KAHF "Hidupkan Detik-Detik BerKAHF” feat. Abimana Aryasatya
Some of the hardest lighting to fake is the lighting nobody notices. That was the whole challenge with this one. Kahf wanted their new campaign, and their new face, introduced through a mood that felt effortlessly outdoor, soft morning air, warm ambient tones, the kind of light you can't manufacture with a single softbox and call it a day. So we didn't try to fake outdoor light. We built it.
The reference pool told me exactly where to aim, a string of Korean and Japanese beverage and skincare ads where the talent looks lit by nothing more than a good morning and a nice view, even though anyone who's worked a set knows how much engineering sits behind that kind of simplicity. Natural light on studio, we called it internally, using limbo setups and pairing them with carefully chosen background plates so the final composite reads as one continuous, believable environment rather than a person cut out and pasted onto a backdrop.
Abimana carried this well, and that mattered more than any lighting diagram. He's stepping in as Kahf's new brand ambassador here, and the brief asked for a very specific energy, calm, grounded, a gaze that reads as sejuk and menenangkan rather than performative or overly polished. Standing him in front of a mosque silhouette, backpack slung over one shoulder, wind gently catching his hair, we were building an image of quiet reflection during Ramadhan, not a product hero shot with a person standing in for the product.
The general key visual leaned into morning light specifically, that first hour where everything feels unhurried and clean, while a companion face wash visual shifted the mood toward midday, brighter, more awake. Small adjustment on paper, but it changes everything about how a face reads on camera, the angle of shadow under the eyes, how relaxed or alert an expression can convincingly hold. We treated each time of day as its own lighting problem to solve, even though both lived under the same "natural light on studio" philosophy.
What I keep coming back to with this project is how much restraint it demanded. It would've been easy to overlight Abimana into looking glossy and campaign-ready in the generic sense. But the brief, and honestly the season it's built around, asked for something quieter than that. Ramadhan doesn't need spectacle to feel meaningful. It needed a face that looked like it was actually present in that moment, lit by a morning that never really existed outside the studio walls.
Indra Dipta
Photographer of HIRA Imaji, Jakarta.