fried under the strobes!!

08 November 2011
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

well, during Eid-ul Azha, there's hardly any chance of missing the delicious kababs (or some may also say kebab)..... the Eid Day is basically hectic and mostly passes managing the sacrifice and the freezer.... but the day after Eid usually an opportunity to relax.... this is when you can sit down and let your taste buds appreciate the quality of the food.... no place for a vegetarian though... after all, this is Eid-ul Azha... vegetarians go into hibernation during this time of the year....

and when you have some opportunity to snap those delicious stuff before they fill your tummy, you get to grab your camera.... its a difficult shoot keeping your nose-buds waiting.... and also difficult to try to style food as they arrive at the table... and this is a time of rising fuel prices... so, why not try frying some kebab with strobes??.... thank to David Hobby, we now have a hope!!.... those YN-560s can pack a punch!!.... its kebab time!!










and thats a lotta effort for basically one picture.... my wife had a tough time preparing all the items and also to style them.... last time during Eid-ul Fitr, I forgot to mention the names of the food items and faced queries on that.... now, the food have names... Stick Kebab, Keema Salad, Tikki Kebab and Bindi Polao were the items this time.... and yes, all the items tasted at least as good as they showed up.... :)

as far as technical stuff is concerned, used two lights in a simple setup.... one bare YN-560 on a lightstand around 8-10 feet away on left, and a Lastolite 24" Ezybox Hotshoe softbox + YN-560 flash combination on camera right.... also experimented with some warm gels, which didn't produce exceptional results.... the trigger used was an Elinchrom Skyport with the light on the right.... the light on the left was on optical trigger (S1) mode....

a lot more to come....

more food, more lessons....

01 September 2011
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

did I say that we had finished all the food on Eid Day??.... well, we did finish, but they were prepared again... yay!!.... and this time too, I was very active with all those funny-looking fence-like stuff they call lighting gears!!

just thought it might be a good idea to change the perspective a little.... used the same light setup as the previous one, with one Lastoline 24" Ezybox Hotshoe softbox as the main light and a bare YN-560 as a backlight.... just changed the vantage point totally.... wanted to capture the geometry of the food.... actually because of the changed vantage point, the lights were coming from the bottom-right (Lastolite) and from top-left (bare flash)..... the bare flash was set at a distance of around 8-10ft from the dishes and became the edge light... I didn't actually plan for such a change of vantage point, and as a result, didn't have a lotta stuff to fill the frame.... it wasn't really possible to bring the whole two plates in frame (had to crop on left side).... that would've made it even harder to fill the composition and complete the shoot... food photography is more about food styling, so this was a big lesson for me... perhaps next time....




started today's session in a more typical fashion... used a Sigma 150mm macro lens to fill the frame.... the same lighting setup.... the YN-560 inside the Lastolite was triggered with an Elinchrom Skyport radio trigger, while the bare flash was on optical trigger mode (S1)...



the food actually tasted a lot better than it actually looked.... that was the best part of it... :)

more Eid photoshoot to come in a hurry!! :)

food and Eid: no confusion; great combination!!

31 August 2011
Mohammadur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

just like the 2010 Eid-ul Fitr shoot, I had to bring out all that junk up to the dinner table... oh yeah!!... all that yummy stuff were to go into our stomach... but they have to wait.... for may be another half-an-hour.... and that was worth it, as these items are not that regularly made at home... a lot of effort went into those.... and with a much much lesser effort, they went into my camera!!

anyway, not being a food photographer, I tend to bring in the experience of the previous session.... apart from the last Eid's shoot, I only had done shoot for Cafe Higin, which, in my opinion, was a pretty average show.... a new day is always a new experience... so, I went to work with a fairly basic setup.... what I've learned is that food photography was more to do with food styling than anything else.... but lighting is also important.... last time I had the main light shooting towards the ceiling, giving an overall fill for the whole table.... this time, I decided to use a 24" Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe softbox, creating a more directional light.... and just like last time, there was a second flash giving backlight.... both the flashes were YN-560s... one was triggered by Elinchrom Skyport, the other was in optical trigger (S1) mode.... the lens was 85mm f1.8 Nikkor.... gives great bokeh, but I wanted a little bit of depth, so, used mostly between f2.8-5.6.....

there you go.... just before they went into our stomach..... :)











a lot more from the Eid Day coming up....

