children + mood + B&W = ?

07 January 2012
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Lamisa and Tabassum are cousins..... we are always on the hunt for some photos when they gather in one place.... the two children are quite contrasting when we talk about their moods..... whereas Lamisa is always on the move and happy to give a happy face, Tabassum is, most of the times, on the moody side of things.... this gives a great opportunity for some contrasty photos when these two get together.... this particular instance was one of those opportunities that we utilised to get some cool moody photos...

if you had been following our video podcasts, you probably have seen our child photography basics video featuring these two.... one of the most important things we talked about in that video was keeping attention of children...... and thats what we concentrated on in the first place when we started this photo-session.... but as the session progressed, we started to get some unique pictures.... by unique, we mean the unique combination of moods produced by the two subjects.... each and every combination produced a different kind of mood in the picture and created opportunity for uniqueness..... but that also created the challenge of constantly keeping attention on both the subjects and to induce them to "produce" some moods....

one of the ways to have a successful "moody" session is to keep other things simple.... we kept a simple lighting setup.... something of bare necessity.... and stuck to it for the whole session.... just one light... Elinchrom Ranger RX + Rotalux 100cm "Deep Octa" softbox.... the light allowed us (recycle time) to use f8, which allowed for a decent DoF for the two.... [for more on DoF and recycle time, please see our earlier blog post here].... the trigger was Elinchrom Skyport.... D700 was used along with the cheap 28-80mm lens....

this was one of those successful sessions when we were able to keep their attention for a substantial amount of time (29 minutes!!)..... and in the end, I love B&W images.... its not that frequent when I resort to B&W for children photography..... but this time, it seemed more than appropriate to do this.... somehow, the moods of the two blended with the colourless environment.... there was nothing else in the picture other than their moods....

a lot more coming up.....

playing with time....

07 January 2012
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

remember the gloomy day photoshoot from fifteen months ago?.... no?.... then let me refresh your memories.... we were in the middle of a photoshoot with two of our best models.... Lamisa and Tabassum.... time flies isn't it?.... to us it seemed just yesterday.... now we know that our children are growing.... and the evidence of their gradual progression can only be recorded in a camera.... what a magic machine that is!!

we had to sacrifice something every time we were allocating some time behind some photoshoot.... at that time we feel all the pain, tiredness, and throw a question-mark on the whole thing..... "is it really necessary?".... "what if I take a rest today and do it tomorrow??"..... I'm glad for every single photosession decision that I've taken in my life.... and I'm sad for every single one of them that I missed for one reason (excuse) or the other.... time is our judge.... I can't possibly answer the question in the ailing days -- "what was I doing on that day?? was I that busy??"

every time I find an excuse to pick the camera in my hand, I feel lucky.... lucky to capture time... history... glad that I chose to be a photographer!!

anyway, we wanted to recreate memory.... so, we dressed Lamisa and Tabassum in almost the same fashion we did fifteen months back.... we could see the difference... the children are no longer one-and-a-half year olds... they're now three-year-old preschoolers... they're much more expressive now....

on a technical note, this time the lighting was totally different.... you can see the background dark in the new photos.... this is the effect only a softbox would leave.... it was taken with an Elinchrom Rotalux 100cm "Deep Octa" softbox..... its punchy light with sharp falloff was quite evident.... and to add to the falloff, the softbox was a bit tilted towards the floor; not 100% parallel to the ground.... the main idea was to take some intimate portraits of the two together..... so, the setup wasn't that perfect to get them dancing around all over the place..... for that kind of shoot, probably the earlier setup was better.... to see the setup of the earlier shoot, please see the earlier blog post.....for this shoot, it was shot on D700 + 28-80mm lens and whole shoot was done at f8... trigger was Elinchrom Skyport....

a lot more to come....

Saadi..... @11 days only!

04 November 2011
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

such opportunities don't last for long..... I became a proud uncle of a lovely baby boy on 24th October... that the second child of my elder brother.... I didn't wanna lose the opportunity to snap this little angel before he became too big to be called a newborn.... babies don't remain babies for long.... so, time was of essence... he was just named Saadi.... and when we came to know that Saadi was coming straight to our place, we simply didn't wanna lose a moment.... it surely was one of the best days we had in recent times... not just with the camera, but with a lot of fun as well.... Saadi is the younger brother of Tabassum, my niece... and Tabassum is the long-time playing partner of Lamisa, my child.... though they don't get that much opportunity to play together....

 


Saadi was so adorable and kept so quiet for so long.... he gave us ample opportunities to take photos in several different setups.... his patience amazed us and made us happy.... by the time he woke up, we were basically done with our shoot, and trying on a bonus one....










this is a second attempt of ours to catch him in his nap.... we tried this once before already.... we went to Saadi's grandma's place on 31 October to steal some quick snaps.... but we weren't really happy with the results as he was not going into his deep sleep for even a moment.... this second attempt wiped off the earlier disappointments... but we still hope to catch another session with Saadi before he is no longer a newborn....







anyway, our idea was a to use some props to show how small the little champ was.... and to keep things simple, I kept the lighting setup fairly simple.... used two light here... used the "Lazy Light" for an overall fill and used a YN-560 + 24" Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe softbox combination to remove any other shadows.... for the first six shots, I used a cheap 28-80mm lens for general convenience, and as I was also using a small aperture for a bit of depth.... for the last four images, I switched to a 50mm 1.4 lens to create a soft look with shallow DoF....





please excuse for the big watermarks.... we just don't want these images showing up in a commercial venture without our knowledge.... we had experienced bad things before quite a few times...

a lot more coming up....

we like it WILD!!

