The Disadvantages Of Cycling Group Rides

The previous article, The Advantages Of Group Rides, explored various aspects of cycling group rides; it is time now to analyse all the disadvantages.

"Madness in individuals is rare but in groups, it is the rule".
— (Friedrich Nietzzche)

If a group rider lacks discipline and attentiveness on the road, he surely will learn the hard way. If he gets easily distracted and cannot hold the desired speed or course, crashes are his destiny. After years of riding, I have observed the following to be true. Read on.

Snobbery on wheels

Members of cycling groups tend to promote exclusivity by remaining in their comfort zones and choosing not to casually ride with others. Riders who cannot beat them, usually join them. I beat most I encountered and decided not to join them.

Just because some prefer riding alone must not mean they are lesser cyclists in terms of speed, performance or power. Several years ago I overtook someone riding a Pakistani steel bike. I noticed he had modified it for speed by removing the mudguards and having two hand-grips welded to the spot where the head-tube met the top of the fork.

Just when I thought he was far behind, he speedily overtook me, holding the hand-grips in ‘race’ position, with a non-aero shalwar-qameez flapping about in the wind but display no apparent loss of power. Being at the tail-end of my 50-km ride, I was unable to overtake him despite going full throttle.

The moral of the story: neither underestimate anybody’s capability nor mock the bicycle brand. Lone wolves may bite hard.

Early birds

In summer or on foggy winter mornings, some ride without headlights and taillights, thus showing no regard for road safety and quality sleep.

Some groups start well before dawn, thereby destroying REM time. REM (rapid eye movement) time is the period of deep sleep during which we dream. The eyes are closed but the eyeballs move in all directions as if glued to a giant TV screen. Perhaps our souls travel to other parallel universes, or off-load sensitive data to God’s supercomputer for analysis on Judgment Day, or receive warnings and good news in coded form. Try losing one night’s REM sleep and see how the day goes by.

A musical break here for REM's classic song: Everybody Hurts?

Late Lateefs

Here is a scenario. The rendezvous is 5 a.m. The entire group is waiting for one undisciplined unpunctual rider. He sends several text messages to the group-leader promising he is 'on my way', then finally joins the ride but offers no apology.

Aiming to be punctual is stressful and arriving early is utter waste of time. If you dislike discourteous time-wasters, it is best to ride alone.

Pied Piper on wheels

Once during a group ride, when dark clouds appeared, the group-leader insisted on continuing the ride. Soon there was heavy downpour and very strong gusts but the riders went on, trying hard not to slip or fall.

Later the leader admitted, "I love to ride in the rain!" Not everybody was amused.

Considering that water ingress caused rust in the bicycle components (especially the hubs and the bearings), I spent the next two days getting the hardened dirt off the bike.

When one rides alone, there is no silly urge to prove anything to anybody.

The road to progress

Until a few years, I routinely rode moderately fast. Then I switched to other methods of training to build better stamina and gain greater power.

Since most groups take unnatural pride in going fast, it is best to ride alone and achieve important fitness goals at a pace that the mind and the body can handle.

Lean and mean

Although professional road cyclists consume plenty of carbohydrates and proteins, they tend to be skinny and have low body-fat due to high caloric expenditure.

By contrast, the average overweight amateur rider in a group dreams about losing weight just by cycling. He rarely achieves the ideal body weight for his height, joins a gym for weight-training, consumes questionable food supplements, ends up increasing the body mass, and thinks that lighter carbon bikes will somehow reduce his own weight.

Thinking deeply about these matters is not possible when riding with groups. The best thoughts and plans come when one is alone.

Sprints, anybody?

