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pproaching its 10th anniversary, the largest online photography community in Southeast Asia, fotografer.net, has welcomed photographers and enthusiasts to capture the best moments across Indonesia.

“The website was launched on Dec. 30, 2002, in Yogyakarta, to facilitate photography-lovers,” said the website’s CEO, Kristupa Saragih.

Fotografer.net was co-founded by Kristupa Saragih and Valens Riyadi. Kristupa is responsible for the website’s content and navigation. Valens is in charge of the programming and technical issues.

At the beginning, the website only gave space for discussions. Some of the users started posting messages about
selling or looking for cameras and accessories such as lenses, tripods and flashlights.

In 2005, the space for business was created so it would not be mixed with the discussion.

“It is not compatible with the forums of discussions by looking to the contents,” Kristupa explained.

Now the home for more than 406,000 registered members have a gallery that contains around 1.5 million photos. An average of 2 million clicks happen every day on the website.

Feri Suminar, one registered user, said that fotografer.net has been a helpful online medium to learn and share experiences about photography.

“I was really a newcomer and did not know a thing about photography at the first time. I’ve been learning techniques and tricks about photography from the website’s forum and have then practiced them,” he said.

“After I have hunted photos, I uploaded some of them hoping to be commented upon and assessed by many other fellow photographers. The given feedback from the more experienced photographers helped me learn so much.”

Feri learned about the website from his friend in February 2009. He said that his fondness of appreciating pictures made him register an account five months later (on July 22, 2009). He said that it was also because some of the features in the website require registration to be accessed.

Now Feri and his friends are providing services for ceremonial photography and other events.

He said that he had rarely opened the website over the past few months. He opened the website only to find prices of cameras and accessories. It is because of this, he said, aside from knowing the latest prices of cameras, people can also search for secondhand cameras or accessories on the website.