{"id":635,"date":"2009-04-23T09:52:32","date_gmt":"2009-04-23T09:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=635"},"modified":"2009-04-23T09:52:32","modified_gmt":"2009-04-23T09:52:32","slug":"slough-vaisakhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=635","title":{"rendered":"Slough Vaisakhi"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha <\/em>in the north of Slough is around ten miles – an easy bike ride – from my home, though I always do an extra half mile or so. Slough isn’t a place a visit too frequently, and something about it means I always get lost, despite knowing exactly where I want to go.\u00a0 Somehow, as usual, I end up in the middle of town on the wrong side of a wide road with a fence down the middle, and have to divert and cycle through a subway.<\/p>\n

Fortunately I’d left home early, and arrived in plenty of time, well before much had started to happen. Photography often involves rather a lot of hanging around and waiting, because it isn’t much good arriving with your camera after things have happened – and the only time I’d come to Slough to photograph the Vaisakhi celebrations before I had been just a little late.<\/p>\n

Being there early did give me the opportunity to go inside the Gurdwara and take a look around, and as well as taking a few pictures get to know my way around and talk to people.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9
\nThe Panj Piyare process from the prayer hall, swords raised<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\u00a9
\nWomen throw flower petals at the Guru Granth Sahib<\/em><\/p>\n

I was at the top of the stairs when the procession came out of the prayer hall and made its way down and out to the crowds waiting below; all the time women were throwing flower petals over the Guru Granth Sahib and I joined them to take pictures from their viewpoint as the scriputres were carried to the waiting float.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

Most of the pictures inside were taken with a 20mm lens on the Nikon D700<\/em>, and this enabled me to work in rather crowded conditions. The 20mm is a nice compact lens too, and although in some ways I’d prefer a wide zoom, I’m getting to like working with a fixed lens again.<\/p>\n

This was the first real set of pictures I’ve taken with the Nissin Di622 flash<\/em>, and I was impressed. It just worked, and seemed to keep up rather better with my fairly rapid shooting than the SB800 generally does.\u00a0 I simply put it on the hot shoe, flipped out the diffuser to cover the wide angle and shot in ‘P’ mode, moving from indoor exposures of 1\/60 at f5.6 to outdoors at 1\/250 at f18 (at ISO 400.)<\/p>\n

I’d tried shooting inside with available light earlier, and at ISO 2000 could work at around f4 and 1\/100, but the colour was poor with the fluorescent lighting. On the stairs light levels were higher with a large window adding daylight, but the mixed lighting seemed an added problem. So flash seemed the obvious choice, although I felt a little obtrusive using it. But my previous experience photographing at other Vaisakhi celebrations and a Sikh wedding was that this was unlikely to present a problem to those I was photographing. And I did really want it for those petals.<\/p>\n

More pictures from the event – many of those outdoors taken with a Sigma 18-125mm on the D300 – on My London Diary<\/a>. The Sigma – which I’ve had for a few years – seems more robust than the Nikon 18-200mm, and has similar image quality – very usable rather than really superb. It lacks the VR of the Nikon lens, but I seldom seem to see much benefit from this in practice – and certainly not on sunny days. I have less focus problems with the Sigma, and its one fault is that the zoom ring works in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n

Working with two bodies again does make life easier in most ways – though I wish they were lighter and came with straps that could never get entangled!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha in the north of Slough is around ten miles – an easy bike ride – from my home, though I always do an extra half mile or so. Slough isn’t a place a visit too frequently, and something about it means I always get lost, despite knowing exactly where … Continue reading Slough Vaisakhi<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-photo-issues","category-reviews-etc","category-technical"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}