I hardly ever see local cyclists launching sprints. Everybody is either going moderately fast or slower than normal. The following seven reasons show why cyclists do not get their rear ends off the saddles:

1. FRAME SIZE: Their bikes may not be the correct size for their bodies.
2. BIKE FIT: Their bikes may be poorly set up for comfort and speed, thus encouraging wrong body angles which lead to aches in the arms, neck, back, knees, ankles etc.
3. FOOTWEAR: Their ordinary flat pedals prevent make from getting a decent foot-grip. They seldom use clipless cycling shoes for a locked-in grip; this prevents them from transferring greater power to the pedals. The solution for issues 1, 2 and 3 above is to pay for a professional bike-fit which perfectly matches the body to the bike.
4. WEIGHT: They are overweight or obese. Sprints require flexibility, agility, swiftness and power. Developing each quality takes time and consistent effort.
5. KNOWLEDGE: They are unfamiliar with the correct technique for sprinting.
6. PRACTISE: They have not practised frequent power generation required for sprinting and which requires up to four times more power than normal pedalling.
7. FEAR: They imagine sprinting will increase the heart-rate so much that it will explode. I recall riding with a doctor who preferred staying below 135 BPM (beats per minute). He was fifty, overweight and afraid of stressing his heart.

Strava pandemic

Many group riders are addicted to uploading their ride statistics on Strava. The app was free until recently but is now a subscription service.

On the Strava platform, grown men suffer from pedalling envy because they imagine they will improve just by peeking at others’ ride statistics.

Riders have been caught on the internet faking the starting and the end points of their rides or showing fantastic power figures (FTP, watts) by drafting behind passing vehicles.

One must have aims in life. All my rides are learning experiences through training. It is helpful to assess routes, their vibration levels, slope angles and traffic patterns. None of these fine activities are satisfactorily possible if one rides in a group.

Aunty social

So intensely focussed are some riders on the rear wheels of those ahead, they seldom acknowledge other riders on the road, leave aside wave at them. I used to cordially wave at other riders but then quit the distracting habit because I found them looking through me.

Social roller coaster

Some fully grown riders regularly join so-called ‘social rides’ where they pedal with children on tricycles and hijabi ladies sitting very low on creaky bikes.

Who wants to ride at 15 km/h when 30-35 km/h is the normal speed for good riders? Who wants to be in a wolf-pack or a group of cackling crows when soaring like an eagle or roaring like a lion is the thang to do?

Then there are them bachelors who ride just to blend with the ladies at every sponsored group ride. Feeling a bit under pressure, some married men too play this game.

Essentially, a social ride is the comedy version of a serious ride.

Road-deaf

Just because Bluetooth devices are available must not mean one should cover the ears while riding. Earbuds belong on an indoors trainer or in a gym. Incidentally, the word gymnasium comes from the Ancient Greek term gymnós, meaning 'naked or 'nude'. Only adult male citizens were allowed to use the gymnasia.

Not only is wearing large headphones in public a poor fashion statement, it is outright dangerous because one is totally isolated from the surroundings, and the sweat absorbed by the earpieces turns into deadly germs to cause fungal infections—call that hearing AIDS.

Instead of being all ears to the traffic, some riders prefer listening to music or recitation of holy texts.

Forget riding with clowns and instead go solo to develop better road-sense and peripheral vision.

Chatterboxes on saddles

What I enjoy most about solo rides is the pleasure of having a quiet mind, devoid of jumbled thoughts, purely focussed on the ride. I call it medi-cadence—a combination of yoga meditation and cadence (pedalling speed).

Talking while riding has its pitfalls:

1. It robs one of energy and distracts from the road.
2. Even two bottles of energy drinks in the bottle cages may not be able to prevent drying up of the throat due to excessive talking.
3. Opening the mouth unnecessarily may allow insects to enter it.

Many who regularly use cell phone while riding find it impossible to ignore requests for position reports from suspicious wives. I know several riders who have crashed into one another or caused road accidents because of cell phone distraction.

Bad company

Most riders in a group with easy-going natures, at least one will be a stick in the mud. I have known such people who show no warmth and do not reciprocate good wishes. They are there to quietly watch or jealously look at your accessories and the bike. Such people seldom smile and almost never laugh. They are emotionally repressed, perhaps dangerous, and could do mankind an immense favour by staying at home.

Again, the best company on the road is your own company.

It is time to listen to another classic song from 1975 by Bad Company: Feel Like Makin’ Love.

Break-dance

Many groups that I have ridden with destroy good cycling pace by taking several short breaks or slow down repeatedly to allow those lagging behind to catch up.

