Photography – PHOTO BLOG BY SSAYEED

The greatest war photographer: Robert Capa

If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.

The photograph below is named ‘The falling soldier’ which is captured in 1936 by Robert Capa. The photographer was capable to capture the exact moment of a soldier being shot on the head. The photograph definitely depicts the ‘decisive moment’ with the stretched arm and falling rifle in the hand. It is dramatic but portraying the truth.

War does not only contain guns, tanks, and soldiers; war contains ordinary people escaping for life, losing of families, and starving for food. War contains fire, blood, and destruction. After achieving the capability of freezing a scene in a photo paper started the journey of war catering photographers.

Robert Capa, one of the greatest photographers the history has seen if not the best in combat and adventure photography. Born into a Jewish family in Hungary as Endre Ernő Friedmann and died by stepping on a land mine in Vietnam as the greatest war photographer of all time he covered 5 significant wars.

Robert Capa had to flee from Hungary as he was involved in politics from his late teenage. He moved to Vienna first followed by Berlin and eventually reached Paris. Starting as the darkroom assistant of famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Capa aligned his intrinsic urge to tell stories with covering social events and the lives of the middle class. It didn’t take much time for the individual thriving to be in the middle of the Spanish War. He along with his partner Gerda Taro reached Spain at the outset of the war in 1936 as two of the earliest photojournalists there. They worked together to create some of the most iconic images of all time. The photograph below can be the most recognizable photograph to the people named ‘The Falling Soldier’.

If we want to relate to the situation he endured, we have to know how lovable the 35 mm lens was to him. He had to be close enough and succeed to create an impact by bringing out the horrors of the war. He never restrained himself to be in the frontline. Capa has created iconic photos from D-Day landings reaching there with the first wave of American troops. Though he stated that took 106 photos only 11 photographs survived a darkroom accident, which later became known to us as ‘the magnificent eleven’. But his capabilities are being realized with these illustrative shots. The photographs from the series had a profound impact on the people and later being studied.

Robert Capa also covered the Sino-Japanese War, the Indo-China war, and Arab Israel War. His workbook has been proved the monument of endurance, bravery, and mythical capability of exemplifying stories from the most dangerous circumstances humans can see. Yes, he received enough recognition and distinction but that surely wasn’t enough to motivate him to embrace the horror. It’s his perseverance and loyalty to truth, his passion for documenting the miseries of people, and his dedication to bringing the grief and uncertainties in front of us.

He never liked war and wished to be unemployed for a longer duration. But the world is not fair enough to give war photographers ‘leave’.

Photo Tales: It is important to protect our architectural heritage.

This photograph contains a temple located in Panchagar, Bangladesh. This extreme northern region of Bangladesh has been ruled by Pundra, Gupta, Paal, Sen, and Muslims previously. Different architectural beauties have been built by them over centuries in the land.As a part of village centric system for decades, religious structures were a significant part of that society. In Bangladesh, we do have plenty of Mosques, Temples, and Monasteries spread all over its lands. This particular temple in the photograph is one of them from an unknown time. Are we enough serious about protecting this precious heritage that we have?

Bangladesh is fortunate enough to accommodate a variety of architectural monuments from a wide array of times. Our culture also has vibrant inputs. Cultural artifacts may not hold tangible benefits, which is a significant factor to be considered in a developing state. We may not effort to take enough protective measures needed to preserve this heritage. We should remember how this resource can’t be found again as it left as the last sign of the time.

Culture is the most distinctive thing to pass to the next generation as a nation. Elements of our culture hold the identity we shared and the elaboration or transition we made through time. We lost most of the things from a time lived by others in the past. But these elements are needed to delineate our folklore, trends, and beliefs. It is the story we collect from the past which resonates with our present. Architecture and public space designs are essential parts to describe a city. This is true no matter how big or small the building is.

Feilden defines the cultural heritage by making the architectural heritage an important part of it, because it is “the physical image and material embodiment of unique human components in which man is the basis of creation, creativity, and production”

Additionally, the importance of having experience with the physical expression of past generations is significant. Urbanization may run fast with time but since the ruins or buildings can’t be separated, urban conservation is what we seek. Population growth is going to expand contemporary cities. We as a nation or as humankind are going to prioritize gentrification in every corner eventually. So, the adoption of policies that are conservative toward these structures should be taken.

Preservation can be done by educating people living there about the essence and the intensity of these components. People are habituating there have been with these for generations and they can be the best to take responsibility for little fragments that can’t be monitored in a centralized way. They’ve been holding these, they don’t have any intention to destroy them. We just have to enlighten them with proper ways to clarify the delicacy.

