Sikandarpur Market
One of my favourite things to do is to gently walk into the lives of people on their streets.
I wandered into Sikandarpur Market, on a hot Saturday afternoon, with my 50 mm lens and speedlite with a Gary Fong lightsphere attachment – I was on a mission to find people willing to be photographed. The language barrier, the colour of my skin, the strange way that I dress and the camera slung over my shoulder did not dampen their welcoming warmth and willingness to share themselves.
I have been trying different approaches to lighting dark eyes in the harsh light conditions of an Indian afternoon sun. Today I found a beautiful soft light solution in this combination of my speedlite stopped down to create fill light and the Gary Fong diffuser to mute any garish effects that can result from using on camera flash. I wanted the boost of adding light without disrupting the natural setting of these people going about their business. My intention was to keep the environment looking natural while adding light to bring up the faces. Here are two of my favourite images from this day.
Even if you are not shooting Canon check out this link Getting The Most Out Of Canon Speedlites for a wealth of information about on and off camera flash, how and when to use them, and Syl Arena’s favourite modifiers.
Check out the two links (click on the bold italics) in this post and let me know if you found them as useful as I did.
Places to go, people to see:
- Gary Fong lightsphere
- Syl Arenas Blog on Light & Image making, Getting the most out of Canon Speedlites
Lighting at the End of the Tunnel 