When one rides at a pace of two minutes per kilometre, it translates to a speed of 30 km/hour. Not many group-leaders will maintain steady speeds unless they use cycling computers and possess leadership qualities. And not every rider uses a cycling computer which means he lacks interest in ogling at important statistics and progress.

Eating out (hogging)

Coupled with good dietary habits, cycling can indeed help one lose weight. Take a look at professional cyclists who are mostly tanned skeletons riding in pelotons and need much less body-fat during fast climbs over mountainous terrain.

Most riders I encounter are overweight by 10-25 kg. They routinely stop at coffee shops to consume commercially prepared drinks or full breakfasts and then report the hogging activity on Facebook.

Why people take photos of food before having it is fit for analysis by a psychiatrist. The text of their posts and the faces wearing patent smiles remain boringly the same. Some in such groups are quick to shoot photos and video clips while riding. Who wants to be in a group that focuses too much on the 'fun' aspect?

Eating out destroys whatever health one builds up with cycling. Instead of paying monthly food bills, I find it satisfying to buy better apparel, accessories, spares or tools for bike maintenance.

Ta-ta

In essence, total cycling success requires:

1. A focussed mind in a fit body.
2. A decent bike with well-maintained hardware.
3. Muscular strength.
4. Correct techniques. 

Remove any part from the above and the magic disappears.

I could say more on the subject of why cycling group rides remain unattractive to many riders but let me sign off by wishing you success in whichever way you chose to stay happier, healthier and sane.

Disclaimer:

If anybody that I know thinks that I have poked fun at his habits, then he should thank God for not being named here.

©Tahir Gul Hasan, 2025

The Advantages Of Group Rides

After twenty-two years of cycling and having ridden several thousand kilometres, I would like to share my observations, likes and dislikes regarding group rides.

Let me start with the advantages and observed facts. In a future article I shall deal with the disadvantages.

What’s a group-ride?

This has nothing to do with groupies of pop bands. Group-rides happen when cyclists form a short beeline or a large peloton (French for group, pack). Usually, two is company and three is a crowd but some cyclists just cannot ride without either being part of a crowd or leading one.

During early summer mornings—usually on Sundays—I witness private or corporate group rides composed of 20-200 cyclists. Usually bike shop-owners organise such events by renting bikes at Rs 1500 ($5) per day.

All that bike-power of ‘social’ rides looks impressive on the roads mainly due to the protection provided by police patrol cars to the privileged amateur cyclists. If having dreadfully slow ladies and children on tricycles trailing behind is your thing, by all means, join the fun.

Serious cyclists usually ride in groups. Some even train to compete as teams in races. Their clothing and lighter carbon bikes inspire amateur riders to emulate them.

If you wish to be inspired, the world’s most famous race, Tour de France, is taking place these days (05-27 July, 2025). Do watch the stages on cable TV or download the app .

Draft dodgers

This is not the draft-dodging the governments face during wars. Drafting or slipstreaming simply means riding right behind another cyclist to save up to 30% energy. That helps one go faster because of lesser drag (air resistance due to the rider’s physical body). Furthermore, body-hugging clothing and an aggressive posture on the bike enhance performance.

When strong riders take turns leading the group to keep up the pace, the entire group benefits from going faster but with lesser energy spent. However, always letting one rider lead the group only satisfies team captains with inflated egos.

Funnily enough, I have seen riders with very expensive bikes—costing as much as $10,000 or PKR 2,850,000—sneak behind passing vehicles to falsely log higher power and average speed figures on their Strava app running on cycling computers. Sharp-eyed folks on the internet have already caught several dishonest cyclists with their cycling shorts down.

Impressive look

Riders wearing impressive cycling club jerseys usually have other commuters respectfully give way on the roads. Passer-by’s rarely engage with groups but freely interact with lone cyclists from whom they invariably ‘wish to know the price of the bike’.

I have some standard responses:

“I got this bike as a gift.”

““Do you wish to buy one? It may cost anywhere from $300 to $10,000.”