Documentation of the existing heritage is needed. In this digital era, documentation is easy and it can help a lot. Technological advancement can assist us in protecting documents that can at least be used to have insight. Researchers and experts on this field is already there definitely and let’s hope for the best.

PHOTOSERIES_Chingmrong Sangrai.

The PHOTOSERIES is about the Sangrai Festival happens on Chitmorom, Kaptai.

The meaning of ‘Sangrai’ is ‘Year Changes’ in English. Bangladeshi Marma and Rakhine groups celebrate this day as one of the main festivals of them. The calendar of the Marmas is called “Mraima Sakraoy”. The Marmaras observe Sangrai as a total of three days, including the last two days of the old year and the first day of the new year.

Sangrai actually means saying goodbye to a year and welcoming a new one. Traditionally the ‘Jhum’ farming session also begins with this calendar opening. Marmas also do not get married after the ‘Maghi Full Moon’ until Sangrai. Which portrays Sangrai as a new beginning by throwing away all old things.

The festival continues for three days. On the very first day, people cleans their house premises and decorate with flowers. According to Marma belief, the Sangrai goddess comes on earth on this day. People also go to ‘Bihar’ on this day to praise Buddha.The second and third day includes traditional sports, cultural programmes and water festival.

The main attraction of Sangrai is the water sport called Marmara “Ri Long Poye”. This water sports festival is held on the last day of Sangrai festival. Sangrai water sports are performed not only by the Marmas, but also by the Dai tribes of Southeast Asia, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and China in mid-April. In Myanmar, such events are called “Thingon” and in Thailand and Laos this ceremony is called “Sankran”. To perform the ritual, people wish for a prosperous and trouble free year ahead.

The festival has catered some modern day entertainment like concerts also nowadays. It’s all about celebration and welcoming a new year with the expectations and prayers for good things.

Urban People

Equality has never been tried to be achieved. This is something never comes up in the royal mansions. That’s true for every nation, country, and society. Prioritization occurs and that frames out poor. People on the command have never been kind to the poor in the world. Rehabilitation, steps for making them achieve a life with basics, making policies that benefit them is going to be ignored for years. Because they never talk. And why do they never talk? Because we don’t wanna listen.

In this era of the digital world, the voice may not be heard if not put in our zone. We are stuck in between problems that come up as rational voices. Why don’t we become the voice of those who always have feared to be included and merged?

Photo By: Ssayeed Bin Mohiuddin

PHOTOSERIES_YOU CANT REACH THEM

This photos are taken from the outside of the Central Jail in Chittagong. This series contains photos which shows how people try to communicate with the prisoners. They stay outside, try to do a phone call sometimes.

In this photo series, I’ve tried to capture the moments in which people are trying to find out their relatives in the jail window. Sometimes, they can make a phone call. When taking over cellular, they often can see the prisoner for a moment from a distant view. You can see in the photos how distant the buildings are.

A man standing upon a truck to see a bit inside

Maybe he was having the chance to see the face a bit.

How high do we jump when we badly want to do something?

Three men were exchanging words when waiting for the same purpose.

I am not sure about him. I think he was there to deal with these bags he was sitting in.

The photo has two scenes. The man here in the front and the baby with her mom in the back.

It’s pretty dangerous to touch this high volt electric wires. But anxiety fades away cautiousness.

This a portion of the huge area. I think this to some extent portrays the reference for the height and distance. They were standing on the roof of a truck.

This one is pretty depressing. Hope they can overcome the situation with positives.

All the shots are taken on Fujifilm xt10 with the 18-55 f/2.8-4 lens on. The scenes are from the afternoon.

All about Pizza

Recently I’ve done a photoshoot in a restaurant for their online promotion. I have covered a variety of items. Pizza is something very common in restaurants. This Italian dish has taken a place in the urban of South Asia also. I am going to showcase the photos from that particular shot. But let’s make this interesting a bit. How about talking few words about pizza before sharing the setups and all.

In Sardinia, French and Italian archaeologists have found bread baked over 7,000 years ago. Flatbread with toppings has been served since antiquity. But the modern birthplace of pizza is southwestern Italy’s Campania region, home to the city of Naples. Naples in the 1700s and early 1800s was a thriving waterfront city. Technically an independent kingdom.These Neapolitans required inexpensive food that could be consumed quickly. Pizza—flatbreads with various toppings, eaten for any meal and sold by street vendors or informal restaurants met this need.

The largest pizza chain in the world is probably Domino’s followed by Pizza Hut and Little Caesars. Pizza toppings now a days can be varied from pepperoni to pineapple. According to many data, Pepperoni is the most favourite toppings of all time.

