “It costs about two hundred dollars for a can of Kopi Luwak. They had a picture of Brad Pitt, there, drinking it, years before.”
Soon enough, Jordan’s tattoos were completed, covering both arms with a haunting kaleidoscope of highly-detailed intertwining images. He and Todd went to Bali for very different reasons, but both found more than they had hoped on that small Indonesian island.
“I would definitely go back,” Todd says, reflecting on the experience. “It was a reasonably economical trip: food, lodging, services. And there is no comparing the sights and experiences any visitor to Bali can enjoy.”
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