Every year, millions of residents in Dhaka travel to their hometown from the Bangladeshi capital to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Thousands use public transportation. I was determined to travel with them to experience this hectic mode of transport.  I went to a local train station opposite the national airport in Dhaka on September 20, the last day before Eid.

I reached the station early in the morning and found thousands of people waiting on the platform. There were trains arriving but they were fully packed with people. There was not even space on the rooftop of the trains. In spite of this, people were crawling on top and inside the carriages like ants, sometimes even fighting with each other.  Twice I failed to get onto the train. Finally, I managed to get on with the help of a young woman. The woman struggled to get on the train with her 4-year old child. I was just behind her, and as soon as she got on she pulled me up.

While sitting amongst the crowd, I started taking pictures with my 5D camera and a 16-35mm lens. After a few shots I tried using a slow shutter speed, but as the train was jerking it was difficult to capture a sharp frame. Then I tried different shutter speeds, changing the f-stops from 11 to 22. Suddenly, I spotted a woman in the middle of the two carriages. At first I framed the shot with the woman at the top. I managed to maneuver my way among the crowd and lay down to keep my hand steady. I composed the picture with the men’s feet and played with changing the f-stop and shutter speed on alternative exposures. I kept my ISO at 100 as I knew that a fast ISO would not achieve the blurred effect. The f-stop was narrow as I tried using slow shutter speeds. I was getting a huge depth-of-field to keep my subject in focus. I shot several exposures on different f-stops from 1/4 to 1/60. The train was jerking so much that half of my shots were blurred. I was continuously trying to find the right shutter speed on the right moment.  Finally I found it. A shutter speed of 1/6 at f/16 was the best among the few perfect exposures.

Click here to view a larger version of the frame.

Jumping up and down isn’t typical behavior in the office, but to show the effect of slow and fast shutter speeds jumping, waving arms and impromptu jigs were par for the course during the Intro to News Pictures classes held last week by Tokyo Chief Photographer Michael Caronna.

L: Hugh in midair on fast shutter speed R: Hugh in midair on slow shutter speed

Staff from Editorial and Business departments at Thomson Reuters in Tokyo learned about composition, shutter speed, aperture and the legal implications of photography during the half-day session. Most importantly, they learned why they should never, ever, under any circumstances, even think about using the ugly, deer-in-the-headlights, demon red-eye producing flashes on their cameras.

No flash here, just light from a cloudy day.
The goal of the Intro to News Pictures sessions was to help staff turn any point-and-shoot camera in their hands into a useful tool for taking strong photos that accurately and beautifully depict a scene. On its own, a camera is just a hunk of plastic and metal. Sure, anyone can push a button and take a snapshot with today’s technological marvels, but it takes a photographer to consistently produce pictures that people want to look at.

This is not a boring composition.

By taking control of shutter speed and aperture, participants learned during Intro to News Pictures how to make their cameras take more than snapshots. They learned to freeze motion, or emphasize it with blur through the shutter speed choices they make. Participants also learned how to draw attention to the important subjects in a photo, through creative use of composition, depth of field, and sensitivity to shape and form.

This was our tool for the session: A Canon G9

But working the camera to produce a sharp, beautiful picture is only half the job. News is about people. People talking, people doing things and people not really terribly excited about having a camera pointed at them. To address this, dealing with camera-shy subjects and helping them to understand what, as news photographers we are trying to accomplish was also covered in the session. Moving portrait subjects into better light, planning photos before the shutter button is pressed, and being wary of the legal dangers lurking in captions and in handout photos were also important topics.

Happily, everybody seemed to have a good time and by the end of the session participants had banished boring and clutter-filled snapshots to history, and were producing surprising pictures.