I have used my Canon 5D mark iii with a Canon 24-70 mm 2.8 mark ii lens in this shoot. This lens supports very well in food photography. If you want to make a frame with lots of props and a wide space this supports you. Also when you want a crisp and detailed image, this gives you those particular perfect shots. I have used a godox LED as the key light. I wanted some shades and overall dark images, so only have used one LED.

Historic Photograph and The Photographer: Cotton Mill Girl

This photograph below is part of a series that implied a significant event in history. The photographer behind these photos was Lewis Hine, an individual who worked enormously for social changes with photography as the tool.

Lewis Hine caption: Sadie Pfeifer, 48 inches high, has worked half a year. One of the many small children at work in Lancaster Cotton Mills. Nov. 30, 1908. Location: Lancaster, South Carolina.

This particular photo contains a young girl wearing a worn dress stands beside a cotton loom in the factory where she works. Why this scene is pretty significant? After the industrial revolution, America has faced an increasing demand for cheap labor. Children from underprivileged families are considered as options and sometimes as a better alternative because they demand considerably less. The inclusion of children in this dangerous work was there, but no one had cared about this until someone came up with the visuals of that situation. He photographed not only this girl but also children in Cole Mines of Pennsylvania,Tobacco pickers in Kentucky,labours in Louisiana and young news boys all over the country. Hine introduced middle-class America to the ugly truth about children’s working conditions and the concept of children working in this dangerous sectors.

If we analyse the photos of Hine,he always put focus on the subject. In this case, we are seeing a girl in front of a big swing machine, we are seeing an women behind the children. But we never been distracted from the little girl. The scene was there but circling around the girl. Hine always used shallow depth of field, which creates a blurry surroundings. We see this practice in many of his photos. He used fine symmetry in this photo also. The machine is remarkably big and endless compared to the girl. Hine’s narrow focus always stuck around the main subject. Moreover, Hine practiced several other factors when taking a photo. We can notice adults in some photos even supervising the children. This indicated how ignorant the fact was at that time. Everyone knew this was happening but no one ever responded.

John Howell, a newsboy in Indianapolis. Starts work at 6 AM and is $0.75 some days.

Hine took over 5000 photos about the child labor force and documented them with sufficient information in his notebook. We see different scenes with the same terrifying factors. He was hired by the National Child Labor committee in 1908 for recording the situation on child labor. He sometimes was not allowed to mills and waited outside and took pictures of workers coming in and going out. Sometimes the workers were willing to pose for a portrait and talk a bit about their wage, working conditions, and struggles.

Little Lottie, a regular oyster shucker in Alabama Canning Co. Bayou La Batre,Alabama 1911.

We have seen how Hine’s activism with photographs made a change in the status quo about child labor. Hine’s searing images of those children remade the public perception of child labor and inspired the laws to ban it. The problem was severe. Because at the time, many believed the practice had substantial benefits. Youths could learn the value of hard work. Businesses could increase their productivity and decrease the hourly pay. Parents could depend on their children to support the family, meaning the adults could work less or not at all. Hine’s photos showed the price for this benefit. Everyone was given clarity about the trade-off these children are taking. Hine also has given information with the photos, which played a great contribution. He walked into the mills in the disguise of a Bible salesman or some others. He kept estimating the children’s age by measuring their height. This is what he has bitten for doing this.

The Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law that would prohibit most employment of minors, wasn’t passed until 1938. Hine died two years later — long before his work would be recognized for the impact it had.

Lewis Wickes Hine was born on September 26, 1874. He was an American Photographer and Sociologist. Hine himself has faced financial instabilities when his father died. He started working in a furniture upholstery factory;13 hours a day, six days a week. He then gathered money to attend college. He studied Sociology and became a teacher at New York City Ethical Culture School. Hine led his sociology classes to Ellis Island in New York Harbour, photographing the thousands of immigrants who arrived each day. Between 1904 and 1909, Hine took over 200 plates (photographs) and came to the realization that documentary photography could be employed as a tool for social change and reform.

Documenting events is easier these days with many facilities, gears and could convenience in work. But Lewis Hine has shown us how to bring change in the worst situation possible. He later also worked on several other projects which are remarkable also. You can check his photo of the ‘Empire State Building’ (1930).

Historic Photograph and The Photographer: ‘Man Jumping the Puddle’

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.“

— Henri Cartier-Bresson

This photograph below is ‘Man Jumping the Puddle‘ also known as ‘Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare‘ . It is one of the most influential and discussed photos of the world. Like the photograph, the photographer behind this is also significant in the history of photography. If we want to comprehend the deep understanding behind this 1932 photograph, we have to take a tour into the life of Henri Cartier-Bresson first.

