Day 15

Sunday was funday, and did a little different that I tried few months back for my college assignment.
Strobist info: Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D @ f/2, 1/30 sec. ISO 400, Nikon SB600 @ 1/64th power from camera right snooted and diffused, triggered via Cactus V2. Camera on tripod and controlled via laptop.

Day14

We had our classes for Industrial Photography. It was awesome. I was a little tired after I came back. I shot this in the morning before I left for college. I stood beside the window, and focused on the grill with manual focus. Camera was on self-timer.

Day 13

I went to Avalanche lake today again with one of my local friends Shatir and his cousins. Shot this there itself with the falling daylight. It was awesome going to that place when the lake shrunk to 1/4 of its size due to summer heat. This lake is fed by the rain water and is one of the reservoir of rain water harvesting project in Nilgiris.

Day 12

It was a crazy day, entire day I roamed around and shot only few photos, mostly went through those alleys and those old places I used to go in first 2-3 months. I loved it. This was taken inside a Pizza corner (Domino's Pizza) with the ambient light only.

Day 11

Today din't shoot much, however in the evening out for a dinner with two of my friends from Colombia. They are teachers there and came to Ooty for a backpacker-holiday. I shot this under the street light. Exif is pretty much same. It is a handheld shot and I got correct after three trials.

Day 10

I tried some splash shots inside a fish tank today. Learned a lot and had a 50% success. What can I say, I miss my Vivitar flash. Had trouble managing light for this shot. Also couldn't get clean water so the water in shots don't look good. After I was done I as usual did my today's blog post. This was taken against a yellow wall inside my living room.

strobist info: Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8 @ f/2.8, 1/200sec. ISO100, Nikon SB600 @1/4th power softboxed (2X2 ft.) camera right 5 ft. away from me on a tripod triggered via Cactus V2. Camera on manual focus preset and got it correct after 5 trails (I am getting better).

Day 9

It was busier than I thought and I couldn't even some get time-off to have a decent dinner. Somehow grabbed some bite before I started working on my photos, and I know that its gonna be really late today. Also not keeping well as my stomach is giving me troubles. I was shooting some table-tops with my strobist setup and after I was done shooting some pizza (done eating as well), I shot this for my today's post. Its pretty neat setup and I like to use it for mostly my table-tops and high-key portraits. However, it is not a high-key here.

Strobist info: Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8 @ f/4, 1/200sec., ISO 100. Nikon SB600 @1/4th power, bare flash behind a light panel (4 ft. away from me) of 4X2 ft. (made with Gateway/drafting paper, 2.5ft. away from me) from camera right triggered with Cactus V2 . My small Suntax flash from camera left pointed towards a silver reflector which was 2ft. away from me (read an exposure of f/2.2) triggered with an optical slave. The background and base is white chart paper with thier matte side facing towards the camera. Camera was on timer, setup on a tripod with manual preset focus on the edge of the glass.

Day 8

This was really busy day for me. I was photographing for my college assignment, which later I will also include in my strobist project. Shot a vodka bottle (local Indian brand called Magic Moments) with martini glass, then splash with grapes. Then shot dark-chocolate biscuits and at the length 7up small cans (In India they call it mycan). I am not done with the splash of the cans, need some things to finish it off. In between I took this shot of mine with simple window light standing in front of my toilet mirror. Setup is the simpler than the simplest one, so not even bothering myself to explain it.

Exif: Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8 @ f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO 100 autofocus in live view.

Day 7

Just a regular day for me. Lotta work and photographing for my ongoing other project on ooty. I need to finish it before I leave Ooty permanently.

The strobist info is almost same as the Day 3, so am not posting it. If anyone wants it, you can write to me.

