Fashionably Early!

We have a 3.40 start to walk into historical Bukhara before sunrise. Any initial grumpiness fades rapidly as we realise how beautifully the main buildings are lit. A small courtyard with a dingy green pool becomes a source of fascinating reflections. The main mosque complex is lit in a slowly changing combination of blue, purple and red to set off the dark blue of the aptly-named blue hour sky.

The lights are switched off on the dot of sunrise, but then we can move into the mosque courtyard to capture its buildings in the rich glow of the rising sun.

After breakfast we drive out of town to the Mausoleum of Naqshbandi, a famous Islamic teacher. They have his most famous sayings up on posters in various places. As a card-carrying atheist there is one about Allah which don’t really relate to me, but otherwise they all make a lot of sense. Moral guidance aside, his followers have created a calm, aesthetically pleasing space which provides a number of equally pleasing images.

We have a few hours off and a late lunch, then it’s off to the blacksmith’s workshop. One family has run a metalworking business in Bukhara for seven generations. You can browse their sculptures and watch the latest son working, but we’re down for something special. This is a "crowd pleaser" display in which a piece of hot steel is folded, covered in hardening powder, reheated and then hit hard on the anvil creating a massive shower of sparks. Using a suitable combination of wide angle and relatively slow shutter speed, the images are dramatic.

After the blacksmith we have time for the short cart ride to the Chor Minor Mosque, a tiny mosque with four minarets, then it’s back to the centre for another "culture show". This has a very different character to Marokand: played "cabaret style" in a small courtyard with live music and alternating dances and catwalk fashion show.

The combination of the cabaret setting and the movements particularly in the fashion show segments present an odd focus challenge. Tracking mode with human subject recognition works perfectly as the girls come towards you, but fails immediately the dancers spin or the models turn around, especially if they are wearing unusual-shaped clothes or making odd arm gestures. Then focus flips to a random member of the audience in the background and the girls go out of focus. I spend some time experimenting with different settings, but fail to find a fool-proof set-up. At least I can use my go-to shutter speed of 1/250s to freeze movement "just enough".

In terms of the fashion itself, it’s a fascinating fusion. The shapes owe a lot to traditional Central Asian forms of dress, but thoroughly modernised, and arguably Westernised. However the fabrics, with their bright colours and dramatic geometric patterns featuring stripes and long curves, are very typically Uzbek.

Tally from the fashion show: a mere 1081 images totalling 44GB, and another large memory card filled. At this rate Uzbekistan, which was expected to be mainly monuments and portraits, could generate more than the 300GB from my wildlife shoot in Zimanga!