“I can't get into a discussion while riding. Visit the nearest bike shop and find out for yourself.”

“I stole this bike.”

Given the kinds of criminals zooming about on motorbikes, one never knows who is who, hence giving correct details could attract trouble.

Coffee and meal breaks

It is quite common for riders to stop mid-ride or at the conclusion of it for coffee, sugary fruit-juices or greasy snacks. The arrival of several riders at restaurants makes the owners happily ignore the sweating bodies ruining the upholstery fabric.

Some fun-loving souls indulge in sugar-loading and belly-filling junk food and then announce: “Hell, I burned 1500 calories today!”

If you wish to give the impression that you are working hard on losing weight but secretly cannot stay away from unhealthy or excessive food consumption, joining a casual cycling group is best.

Get togethers

Prosperous riders occasionally host post-ride breakfast sessions at their sprawling homes where they regain twice as many calories that they burnt during the morning ride. Other activities may bring together group members for mountain-biking or hiking trips in the mountains. In short, the male-bonding helps strengthen the brotherhood.

FAITH-ful riding

Accustomed to running to the mosque for congregational prayers, riders with religious minds have also joined the race for better health. There is no harm imagining one is atop a camel in the desert while riding a bicycle.

Two years ago, I remember seeing a long-bearded track-cyclist preparing for the Asian games scheduled to be held in India. The aerodynamic drag induced by the beard is measureable. Although every cyclist need not shave his legs for better aerodynamics, having a clean-shaven face certainly helps during intense summer rides when sweat and dust become unbearable.

Then we have the hijabi ladies who do not fear their headscarves getting entangled in the wheels, the chains or the pedals. Having very limited peripheral vision with this bit of clothing is less important to them than the group activity, the gup shup.

Competitive teams

When I started riding in the early 2000s, I never saw ordinary riders on the road except teams belonging to the Pakistan army, WAPDA or Pakistan Railways.

During the past few years, and especially when the COVID pandemic erupted, droves of people bought bicycles, formed groups of all kinds, and created teams and clubs whose members occasionally competed in organised races for cash awards. Cycling allowed one to get out of confined germ-infested spaces and into the open.

Peer-pressure

Cyclists who join a group are expected to come up to higher standards of stamina and speed—if at all the group is progressive and somewhat competitive. Hence, slower riders improve their performance if the social pressure is used positively.

Within a group, one quickly learns about routine maintenance, riding techniques and equipment. It might come as a surprise to pilots—it did to me, being a veteran commercial aviator—that the handlebar area of a bicycle is also called a COCKPIT, except that no cocks are found in any pit.

What else is out there?

Now compared with golf, cycling is cheap—unless you are fixated on rubbing shoulders ('networking') with the elites.

A set of golf clubs could cost as much as a decent mountain or road bike but the membership of a prestigious golf club could set you back by millions of rupees. Walking a kilometre or two and swinging at balls burns far fewer calories than a ride. My average ride is 60-70 km, done in 02:30 to 03:00 hours and which helps burn 1500-2000 KCal.

If you go to a gym to lift weights, how are you using all that power, muscular strength and abdominal 6-pack doing an office job?

If you swim, are you comfortable being in pools filled with other people’s germs, sputum and urine?

If you prefer jogging beyond the age of fifty, do you want your knees and other joints to suffer due to all that bouncing on paved surfaces?

Let it sink in: nothing truly compares with cycling as additionally it brings back one’s childhood in adulthood and beyond.

Finally, if you are the social kind who loves to party on two wheels, then join a group. If you are a lone wolf, then read my upcoming article: The Disadvantages Of Group Rides.

BONUS: Pro Cycling Calendar 2025.

©Tahir Gul Hasan, 2025

Fixing The IKEA FIXA Cordless Drill Machine

First of all, the name IKEA is not pronounced as EYE-KIA—as most people do—but EE-KIA—as the Swedes do. With this settled, let us move on to the story of a dysfunctional IKEA FIXA cordless drill machine.

History

I bought this cheap babe to supplement what I already owned: a mid-sized Black & Decker 2-speed hammer drill and a larger Bosch variable-speed bi-directional hammer drill. I needed the IKEA FIXA to help do odd jobs without the inconvenience of using heavier drills in confined spaces.