11 March 2011
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

I had never been so tense watching a cricket match..... for the greater part of the second inning, I was unable to sit in front of the TV..... but I also couldn't stay away from the game.... something told me to wait..... it was a shock to me when the 6th wicket fell..... I didn't even watch the 7th and 8th wicket fall.... still, that shock couldn't get me to close down the Cricinfo web-page.... I simply couldn't close it..... and when it came down to the last 24 balls, I had enough of it....

I had never shed such sweet tears of joy!!....... it was a joy thats pretty difficult to explain..... I couldn't stop my tears of emotion!!....... a memorable day..... not just for me; it was for my whole family too..... my daughter was half-way to her sleep; but we decided to take a tour of the streets, where we know are people as least as crazy as us..... it was 11:00PM....

From We like it wild, Dhaka, 11 March 2011

From We like it wild, Dhaka, 11 March 2011

From We like it wild, Dhaka, 11 March 2011

as predicted, we had a hard time getting to our very close destination; to Tabassums'..... we decided to celebrate this night together..... going through that wild crowd was tough..... they really went wild..... we've seen that after the Ireland match as well..... some people might say whether we need such emotional outbursts every time we win..... but I say...... do you really want to see our sad faces??..... do you want us to count our failures??...... come on!!..... whats a game without emotion??.... what a win without celebrations??..... and whats fun without being wild??...... yes, we are wild........ and we like being WILD!!!

From We like it wild, Dhaka, 11 March 2011

when you celebrate something wild, don't deprive your family...... :)

brightening up a gloomy day!!

08 October 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

what else could we do on a gloomy day like this??..... there's a depression over the Bay of Bengal; the resultant rain creating swimming pools everywhere around Dhaka..... even the Bangladesh-New Zealand cricket match got washed away...... we also planned some photowalk in the afternoon, but that would be difficult without boats and raincoats, I guess.... fortunately, we have couple of lively models at home..... and they came to the rescue..... Lamisa and Tabassum got dressed pretty quickly.... and called their small kitty party at home...... I volunteered to become their official photographer.....








now the tech details...... I needed a big light source; enough power, but soft....... I knew I would have to rely on a 4'x4' diffusion panel; after all, thats the largest light source I can muster (other than white walls, of course)...... I opted for the silver reflector umbrella to be the light amplifier for one SB-900.... I actually bought the silver umbrellas for that specific purpose.... this was the first time I got to use this setup..... the silver umbrella's shaft doesn't match with the Simpex Prolite strobe, which I had first planned to use.... anyway, I could still use the Simpex with the opened-up softbox to do a similar job, but I stuck to the SB-900, just to see how it performs.....



my first impression was, the SB-900 was a bit underpowered for a job like this.... at full power the SB-900 did exceed the needed exposure, but I didn't want to shoot at such high power settings.... I wanted faster recycling..... I was shooting at f7.1 first, then moved to f8..... still wanted to move to f9-11, but had to go back to f8, just because @1/2 power the SB-900 was struggling..... I needed enough depth for the image as I was shooting two moving subjects with a fair bit of distance between them..... ideal aperture would still have been f11 or below..... perhaps a couple of SB-900s could do the job better, if not the Simpex Prolite itself... after some quick shooting, the SB-900 activated its temperature control and would not budge!!...... damn!!..... then I switched to another SB-900 to finish the job..... I used the Elinchrom Skyport triggers to trigger the light....

enjoying tethered shooting......

25 August 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

just got inspired by a YouTube video of a German commercial photographer..... he had been using his netbook for tethered shooting..... its not that I haven't seen this before..... but its the first time I've seen someone using a netbook instead of a big laptop or a big LCD monitor..... its a great tool to use, especially for portrait photography.....

I searched the Net and downloaded DCamCapture..... its a free software and supports latest DSLR models...... its simple, but does the most important thing.... it brings the photo into the computer right after the shutter release...... it doesn't have an image viewer, but I didn't find this particularly limiting.... I used the ViewNX software as the viewer and problem solved..... I only needed to push the next button to see the picture..... I wasn't really bothered by that, at least, don't feel bothered right now...

I took the opportunity to shoot some young models in-house and the system tested positive.... seeing the images big right after the shoo is a big advantage..... it helps to check critical focus much more easily and also helps to judge other things in the picture with more ease.... camera LCD does the same thing, but its too small to save a lot of time....



Model: Tabassum
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 50mm f1.4D
f1.4, 1/125s, ISO1600
Illumination from tube-light



Model: Tabassum
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 50mm f1.4D
f1.4, 1/125s, ISO640
Illumination from tube-light