So tired at work that I just don't find much words to say for today in here! Not much photographic experience for the past few days but yet I'm keeping on reading some texts here and there to enhance my knowledge about some aspects of the exposure.
I barely made a transliteration today for 2 verses and now after this post I think I will nap for 30 minutes until it's time to move out of here...
__________
25. Alexander wondered for the name 26. he never heard of it in the pages of history 27. but so he obeyed the commands and got back to his camp 28. and kept the words for himself as a secret 29. and in the next morning he raised up with his men 30. and to the roots of the sun they were marching 31. until the Earth swept its green cover and the water 32. and with sands filled the ground and salt 33. there, they glanced many a tribe from afar 34. barely cover themselves and barely live 35. running after insects of the desert 36. and drinking the dirty waters 37. their looks were miserable 38. their poverty pulls out the tear 39. Alexander then approached them with peace 40. and they gathered together with fear in the eyes 41. their action amazed Alexander 42. he announced the peace before them 43. but they kept their silence with fear 44. the hero then offered them some food 45. and they attacked the food with their teeth 46. fierce was their hunger 47. fierce was their thirst 48. and their tongue was not comprehensible
Not much of photography for this weekend or experiments, as I'm out of ideas. But rather, I spent some time trying my new flash against the faces of the family just to make some sense on how to use it and how to adjust the light to my needs. In fact, my main interest in the flash is to give enough light when I use high shutter speeds, and I use high shutter speeds to compensate for my shake of hands when I'm on the go without a tripod (or more precisely, not in mood to put up a tripod!).
For the time being I'm checking for shots here and there from Ireland and this time I've reached the folder which I call, the "Damned." The folder contains some panoramas that really made a headache for me in the past and I might as well go again with it. It's entitled (2009-10-04). Two folders prior to that contain some images that I've done before and already inspected, thus I didn't spend much time with them and moved directly to the next folder. But one of the images in the folders before was something that I think I didn't make up before (or I made in some small size);
My window's view in The Waterfront, Co. Galway, Ireland.
Dandelion near Oughterard's Golf Field
As for now, I'm surfing Amazon to see more books related to some fields of photography and other stuff and tools. I put them all on my wish list to refer back whenever I want to. I also made an order from Astrodiesnt, for a "psychological astrology profile," and the introduction was interesting enough that it seems almost like 100% accurate, but I have to continue reading it (I stopped reading to write this post first!).
As for now, here you go, with Alexander 3, Verse 1.
__________
1. Alexander camped 7 days and 7 nights 2. he organized the west, spread the goodness 3. he banished the evil from the hearts 4. and the message of Heavens arrived 5. "Alexander, catch the sun from its roots" 6. on the 8th day he got ready with his soldiers 7. and along the long path he should go 8. amid deserts and forests, amid waters and fires 9. people come and go, tribes settle and move 10. wars and victories, along with friendships 11. some joined him by their well and some by force 12. until he reached the line of the day 13. where night falls just after the other side 14. he made a decision to settle with the hordes 15. amid the noise of hatred among the men 16. amid the fear that spread among their hearts 17. but the hero had a heart of a man and man shall be 18. and a gaze to the generals he made and they settled down 19. while he wandered between the two lands 20. he praised God for His wonders in that spot 21. while angels came down greeting him with a smile 22. they told him he will be back here one day 23. to see wonders beyond the wonders 24. in some land they called Ayvar
Relatively a quite day, except of the smelly canned fish samples that I had to prepare. Thank God I didn't puke after all!
I brought my camera today as well for no apparent reason, and since I'm leaving in 30 minutes of writing this post, so I think I won't do any photography for today. However, it was nice to try my filters out yesterday on the roof with the beginning of the night at around 6:00 p.m. local time, when the moon was just raising and Mars was apparent as a red dot to the south of it. There was a bright glowing spot to the right of the moon as well but I can't tell which planet is this, and I say planet because stars usually are not that sparkling in the city.