About us....

the story of "Ideas R Bulletproof"....

where the term(s) came from....
the term(s) "Ideas are bulletproof" came from a movie named "V for Vendetta" where the chief character utters these words while heavily wounded, but before he kills the villain.... he died, but his ideas lived on through his followers....

who we are....
we're a husband and wife photography team based out of Dhaka, Bangladesh..... Aniqa is the creative director, and Sharif is the photographer....we aim to show our countrymen what family moments they are missing today..... we took the challenge of creating a type of photography market here in Bangladesh that most people are not even aware of.... we do not just want to take photos of people..... we want to capture moments and give an experience to people.... an experience they will talk about for decades.... we are not a typical photography studio.....

how it all started....
me (Sharif) had been a travel photographer and blogger for the last seven years, and she (Aniqa) had been a homemaker for the last six years..... our real inspiration behind this specific venture came around four-and-a-half years ago from the birth of our daughter Lamisa.... this ground-breaking event provided a different dimension to our photography.... this provided not just the motivation to document the most transient part of Lamisa's childhood, but also opened up the opportunity to learn portrait photography, especially the art of lighting.... a huge amount of study and practice provided us the technical knowhow needed to think ahead.... we were also lucky enough to be blessed with a child like Lamisa, who constantly provided us an excuse to shoot photos.... but to make sure that this regular shoot didn't get boring over time, we decided to innovate.... regular brainstorming ensued and that resulted in images that we only dreamed about.... the images had always been there, we just needed to dig them out....

my passion for photography took over when my long-standing corporate job started to take the life away from me.... my mind started to question whether my private life was being eaten by the very job that was supposed to help me sustain....ideas rolled; plans unfolded; decisions stamped.... and here we are.... to prove a point or two....

our uniqueness.....
our edge is our ideas..... we do not want two photoshoots to look the same.... and to make sure of that, we customise our ideas based on the people we would do the photos for.... their characters and relationship stories would give us the ideas to make the photos stand out of the crowd....we talk to our clients first, which help us to cook the ideas....

if you're bored watching the same types of family photographs and looking for a break, you've come to the right place....

 


update(s).....
we have evolved since we started this business venture.... we have diversified our efforts and at the same time, developed our core competencies....
a) blogging: we are still the blogger that we always had been, but now, with more vigour.... though we haven't maintained our travel blog for long, we kept up with the portrait lighting blog; developed another blog in Wordpress to talk about photography in general where we have several contributors; we also kept up the updates on our 'daily' (well, almost) blog at Tumblr.....
b) workshops: we added training ventures to our portfolio as we had received many requests for photography and lighting workshops..... updates on Idea Workshops would be found here.....we're also involved with organisations like Through the Lens: Bangladesh and Counter Foto in the photography-related workshop and training ventures.....
c) fine art prints: we brought all our fine art travel photography under one banner - Desherchobi Prints.... and you can get updates on those here.....
d) food photography: this is our latest venture.... we're currently developing this venture (Dhakai Menu) along with some of our core competencies.... to get updates on this, please visit this link....
e) Facebook: we would love to have you with us as we put regular updates our work in Facebook.... you can find updates on our portrait photography (Ideas_R_Bulletproof) venture here.... and our food photography (Dhakai Menu) venture here....
f) Twitter: you can follow us on Twitter to get regular updates on our activities....
g) Youtube: we started a video podcast series in Youtube, which hasn't seen a lotta updates since around early 2013.... but we hope to resume this series as we see fit....
h) commercial photography: this is a new venture of ours..... not publishing any link right now.... but anyone interested can contact us at: +880-1711-055524
i) consultancy:  this is one of our oldest competencies..... concentration area is marketing research.... we do research design, advise clients based on acquired data and also work with organisations and professionals to develop human resources in the field of marketing research.....  again, not posting any link right now....but anyone interested can contact us at: +880-1711-055524

food, glorious food!!!

11 September 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Eid Day!!...... usually Eid-ul Fitr is more of an Eid of food and guests at our place.... I've documented home-made food bonanza for the last several Eid Days..... but never really concentrated in it or gave enough time behind it..... this time round, I got my strobist stuff going and I just had to push this one..... my family members were also co-operative enough...... we kept ourselves from eating the delicious stuff for, I don't know, may be 20 minutes or so!!

here's the geeky stuff..... I used two SB-900s here.... one as a back-light; direct, but with the diffuser on....... the second as the fill-light; beside the camera; with the diffuser on; shooting vertically towards the white ceiling..... both were firing TTL and were on tripods...... the trigger was the SU-800..... used a 50mm 1.4 for shallow depth (shot @f2.0; also experimented quite a bit) and 70-210mm lens for perspective flattening (shot @180mm f5) on D700..... shutter speed varied between 1/125s-1/200s, not to include any ambient light actually, but to compensate for longer focal length balance..... anyway, it didn't anyway, as I had the stopping power of the flash.... ISO was kept at 100....

