Weekend in Madrid

Not too bad, little more than a week since my last post, during which plenty has happened. I spent the weekend in madrid. A feat which turned out to be a very full and tiring weekend. The trip began on friday during which we took a long arduous journey by car from Malaga in the early morn to madrid. I slept during most of this trip. I spent the day just chilling with my cousin and moving around the high street.

The big day though was Saturday. It began with a ridiculously early rise at 6 am, to meet my fellow photographer Hitesh (aka hitkaiser (www.hitkaiser.com)) as you can see in the picture down below



And if you are asking what in dear God's name am I doing up at such an ungodly hour. Well on this very day there was in fact a classic motorbike tour, begining in the little town of barajas between the two madrid terminals of the Barajas airport. ( I was told people there complain about the high noise levels...hmmm). And so we began our fruitfull morning. photographing the various antique wonders and their owners, BUT not before having a fulfilling breakfast at a nearby bar where I managed to capture this lovely little Image.



Once our bellies were full, and our heads caffeinated we then proceded to snap away...





Of course, after morning of intense shooting, the day would be far from over. After separating ourselves from the rest of hitkaisers army of photographers, He, my brother and I proceded towards the jewellry/gift fair to meet our families, hunt for a camera store and theoretically rest up for the long night ahead. Unfortunately this day created an incessant hatred for madrid as I had to run back and forth throughout the city hunting for an open camera store to purchase a charger for my camera, which after having found one in FNAC turned out to be completely useless, ending up with me returning to the venue to find 40 minute queues and thus me endng up having to buy yet ANOTHER charger from el Corte Ingles.

and so the day continued with nighfall bringing madrid's Noche en Blanco, a festive event where the citie's galleries and museum are open all night and the major landmarks are dressed up by famous artists.

just like this field in principe pio turned into a garden of light



I of course also used this oportunity to work on my night photography :)

Manhattan Skyline

Manhattan Skyline
Originally uploaded by sbalani

So after a long absence travelling, working and whatnot, i'm back. I'm currently involved in various projects, and as usual my attempts to be a daily blogger (which is actually harder than it seems)

As I mentioned I have recently been travelling around, but for the most part Its been in the USA. This year I had the oportunity to visit New York, and Los Angeles for the first time, which I of course loved, and cherished every opportunity to work on my photography.

New York was an incredible city to visit. It certainly surpassed all of my own expectations of what the city would look like or be. You see so much of New York in the movies, magazines, Times Square, etc. But its still always that much more when you see it in person. Ive always thought it would be a city similar to that of london, and in some ways it is. And yet so Incredibly different



What I particularly liked about New York was the gridlocked system of the streets making it easy and quick to move around, yet at the same time it creates a certain confusion as to which way you have to head. In Comparison, London or almost any European city for that matter is usually just a mess of streets and lane's giving one a completely differnet experience making it that much easier to get lost and find interesting little nooks and crannies.

Alex Jewellry Shoot

Alex Jewellry Shoot-8
Originally uploaded by sbalani

So I did a photo shoot a while back, loong before I went to my USA trip Got lots of pics of those to put up.

bright idea

bright idea
Originally uploaded by sbalani

So im back! after a once again long absence on the blog (due to intense busyness) im back! and blogging from Los Angeles! This picture was actually taken from my hotel in NY! i loved the lightbulbs in the bathroom, they were a little bit a la hollyoood dressing room, but not bright enough. they also reminded me of the lightbulb that usually appears above someones head when they have a bright idea :D. So i took a whole load of pics, you never know when they might be usefull to cut out and paste on top of someones head :)

Wet ´n´wild

I´m sure many a photographer out there has gone the extra length to get that image they so desperately want to have just right, wether its trekking through rain, hail, sleet and snow in alaska to caputre polar bears, or hanging upside down from a lamp post so that your subject is not framed by other people taller than you when youre hundreds of meters away, or running around avoiding local security and attempting to setup, shoot and take down an on location fashion shoot before they return, a true photographer will do what me must for that image.

Although my stories dont quite compare, i think beeing chest deep in the sea, in one hand my flash gun, wrapped around my neck so that i can support my telephoto lens and camera on my elbow to shoot shoot and light my model on some rocks in the sea deffinetly constitues as a dangerous adventure!

Of course most people at this point start thinking what kind of a nutjob runs into the sea with over a thousand dollars worth of equipment. Well my only answer to that would be a photographer. And for the most part, if things go as planned (or even if they dont) the pictures that end up as a result of the shoot will have any photographer tell you that the risks are always worth the picture.

(i´m still processing the pictures i took on the rock, but i will deff include one in my next post.)



The picture below was another one that i took on the beach, however there was an old house nearby with some interesting grafiti which i thought would contrast well with the outfit my model had chosen, although more details on that in my next post)

And as for the lighting the top image was natural light from teh rising sun (this shot was done at 8am)

and the one below i had a canon flash right next to the model camera right

and a flash next to me camera left toned down to just complemetn the natural light as fill.

updates updates updates...

So even though i have been doing photography, and posting up a couple on things on flickr my general workflow has been stuck at a bottleneck in attempting to get my website LIVE and working. I think ive more or less got it spot on. For those of you who are interested it can be found at

www.sbalaniphotography.com

The main page is a basic portfolio page with two albums, one of my fashion and art pictures and another for my travel images. However that is only temporary as i may be expanding the albums into more mini albums with more pictures, or scrapping the whole system altogether for a flash one. Aditionally this blog will also cease to be its own seperate entity and will be incorporated into the sbalaniphotograhpy website, however the pandamonium-arts url will be forwarded to its new home when it moves.

As many of you also know it was recently the WWCD 08 where the IPHONE 3G was announced along with OSX SNOW LEOPARD, however i wont bore you with the details since various other blogs such as Engadget have written extensively about it, and you can even watch it on the apple site.

However! enough about the tech talk! on teh next post i will be talking about my latest escapade "cough cough" i mean photoshoot! Which i think is by far my best one yet!

Photoshoot in Hyde Park

Jenny Nandwani Nature-58
Originally uploaded by sbalani

So this shot right here is one of my fave's of all the ones ive uploaded so far. I just love the lighting, pose framing, colour! everything about it! Of course now when i look at it I also think of 20 different ways i could have taken the image, different lighting scenarios, different camera angles, etc. and even though this was my first shoot outdoors, in the sun, and was suppossed to be an educational venture into high speed flash photography, I still managed to be reminded of how a simple change of angle or lighting can alter a scene completley despite the model not having moved at all.

Now, as I mentioned earlier shooting in Hyde Park was EXTREMELY experimental for me. I not only had to account for the flash, but in addition i also had to account for the natural light from the sun. In most situation sthe sun would have overpowered my meager flashes (if any of you follow the strobist youll see the lovely setup that Joe Mcnally had for just ONE directional light so as to overpower the sun. Thankfully it was evenign and overcast when i did my shoot, which as like Mcnally says, just makes one very big diffused light! :D. So attempting to use that as my fill in light, i attempted to place my other flashes accordingly to light up the scenes and VOILA!

P.S I also learned another valuable lesson which mcnally emphasizes OVER AND OVER in "the moment it clicks" WEIGH DOWN YOUR STANDS! even the smallest breeze will wreck chaos on your equipment (it was such a teeny weeny breeze taht knocked over my stand and totally killed one of my brollies! :( thankfully it was the cheap one.....i think...)

well hope you enjoyed today's post :) as usual, the rest of my images can be accessed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbalani/sets/