I wanted to make a study about my filters and make an estimation of how much light they can block, but anyway I find that is difficult for the many factors involved, but rather I found out some useful sites that explain some aspects of the filters, and I've found out that Cokin (the manufacturer of my filters) seem to provide only 3 types of filters: ND2, ND4, and ND8, but there are lot of others out there that reduce the light more than this specially for the long exposures. The numbers after "ND" denote how many times the light is reduces, i.e. 2 reduces the intensity to its half, and 4 reduces to the quarter and so on. There is ND64 and ND1000, but they seem not made as a flexible filter as I'm hoping for, but rather as a fixed plate to be screwed int othe lens, and this one is expensive. However, I might be able to induce such effects by stacking the ND8 filters altogether, but at the current time, I have only one. It was such a mess that I couldn't take a picture of the moon from the roof with my telephoto lens (simple one: 55-200mm) which zoomed nicely for the moon surface and showed the spots (but I had to do this manually since Automatic Focus tend to be problematic with darkness all around the scene). Alas, the light coming from the moon is so strong that makes such a glowing spot, and I have no adapter for this lens diameter. Anyway, I didn't think of speeding up the shutter speed, so I hope I can check for today. The main aim for my experiment yesterday is to see my ability to catch long exposures and make a trail of an object, but that was not so successful with my recent grasp of NDs. Instead, I took successive pictures with my 18-55mm lens (which did not zoom to the moon at all but only showed a glowing star with flare), with my ND filter fixed on it and each shot was exposed for 30 seconds. Thus, and for ten minutes, I came up with 20 or 21 successive shots. I stacked the images in Photoshop and blended them together and it showed a trail somehow but not good at all. Well, I was happy that at least I find the moon moving!
I have some ideas for now about the nature of light and how to use the filters, yet, this will be improved by experimenting. More cash needed I think for more tools... and books!
__________
Alexander did understand the test of his Lord thus with a point from his hand ordered an attack While Chinchán's Son, Wirchán took the lead seeking the revenge and chasing The Kákhbár The armies met, just like a fleet of locusts nothing can be seen but blood and heads While the ringing of metals deafened the ears and the shouts of agony and wrath filled the air Alexander was not any less with his fierce heart knocked down the heads reaching for his Karnagod Finally they met together amid the twirl of blood shield to shield, sword to sword, and eye to eye Yet though the fear among the army of the hero the grace of the Lord was revealed down on them And when Wirchán seized the head of his enemy did Alexander plant his sword, and Karnagod no more Thus, when the men of Geltáns heard of the disaster ran like insane in every direction seeking refuge But many of them were seized and captured and prisoners they became with dignity no more After war, the peace and the belief spread over and Alexander assigned his men to hold this land Wirchán and Dómí held the matters of this one of the north, and one to the south of West
One heck of a night and a day, that was yesterday. A headache and a high blood pressure that accompanied me all the way to my bed time. I slept earlier (or let's say tried), but yet kept on waking up. I took one Cataflam pill at the end just to knock me off and sleep for 3 hrs before raising up again to go to work.
Had a chance yesterday to snap a a picture from some junk thrown beside my work place. The image reflects my feelings about those people who glue their butts to their thrones. Despite all what they do, they remain stupid in the eyes of others and behated.
As you see, I called it the King of Chairs. The hard part was to fix the blue chair on top and make it remain there. When I did so (hardly) with some broken metal pieces from other chairs, the wind started to rotate the base. Usually I like such chairs but not in this condition!
The shooting was mainly to experience my ND filters that I've just received. I fixed the ND4 Grey filter and started to shoot, and then removed it and shot again, then I changed the angle and shot again then fixed the filter and shot back. Of course each session was for 3 shots to combine as HDR. At the end, I joined 6 RAW files for the HDR make up. This gives me an idea in fact about studying the relation between the exposure value, time and the ND filter type. I might do this soon to study how the long exposures (bulb mode) photography work with ND filter and what do I need exactly to eliminate the excessive exposures as much as possible in day time photography.
In photoshop, I opened my HDR and started on fixing some coloring. Personally, I like the first version of the image (which was combined into HDR in Photoshop itself) because of the high contrast between the blue chair and the yellow wall, and also the darkened purple floor. All of these were fixed by adjustment layers in Photoshop before tone-mapping. Unfortunately, after saving the file, and for some reason I don't know, the original EXR file got grey spots all over the image (and seems I've pressed some wrong key with all that headache in my head!). However, I combined the images again and worked on the second version with Photomatix. Of course, the second version of the image MUST go to photoshop for some tiny adjustment with the contrast and sharpening and then small-sizing to hide some artifacts.
