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....

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.....