how green my valley could've been........

06 August 2010
Char Washpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

went to the other bank of the Buriganga for two weekends in a row.... this place never becomes too old for me..... and the other weekend I discovered the beauty of the lit-up bridge at dusk... had the plan to go there during the weekdays, but as like any other day-dream of mine, this one was assassinated at the door of my office.....

anyway, was able to capture some eye-catching moments of Nature that reminded me how the River Buriganga could've been if we considered it our river.... now the struggle is on to retrieve what we can.... but the damage is already done......


only if colours could tell the story.......


the chimneys jumping out of the brick-fields are the symbol of air pollution for Dhaka..... they can't possibly make a beautiful backdrop however colourful the sunset is..... and the mirror produced by the water from the River Buriganga has been in the news for all the wrong reasons...... we just wish the reality was as rosy as the sky.....

Taken at on the bank of the River Buriganga, Char Washpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh; 06 August 2010


a beautiful reminder..........


the Second Buriganga Bridge looks beautiful under the monsoon clouds, facing warm afternoon lights..... this is just a reminder what we are missing by polluting this beautiful river...... there is still time for us to bring the River Buriganga back to life......

Taken on the bank of the River Buriganga, Char Washpur, Basila, Dhaka; 31 July 2010

Just to breathe under the open skies......

Basila, Dhaka, Bangladesh
06 July 2010

just wanted to have a glance at the open skies...... got tired of seeing concretes all the time.... I still remember the day when I had to sneak a peek at that massive rainbow from my office window..... sometimes I do ask myself whether I am doing what I should be..... anyway, I was trying to look for the closest open sky available to me, Basila....

while on the way, I was thinking whether I would be missing even the sunset..... sunsets this rainy season had been fascinating for most of the days.... so, I was hoping that city traffic would allow me to be there on time.... it took me more than 40 minutes to Basila, whereas it shouldn't take more than 20...... anyway, I reached there just in time to watch those spectacular rays.....

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....





















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Experiment at Cafe Higin