That's it for now and I'm still waiting for the reply of Bigstockphotos!
__________
The fierce eyes met with the frowned faces while Chinchán exchanged the show of power There was Kákhbár, standing there beside the king a valour general, mercy has no landing into his heart His drink was the blood, and his food was the flesh and his jokes were made of spears cut into the throat Then with a loud voice from the horizon did it appear Chinchán shouted from afar at the so called Kákhbár "We heard of a mass of muscles, and a heart of stone a man called Kákhbár the hero, and I doubt if it is so" The glorious Geltán had his blood violently out from him and shouted back with words that no one understood He walked alone to the field and everyone was watching while Chinchán was there waiting for him with pride Two heavy things were meeting at that time of old age if not men, then it is free for others to imagine the beyond Copper and Iron, no difference in color they have now but similarities they hold in the sound they do when beaten Strike by strike, they exchanged the power so fiercely everyone saw the fire coming out from swords and eyes If it was not for a mistake in the steps of Chinchán his head wouldn't be a target to be splitted into two Just then the Geltáns released the shout of ego and the knees of Caqobians shivered of fear
Some enhancement with the mood, but I had to receive some bad news from the press with my model for the brochure that I made for work. I have to make the fonts smaller and blacken them out just to fit their machines. Anyway, this is supposed to be some "easy" task to do... if only I would find the original PSD file of this brochure.
I couldn't believe my eyes when Fotolia rejected my 2 images of the dome, claiming that they have aesthetic problems. I just can't understand what those people are asking for? Anyway, Canstockphoto accepted the 2 photos and that's fair enough. I'm waiting for a reply from Bigstockphotos as well. They surprised me indeed when they accepted 2 of 3 from my shots from the parking lot in Soog Sharg!
Rejected
Accepted
Accepted
After accepting these 2 images, I revived my hopes in them. And I used to think that they are worse than Fotolia in their conditions! Pah! It would be somehow a disappointment if they rejected the dome photos... and since no luck is my friend, then they would reject them eventually!
Back to the images from Ireland now, and as I finished the folder of 1-10-2009, I'm checking the special subfolders that I usually keep for panoramas taken on that specific day, and they were a lot. I'm hesitated on wether should I spend more time fixing the errors in these images or just do the easy stuff and move on and come back later one day to these! Apparently, the noise problem that I just noticed a month ago and picked my camera for sensor cleaning for it was apparent in the photos taken back then, but for some reason I didn't notice them at all. But with the new panorama that I've made, I've noticed how much spots were there...
The previous image was cleaned from spots and noise with cloning stamp in HDR state before the tone-mapping. Also, I added layers of hue and saturation adjustments to make the colors more bluish and fanciful with some greenish hue for the trees. Honestly, the image looked perfect to my eyes just like that without tone-mapping. However, I made the tone-mapping with Photomatix and not in Photoshop, because in such abundant details and wide image, I tend to make lot of mistakes with the manual job. I was surprised though with the amount of noise that appeared after the tone-mapping that neither NeatImage nor NoiseNinja did any good in removing it! For this reason, I kept this image for myself. It looks better in small size, but in actual size, it is horrible. Thus, I did not submit it to Canstockphoto (and that's why I didn't put any watermarks on it). If you want to use it, please go ahead, just give the credits, please.
I'm trying my best to sharpen the image in the HDR state before tone-mapping, as I read and learned from Mr Christian Bloch's book about HDR imaging, but this option seems not so very useful to do, at least for my images. When I sharp and watch the sharpening artifacts show up (by checking the higher EVs of the image in HDR state), I do reduce the amount of sharpening and the radius and they become so low that, eventually, you see no sharpening effect in front of you at all! Thus, why use it? I guess doing the sharpening after the tone-mapping is better in my case. Sharpening too much without taking care of the artifacts and the color noise at the edges in HDR state, would make tone-mapping later on a bad experiment with weird spots of colors showing every where.
My work with transliteration today would be limited to one verse only I guess. I've discovered some confusion in my present tense make-up (the last syllable of the 4-letters verb). For example, "to leave" is (ğaţbaš), now to make the present for 1st person - I leave - it would be (ağaţbiš), but then some verbs I wrote like (ağaţbaš) and that made me some confusion in the matter. It is a serious mistake that makes me think of all the previous writings and transliterations that I did before. I might have to check them seriously and see any corrections that appeal. I hate this when it happens. Moreover, it might make me record some stuff again, which I thought I've finished already.
