Day Two: BIF-3..... in full motion!!

26 March 2011
Drik Gallery, Dhaka, Bangladesh

BIF-3 is rocking, not just Drik, but outside as well.... another great day..... the day started with an FM radio campaign on Radio Foorti.... Faisal Bhai and me went on air at 10:00AM to give an overview of TTL and BIF-3..... it was a pretty good exposure for the exhibit.... thanks goes to Radio Foorti for giving us the coverage.....





it was the Independence Day..... and as expected, the day was pulling a big crowd.... there was hardly a moment during the day when the galleries were not full of people.... Anwar Hossain was there with us for the second day in a row.... our selector Andrew Biraj also spent the day with us.... and the best part of the day was the cake!!.... it was TTL's birthday!!..... a big cake, symbolizing the national flag was introduced.... and almost immediately, it became the most photographer cake ever!!..... the cake-cutting ceremony set the tone for the day..... it was a day of fun.....

the outside weather changed during the evening and we had to remove all the images from the open-air gallery on the ground floor..... but our spirit remained high until the exhibit was closed right after 8:00PM..... the authorities literally had to throw us out..... but before that, we were able to exercise a bit of madness with lights and shadows......


model: Xoaher
D700 + 70-210mm @92mm; 1/400sec, f9, ISO 100
Strobist info: 2 x SB-900 + 1 x SB-600 firing from camera left; TTL, high-speed sync; placed on ground; shielded by human shield formed by several TTL-ers so that the light doesn't spill on to the back wall, which was lit by many lights... well, it still did!! :O
Editing: tilted the image around 90 degrees!! :O

testing the DIY backdrop stand......

18 November 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

after Eid day, it was turn for a continuation...... Lamisa provided me with the impetus in the morning.... she pulled me into my makeshift studio...... it was real delight actually.... it is always so difficult to keep her in front of the lens... and now it came from her!!..... she posed in front of the lens in a voluntary act and the whole shoot was done within minutes!!







and then the night shoot was inspired by my wife..... Lamisa played a small part, but the most important thing was that she stayed out of the frame in most occasions, which was too important!!





the set-up.....



Eid day shoots were done using an improvised backdrop, which wasn't really suitable for portraits of a full-grown human..... Lamisa was probably the biggest subject in front of it..... I wanted to extend the shoots beyond these limited prospects..... I had a much bigger backdrop stand made of aluminium pipes that I had used previously, but not with a lotta success..... the stand was not stable enough.... but since acquiring the boom stands, I had the idea floating around in my head.... the booms came from the mike stands that I had acquired a while back.... the base of the mike stands provided an excellent set of studio equipment.... two of these base stands provided the base for the backdrop stands.... the backdrop stands had bases for themselves, but they needed weights to stand upright..... now the base stands gave the badly needed balance.... no weights required.... on the other hand, the cross-bar was another problem before..... attaching the cross-bar to the stands was something of a challenge previously..... now the system works much better with the use of "T"..... a couple of "T" attached the cross-bar perfectly on top of the stands.... the system was now more stable than any time....

another problem was to cut the spill of light.... that was absolute necessity to work with a black background.... I don't have a big softbox and space is something of a premium..... using panels provide the big lights, but they do produce a lot of light-spill.... I had been using some black fabric as sort of a GoBo between the backdrop and the main diffuser...... that more-or-less did the job.... but today, I found another spill on the top-end of the backdrop.... this spill wasn't there previously as the backdrop wasn't that high.... I thus put another black fabric on the SB-900-diffuser combination and the the spill was gone.....

another change was the power of the SB-600 hair-light.... I had overestimated the SB-600 and kept its power at one-stop higher than the other SB-900 hair-light.... it seems that the SB-600 needed much more power to feature in the shot.... so, whereas I used 1/128 power on the SB-900, I used 1/8 power on the SB-600.... both served the purpose of hair-light..... the above shots hardly had the effect of the SB-600.... for some later shots the SB-600 had the power increased and was featuring much more clearly in the shots.....

Eid-ul Azha........

17 November 2010
Mohamadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Eid Mubarak...... its Eid-ul Azha.... its usually an Eid of busy times.... had been busy most of the morning hours and resting during the afternoon.... had lunch pretty late and wasn't really in a mood to do some shooting..... but it all changed in a moment as Tabassum and company hopped in..... Lamisa was very busy during the day, making our lives twice as busy as it could've been..... this was her second Eid-ul Azha..... and she got rejuvenated after finding her mate, Tabassum.....

we cut cakes and did some photo-session...... Riad, my brother-in-law showed up and it was a bit of a party for a short while.....









for the later photo-shoot, I followed a similar set-up that I used in a shoot-out last month..... the set-up worked pretty well after putting on the grid/snoot on the hair lights..... there was a bit of light-spill on the black backdrop, which went away totally after using the grid/snoot..... used the venerable 28-80mm lens.... had been using this lens for a while as something of an experiment.... also used this for an outdoor shoot for the first time on the 16th, the day before Eid...... more on that in the next blog, hopefully.....

strobist double-header!!