Cafe Higin second session, June 2010

18 June 2010
Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh

the assignment at Savar continued at Rashed's place...... last week, I enjoyed the food photography that I did for the for the first time...... it was a day of learning and enjoyment...... this time round, it wasn't different either...... the only thing that differed this time was the approach I took for the work.... last time, I was concentrating on close-up shots and avoiding whole frames because of the lack of suitable backgrounds...... I was prepared this time for doing it on at least some decent backdrop...... I didn't have anything with me that could produce that white blown-out background..... a seamless white kind of thing was needed...... Rashed couldn't manage a white cloth, or a decent table-cloth, but he was good enough to produce a couple of art-paper sheets within a very short time..... the whole process made me loss almost a couple of hours...... there was also a problem with the stock situation at the shop...... but I was just able to manage the whole thing within an acceptable time.......

last time, I was only using one strobe and ambient light....... this time round, I knew I couldn't manage a white seamless without several lights...... so, from the start, I set up all my lights, switching them on and off, and changing positions, as required..... mainly the dishes that required more space, were causing trouble..... there was no way to do those shots completely excluding the background..........

I'm still trying to grasp the best ways to shoot drinks/glasses..... water-drops on the cool glasses and reflections on those are specialties..... also, the difficulty of shooting several types of foods, which require different kinds of exposure values.... I was also limited by the capability of my hardware a little bit....



I used a couple of SB-900s, one SB-600 flashes.... they were placed on tripods and tables and triggered via SU-800 IR trigger on my D700..... two of the flashes had a shoot-through umbrella on them and one had a home-made 2'x2' diffuser set in front of it....... I cut the ambient light completely with a shutter speed of 1/125sec or 1/100 sec....... I chose apertures ranging between f8 and f20...... the depth was needed; as I was shooting whole dishes; and sometimes combos, where a larger space was covered by the dishes..... I chose to use 2/3 lights as needed and also, varied flash power quite a lot.......

other practical challenges were there that were my learning..... it all started almost 2 hrs late, which pushed me to perform within a reasonable time.... food items had to shot within a specific time limit, otherwise the food loses its colour or texture or freshness....... each of the food items had their own challenges..... I had to change settings constantly to cope with those challenges..... the SU-800 saved so much of the time and effort that it now seems almost a must for complex situations indoors, and even outdoors.....

I still have some work to do at Cafe Higin..... its branding and promo would require more involvement from me..... and its expansion may also call for my services....





















to view the whole gallery, please visit the following link:
Experiment at Cafe Higin

Experiment at Cafe Higin, June 2010

11 June 2010

it was a nice opportunity given by my trusted friend Rashed..... he needed some photos for his newly founded restaurant, and I needed some practice...... it all turned out to be a nice bit of experience..... it was not just work, in the end..... our families also had a nice time during the day..... the children especially, had a great day, which made us happy..... it was a particularly warm day, and the weather was accentuated by frequent load-shedding by the electricity department......

Cafe Higin's aim was more to attract the customers, rather than just giving a glimpse of whats on offer.... this aim made us switch from whole dishes to close-ups..... I was never in doubt about what lens I would be using once we decided to go close.... the Sigma APO 150mm f2.8 EX DG Macro....... my trusted horse..... it puts most of the background out of focus, thus makes framing so much easier.... I shot a lotta apertures to adjust to different light and depth requirements.... used most apertures between f4.5 and f16.....

it was daytime, so I used the natural light coming through the huge glass window, acting as a big softbox..... I kept the natural light as backlight, not only to blow out the background, but also to give that glossy edge on the yummy items.... I quickly knew that I needed another light source as fill light in front of the food items...... an SB-900 with a shoot-through umbrella did the job for me...... I used the SU-800 as trigger..... I was shooting indoors, so not issues with using IR triggers..... it surely is much more convenient than radio triggers.....

using the ambient light was a bit of a pain though, requiring much lower shutter speeds (1/15-1/40sec).... had to depend on a tripod to keep the camera stable..... for some shots, I also brought out a second flash to give rim light, but that didn't come out to be very prominent.... there were quite a few items that we couldn't do because of unavailability and time shortage...... so, another session is required to complete the job.....