23 December 2011
Dhaka, Bangladesh
this was the fourth time I had been lucky enough to participate in a graffiti shoot event, though this was the fifth event to take place... the first time it was more like an exploration.... second one was more preparation.... and the third one was differentiation.... and the fourth one??.... well, umm..... please read below....
this was another of those strobist meetups that we used to call "Koba Squad".... again, all the thanks go to Zaim for not getting tired of organising this every now and then.... and also thanks to all the participants for daring the weather and a Friday morning sleep.... and I also need to give thanks to my models for being patient and having faith on my ideas.... thanks to Faryeeha, Ayon, Rezwan, RR, Nasser, Ananya, and others (please forgive me if I forgot your names) for helping to create something different....
the idea was to try out some "film noir" kind of shoot.... but as it turned out, it was less of a classical Hollywood-style shoot, and rather more like a twenty-first century crime drama shoot.... well, sort of... we were not planning for it in advance... so, we made something out of just our imagination.... not a lot of found objects that we could use over there.... but we at least had some space and some rooms and walls to do our stuff.... in sum, we had to improvise.... may be next time, when we are more prepared with ideas, it would be something better.... but I must say, our models did wonderful.... they understood the ideas, took instructions pretty well, and constantly tried to implement the ideas as best as they could.... it was a team effort....
anyway, I had a specific theme for the shoot was more in the line of thriller drama.... "fear of the shadow".... so, there were shadows; lots of it... and darkness, and some striking colours, to strike fear.... and of course there were the expressions.... fearful, of course.... we shot just five frames.... we just thought it was better to go for a small number of satisfactory photos, rather than a lot of less-than-satisfactory ones....
technically speaking, except the last shot, all the photos had two lights.... the main light on the subject was a YN-560 flash shooting through a Lastolite 24" Ezybox Hotshoe softbox.... and the other light was another YN-560 with some sort of gel filter.... the first one had blue gel, second and third one had red gel.... the fourth one didn't have a gel on it, rather it had a grid spot on it to concentrate light.... in all the cases, the lights were triggered by Elinchrom Skyport radio triggers.... I first thought of leaving one flash in optical trigger mode.... but as Zaim & Co. had been using flashes on the other side, I had to resort to two triggers....
the last shot was a bit more complex... I brought out a third flash for it.... two flashes were gelled green... two models created the silhouettes by standing in front of the flashes.... the third light was the main light in the softbox illuminating the main subject... this time, the third flash was on optical trigger, as I didn't bring out a third radio receiver....
this was my first outing with my newly acquired old camera, the Nikon D70s.... its a great little camera with a lot of capabilities.... it performed well.... the 2" monitor was bit of a pain considering the 3" monitors that we almost habitually see everyday.... used a 20mm Nikkor on it, which became a 30mm lens because of 1.5 crop factor... 30mm was enough for the type of shoot I had in mind.... didn't need to change the lens... and in fact, didn't need to touch anything in the camera during the whole shoot... only changed some settings with the lights.... the camera was untouched.... f8, 1/160sec, 200 ISO....
a lot more to come....
Dhaka, Bangladesh
this was the fourth time I had been lucky enough to participate in a graffiti shoot event, though this was the fifth event to take place... the first time it was more like an exploration.... second one was more preparation.... and the third one was differentiation.... and the fourth one??.... well, umm..... please read below....
this was another of those strobist meetups that we used to call "Koba Squad".... again, all the thanks go to Zaim for not getting tired of organising this every now and then.... and also thanks to all the participants for daring the weather and a Friday morning sleep.... and I also need to give thanks to my models for being patient and having faith on my ideas.... thanks to Faryeeha, Ayon, Rezwan, RR, Nasser, Ananya, and others (please forgive me if I forgot your names) for helping to create something different....
the idea was to try out some "film noir" kind of shoot.... but as it turned out, it was less of a classical Hollywood-style shoot, and rather more like a twenty-first century crime drama shoot.... well, sort of... we were not planning for it in advance... so, we made something out of just our imagination.... not a lot of found objects that we could use over there.... but we at least had some space and some rooms and walls to do our stuff.... in sum, we had to improvise.... may be next time, when we are more prepared with ideas, it would be something better.... but I must say, our models did wonderful.... they understood the ideas, took instructions pretty well, and constantly tried to implement the ideas as best as they could.... it was a team effort....
anyway, I had a specific theme for the shoot was more in the line of thriller drama.... "fear of the shadow".... so, there were shadows; lots of it... and darkness, and some striking colours, to strike fear.... and of course there were the expressions.... fearful, of course.... we shot just five frames.... we just thought it was better to go for a small number of satisfactory photos, rather than a lot of less-than-satisfactory ones....
technically speaking, except the last shot, all the photos had two lights.... the main light on the subject was a YN-560 flash shooting through a Lastolite 24" Ezybox Hotshoe softbox.... and the other light was another YN-560 with some sort of gel filter.... the first one had blue gel, second and third one had red gel.... the fourth one didn't have a gel on it, rather it had a grid spot on it to concentrate light.... in all the cases, the lights were triggered by Elinchrom Skyport radio triggers.... I first thought of leaving one flash in optical trigger mode.... but as Zaim & Co. had been using flashes on the other side, I had to resort to two triggers....
the last shot was a bit more complex... I brought out a third flash for it.... two flashes were gelled green... two models created the silhouettes by standing in front of the flashes.... the third light was the main light in the softbox illuminating the main subject... this time, the third flash was on optical trigger, as I didn't bring out a third radio receiver....
this was my first outing with my newly acquired old camera, the Nikon D70s.... its a great little camera with a lot of capabilities.... it performed well.... the 2" monitor was bit of a pain considering the 3" monitors that we almost habitually see everyday.... used a 20mm Nikkor on it, which became a 30mm lens because of 1.5 crop factor... 30mm was enough for the type of shoot I had in mind.... didn't need to change the lens... and in fact, didn't need to touch anything in the camera during the whole shoot... only changed some settings with the lights.... the camera was untouched.... f8, 1/160sec, 200 ISO....
a lot more to come....
