Muhib

Our apartment is becoming a campus hot spot for Bangladeshi students. The other day, Muhib came for some studying. And I got the chance for some experiments.

The photo was taken using a DIY grid on my SB-25. The flash was triggered by cactus V4 and it was positioned on a table to camera right.

Here is the actual image-

After post processing the photo becomes this-

Muhib does not have any profile picture in facebook. So I sent this photo to him to use as one.

This photo was a achievement for me in a sense that, the final result was what I exactly wanted. I wanted a black and white photo, where light was falling from one side and other side has shadows but not completely dark so that the eye and some of the features of the face can be seen.

Arefin

Arefin was facing some problem with his Java programming class. So he came to Raquib to solve the problems. So when he entered our room, he noticed that there was box type of thing with lots of plastic straws glued into it. It was the DIY Grid I made some days ago. Naturally he asked me what it is and I showed him what it is. This lead to an impromptu photo shoot.

After several shots, I changed the settings and told him to look down. The resultant shot was this-

ISO: 400
Exposure: 1/200 sec
Aperture: 13.0
Focal Length: 85mm

Everything considered, this was a less than okay shot. So I had to use photoshop to make it more interesting.

I opened the raw file in photoshop and increased the aperture, contrast, clarity and vibrance. Also changed the white balance. Then transfered it to photoshop. There cropped it using 4:5 ratio. Then duplicated the layer and applied screen from blending mode. Here is the result-

Still I was not satisfied. So duplicated the screened layer again. And applied some Gaussian blur, changed blending mode to overlay and set the opacity to around 40%.

I liked what I saw. And thats about it.

DIY Black Straws Grid

Today I finished a DIY Grid for my SB-25. Actually I started it a few days ago. But I ran out of the straws and had to collect more straws. I took help from this site for making this grid. Instead of black straws, I used the thinner straws I found in UTD Student Union coffee corner. These straws are used to stir the coffee. Here is a picture of a piece of a straw used-

I used a Quick Dry Adhesive by 3M for holding all the pieces together. Here is a photo of that one-

The grid itself is not yet finished. After the glue is dried, I shall try to finish it. There is some gaps in the grid that I need to fill. If I can fill the gaps with the available straws, then I will upload another photo of that one. In the mean time here are some other photos of the unfinished grid-

One word of caution, try to build the whole thing in one go. Don't stop at the middle of the process and start again. Because the glue will be dried then and it will hamper the placement of the straws. And also collect as many straws as possible. Don't be shy. In most the places they are free.