Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh
In recent times my work has almost got into my nerves.... putting enough pressure on me to make a real difference in my day-to-day mood.... but its the survival instinct that keeps me going, actually... the weekend seems so precious, yet so short and even lesser in terms of its effect on the coming week of busy of schedules..... I had planned on a photoshoot on Friday no matter what.... had received all the help from family members and we were rolling by around midday.... we didn’t plan for an all-day session, but as it turned out, that was probably the most feasible if we really wanted to make it count.... and when I say making it count, I mean utilising the whole setup for the shoot.... almost one hour’s effort should not be used to shoot just a couple of frames, I guess.....
we started in the morning hours; late morning hours to be honest..... Lamisa was as usual in her moody self, providing me with all the unique stuff.... but as always, she also charges premium for it.... hard work for the photographer, that is...... someone who shoots babies frequently, would know what I mean by hard work..... sometimes, one single successful shot is all that you have..... I at least got several!!
the idea was to use the same white-out once again that I’ve tried out more-or-less successfully couple of days back (see my last blog).... not a lotta changes to the settings, used the same lens too.... Lamisa was in her black dress, which made it imperative to used a white backdrop, rather than dark.... anyway, I had actually planned to utilise the black some time during the day....
The next shoot came up in the afternoon, after some modifications to the setup..... I used a black fabric to put on the white diffuser that I used as backdrop..... I’ve used this same black fabric quite a few times before, mainly as backdrop..... and it works.... I won’t say perfectly, but it works..... but I usually have to be very careful about light falling on the backdrop.... so, control of light is more important than anything else while would be using a black backdrop..... except for one occasion, I never had the opportunity to setup the black backdrop way behind my subject, which would’ve made my life so much easier to control light spill.... space had always been the concern.... anyway, the panel now seems to be working somewhat with close collaboration of the black fabric, not just as a backdrop, but also as a Gobo.... also one of the newer things I tried out was a hair light on a boom stand, with grid spot.... this worked pretty well, considering my other experiments with hair light.... still, there is room for improvement.... lets see where I can take this....
there was a long enough pause before we could try out the next thing..... we went out and among other stuff, visited Drik Gallery, where we watched a couple of photography exhibitions..... one was involving some deprived children (age 12-15) who are getting training on photography.... I was really amazed at the quality of work on display there.... some of the shots were outright brilliant!!.... the other exhibition was called Wedding Diary, where wedding photographer Prito Reza tried to show his portfolio..... this was the first time I've seen an exhibition involving wedding photography.... his shots were really good; some of them being unique.... this was a good lesson in terms of how marketing should be done by a professional photographer..... the exhibition was a good lesson in photography, and a great lesson in marketing.....
anyway, we came back and got prepared for the last shoot..... we knew that it would be late..... there was no Lamisa planned in the frame this time, but she was not possible to keep away..... it was another difficult shoot was Lamisa wanted to be a part of it....... this last setup of the day didn’t change the earlier lighting that much, but it surely changed everything else.... I switched to a wider lens, as this was a whole body portrait with some props..... couldn’t afford to use a shorter focal length to flatten perspective, as I was really short of space..... 50mm was too cramped for my liking and the 35mm was not doing justice at all with wrong exposure.... didn’t want the 24mm either because it would not just be too wide, it would also add some perspective distortion as well.... so, I decided to turn to the old 28-80mm lens... the lens has accumulated some fungus and was not in the best shape..... but this kinda practice, it was probably enough..... and it worked fair enough, though I would’ve liked some sharper images at f6.3.....
anyway, it was a good exercise..... learnt some lessons regarding control of light and also learnt some lessons on the type of lenses suitable for my work..... I used tethered shooting for more ease of review and thankfully there was no software glitch this time..... I kept the setup intact as it was well beyond midnight.... perhaps the setup has some more life in it.... lets see....