Soon I discovered that the FIXA was the McDonald of drills—it partially filled a need but without much satisfaction. The battery drained fast and for some jobs I again reverted to using my other bulkier babes.

Click below to...

Pro Cycling Calendar 2025

This covers the races we feel passionate about. The focus remains on the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España, but there is so much more happening in 2025.

Please click on the links underneath for more information.

Click below to...

The Ordeal Of John Suitcase

“What an ordeal! File a complaint, do something—what’s your name Miss——?”

John implores while attempting to read the name tag of the young woman behind the desk at the Lost and Found Luggage office of the airport.

“I'm Miss Trolley Bag", replies the young woman, placing special emphasis on her marital status.

"John Suitcase is my name. I'm on four wheels and twice as useful as a human being on two legs", explains John.

Click below to...

Under My 42-Inch Umbrella With Vintage Speedlights

In this article I will show you how to create a key light source for indoor portraiture with not one but three vintage speedlights and a 42-inch umbrella.

Triggering slavery like a coloniser

I found lying about at home:

1) Two Made-in-Japan Popular 606 speedlights from the 1970s/80s. These worked not only on batteries but on A.C power as well. To save the planet, I used the latter option to say goodbye to batteries. These units could only be fired at full output because there was no output control on them.

2) One Nikon SB-15 vintage speedlight from the 1980s. This unit could only be powered by four AA batteries—sorry mother Earth.

Initially I fired it at full MANUAL output power but later preferred using its A2 BLUE setting, which provided lesser light but enough to trigger the optical slave units attached to the Popular speedlights.

3) One Godox 3-in-1 Reemix-II receiver mounted on the Nikon SB-15 so that when I fired the camera’s shutter, the SB-15 speedlight fired too, and whose light would in turn fire the optical slaves attached to the Popular 606s. Elementary, my dear Dr. Watsons!

4) One Godox 3-in-1 Reemix-II mounted on the Nikon D-750 DSLR which transmitted a radio signal to fire the SB-15 speedlight to which the Reemix-II radio receiver was attached.

5) Two optical slaves attached to the Popular speedlights which fired when the Nikon SB-15’s light hit their sensors.

Mounting the horses

An adjustable speedlight/umbrella adapter came in handy and on this I mounted the Nikon SB-15 speedlight.

The Popular 606s were mounted on the left and the right sides of a flat-plate multiple-speedlight bracket. The adjustable speedlight/umbrella adapter was mounted in the middle.

All this hardware was attached to a microphone boom stand. Because the weight of the attached devices tended to topple the mic stand, a large pipe-wrench was hung from the boom arm’s end to act as ballast weight.

To prevent the boom-arm from dropping down, I locked it to the vertical shaft with a carabiner (a quick-release lock used for mountaineering).

A 42” silver umbrella was mounted inside the adjustable speedlight/umbrella adapter.

Output in Watts

If you think that mounting three speedlights in this manner provided three times the wattage or light output, you are wrong. One could work out the light output with a formula but using a flash meter is more convenient.

With a subject-to-light distance of 2.13m (7’), the flash meter allowed me to dial in very useful aperture settings of f/8 and f/11 at ISO 100, with 1/125 sec shutter speed.

The 3-speedlight key light was complimented with a background speedlight (read my article: Filter Holder For Speedlights).

Butterflies in the stomach

I tested the entire set up using 1/200 sec shutter speed instead. The idea was to experiment with lighting that cast a dramatic butterfly-like shadow under the nose.

This single point source light was positioned head-on and tilted down 45° at the subject. This provided Hollywood-fame ‘butterfly lighting’ or ‘Paramount lighting’—the latter named after the movie studio: Paramount Pictures.

I read somewhere that such was the power and overall effect of this kind of lighting that famed British actress Audrey Hepburn specifically mentioned in her contract with Paramount Pictures that she ‘only be photographed using butterfly lighting’. Only social butterflies can afford such luxuries.

