During year 1965, there was a friend of my elder brother, used to visit my house and talk about Philosophy, Spirituality and Politics. With fascination I used to listen to him. But his one remark reduced my respect towards him at that young age. He used to read all books in his toilet and there he is to form his opinion about any subject. Then I came to know he had Photo Studio, he had been to UK to learn Photography.
I asked his permission to be his assistant for free, a helper boy in the dark room and carry the equipment on locations. My photography fascination developed by working on his Twin lens Rolleiflex camera, but reduced when I came to know the money involved in photo equipment was beyond my reach in near future and did not want to remain as helper.
In year 1977 when I was in Iran, there was an engineer working in the same company with me, stopped me to touch his Nikon F3 camera. His objection was not at all wrong. But his comment “try to save money and buy your own camera.” That made me serious to buy an affordable camera. After two months I could buy a 35 mm format Chinon SLR with 55 mm standard lens. Every week I used to finish 3 rolls of 36 frame film. I used to do lot of testing for Shutter speed, Aperture, ASA, Lighting, Object framing, use of flash, effects of various exposure on any selected subject. Six months past, people around me started asking my advice on photography and devices.
I joined ICS,UK correspondence course for photography to have a certificate. I spent thousands of dollars on buying photography and camera books. Then bought, used, learnt the pros / cons and sold entire A series of Canon 35 mm cameras, such as AV, AE, AL, AT and the then popular A1 models. Same with various models of Flash units and flash firing slave units. Super wide-angle to super Telephoto lenses of Canon, Sigma and Tamron brands. Canon 85 mm, 1.2 max aperture fast lens. Canon Tilt Shift 28 mm lens, used for perspective control and high Depth of field control.
The revolution in Iran disturbed everything. I could not send my answer sheets and photo graphs to ICS,UK. The whole six months of my course work was missing in the Iranian postal service. When I came out of Iran I had Pentax ME camera with 150 mm fixed lens. I had Chinon 8 mm movie camera. Visit to Sydney, Australia in 1981 I sold my movie camera, because I realized the introduction and importance of Video camera and cassette recording system.
In Oman from 1983 I again started my event photography. I started earning some money, I bought 35mm format cameras, Nikon F401, F801, F601, F50, F60 cameras. I still have F801, F401, F60 camera body. As per job requirements I had to buy lenses, I had collection of 25 different lenses. Various medium size Flash units of Nikon, Sunpack, Vivitar, also Metz and Vivitar flash guns and special purpose Cokin three-headed flash unit. I had various flash triggering slave units.
These images are some samples I tried by using 2000 watts Halogen lamps.
These two images are with florescent lamps.
Every processing lab gave me very hard time in making correct color balanced print, I lost the good amount of money. Finally I had paid extra amount to the operator to allow me to enter in the lab and helped him to adjust the white point in these images. The operator gave me thanks to show him my white balancing method for correct color rendition. From that time on word I used that lab for all my printing work. I thank God, to meet right mind-set operator, because in the commercial circle I was getting branded as failure. I had made some Fuji Transparencies for few restaurants out of these images of 24 inch Height and variable Width.
After earning enough money I bought Bronica SQA medium format SLR camera with eye level viewfinder, two sets of film backs and a Fuji instant film back, 110 mm Macro lens and 45 mm wide angle lens. This camera is still with me, I am dreaming to buy a digital back for this camera.
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