For the time being, I'm going to check what I transliterated already from Alexander VI story, and hope no mistakes would show up in the future. At least in grammar that is.
For today, we have Alexander 2, verse 4.
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The tidings of the ill omen travelled like lightning the king killed the messenger for no right or wrong Thus, Alexander raised his eyes up to the sky and prayed with tears on the cheeks for the poor man he sent "O Lord, what to do, I obeyed and listened but the devilish ones accepted nothing but evil By Your might I come and go, live and die guide me through this and do not let me go astray" Then the voice came down to Alexander and only he could hear it in his ears from above "O Alexander, by My power you shall succeed, and with the light of Mishdárá you shall go on We know what happens, and happened and what will go and victory is yours, this is a test for you and your men" Thus, Alexander got down from the mare and bowed down to the Almighty, the Giver of life, the Giver of might Then to his soldiers he looked and organized and spread the twelve generals across his eyes Chinchán, Ishkán, Chírán, Érán to his right Dómí, Tólímí, Kahrímí, Gehámí to his left Then Shakrashom, Dartalom, Keríhom come along with Galgolom, they were in his front While the bugles of war screamed so high for the blood scattering and for men's valour
Welcome to my world of MONDAYS. In the news today we have many problems:
1. Waking up at 2 AM and going to work in the morning without sleeping.
2. Having to wander around the labs because of stupid sockets and no water in some labs to wash the tools.
3. Visitors that I had no mood for.
4. Going to DHL and getting stuck in the traffic jam and barely finding a parking place later on (I parked in a mid-lane really and not a real parking place).
5. Being screwed from a colleague.
6. Did I tell you that I crushed into a wall a bit yesterday? Well, it wasn't Monday but it was an introduction to Monday.
The good part is, I picked my shipment and I got my 3 filters now with an adapter and a filter holder. Yesterday when I went to the DHL facility, there was nothing but a single "folder" like thingy with some stuff inside. I opened it to see a ND2 (neutral density) filter only lying there! The whole shipment for 99% of the order just arrived today! Anyway, lot of work to do later on to experiment with these new tools. This is supposedly to help me out with long exposures in BULB mode. In such situations, the images tend to be blown out by the exposure, thus you have to limit the light as much as possible (specially in daylight photography).
No activity so far with the pictures from Ireland, as I'm taking some time to play some games, and at work, I get myself busy with some machines and with the transliteration of Alexander's VI story. I was hoping though to take some photos today of some scene around the campus but I was so busy in "work" that I didn't think about it for now. Anyway, it's going to be a picture of some garbage. That's all!
By the way... I hate Mondays...
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The army of the hero with twelve generals stood firm before the walls and the gates of Galatanga the bold A might city and mighty walls, and mighty men not countable from the distance, but hard and tough Alexander sent a messenger before him with a letter and he approached the army with a raised hand above He showed them the letter high up, and signed for peace and asked to meet the king to reveal the tidings before him The king was there, on a throne carried by six slaves among his men, and enjoying the view of his kingdom The king with a point from his finger made all silent and pointed to the messenger to read his tidings The messenger went on with no fear to read on "From Alexander, king of the Caqobians, To Karnagod, king of the Geltáns, after the proposal of peace that we came for, We invite you to worship the One, and the Only, the Lord of Heavens and Earth and the beyond And shall you make peace, we are for the peace yet, mischief would be in your demeanours Thus, you dug for your people their graves" and the king went fierce with reddish eyes With a point of his finger to some guards the innocent messenger was cut into pieces
A day that begins with a headache is not a day, it's a hell. This is my first day of the week and its start. Beside that, I did wake up a bit later than my usual time, so I had to go in a hurry to my work place.
I had to grease little bit and do some work with the now-working freeze-drying machine and check if the samples were already dry or not... for my luck they were;
The headache did not give me much chances to do anything but at least I started my transliteration with Alexander's story, part 6, doing the usual 2 verses as before. Two verses with such a headache is a miracle, I tell you. As for the time being, I go around wherever I walk and try to concentrate as much as possible for new ideas of photography. Maybe this is what is causing me the headache? Nah, I don't think so. I might need to nap in the office. I'm expecting a way to go to DHL today, as one shipment arrived and the other had just departed from Bahrain. Hope I can manage...