Day 6

This was my worst day so far since I started the project. I had lots things not working well since morning, on location I started shooting and my vivitar 285 stopped working. It happened before as well but din't pay heed to it and today had to suffer the consequences. During that hussle lost a lot of window of light fall off. Then dad called to let me know that mother is not keeping well and diagnosed with stones in gallbladder, so has to get that operated. Whoa!!!! man I couldn't think much ahead of what I shot and ended the shoot in midway. So today you have to bear with a little shitty photo. This is a deserted building off Garden road, Ooty where we went several times during our assignments' shoot.

Strobist info: Nikkor AF 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G @ 24mm & f/8, Nikon SB600 @ 1/16th power from 6 ft. away from me camera right, ISO400. Triggered via Cactus V2. Lower part of the background was lit with Suntax flash with a yellow gel. Camera on manfrotto 5 ft. away from me. I took another exposure without changing the camera and SB600's position. I added one yellow diffuser gel on the SB600 and @ 1/4 -.7 power. Then I replaced the background (the wooden panel behind me) in PS CS5.

Day 5

This was the day for my shoes. I bought a new pair of Lotto snickers and thought of taking some pictures of that in my living room only. Set up my camera and SB600 with a 1X1 ft. foldable softbox and started shooting. I ended up using my small Suntax flash (GN 30 ft.) bouncing off the white ceiling. I mostly did some selective focusing keeping the logo in focus, because as they say "Brandname should always visible in any product shot".

I then started my daily take of self-portrait. I went with the setup that I used about 6-7 months to shoot one of my assignments for Lighting class. I think those techniques come real handy when you want to do some shots real quick. I used the wooden blocks with glass on the side of my living room's sofa (which is my throne and on which 'am currently sitting on which with 6 coushions watching Pink Panther-2 and posting my blog) to create light coming through the window pane kind of situation. I used the same 1X1 ft. softbox and an extra diffusion to get a small but soft lightsource kind of effect.

strobist info: Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D @ f.2.8 Nikon SB600 @ 1/8th power and 50mm zoom settings. Camera connected with laptop with Nikon control pro 2 and with Liveview on set the focus.

Day 4

I have been to college today for some practice shots i wanted to try on one of my friends' brother. That boy helped me with my self-portrait yesterday near the mag shop. We got some good shots mixing the ambient, sunlight and my Nikon SB600. This shot was done inside my college campus near the Studio-10. The back ground is the earthen terracotta grills and through it the outside valley can be seen. I am surely looking like a good here and it should be, because I was dead tired (actually both of us were) after walking up and down for 4 hours. I let some ambient light visible so that the right side of my face should no go completely dark.

Strobist info: Nikkor 50mm f/2.8, 1/80 sec. ISO 200, Nikon SB600 @ 1/16 (- 0.3 compensation) power, 50mm zoom setting with a 2X2 soft box from camera right 4 ft. away from the subject. A cutter was setup beside the flash to block the light falling on the background. Distance between me and the background was almost 7 ft. Camera on autofocus (I could click the sutter release myself because I was as close as 2.5 ft. away from the camera) and I managed to get a focus point reset on my right eye after 6-7 trials, Yahoo!!!!

Day 3

This is the third day and I have decided before the start of the day that I will do a street shot around the magazine shop at commercial road (its the busiest road in Ooty, especially during summer). So I went out and on the way two local friends of mine saw me and accopanied me for the shoot. They were highly enthusiastic and Shatir wanted to click for me when he heard me saying that I am going to take my own photo. Then I explained that it has to be a self-portrait and has to be clicked my me only.

So then I went to the location and setup the camera and the Nikon SB600 with the cactus V2 receiver. We tried few shots woth preset manual focusing, however, I wanted some more light so setup my tiny suntax (local 15 year year old Indian brand and I bought it for some $10 has a GN of 30 ft.) flash with an optical slave (because the cactus doesn't work with that) with a yellow gel for sort of dimension lighting. I got the final shot after almost 10-12 trials.

Here's the strobist info:Lens Nikkor 50mm f/2.8, 1/50 sec., ISO-400, Nikon SB600 @ 1/32 power and 85mm zoom with a 2X2 inch soft box on it, 5 ft. from away from the subject, camera left. Suntax (unfortunately it has only one power mode) with a 3 layer of duffusion (to cut down the light) and yellow gel 3 ft. away from camera right.