With nobody around who even closely resembled the petite stylish British actress, I took comfort in butterfly lighting family members for informal portraits in the master bedroom.

Final words

The results were very reassuring. Because simple butterfly setups did not always provide solutions for all shooting situations, I sank a fair amount of money into buying expensive studio strobes and soft-boxes.

The experiment worked well. I got nice deep shadows on the faces with the silver umbrella. Expensive Fresnel lenses would give even better results, whereas white umbrellas tend to produce softer shadows.

Right after I shot some portraits, I ordered a massive parabolic silver umbrella (165cm or 5’-5” diameter) which still lies unused. Please stay tuned for a follow-up article on that piece of equipment.

So, get your digital camera out of the camera-bag and shoot away before it de-values enough to make you invest more in another toy which again would spend most of its life in yet another camera case.

©Tahir Gul Hasan, 2024

Read my other photography articles:

1) TGH Photography Exhibition (DAWN article) A Professional's Touch

By Mahnaz Hasan

2) Pictures In My Mind

My own views about the first solo exhibition

3) Yashica Electro-35: Making Your Own Battery

How to make this impossible-to-find battery for a vintage camera yourself

4) In Pursuit Of Photography

Launching my portrait photography studio

5) Filter Holder For Speedlights

Reference: Butterfly Lighting: A One-Strobe Setup for Amazing Portraits! (digital-photography-school.com)

Filter Holder For Speedlights

In this article, I will show you how to use coloured filters and honeycomb grid on a home-made holder that you can attach to a speedlight to improve your flash photography.

Birds in hand

The idea of having a filter and grid holder had been simmering in my mind for some time. I searched on the internet but found no cheap and useful accessory.

Lying unused, I had five round plastic coloured filters: red, green, blue and yellow. All filters and the grid (honeycomb-pattern) were 11.8 cm or 4.65" in diameter.

Since I already had a professional-level lighting setup in the photography studio, I needed a compact secondary setup for quick and informal indoor shoots.

I was in no mood to buy another light-stand. A spare microphone stand came in handy for conversion to a light stand. It was height-adjustable, had a heavy round base and could be extended up to 178 cm (5'-10").

Over its top end, I screwed a metal adapter to convert the larger diameter male male 3/8" thread to a smaller diameter male 1/4" thread.

On this adapter, I mounted an optical slave unit with an ISO hot-shoe. The use of such slaves has fallen out of favour these days as everyone fancies radio-controlled, battery-dependant, menu-driven and expensive triggers. 

On my poor slave unit's hot-shoe, I mounted a swivel adapter to enable the fixed-head speedlight to be angled in any direction.

No trouble at all

Enthusiasts and hobbyists usually end up falling in love with some or all of the equipment they use.

I took all the trouble for the sake of my vintage Yashica Pro 50-DX that I loved using because apart from having the ability to be powered by three AA batteries, it could also run on 220V A.C.

On modern speedlights, I miss the ability of vintage models to fire either using battery power or 220V A.C. 

Most people do realise now that the manufacturers do not want us to have flexibility and useful options without paying dearly for them

Shoes, hot and cold

The swivel adapter used here had a cold-shoe (without electrical contacts) on top for the speedlight. To get a proper hot-shoe connection (with electrical contacts), the speedlight's male PC sync plug was connected to the swivel adapter's female PC sync terminal.

Finally, I mounted the old speedlight on top.

SoN philosophy

Put simply, I practise making something out of nothing: that is SoN.

Instead of jumping to buy expensive accessories, I always first try to use unused but useful items lying about at home.

Looking around, I found plastic covers of the terminals of four UPS batteries purchased earlier. Two such two covers were glued together in a u-shape and then secured with several zip-ties.

Additional zip ties were used to create a 1 cm wide gap in the middle of this gizmo to facilitate installation and removal of the filters and the grid.

Result

With this filter holder, I can now use two light modifiers simultaneously: a coloured filter and a honeycomb-pattern grid. Are you asking yourself, what is the use?

When any coloured filter (red, green, blue or yellow) is used, a white background can be made to look unique and colourful.