__________
Days passed and the journey was to the west they marched into different lands and villages Some joined them and some resisted them and some hosted them as friends and brothers And the march continued amid day and night between the plains and the forests so dark Until the limits of the western horizon glanced where the sun sets in the cold sea of Échalán And there lie the lands of the pagans so fierce idolators, and for the stone they bow and heed Worshippers of nature, and forgot Who made it thus cruelty got planted in their hearts and eyes Their children they gave for nothing but mere myths and their own earnings for the bless of the unknown Geltáns they were called and named in records the guardians of the western paths to the sun Thus, the command from the Almighty came down O Alexander, teach them who Am I, The Lord and let them praise Me and worship Me as well If they insisted with cruelty then your sword shall work and you are a faithful man, thus punish or have mercy My grace endowed you with the sense of justice and mercy Then, the news of the hero approached the borders of might and the hordes of Geltáns were made ready for the new comer
It is not an usual thing to post in this blog in weekend days, to me at least, but here I am after finishing the stitching for the Dome's picture. It was not an easy task anyway!
Coming to some calculations and after downloading the RAW images from my camera, the shots run over 21 angles (20 continuous in a circle and the last one was a zenith), and in each angle I had to shoot 3 times with exposure bracketing, thus 3 x 21 = 63! Ta da!
The composition was not easy and I had to try many times in the past 2 days because of my damned memory limitations! All of that happened when my stitching program did not work wonders as usual and there was some mis-alignment in the layers, and working in OpenEXR in 32 bits is not an easy task for my memory. I wanted to resolve the matter with Photoshop but yet, the results were even worse because nothing could be accomplished with such memory. At the end, with some tweaking in the software itself I was able to produce some decent image with less errors and the output was saved of course in EXR format as well;
The above images (when enlarged) can look a bit of cumbersome with some spots in colors, well this is mainly because I saved it as a GIF to keep the transparent background and keep the image circular completely without any white background. Of course I couldn't be able to submit a GIF to stock sites so they are saved as JPG as well. However, there are 2 versions here because I worked with manual tone-mapping in Photoshop (the bright one) while had a trial with Photomatix (the darker one). I've submitted the two currently to stock sites, you wouldn't know what people want. In tone-mapping (specially the manual one) you can produce many different aspect from a single image. I might go over with a third trial as well with a different method.
As I prmised before, here is the second part of Alexander's story. To make it a bit longer, I shall put only a verse at a time. Today it's Part 2, verse 1.
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It is the morning and its glory that began and Alexander viewed his armies from the balcony The sun's heat was heavy on the heads and metal and the brave hearts were looking to the balcony Whispers became obvious, and then into shouts the hero raised one hand high into the heaven With a glance of sun's ray over his fingers the crowds kept silent like preying wolves The Alexander started the speech with praises for the Lord of earth and Lord of heavens Then announced the beginning of the journey of hardships and agony, under the Eyes of God And by the commandments of the Almighty the crowd of armies headed to the west Into some lands they have never seen into some lands they have never heard of And the time had come now to go ahead and all shall be heading towards the west And although the graceful mother of the hero wept and wept until her eyes became white By the grace of God he calmed her down and she understood no one here shall be left For the Earth is nothing but a revolving wheel of happiness and agony, of life and death as well
It's going to be a very tiresome day. It is already at the moment of writing this post. Not because so much to do, but mainly because the sleeping problems I have.
I woke up today at the usual time, but instead of going to get me something for breakfast like I usually do everyday, I picked my stuff and went directly to my work place to snap a picture of the dome that I shot before, but this time I decided to do it in a different way. I was afraid that those security guys would block my way or something, but instead, the security was behind his desk and sleeping, and I was trying to do everything quietly. Some of those cleaners came in later and stood over my head to see what I was doing and kept on blabbering over my head gergergergerger... gosh, ever saw a silent janitor before? Here, I didn't.
