Alexander 4, V1.

Still struggling. I seem can't fill the interior circle for my new work of "Caisleán Achadh na nIubhar - Little planet". The projection makes a hole in the middle which will be filled with white in case I saved as a JPG, unfortunately. I'm trying to work around this problem for a week now! And as always, my RAMs are always a pain.

Early Friday, that is, after midnight and the beginning of Friday, I went on a little semi-adventure after dropping my friend back home, alive. While driving here and there that night I noticed that beautiful building that I insisted on snapping it, and since my friend was a chicken I had to drop him back home and then get to work. I wonder if he was afraid of ghosts at that time or just afraid of cops. However, I went on roaming around that building here and there trying to catch a good spot to snap it, and in the same, an isolated one somehow. I went into some weird alleys, full of dust and bumps and my car almost turned into a bicycle, but the angle there was not so good. After all, I roamed around again and found out a nice spot although it was not so isolated but yet it was somehow a quiet place; the parking lot in front of the Khalijiya complex, where the DHL facility lies. There far away in the parking lot, I used my telephoto lens in a speedy manner in that cold weather that I didn't check even some settings for mirror-lock-up before shooting, and snapped the image;

The images were hard to compose though into HDR. I took 6 images (2 series of 3 shots, with focus changing from f5.6 to f16). The problem is, the wind played a role and shook the tripod a bit. Photomatix played a nice role in aligning the displacement somehow but Photoshop did not. The technique of aligning images is described in the HDR book made by Christian bloch, and seems the Photomatix algorithm is more complex than its counterpart in Photoshop. However, some work was needed later on to cool down the colors (the original image was yellowish) and to crop the image to remove the objects at the bottom that were blocking the way of my lens. I'm not completely satisfied about it but at least, I tried. The moon at the top is a later addition, beside, there was a crane on the top of the building that I had to clone-out.

It's not the first time I take a picture of this building by the way, but that night was special. The blue lights in the building were magnificent.

__________

1. thirty days and thirty nights the hero spent
2. in the lands of the bulughmans, the nomads
3. he taught them arts and crafts
4. he taught them how to speak in manners
5. he taught them how to write and read their own words
6. their letters were called the Bogol
7. and their tribes as the bulughmans
8. and then he taught them how to build houses
9. how to plant trees and how to find water
10. then he prayed to God to bless the lands
11. and clean the hearts from envy and mischief
12. as much as He desires so to be for them
13. then the rumbling started among the men
14. some are tired and some want the homelands
15. while some asked for more lands to takeover
16. and now Alexander had half of what he had
17. he stood in the middle of his camp
18. one point from his hand and everyone was silent
19. and after praising God and His favors
20. and after he reminded them about his vow
21. he announced firmly to them
22. that he will not move or get back
23. until the commands of God reveal themselves
24. or until his soul is taken away from his body