Roaming...

Three days of holidays. Weekend and Sunday for the new lunar year. It is the beginning of the month of Moharram, where the sadness hover around for the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Mohammed (PBUHH). For this, I shall try to be all in black at least for the first 10 days. Some people are even braver than me for wearing the black for 2 months; that is Moharram, and Safar. Safar contains also the martyrdom of many holy personalities for Shiites, starting with the Prophet himself.


With the usual delay of my plans to clean up the room (typical), I couldn't stop taking my trials with the camera wherever I go and however I can. The image above was taken last Friday when this moth crashed into mom's head and fell down on some table. Many shots were taken in fact, but I think this one is the best. The bluish luster of the moth was in fact a result of the flash itself, and since I don't have a dedicated flash yet, I was not able to control much of the direction of the light needed. However, some people liked it that way. I tend to take the camera with me in the car wherever I go, because you wouldn't know when some idea flashes in your mind and makes you want a camera at hand immediately. Few days ago I was out for dinner with a friend and this is exactly what happened when I saw the Kuwait Towers. It is not the first time to take a snapshot for them, but this time I was closer and in a darker time, which made me think it is a nice trial for some HDR and exposure bracketing;







The initial settings were for a small aperture (f/22) which made a nice effect of glow for the lights in the beginning but there was not much differences in the exposure rate. I need to work and experience more to adjust the aperture according to my needs and to what I really want. However, I reduced the aperture after all and made the shot above with 3 bracketed exposures, adding to that the tungsten WB, to balance the yellowish lights around the place in general.

We had a meeting in my office today (my office is the meeting room actually) and hence, I did not have enough time to translate more than 2 verses as usual, and to type down this blog as well. So, I'm typing the rest of it here now at home, after doing some work with the photos I've taken today and after some hot shower to clear this greasy hair!

Since the meeting today was for the heads of the center where I work, it was a bit like something not for me, and fortunately my camera was with me to snoop around. After taking a group photo for the staff members of my place, I decided after the beginning of the meeting to go around and roam snapping pictures from all around. I still feel annoyed when I remember that the sensor needs cleaning and maybe a heavy one, since there had been some spots showing on the images that I'm taking. The spots can be cleaned of course by photoshop but it is still annoying and the sensor should be "clean" completely.

I had many shots, and I figured that using "exposure fusion" is more pleasant than the make of HDR images with tone mapping to give some weird artistic looks. With "exposure fusion" as well, I can merge photos with different WB (White Balance) to give some weird looking gradients all over the image, and with some tweaking you shall have it. An example of this tweaking:





This shot was made with somehow high exposure (+1.75 if I remember correctly) on several WBs and then fused together. I've been taking other photos from around the building in different angles trying to do some experiments with the vanishing points and how to use them to give somehow infinite look into the horizon (of the image) amid the constructions being under "inspection". I didn't prepare the other photos for now, but I shall hopefully post them here whenever they are finished. As for the time being, I've been reading some texts about panoramic photography, and seems there are some good (and complicated) softwares to test, that can do a better job than photoshop when it comes to stitching photos. I'm ahead for trying some!