30 October 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

simply didn't wanna bring down the whole setup as long as it had the capacity to serve further.... so, the utilisation of Friday wasn't enough, it seems.... got this inspiration from my family and decided not to bring it down.... this is the first time I've kept studio setting intact for so long....

Lamisa got her new cooking set from one of her grandmas a few days back.... and already those were in the line of fire..... I decided to get some snaps of Lamisa with those stuff before they changed beyond all recognition.... that triggered the first session......














decided to utilise the black backdrop, rather than anything else.... so, the typical challenges of background darkening and creating separation remained.... the set-up worked fairly well in terms of making the background dark.... the hair-light wasn't really yielding perfect results, but it was working..... I decided to add a third light in the same setting with one SB-600 as a second hair light..... to restrict the light from falling on the lens, I put a DIY snoot on the flash.... the other hair light, an SB-900, had a DIY grid spot on it.... for this particular experiment, the hair light coming from the gridded SB-900 seemed a bit too restricted.... it wasn't covering enough area that I wanted it to..... but I only had one option, making me somewhat crippled.... both the hair lights were on improvised boom stands, getting some overhead position that my other stands were unable to provide.... the SB-600 was on my new improvised boom stand that I made out of my old damaged tripod.... did some repair to it during the day and it worked fine....

we went out for some shopping and came back with something that could potentially help the makeshift studio..... a stool..... Lamisa pounced on it and I got at least one shot....


(p.s. she's holding on to the KitKat packs that Rumi Bhai smuggled in for her!!)


then some happy accident happened..... Rumi Bhai came in to see the intact setting.... and some way, I brought the grid-spot down from the flash..... so, when I was shooting afterward, the flash was bare..... and the hair-illumination was actually better than it was with the grid-spot on..... quite surprisingly, there was no flare because of this.... I was pretty sure that the flash wasn't supposed to miss the lens, yet there was no flare!!..... for the rest of the shoot, I kept the flash bare and forgot about flare....




this was the last setting used.... changed the aperture a little in some cases though.... but overall, the settings remained the same....

three-and-a-half light.....

07 September 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

the main aim was to check out how I can sync the Simpex Prolite strobe with the SB-900/SB-600 flashes..... I have only one radio trigger!!...... but I did use the Prolite flash as an optical slave some time back.... it synced with SB flashes..... but for some reason, the optical slave of the flash is not longer working..... its the poor reliability of these cheap Indian system that keeps me worrying..... and can't really blame these systems much, as these are the only things that I can put my hands on right now.....

anyway, the experiment to sync once again failed miserably..... and I only have the option of using the Prolite as a stand-alone flash.... may be using some reflectors and diffusers to make it work a bit better..... thats it.... I quickly switched to the other set-up that I haven't tested yet..... spent some effort in recent times to construct some of a boom-stand to create overhead light.... this was the time to try it out, before I could really put strangers under it....

I quickly realised that the light spill on the background remained as grave a problem as before.... and SB-900 was easily reaching the backdrop..... I suddenly came up with a decision to use the softbox of the Prolite to contain the light of the SB-900.... thus, the whole system instantly becomes sort of a 25"x25" softbox.... and the spill was complete gone..... to be over-sure, I switched to high-speed sync and made the background totally dark..... it worked, although with some effort...... had to invest a lot of time and labour into it.....

the other problem that sneaked in was the trigger.... my SU-800 ran out of batteries and I couldn't get one timely enough..... the D700's built-in flash was the only solution..... but the practical problem was that the built-in commander was capable of controlling only two groups of lights..... but I needed three separate groups to accomplish my setting..... couldn't give the hair-light enough power because of this and struggled to make the hair-light visible in most shots..... was also not controlling the floor light well enough.... the chair got too much glare.... it needed some go-bo to control the spill on the bottom of the image.... I wasn't using tethered shoot this time because of some USB cable problems..... wasn't able to give enough look to all the small details.... may be next time....

I used the reflector for the first time and it worked really fine.... decided to use the silver side instead of the white side..... next time would also try out the white side..... the half-light really made a difference.... it worked almost as a full light!!



the set-up....

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.....

Shooting time..........

