A massive amount of 430 pictures today, but decidedly mixed results. Lot’s of just good enough pictures, and interesting pictures, or ‘oh, that’s nearly there’ pictures. But nothing that blows you away. Worked at Motijheel, Sayedabad, and most of my time was spent in Sadarghat (or ‘Old Dhaka’).
- Played around with focus quite a bit and the results were all over the place. Although the close in shots were mostly bagged, I was trying some close to mid and mid shots (roughly 0.7m to 1.2m) where I was focusing too close. It’s good to try something new and pictures certainly looked interesting at that distance, but inevitably there were a lot of pictures which didn’t belong anywhere, other than say, a general book on Dhaka.
- Working on sets brings with it it’s own problems. It helps you to decided between what you want to shoot and not, and what you want to choose in an edit. But it’s also very restricting and often doesn’t let you explore other avenues. Today I really shot everything and I was in the flow a lot. But at home, there is the disappointment that most of these photos (even the good ones) won’t be used anywhere.
- Speaking of the flow. It was lovely to be in it today. It took a bit of time to settle into it and it was very dependent on the location. I just wasn’t feeling it in Motijheel. The offices were closed so not much foot traffic around. But moving to Sadarghat bus station made things a little smoother. I started shooting more. Old Dhaka has such a diversity of odd looking people, and streets, and objects. It’s divinely photogenic. And sometimes (but certainly not all the time) that helps.
- Beyond focusing there were other new technical issues today. One was colour. This may seem like a slight thing but I increased the saturation level of Neutral from where I’d set it, at the very bottom, to one click higher. The results were colours that were far more natural, more vibrant, and with a more gradated tone. The colours started talking more, but didn’t out talk each other. I’m always afraid that if I let the colours go, they’ll take over. And it will be a revolution of the proletariat with colours that seem to be there for their own sake. But that doesn’t happen, and even when it does, sometimes it’s nice to have colours for their own sake. I’ll play around with both this new setting and dialling saturation back and keep on comparing images to see what I like. But especially for the headshots, it seems to be working well.
- Another interesting technical move today was dialing down the exposure (to -1.7 or -2.0). In bright sun, with lots of shadows from buildings (especially in the alleys) this created lovely chiaroscuro effect in a lot of the shots that really brought some tension to the fame, some depth, some mystery. I’ll need to play around with it more. I started really disliking the 0.0 exposure compensation shots as too bright, but mostly in darker areas like alleys. On main roads with full sun on the subject no exposure compensation was required. However, I didn’t play around with this too much and will have to do more testing. The shots didn’t come out on the computer as well as they looked in camera. Mainly because there was a lot of blur that shows up when the pictures are bigger. It would be really nice to be able to go clean to 1600, and 3200 would be a dream. I’m not sure a faster lens would help as it reduces DOF and I’m shooting close enough for that to matter a lot.
- Although I took a lot photos through the viewfinder of subjects who knew they were being photographed, there was very little confrontation. It’s unfortunate to say but this is far easier to do in poorer areas where people aren’t used to speaking up for themselves and are left speechless by someone wanting to take a photo of them. In richer neighbourhoods you get more problems.
- There was a weird problem with the camera where the meter wouldn’t read from a second ago. So if I had the camera pointed down when travelling on a bus and then whipped it out to shoot something outside, it would severely blow out the image. But now that I think about it, it could have been me half pressing the shutter as I was bringing it out to shoot.
Why tomorrow will be better
- After getting into the flow (best to use music, and put yourself instantly into a busy environment) start shooting just faces and really building up a cache for that set.
- Shoot at the new colour setting and check results against past shots with previous settings.
- Compensate exposure down when in slightly darker places or getting the blown out and creating more contrast in the shots.
- Push to 1600 when needed and see if the results really do look flat. My biggest fear is that it will produce crapper colours and less range, but maybe that’s unfounded below 1600.
Posted 2 years ago