If you use the grid (with or without a coloured filter), you will get a focussed beam (meaning, the light beam will be narrower). By playing around with the distance and angle of the speedlight from the background, you can come up with novel lighting effects.

For portraiture, I can now light up in various colours the background separately from the front KEY light.

My secondary setup's KEY light is another bit of ingenuity. I am using multiple vintage A.C-powered speedlights mounted together inside an umbrella. These I trigger via a DSLR-mounted radio slave unit.

In a future article, I will show you how I made this key light out of vintage gems.

Endnotes

Inflation be damned, to complete this project I spent no money to buy any parts. Everything was already available at home, I was able to do what I wanted and above all, I achieved great satisfaction.

I encourage you to pick up your tools, speedily re-connect your brain with your heart and be a handyman (or a handywoman) DIYer.

QUIZ

Can you guess the brand and model of the wristwatch I have used in the photos? Please leave your answer in the comments section.

©Tahir Gul Hasan, 2024

All photos by the author

In Pursuit Of Photography

After sitting on my plans for a long time, in the spring of 2024 I sprang into action to launch my photography thing if not an Arab Spring from Egypt. If the birds and the bees could do it, I too could.

My rear lawn

Starting from one’s own garage has somehow been the preferred method for several entrepreneurs who are now billionaires. The sad part is that no photographer became a billionaire this way, sadder is the fact that no billionaire ever had the time to become a great photographer.

COVID—the 9/11 of health—changed our life patterns. Baking, education, food catering, almost everything switched to the online work-from-home business model.

This method has its drawbacks if the space is limited and if one is to refrain from creating nuisance for immediate neighbours in a residential area.

Renting expensive properties for commercial use is getting out of reach for most businesses considering the rising utility rates, inflated bills, the cost of hiring good help and deadly taxes.

Who to shoot?

I resolved to avoid the monotony of wedding shoots and fashion photography and instead focused on family, friends and acquaintances.

By the way, it was in spring of 2005 that I had my photographs displayed for the first time at a solo exhibition.

Read more here:

1. TGH Photography Exhibition (DAWN article) A Professional’s Touch
2. Pictures In My Mind

The videos of my interviews were aired repeatedly by television channels. What I was asked by the interviewers and what I replied is a topic for another article.

Briefly, the exhibition enabled me to sell a few framed prints but then I just rested on my laurels and did not prepare for another show despite getting a sponsorship.

Family reunion

What woke up this sleeping giant was a family reunion lunch. With several faces available, I lined them up to say cheese.

As a backdrop, a large piece of painted muslin (backdrop) was suspended from a support system designed for photographers.

The difficult part was arranging restless relatives in a tight group, having them look at the camera with genuine Mona Lisa smiles, and ensuring that they did not blink just when I pressed the camera’s shutter button.

The equipment

I used a Nikon D-800 high-resolution camera with a Nikkor 24-70 f2/8E ED VR lens on it. 

The light sources were two Elinchrom strobes (studio flash units) fitted inside 120cm wide parabolic soft-boxes to soften the lighting.

Another Elinchrom strobe acted as a hair-light to give some definition to the hair. Finally, a speedlight (flash) was placed right behind the subjects’ heads to create a halo effect much like that seen in the paintings of Christian saints’ of the classical period.

Other details

With no two faces being the same, several details needed to considered, such as: how lights cast shadows on the faces, highlights, lighting ratios, posing and facial expressions.

My camera was tethered to a laptop with appropriate software installed. This enabled me to autofocus the lens and operate both the camera and its menus with clicks of a mouse—the preferred method for professional shoots. For greater stability, I mounted the camera on a sturdy tripod.

While several parameters (aperture, shutter speed, white balance etc.) of the shoots were being digitally recorded by the software, I noted other details on paper to make repeatability easier later—note-taking being an old habit

Although the light intensities of the strobes were controlled via a camera-mounted remote, I still ended up running around to make other adjustments. Within ninety minutes I shot over six small groups; in fifteen days I photographed sixteen people.

With the relatives and friends awe-struck by the superb results, the Apollo-13 of my passion for photography was headed for a moon-landing.