Henry Cartier-Bresson was a renowned French Humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography. He pioneered the genre of Street Photography. He viewed photography as capturing a ‘Decisive Moment’. What does that mean? We fear, we can explain that properly but let’s have a try.

Wait wait. Just let us write this first.

Cartier-Bresson has started as a painter the beginning. In 1927 Cartier-Bresson entered a private art school and the Lhote Academy, the Parisian studio of Cubist painter and sculptor Andre Lhote. Although Cartier-Bresson became frustrated with Lhote’s “rule-laden” approach to art, the rigorous theoretical training later helped him identify and resolve problems of artistic form and composition in photography. He joined University of Cambridge in 1929 to study literature and painting.

As a boy, Cartier-Bresson had been initiated into the mysteries of the simple “Brownie” snapshot camera. But his first serious concern with the medium occurred about 1930, after seeing the work of two major 20th-century photographers, Eugène Atget and Man Ray. Making use of a small allowance, he traveled to Africa in 1931, where he lived in the bush, recording his experiences with a miniature camera.

The most well-known photographic concept attached to Cartier-Bresson is, of course, the idea of the decisive moment. With this one image from 1932 he taught us that if one captures a subject at precisely the right instant, one can shatter normal life to retrieve a transcending moment. The meaning of “decisive moment” seems self-evident from this picture. The timing, the composition, the totality of the picture, an ordinary moment transcribed as a complete statement. It is at once obvious and marvelous, an act of description and a small revelation.

The idea of Decisive Moment was introduced illustratively in his book in 1952. But every single picture of Henri just indicates the idea so very much. We can look at some other pictures by him to understand better.

According to him, the Decisive Moment occurs when the visual and psychological elements of people in a real-life scene spontaneously and briefly come together in perfect resonance to express the essence of that situation. Some people believe that the unique purpose of photography, as compared to other visual arts, is to capture this fleeting, quintessential, and holistic instant in the flow of life.

Regardless of knowing how much time the photographer waited for the scene to be staged, we know about the scarcity of this to be captured in a photograph. Cartier-Bresson has done this job for thousand times maybe. He has implemented his impressions very flawlessly. His photographs are truly very explicit portrayals of Decisive Moment.

So we can have a look at the mentioned image now and realize the depth of Cartier-Bresson’s idea. We see the perfection in the picture. How the reflection of the man is so precise about the position of the focal subject. We understand the uncertainty and the candidness of the scene by observing the details. The feet are about to touch the water, the whole reflection of the man is shown, a man is standing behind the fence, objects in the water amplify the horizontal depth of the surface and the man is just about to exit the frame. According to Cartier-Bresson, the background is every bit as important as the subject. It doesn’t provide a harmony, but rather, its melody — one that competes in a way that turns the result into something transcending. The photograph is a wholesome experience of not only seeing but also living the scene.

Today the “decisive moment” occupies a unique position in photography. The concept, as it has been construed and adopted, has informed an often positivistic faith in straight photography. At its most useful it’s a recognition of the photographer’s subjective act of witnessing, the basis of documentary photography and photojournalism. This form of straight photography falls in and out of favor in fine art photography contexts, partly because it is so resolutely modern in its notions of visibility and the forms of truth on which it relies, and which it professes to verify.

“Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.”

–Henri Cartier-Bresson

References:

Wikipedia

Brittanica.com

lubowphotography.com

truecenterpublishing.com

Fraction Magazine

Photo Tale (2)

In this segment, I will be writing about one photo each post. What’s the purpose? Nothing specific, I just want it to be documented. This may help someone to understand settings, framings, etc, if not then I just want to remember the memories for years.

This photo says for itself. It’s a portrait I have taken at a birthday party of a girl who was maybe 3 years old then. I was appointed to cover the whole event. As usual, I have taken shots of the venue, decorations, portraits, and mostly candids. The event was cheerfully complete with children and their activities. I always loved shooting in such an environment. An event full of bright colorful props, delicious chocolates, pastries, laughing, crying, complaining, running, and full of energetic little souls.

This photo portrays the bond between a father and a daughter. I have thought about how amazing the experience is for the girl. She may not remember the day at the age of 18 but definitely, it’s a present she had enjoyed.

I always try to use ambient light on a candid. But as the light setup was ready facing on the stage, I had the chance to capture some moments without preparation and attention from the subject. The shot was taken with Canon EOS 5D Mark iii with a Canon 24-70 mm 2.8 mark ii lens. Godox octa and a Godox flash are used as lights. The restaurant had a yellowish light overall, so got this unwanted highlight. But never gonna miss the chance for this little error.