Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh
after an extremely hectic week, this was a must actually..... the week contained only four days because of Durga Puja holidays on Sunday.... yet, the week seemed so long.... last weekend's Rajshahi tour seems like weeks ago..... its a pity how the hectic city life is making us age so quickly.....we have to find our ways to survive.....
anyway, Rumi Bhai took the initiative.... we planned to go outside Dhaka on some small strobist effort.... but it didn't materialise as some of us dropped out because of personal engagements..... so, we had to live with something shorter.... much shorter.... we met early in the morning at Mohammadpur and decided to venture to one of our old hunting grounds, Martyred Intellectuals Monument at Rayerbazar..... the idea was to spend some time talking and also to shoot some pictures, as opportunities came by..... we also kept the option of practicing some strobist stuff..... actually that was the most important motivation and we were prepared..... we had quite a few flashes among three of us.....
the guy was completely insane.... he continued with his fiery speech whether anyone listened to him or not.... and he was breaking the rule just like other "sane" people, so can't blame him for standing and walking on the altar....
children playing cricket on the historical premises.....
little do they know that they are the ones expected to create history in the days to come.....
although we spent some time shooting some available light lifestyle and landscape shots, we soon figured out that our strobes were still in the bag.... the weather was gloomy to start with, as there was the tropical storm Giri looming over the Bay of Bengal..... but the sun did win its place and illuminated the massive Monument with morning lights.... we spent our time under the cool shades of the numerous trees there...
once we accumulated all our flashes, we came up with the idea of trying to overpower the sun.... or at least, test the potential of speedlites to overpower the sun.... we had five flashes, but to sync them together was something we haven't done before.... two Canon flashes and three Nikon flashes..... how do we do it?..... we had in short of radio triggers..... Rumi Bhai's radio triggers (Yongnou RF 602/C) could trigger only two flashes... I also had Elinchrom Skyport that could trigger only one flash.... I knew that the SB-900s can shoot in SU-4 mode, utilising the light from other flashes as the trigger..... so, thats it.... five flashes...... we tested the flashes and they all synced.... Rumi Bhai was surprised to see his radio triggers working with my D700, as he thought they were only supposed to work with Canon flashes.....
we used all available resources to mount the flashes in the right places..... to overpower the sun, I had to dial down the aperture to f16 and had to utilise the full power of all the flashes.... the radio trigger seemed quite unreliable, as it regularly decided not to shoot..... but after some random pressing, they somehow worked.....
Rumi Bhai volunteered to feature in front of the camera and Pervez kept the two SB-900s in his hand behind the single umbrella, which was constantly under thread from the slight breeze..... the edge lighting was provided by a Canon 430EX and an SB-900..... the SB was on the ground, while, to better utilise the 430EX, I had to put it on a higher platform..... a local boy (Ziaur Rahman) was among the substantial crowd of onlookers enjoying our madness..... he helped us keeping the flash away from the floor....
setup......
it was by no means a perfect shoot, but it was another step to learning more.... and that was a big enough motivation to do this..... can't wait for the next effort....
