«A Month 6 Artists and a Book»
SoFoBoMo completed today. Its done!

The intent was to photograph 6 artists [Saidul Haque Juise, Fareha Zeba, Smita Srivastava, Ujwala Prabhu, Rokeya Sultana,  Jamal Ahmed] at work, with the least amount of «set-up». Some people are less conscious of the camera than others, so I had to use a different approach for each. I tried to capture the persona and essence of the personality rather than make pretty photos. I hope that I was able to convey this and some of the intimacy that develops between photographer and «photographee!».

The finishing touches to the text assisted by Jyoti today. Many thanks! Thanks to both Jyoti and Ujwala who supported me from day-one, gave suggestions and assisted in the design. Ujwala, sorry for making your mailbox overflow with those 100's [or was it 1000's?] of emails! 

1. A downloadable PDF [around 18MB] is online → SoFoBoMo - «A Month 6 Artists and a Book» [It might be quicker to right-click this link and save the file to your PC for offline viewing].
   The suggested viewing settings in Adobe Acrobat are:
   View->Page Display->Two Up.
   View->Page Display->Show Cover Page During Two-up.
   Alternatively, set the viewing option in Acrobat to «Full Screen» for a full page by page slide show.
2. View the book online at → ISSUU [Requires FLASH].
3. View it at → SCRIBD

Preview the book:

SoFoBoMo chequered flag after this lap?
Good friend Ujwala assisted clean up the layout and tweak the cover design today. We did struggle to get Scribus do what we wanted it to do - and finally compromised on what we wanted and what Scribus could do. Need to feed it a couple straight shots of Java maybe. Shake it up and wake it up! Text, fonts, text box widths, master pages and the likes get messed up and worse when one edits a page... a glitch of some sort in the software. Made some progress with the text for the book but it is not complete just yet. SoFoBoMo for me is supposed to end by May 20th....that should be time enough to complete whats left to be done.

Photo sessions done, edits done, PDF from Scribus tested, PDF upload to ISSUU tested. But the text is completely incomplete! Yikes!

SoFoBoMo Day-12
Spent time reviewing all images - looked at continuity - some sections need images to fill-in-the-gaps. Will need to shoot a few more of Zeba and Ujwala to round correct the off-balance. Edited, culled, re-processed several images. Did a test PDF from Scribus to ISSUU. Worked just fine. Now I'll need to focus on a reliable POD service - which from Paul's experience looks like it will be a bit of an uphill task!

And, while looking at the Yahoo! SoFoBoMo Pipe - found this post. LOL! 

SoFoBoMo Day-11
Jamal Ahmed - Artist.

An absolutely fantastic day! I had thought we'd do a fast paced one or an hour and half session at his studio. It turned out that Jamal sets his own pace and it will take its course. Not that he is «slow paced» - he is a highly energetic person. So we started out by talking about various stuff... a friend dropped in. Turns out he is a professional photographer. Turns out a great experience - we both start photographing.  I get a few tips from Taher. Especially a critique regarding too low a shooting angle I had chosen. I correct it.

We head off the the University of Fine Arts. Jamal is also a Art Professor there. Met his students. Photographed them at work. We go back to Jamal's studio and then we sit down to a home-cooked lavish Bengali meal. Delicious!

Jamal then tells me he has a special treat for me. One of Jamal's regular model is going to be coming back to his studio and Jamal is going to sketch him while I photograph. Wow!

Turns out to be Pagla Baba!

Pagla is seated on the floor and is asked to place his head in the crook of his arms. And then Jamal goes to work - full of energy, it looks like a movie being run at double speed!

Further images will be in the book, once it is done.