Prints anyone?

For each person or group, I shot twenty to forty images at the highest possible resolution in lossless RAW format instead of the inferior JPEG which people generally use just to save storage space on their computer hard disks.

After rejecting technically imperfect shots, I selected the ones whose enlargements were to be ordered at a professional photo lab.

It was the mistake of my life to expect that relatives would want to pay for the prints. They all assumed, just as they feasted on free food, that the enlargements would be home-delivered for free. Considering that the entire nation continued to survive on IMF loans, I was not in a charitable mood.

A few seemed uninterested in enlargements and which made me feel as if I had wasted my precious time. Included in this unresponsive group were cousins whom I had photographed over forty years ago when they were very young ladies. My intention was to let them have that old group-photo along with the new one but the whole idea came crashing down. The rest of the appreciative souls were informed about the printing cost which they readily paid in advance.

I did a few headshots of some schoolmates but unfortunately could not gather all under one roof for a memorable group photo. There was not much I could do for people glued to their cell phones.

To the photo-lab

I did toy with the idea of finding someone with a large printer which many professional photographers use for printing. These printers cost a small fortune but their prints’ archival quality remains questionable while the running cost makes printing costly. The safest thing to do was to head for my favourite photo lab, located at the far end of the town.

Things had changed since I last had any prints made, which was many moons ago. Essentially, the colour paper and the chemicals used by these large machines were not from Fuji but rather Chinese sources. The latter produced results less pleasing to the eye than those obtained with the former.

The very first enlargement that emerged from the machine strengthened my resolve to look for a lab that could produce better results.

Editing

Not being able to use Adobe Photoshop editing software proved to be a setback as I ended up relying on outside help for editing of digital images. Around fifteen minutes were spent on each image by the lab assistant to edit to my satisfaction. In that much time he normally edited five images for others. On top of the printing cost, I paid extra for editing.

Market survey

Earlier, I had conducted a market-survey to check what other photographers were charging. To work out the total cost and my profit, I added:

1. The fuel cost to and from the lab
2. My studio’s electricity cost per shoot
3. Equipment usage and depreciation costs
4. And a nominal amount as the price of my own experience and time

I kept my prices slightly lower than others while giving a much better product, hoping that people would appreciate both aspects.

Deliveries

The enlargements once printed were signed and dated both on the reverse side and on the bottom right hand side of each print—something that the old masters once routinely did.

All the information for re-orders was also included with the print.

The name game

An amazing idea appeared in a dream as I hunted for a nice name for my studio. I saw included in the alphabets of the word PHOTOGRAPHY, my name’s initials in perfect sequence. Was that message from God? Was my destiny hidden in plain sight?

Note how the capitals show TGH (Tahir Gul Hasan) in the word phoToGrapHy.

Why ‘since 1969’?

There is no substitute for experience. Lies and Photoshop trickery cannot ever replace good taste and maturity of style.

During research on studios in Lahore, I saw a website mention the year of establishment as 1937. I could not recall their name because all the old masters were known to me.

Further research indicated that the studio-owner expected the clients to be impressed without checking the claim.

I sat down to design a visiting card on which I mentioned ‘since 1969’. The year meant something to me because I had black-and-white photos taken with a toy camera. Man landed on the moon in the same year—or so NASA insisted.

My hobbies from childhood are still with me; these have a calming effect on the nerves. I started as an amateur photographer as far back as 1969, did a few wedding shoots during college days with simple equipment and proudly earned some money.

The masses today prefer owning expensive cell phones and whiling away time talking or texting. Photographically, they shoot themselves in the feet by taking selfies. In extending their selfie-sticks, they have stopped reaching out to other humans to shoot photos. People have also injured themselves or died taking dangerous selfies.

In this atmosphere of gloom, I knew I could return to my roots, maybe not turn the tide but create a niche for styles and techniques I loved.

What now?

I only intend to do selective work. To get an appointment for a studio or on-location shoot, email me first at: writersblocktgh@gmail.com

Thanks for reading. Stay healthy and prosper.

Tahir Gul Hasan

©Tahir Gul Hasan, 2024