Nature still shines, despite being under threat.....

07 January 2011
Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh

its been a while since I've made my last visit to JU...... if I needed to see Nature within the shortest possible time, it had to be JU.... winter is the best time to see JU at its most vibrant..... the idea of going there came from my family.... my two-year old daughter Lamisa hasn't seen JU yet, so, it was the perfect opportunity to let her get close to Nature.... she has already stepped foot on the beaches of Kuakata, has sniffed the cute kaash ful, and seen the colours of endless mustard fields........

I had tested my Sigma 50-500 (BIGMA) at JU three years back..... that was the first time I got to know about the biodiversity of JU.... a first-hand account.... since then, I started to train my lens towards birds whenever the opportunity came...... I haven't done such bird photography in a while..... it was almost as if I had my finger ready on the shutter release.....


migratory ducks at JU........01



migratory ducks at JU........02



migratory ducks at JU........03



a tree-full of Asian Openbills......01



a tree-full of Asian Openbills......02



Asian Openbills basking in the afternoon sun......



Jungle Babbler...... a common resident of JU.....



White-breasted Waterhen searching the green for food.....



Magpie Robin, can't get enough of them.....



Common Snipe..... (thanks to Zamir Bhai for the ID)



Bronze-winged Jacana.......



Bronze-winged Jacana (Juvenile)......


as I was with the family, I didn't really move around..... we stuck to one big pool, where most migratory ducks concentrate..... I could easily guess that the number of birds has decreased substantially..... but locals said that the pool was even more empty last year..... this is the first time I noticed some Asian Openbills occupying one big tree.... there were around 12 of them in that empire..... I couldn't help take a walk to get a different view of the tree from the side of Al Beruni Hall..... and in the process, I located a couple of more species around that pool..... seen a couple of Common Snipes, which I previously didn't notice at the campus... White-breasted Waterhen was my first..... the pool also had a couple of Bronze-winged Jacana dancing on the floating water lily.... I saw them before at JU, but a juvenile was my first, and the different colour confused me much....

the two-plus hours' stay there was refreshing indeed..... Lamisa has never seen that many birds flying together..... its true that the campus was losing its charm fast, but the biodiversity there still exists, albeit under a lot of stress..... I though I should manage some more time later to go around the bushes..... well over 100 species of birds call this their home.... so, a day spent there would never look like a waste....

there and back again.....

Hajiganj, Chandpur, Bangladesh
16-17 December 2010

I was just thinking how I can compensate for the lost blogs posts of December 2010..... well, yes, there's a solution.... dump it one after the other..... may be there are some prettier solutions, but to me its more like getting it done than look pretty.... so, there we go..... I start the dumping with the Hajiganj tour...

its my mom's ancestral home.... and we went on a trip for the first anniversary of my uncle's death.... Victory Day holiday coincided with weekend and gave us an opportunity to take a time off..... actually we planned the tour with the holidays in mind, rather than keeping the anniversary date..... we were there with our whole family.... most of my uncles and cousins showed up and it was a grand get-together..... I thought I had captured some of those rare moments that people would like to see after years.... simple family stuff.... but to be they are as precious as they can be, because no zillion dollars can produce those photos again....

the family stuff all happened on the second day of the tour actually..... the first day's evening was a strobist evening..... would've loved to share some of those portraiture I've done there with my cousins.... its a pity that I failed to get the approval for publishing those shots.... now I have to be content with publishing the experiences of the second morning only....

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

the second day of the tour started with that thick winter cloak.... and man, it was thick!..... the first touch on the winter weather on my face reminded me that this is way different from what we are used to see in the cities..... I had the plan to wake up early to have a look around; of course with the camera in hand..... the Balakhal Railway Station being so close to the house made it almost mandatory to take a walk along the rail-track..... and when the mist is so thick, it ought to look something like a mystery movie setting..... whatever I could see in front of me, was disappearing behind that cloak of fog.... I prayed for a train for as long as I was following the train tracks.... but it arrived just after I left the scene.... it cheated me in such a clever way!!

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

the locals looked at me like an alien; I don't blame them..... someone they don't know and sporting a big machine in hand at the dawn of the day had to be an alien..... but they did fill my frame more than once; knowingly or unknowingly..... the sun struggled for a while to show its face, but ultimately it overpowered the mist and cut through..... thats the point I realised that it was probably time that I call it a day.....

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

From Hajiganj 17 December 2010

that single morning was enough of a motivation to do the tour.... but I still think the portraiture that I was able to do there were the more priceless of it all....

first corporate assignment.....

