Mirpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh
some people make their mark on your life only once and you carry that debt for the rest of your life…. but worth the try to pay off some of that debt when you get the chance…. its a small token of gratitude, yet its also an expression of love and care that resulted from the same things you had received once…. this session was one of those that gave me a different kind of satisfaction….
it was also a venture into an untried territory for me…. I had always thought about venturing into that intimate part of life that most people do not even think about documenting…. an expecting mother’s emotions can’t possibly be understood by anyone else… that emotion is hard to record in a photo…. still, its possible to record that transient period, which, in time, can bring out emotions…. time is a very important documentation and there’s nothing better than photography to record time….
from photographic point of view, it was a really nice experience for me…. learned many things, which spawned many new ideas as well…. hoping to build a base on that…. lets see…. had to take a truckload of equipment with me…. the reason being, I had no idea what to expect over there…. what I was certain of, was that it would be an indoor shoot, which made me carry a lot more stuff than a much lighter outdoor shoot…. a bag-full of fabric turned out to be a great ally… I actually ended up using every single piece of white fabric I had in the bag…. I still had the 4′x4′ diffusion panels packed in the bag in case they were needed…. had to work with the confined space that was there on offer…. but there was enough space to flatten perspective with a longer lens, which came in handy, reducing pressure on the limited options with backdrop….
didn’t take the Simpex monolight with me, fearing power interruptions…. the Elinchrom Ranger was the main workhorse behind creating that white backdrop…. two hotshooe softboxes got used and they both performed as expected…. in the end, used a total of three small flashes with the Ranger…. the Westcott Apollo remained in the car as a backup…. though didn’t end up using all the lightstands, its difficult to ignore them… just in case that window option for backdrop setting wasn’t available, I would’ve needed to use two lightstands as backdrop stands….
now, to the shoot…. my first idea was to isolate the subject in a white empty space…. needed some photoshopping to achieve the last output, even though I suck at it…. tried to create as much white space around her as possible…. Ranger + a lotta white fabric did the job…
the next try was with an idea on reflections of time…. that photo album was the key attraction here and wanted to isolate that with a shallow DoF….
the last idea was with the couple…. it was a show of bondage and caring that needed to come out in the picture… we had some nice laugh while doing it…. it was hard for the subjects in front the family members, but the effort paid off…. had to couple of softboxes for this shot to have even exposure on both subject’s faces…
more to come later…..