For this time, the way I snapped the parts of the dome (for stitching later) was different than the previous one which was a fatal mistake. I lowered my tripod to its lowest position with its legs unstretched, and then I raised the camera by the portrait level (i.e. I fixed the camera so that when the portrait level is 90 degrees and upright, the camera will be pointing to the center of the dome). However, I think I raised the level for about 60 degrees up, and started taking 3 shots in each angle. I rotated the rotation plate for about 2 lines, but I don't know how many degrees are those! Could be 30. And for this, I have now a HUGE flow of images for circulating the whole circumference of the dome. At the end, the session was finalized with a shot to the center of the dome. The problems I'm expecting now even before the stitching process starts would be related to a little nudge to the center of the tripod from the center spot on the ground (there was a floral design in the middle of the hall that made me use it as a marker for the center), and, the process of shooting was so slow and the time was running by, and the sunrise started in the middle of the shoot, thus I expect problems with color differences when stitching already. I might need to tweak the WB abit as well.
I shot also some shots for a device in one of our labs and for some samples containers (for artisitc use if possible!). There was some nice ideas chasing in my mind while I was walking outside of the building. The cloudy weather we had for 2 days now is nice for some "drama shooting", but I really didn't feel like it. But I preferred to stay here and correct some spelling mistakes in the English version of Alexander's story VI.
For today, I will start posting parts of Alexander's story starting from the very beginning, down to the 6th part.
__________
(1)
Once upon a time in the
dusty past
when tribes dominated and
hatred spread
the destiny was waiting and
waiting it was
for the man of might who
will come and unite
so destiny chose a man
called Alexander
far away from the land of Caqobia
king of kings whose father
was Pilippánút
ruled with just and spread
the wise word
the kingdom of Caqobia now is unite
the kingdom of Caqobia now is mighty
(2)
five years since the seat
of Alexander
the poor man worked hard
and slept less
a mighty army he made out
of dreams
from tiny ants to so huge
men of courage
and Alexander did not
forget his Lord
the Giver of life and the
Giver of might
and despite his weakness at
night
he
stood up right bowing to Almighty
(3)
One night when the stars
were witnesses
a soft sound arrived from
heaven by darkness
calling with a soft voice
that shakes the heart
Alexander!, Alexander!,
stand up! and listen to me!
Alexander, O faithful man
of might and power
raise up and identify Me to
ignorant people
thus Alexander rose up at
the time of dawn
and
the shields he got ready and the swords
(4)
The trumpet of gathering
was blown
and the bugle of war was
shouting
the men of might then stood
before him
like how the force of day
obey the moon
and in a courageous speech
did he announce
'O men of valour and courage at times of heat
the commands arrived to me
and so shall I go
to
spread the wise words of God all over the lands'
(5)
Thus, armies are organized
and made ready
twelve they were, and full
of shields and armor
and each had ten thousands
men ready to fight
full of muscles and covered
with iron and copper
and the twelve generals
were ones of noble state
and had famous names and
loyal to their causes
Chinchán, Ishkán, Chírán,
Érán, Dómí, Tólímí,
Kahrímí,
Gehámí, Shakrashom, Dartalom, Keríhom and Galgalom
It had been a long time since I've been busy like this. Busy with work I mean and not with my own business. After finishing the translation of Alexander's story VI, I'm thinking of taking a bit of a break for the time being. A break from Ayvarith, but not from other things that is.
I brought my usual book about HDR to read today and also the manual of my new baby dedicated-flash to read for today, but I got so busy with the motor in one of the labs that I didn't do such readings in the early morning but later in day. I think I will snap a further picture for this machine that I'm preparing my samples with. It's called "Freeze Dryer". Ever wondered how come there is a milk powder? Well, this machine can do it. It sucks all the air in a space enclosed by some plastic or glass container, and freezes this space. Depending on the sample's weight this process can take some several days. The larger the sample is, the more time you'll need. But there is always a regular check for the oil level in the motor, which is critical for the work. There is one motor that is dead and I'm working on fixing it, if possible, so I don't want to go on with another damaged motor and hence, no work to be done with those fishy samples.
And I just discovered that when someone interrupts or interfers with what you were doing oiginally, is something fishy indeed.
