Cafe Higin second session, June 2010

18 June 2010
Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh

the assignment at Savar continued at Rashed's place...... last week, I enjoyed the food photography that I did for the for the first time...... it was a day of learning and enjoyment...... this time round, it wasn't different either...... the only thing that differed this time was the approach I took for the work.... last time, I was concentrating on close-up shots and avoiding whole frames because of the lack of suitable backgrounds...... I was prepared this time for doing it on at least some decent backdrop...... I didn't have anything with me that could produce that white blown-out background..... a seamless white kind of thing was needed...... Rashed couldn't manage a white cloth, or a decent table-cloth, but he was good enough to produce a couple of art-paper sheets within a very short time..... the whole process made me loss almost a couple of hours...... there was also a problem with the stock situation at the shop...... but I was just able to manage the whole thing within an acceptable time.......

last time, I was only using one strobe and ambient light....... this time round, I knew I couldn't manage a white seamless without several lights...... so, from the start, I set up all my lights, switching them on and off, and changing positions, as required..... mainly the dishes that required more space, were causing trouble..... there was no way to do those shots completely excluding the background..........

I'm still trying to grasp the best ways to shoot drinks/glasses..... water-drops on the cool glasses and reflections on those are specialties..... also, the difficulty of shooting several types of foods, which require different kinds of exposure values.... I was also limited by the capability of my hardware a little bit....



I used a couple of SB-900s, one SB-600 flashes.... they were placed on tripods and tables and triggered via SU-800 IR trigger on my D700..... two of the flashes had a shoot-through umbrella on them and one had a home-made 2'x2' diffuser set in front of it....... I cut the ambient light completely with a shutter speed of 1/125sec or 1/100 sec....... I chose apertures ranging between f8 and f20...... the depth was needed; as I was shooting whole dishes; and sometimes combos, where a larger space was covered by the dishes..... I chose to use 2/3 lights as needed and also, varied flash power quite a lot.......

other practical challenges were there that were my learning..... it all started almost 2 hrs late, which pushed me to perform within a reasonable time.... food items had to shot within a specific time limit, otherwise the food loses its colour or texture or freshness....... each of the food items had their own challenges..... I had to change settings constantly to cope with those challenges..... the SU-800 saved so much of the time and effort that it now seems almost a must for complex situations indoors, and even outdoors.....

I still have some work to do at Cafe Higin..... its branding and promo would require more involvement from me..... and its expansion may also call for my services....





















to view the whole gallery, please visit the following link:
Experiment at Cafe Higin

A day of rainbows........

13 June 2010

only if I could change this world...... I could watch that wonderful rainbow from the rooftop..... and the lovely glow of the sunset trying to overshadow the colours of the rainbow.... only if I could..... I was at work when Kamal called me...... he though I was the only one who regularly carries a camera..... but he didn't know that the camera had long been replaced by a netbook..... work became more important than emotion..... don't even know when this happened......

I took a short break from my work to go to the balcony..... the eastern sky was covered with that huge huge rainbow...... I could only get a glimpse of that peeping over another big concrete structure.... at least, it reminded me of the full rainbows that I had captured some time back.....


rainbow at sunrise....... [Cox's Bazaar Beach, Bangladesh]



Welcome to the Bengali Month of Ashar....... [Dhaka, Bangladesh]

Experiment at Cafe Higin, June 2010

11 June 2010

it was a nice opportunity given by my trusted friend Rashed..... he needed some photos for his newly founded restaurant, and I needed some practice...... it all turned out to be a nice bit of experience..... it was not just work, in the end..... our families also had a nice time during the day..... the children especially, had a great day, which made us happy..... it was a particularly warm day, and the weather was accentuated by frequent load-shedding by the electricity department......

Cafe Higin's aim was more to attract the customers, rather than just giving a glimpse of whats on offer.... this aim made us switch from whole dishes to close-ups..... I was never in doubt about what lens I would be using once we decided to go close.... the Sigma APO 150mm f2.8 EX DG Macro....... my trusted horse..... it puts most of the background out of focus, thus makes framing so much easier.... I shot a lotta apertures to adjust to different light and depth requirements.... used most apertures between f4.5 and f16.....

it was daytime, so I used the natural light coming through the huge glass window, acting as a big softbox..... I kept the natural light as backlight, not only to blow out the background, but also to give that glossy edge on the yummy items.... I quickly knew that I needed another light source as fill light in front of the food items...... an SB-900 with a shoot-through umbrella did the job for me...... I used the SU-800 as trigger..... I was shooting indoors, so not issues with using IR triggers..... it surely is much more convenient than radio triggers.....

using the ambient light was a bit of a pain though, requiring much lower shutter speeds (1/15-1/40sec).... had to depend on a tripod to keep the camera stable..... for some shots, I also brought out a second flash to give rim light, but that didn't come out to be very prominent.... there were quite a few items that we couldn't do because of unavailability and time shortage...... so, another session is required to complete the job.....

A day of exhibits......

05 June 2010
Dhanmondi, Dhaka

Just came back from watching several exhibitions Saturday. After getting in touch with quite a few photographers in that nice afternoon, we decided to explore Dhanmondi, where all the action was! First went to Alliance Francaise, where the exhibition was on Rural Exodus. 12 photographers participated in this story-based photography exhibition. There were some really large prints, which were nice to see. But the exhibition wasn’t producing that nice feeling. To be honest, it hardly made any impact on any one of us visiting the exhibit. The stories were not there; rather there were two photos each from each story, which couldn’t give any idea about what the full story was about. It was a compromise, and ultimately it came to nothing. And the choice of pictures to bed hung on the wall was also poor in my view. Altogether, it was a real disappointment.

From Alliance Francaise, we went to Goethe Institute. And quite contrary to our expectations, the exhibit was closed! What the guard said, was that exhibits remain closed on holidays! It seemed like a ridiculous way of promoting something. Usually weekends see the highest number of visitors in any exhibit. But they seemed to be living in a completely different world altogether!

Anyway, we went to the third exhibit of the day, which was going on at Bengal Gallery. This was a solo exhibit from GMB Akash. The exhibit contained several photo-stories from several places, but all combined under one theme, “Soulscapes”. This was a really good exhibit with a lot of space to talk about. There were photo stories on Varanashi’s Burning Ghat, from a brothel in Dhaka, from cyclone Aila survivors in Satkhira, working children of Bangladesh, suicide farmers from India and old asylum. GMB Akash’s ability to use light has to be considered regarded highly. Some shots made it there only because of the exceptional light conditions. Some classic compositions were also there. The old asylum picture from Nepal with the two old people sleeping on the floor while a woman crosses them, was superb; and in my view, one of the best. His particular fascination for extreme shallow depth of field catches the eye. In some cases, one can debate on the philosophy behind that. There was one whole wall filled with words, and a couple of chairs were placed in front. The words described GMB Akash’s philosophy and his way of work. It shed light on some of the intimate memories he had while building that whole portfolio. Words of wisdom, words of experience. Liked those.

That’s how we ended our day of exhibit. It was a nice afternoon and evening spending the time with friends. And it was a productive day judging by the amount of discussion we had on the exhibits.