20 May 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

it was an experiment..... just wanted to see how difficult it may be to shoot a product against a complete white backdrop....... I've never shot such things, so it was a challenge...... wrist-watches became my subjects..... I had several considerations...... first, I knew I had to use a tele to flatten perspective and to bring the background to a minimum..... but when I put the 70-210 on my camera, I straightaway knew that I needed a macro to do this..... close focus was the second key thing I discovered...... I put on the Sigma 150mm macro and things began to improve...... I had to go as close as 1.75ft of the subject to get a decent crop...... third, I found that I needed another light source coming from the back to blow the surface into complete white..... so, I ended up with three flashes; two with shoot-through umbrellas and one with a home-made diffuser...... the settings apparently worked.....





settings.......

High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, 23 April 2010

it was a very very sultry weather, but we braved the weather to venture into a room that drains the energy out of the body in minutes!!

it was another strobist meet..... a meet that we learned to call Studiowalk.... it got that sort of name because we not just shoot with strobes, but shoot with anything that we can put our hands on...... anyway, this short, but nice Studiowalk was organised by Zaim..... actually we couldn't even think of something like this without Zaim's proposal....... his proposal was unanimously greeted with excitement and the enthusiasm actually skyrocketed once we saw the samples of the graffiti over there... Zaim and his friends created these arts and gave a new horizon to think about.... at least, I haven't seen such graffiti in our country so far..... we simply didn't want to miss such a unique opportunity..... so, there we went.... it was a preparation of almost a week, yet we felt a little under-prepared once we reached there....

the building has been abandoned for more than four years...... and gives an eerie feeling inside..... there are marks of human activity, but not a single soul to be found..... the floors have acquired so much dust that one can create a graffiti using the dust!....... all the floors were empty and dusty.... we climbed to the top floor, the 10th floor..... and things began to clear up in front of us..... this floor contained offices, and there were plenty of files and other office stuff to corroborate the fact..... the floor was once fully air-conditioned; so, now it contains to air outlet..... we opened the door to the balcony and let some air and light in.... this made us survive there for around two hours.... the month of April was felt inside down to our bones..... it was sultry and exhausting.....

From High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

model: biju
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 50mm f1.4D
f8, 1/250, ISO 200
Strobist info:
3 x SB-900 with warm gel filter outside filtered window glass on stand; TTL mode; triggered with SU-800+ extension cord

From High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

model: biju
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 50mm f1.4D
f5.6, 1/250, ISO 200
Strobist info:
3 x SB-900 with warm gel filter outside filtered window glass; 1 x SB-600 with honeycomb grid on left on stand; TTL mode; triggered with SU-800+ extension cord




anyway, we started off with the main graffiti..... the sun was exactly to the opposite side and there were huge windows with filtered glasses prohibiting light from coming inside.... the graffiti was pretty much in the dark, so, we needed to set up some flashes to light things up..... we set up three SB-900 flashes outside the window with warm gel filters to create late afternoon sunlight..... but it proved difficult to trigger the lights with the SU-800 from inside the dark glasses.... it took some effort to get an acceptable exposure.... we weren't absolutely happy about it, but accepted it..... needed to set up another SB-600 with honey-comb grid as fill light..... the samurai replica from Hameem gave us the opportunity create some drama.... the whole thing proved tough because of the extreme contrast created by the graffiti colours.... we couldn't find a satisfactory solution to it.....

From High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

model: dipa
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 50mm f1.4D
f3.5, 1/200, ISO 200
natural afternoon light coming through large filtered glass window

From High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

model: zaim
Nikon D700 + Sigma APO 150mm f2.8 EX DG HSM Macro
f3, 1/250, ISO 1400
natural afternoon light coming through large filtered glass window


anyway, shooting continued with strobes..... there were quite a few strobists there shooting away.... I gave a hand to some and helped create some great images..... I, on the other hand, found my frames with available light.... the huge filtered glass was holding enough of the afternoon sun to get some cool portraits.....

From High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

model: zaim
Nikon D700 + Sigma APO 150mm f2.8 EX DG HSM Macro
f3, 1/500, ISO 200
natural afternoon light coming through door

From High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

model: zaim and kamal
Nikon D700 + Sigma APO 150mm f2.8 EX DG HSM Macro
f3, 1/320, ISO 200
natural afternoon light coming through door

From High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

model: kamal + hameem's samurai
Nikon D700 + Sigma APO 150mm f2.8 EX DG HSM Macro
f3, 1/2,500, ISO 200
natural afternoon light


Hameem's samurai had seen some action, though mostly without its original owner... while I was shooting Zaim with the samurai and thinking of creating a scene where a samurai silhouette would be attacking someone else's silhouette, Zaim came up with a cool idea of creating a Japanese beheading ritual...... Zaim and Kamal created the scene, though there were not enough space to do this properly.... we also went outside and shot the samurai with the setting sun......