03 January 2011
Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh

when the opportunity came up for me to shoot in a corporate environ, I just grabbed it with both hands, though I was not gonna be paid for my services..... I actually relished the opportunity to shoot some pics with extremely friendly bunch of subjects.... the ideas were simple enough, but to execute the thing, I had to travel with a ton of equipment..... ended up using most of the things, but also felt the need for some other things that might've made the job easier..... anyway, it was a good lesson for me.... learning to shoot with limitations of space and facilities....

this is first time I've really used the Simpex Pro 400D monolight for any serious shoot away from home..... I took it to the first studiowalk of TTL and also to Rajshahi, but didn't really use it.... I've found its best use as a background light.... it has a fair bit of power (250ws) that can be shot at f10/f11 under given circumstances..... I also used the SB-900s and Elinchrom Ranger units for different shoots..... the 4'x4' diffusion panels did a great job, but proved their limitations for the first time..... I also took all the fabrics for background and go-bo, but didn't really use them for lack of time,space and hanging facilities.... this was another important lesson.....

the first frame was involving three people and a laptop.... and there was a need for a white background.... the background was a 4'x4' white diffusion panel, illuminated by a Simpex Prolite 400D monolight at full power.... the main light was Elinchrom Ranger RX with A-Head, at first shooting through a brolly, then shooting through a 4'x4' diffusion panel..... framing was a real issue because of lack of space and I couldn't flatten perspective in any way because of that..... had to use PS to remove some of background clutter that remained in the frame.....










the next frame was a simple one..... a table discussion of several people..... needed illumination on all the faces...... used the Ranger as the main light with the 4'x4' diffusion panel and used the Simpex Proline 400D with a reflector to bounce light off the white ceiling as fill light....




the next one was an experiment with speedlights..... put one SB-900 on the laptop as the main light..... another SB-900 was camera right, shooting up into the white ceiling as fill light...... used the 28-80mm lens for all these shots.... all lights triggered by Elinchrom Skyport radio triggers....



also shot some available light stuff with aperture wide open..... 50 1.4.... shot between f4 and f2...













we had a lotta fun shooting these boring pics..... and decided to finish the day with a group shot in a non-corporate way.... Elinchrom Ranger shooting into the white ceiling as fill light.... shot at 34mm f8 on 28-80mm lens...

bagfull of memories.....

31 December 2010
Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh

I simply couldn't have dreamed of a better ending to 2010.... it all brought back those memories....

I spent twelve of my most enjoyable years at that place..... that place is still there, but what happened?...... we all grew out of our small dreams.... and the place no longer has that human touch, which kept it so close to our heart.... it was almost as if we could even take the place everywhere with us if we could.... but whats the place without that human touch?...... the place found its home in our heart because of the people who surrounded us..... the place was nothing without the people..... I simply can't understate the importance of those years with those people.... I can't forget the past that formed me to be the man I am today.... and finding myself among those people after years was a dream come true....

we have had such get-together before, but none was of this scale.... we still missed some buddies who couldn't join.... the g2g was especially rare because of Andalib, Shouvik, Romel and Saikat, who crossed oceans to be here at year-end.... we have all changed in our own way, and discovering that change was a fun itself.... it was almost as if we were looking at mirrors; only discovering our own changes in the faces of others..... fascinating!!




it was truly nostalgic going to that place once again..... we had a great lunch together, but visiting our old place of living was something..... lotsa things have remained the same; there are still seven building and seventy families; the buldings still sport the cozy names that we once used in our addresses..... but many things did change, most notably, the people.... the playing field isn't the same today.... neglected; almost forgotten..... the mark of time is on the cricket pitch, that used to be our day-home for the winter months... the current dwellers wondered at us, but none called us to know who we were.... perhaps they could guess.....







our generation of children roamed the playing fields and made full use of them.... there had been so many types of games and tournaments; we could hardly notice something like that going on right now..... the days of glory left with the people, as it seems..... but we were able to discover some cricket gear, which still reminded that perhaps some of them didn't forget the game altogether.... we had our short stint with the bat and ball; again discovering how unfit we have become for such activities..... we could also borrow some badminton rackets and do our bit on the court..... evening badminton is still there, but be not with the charm that used to surround us..... anyway, that charm is long gone; only charming memories remain....







we posed in front of the camera and filled the memory cards..... "memory" cards.... yup.... those surely are memories.... a bagfull of them.... the people who called those cards "memory" cards must've thought about this at least once.... :P