Day 2

This is Day 2, and I got caught up in some real hecking stuffs, so couldn't get back to the location I selected for my today's shot. While coming back home I got this idea of taking few photos in my room only. Both the shots were taken used portable flash (Nikon SB600) only. I am giving too many excuses for not going out some place else to shoot, but I promise I will tomorrow go somewhere to shoot. :)

Strobist info: Left side-Shot with my 50mm, f/2.8, shutter 1/80 sec. and ISO 100 with my Nikon SB600 at @ 1/64 power @ 70mm, with a yellow diffusion filter around 1 ft above subject/camera. Right side-Shot with my 50mm, f/5.6, shutter 1/200 sec. and ISO 100 with my Nikon SB600 @ 1/4 power @ 50mm, with a yellow diffusion filter standing 3 ft away from subject and 90 degree camera left.

Settings are pretty simple. For the photo on the left, I used my camera tripod to mount the flash on the top of the camera, almost a 90 degree top light settings. Used a yellow gel to get a raw yellow tint like the actual bulb top of my room's mirror. Triggered with Cactus V2. I used auto-focus and guessed the focal point and took about a dozen shots, out of which I liked this one. For the photo on the right setup is almost the same, but first I changed the light to give a skimming effect on my face and I used my laptop tethering to set the focus point and shot with the Live-View on.

Day 1

This is the first day of my 'The 365 Project'. I planned to do it as a self portrait session. I started this today as its the begining of the month, and Labour's Day as well. Since I love strobist portraits, hence I tried few and this one is that I chose. It was as usual a pretty darn boring Sunday with gloomy weather and rain during the early evening. I tried going out to take some photos, but all in vain. So I went up to my apartment's terrace and the sky was perfect for this shot. Took a few exposure and voila! this is what I got.

Setup is pretty simple. Shot with my 24-120 zoom @ 35mm, f/4, shutter 1/50 sec. and ISO 100 with my vivitar 285HV at @ full power @ Tele mode, with a diffusion filter from 9 ft away from the subject camera right. Manual focus by distance tracker on the lens, 10 sec. timer setting, flash triggered by cactus radio trigger.

Behind the scene

Hello there this is an informal intro to my blog and about what I am and what I do. I am a professional photographer from Calcutta, India. I work freelance and accept assignments on corporate, industrial and interior photography. I love documentary and strobist photography. My purpose of this blog is to take a self-portrait everyday using different technique and explain the idea and technique behind it. The specialty of this project is, it has two self-imposed restrictions, one-I will use only small flahsguns for strobes (which is called strobist technique) and second-I will not use a typical studio but in some photos will try to create an environment of a studio. I believe that this will help me a lot to improve my style, technique and aesthetics (because I have to figure out new ways of making the same darn face look special every freaking day).

I use very simple gears (that's what call them, but believe me none of them comes inexpensive) and try to travel light (but always end up carrying 3 to 4 heavy bags).

I have these things:

• Nikon D700 (with a MB-D10 battery pack).



• Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D.
  


• Nikkor AF-S 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IF



• Sekonic L308s light meter (its a basic one and works for pretty much all my needs).



• Nikon SB-600



• Vivitar 285HV
  


• Some small inexpensive flashes.



• 4X4 inch, 24X24 inch and 36X36 inch soft boxes.



• Colour gels for the flash guns.
  


• 30 inch and 42 inch diffuser and bounce umbrella and brackets to attach them to tripods/light stands.



• Lots of sync chords.



• Cactus V2 radio trigger and receivers.



• Manfrotto 055x PROB tripod and 498 RC2 ballhead.



• Some inexpensive light stands and tripods for my lights.



• Lowepro Prorunner 350AW and Toploader zoom carriers.



• And lots of other stuffs not worth mentioning here.