From High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

The Koba Squad!!
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 50mm f1.4D
f10, 1/500, ISO 200
Strobist info:
6 x SB-900, SB-800, SB-600 on stand (4) and on ground (2); TTL mode; triggered with SU-800


the last act of the day was a group shot..... the big graffiti was the obvious choice for a background..... it was real challenge to light everyone with strobes, since we had space constraints on one side, which left us with one side to setup the strobes..... we used a total of 6 speedlites to do the job...... killed the ambient light with a high shutter speed and set up two flashes behind the people in front to that we had enough light for the people in the far corner.... it wasn't the most ideal of group shots, but was enough for us start packing.... it was already quite dark and we had to go all the way down the dark stairs.... there was no electricity in the whole building.....

it was a cool outing.... though tough from the conditions point, it surely helped us learn quite a few things..... lighting and other conditions were quite different from what we had encountered in other places.... the challenge was great and we thought we came through..... lessons were learned, for another day..... we have to come back.....

for more shots from same venture, please visit the following link:
High-rise Graffiti Shoot, Dhaka, April 23 2010

Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

it was a sudden decision..... the holiday wasn't sudden; so, we had a prior thought to utilise the spare time.... afternoon was the target and the great idea for a place came from Atia..... she was the catalyst behind the previous short photowalk at Nikunja.... this time too, she came forward and guided us..... we were a bit confused about the venue, but once she came on board, it was fixed.... we would shoot near the air port using strobes.... and we would have taking-off aircraft behind the subject....

getting to the place needed some effort, as the place is a bit under watch.... people can go there, but at some places, checkpoints are there and the guards need to be convinced...... anyway, we took a different route and avoided checkpoints.... Saif Bhai went back to bring his car through the main checkpoints, which ensured security for the car and a much better way to go back during the evening......

we took our position assuming that Atia was right about the airline schedule..... according to her, there was a flight of Saudia at 4:30PM, which was certainly not going to be any other than the huge Boeing 747...... we didn't want to miss such an opportunity to have a giant like that in our frame.....

we soon found out that planes were taking off from another direction and the 747 was nowhere in sight..... so, we quickly changed our direction and setup..... the sun was setting on our left.... we kept the sun in the frame as long as we could.... and the rest of the times, we were depending on the afterglow..... we shot away until around 6:45PM, when it was pretty dark...... we had a lot of fun and didn't forget to learn all the way..... it was a good practice session, and a nice afternoon adda with some cool people.....

here are some glimpses of the captures.....

we started off with typical portraits using flashes..... the main idea was to overpower the sun and to underexpose the background.... it was the warm-up time before we could see some big airplanes overhead....

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

model: biju
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f4, 1/1,600sec, ISO 200
Strobist info:
Two SB-900 on ground on camera right with warm gel filter; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

model: tahmid
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f4, 1/1,600sec, ISO 200
Strobist info:
Two SB-900 on ground on camera right with warm gel filter; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800


we had to change our direction quickly to catch the airplanes in our frame.... the sun was on our left, and using a wide lens, it was possible to bring the sun in the frame..... the sun was already behind the trees, so, just a bit of read was all we could catch.....

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

model: atia
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f4, 1/1,600sec, ISO 200
Strobist info:
Two SB-900 on voice-activated tripod (Tahmid) on camera left with warm gel filter; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

model: biju
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f4, 1/1,250sec, ISO 200
Strobist info:
Two SB-900 on voice-activated tripod (Tahmid) on camera left with warm gel filter; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

model: tahmid
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f4, 1/1,000sec, ISO 200
Strobist info:
Two SB-900 on voice-activated tripod (Atia) on camera left with warm gel filter; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800


then we came up with the crazy idea of capturing a high-speed duel between two "urban warriors"....... the light was fading, but we had the flash duration of the strobes to support us in capturing motion.......

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

model: tahmid & biju
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f5.6, 1/100sec, ISO 200
Strobist info:
Two SB-900 on ground; one on camera left and another on camera right; with warm gel filter; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

model: tahmid & biju
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f5.6, 1/100sec, ISO 200
Strobist info:
Two SB-900 on ground; one on camera left and another on camera right; with warm gel filter; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800


we had to bring down the shutter speed and boost up ISO to bring the background into play...... it was already getting dark.....

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

model: tahmid & biju
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f6.3, 1/30sec, ISO 640
Strobist info:
Two SB-900 on ground; one on camera left and another on camera right; with warm gel filter; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800


by the time we came up with the idea of a group shot, it was already quite dark..... and without a tripod, it became sort of a pain to get the best composition...... the effort was still there to get a goodish group portrait.....

From Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010

The Koba Squad!!

Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D
f6.3, 1/5sec, ISO 640
Strobist info:
Two SB-900, one SB-800 and one SB-600 on ground; two on camera left and two on camera right; with warm gel filter on the SB-900s; TTL mode; triggered by SU-800; on timer; on ground

please don't forget to visit the whole gallery to have a look at more pics, including some hilarious bloopers!!
Nikunja Strobist Meet, 16 April 2010