Keeping my work with the pictures I took in Ireland, specially around Aughnanure Caslte, I've come to test some theory with composing HDR. This time, I wanted to apply one of the things that I've learned from the book I'm reading already, and that isharpening before tone-mapping. In fact, I never thought of mangling with the images in HDR (or 32-bit) format because in Photoshop, lot of options are turned off and you can't do much, and hence, I've never thought of doing something other than tonemapping my images and fixing the lights in some areas, and for this reason alone I seldom use Photoshop now for HDR purposes. But now, I've learned that I can do sharpening to the original HDR image and enhance the image before tone-mapping. Sharpening the image usually pops out some artifacts or noise in the image but with HDR, we have an open space of values assigned to each pixel in the image and hence, we can sharpen the image and not affecting the data. This is the theory. However, in my trial I wasn't successful (and maybe misunderstood some concept or Mr Christian Bloch does not want to give me all his secrets!), and I produced lot of artifacts that I need to remove. Anyway, for my image, I decided to sharpen the normal way after tone-mapping in Photomatix, and I will give another trial later on with a new image. Maybe my image was not so good after all... specially with the chromatic aberration on the edges (I'm supposed to clean those in the original RAW files before I merge to HDR, anyway too much headache for me now!).
I have one Panoramic HDR that is making a headache for me, and so, I think I will to do the whole process with Photoshop this time instead of Photomatix, since Photomatix has a problem with memory usage. I know, my PC is not a competant but well, I could handle the file only in Photoshop so far.
This day seems different since I was busy with my hands mostly and not writing as usual. And tomorrow I think I will be alone in the work place! Yeppieeeee...
It is finally here! The translation of Alexander's story the 6th part is over! WOHO!
I won't say it is without mistakes of course and the lines are lesser than 3000 after I've discovered many mistakes in the order of numbers, but it is a relief to finish all of this! The total was 125 pages! My hand hurt so badly while trying to type this entry because I was speed-writing and tryin to finish everything before I leave my work place, and I don't want to leave without typing something for my blog here.
Now other load of stuff to come in, basically, the transliteration and along with that I suppose there would be lot of corrections as well. Then, we have to add the new created words into the dictionary, and maybe while doing the previous tasks I would search and think about some new way to establish the webpage back again somewhere! Uh, one stress after another!
I'm reaching some interesting parts in my reading about HDR and I think there are loads of information that I need to consider from now on when I work with HDR images in the future... near future. Anyway, it is time now to get back home and read the new Flash manual a bit and see what I can do with it! By the way, never play with a Flash without wearing sunglasses. This is just a bit of an advice, take it or leave it, on your own risk!!!
Finally! My dedicated-Flash from Canon is here!!!
It was kind of a tiresome day but after all, with this Flash I think I should crown this "Monday" with some success! But, that doesn't mean the day didn't pass with no problems of course...
First thing in the morning, I've noticed that my colleague forgot some device OFF and did not turn it ON since yesterday, and that makes our work lags one day further. I pinned that down in the log book of the device and I wonder if he saw it even.
On the other hand, I'm trying to speed up my pace with the translation of the story of Alexander as I'm reaching the end! I expect that I would finish the story translation before the arrival of this next weekend!
By noon time I was tracking my shipment to see that it got over with the damn inspection so fast (ironically a shipment of books took about 3 days or 4 just to finish the inspection with those damn people). Thus, when I read in the tracking system that the shipment is awaiting for me to pick it up, I hurled down the streets and off to the DHL pickup location. The charges were 16.500KD, and I paid them happily with my visa. Since it is Monday, things shouldn't go as easy as that! No Way Sir! So, after getting back to work I got a call back from the guy behind the desk and told me that he charged me only 8.500KD instead of 16.500KD! So, since I'm a good guy and a sincere one, I had to go back after lunch at home and pay the rest eventually.
And now, the flash is all mine and I have to do a long process on learning how to use it and some tips about using this flash creatively as well (and not just aiming in all directions). This flash is Speedlite 580EX II from Canon. I didn't imagine it would be massive as much as that! The camera feels heavy when I fix it in the flash shoe on the top of it!
Speaking of processes I'm working on more images from Ireland and still on the same folder (folders are categorized according to the date of the shoot). It's been more than one week or two and I'm still working on photos from this folder that belongs to October 1st, 2009. The Second day for my arrival to The Waterfront. I discovered that there are some amount of panoramas that need to be stitched as well and that, eventually, expands my time for this folder. Many pictures had been prepared already and a small version of those were put in my Photobucket to send them later by email, however, Canstockphoto is accepting most of them, and that, makes me happy! You can check the photos that had been submitted lately by checking my profile at Canstockphoto (click the signature at the end of every post). No need to stuff this entry with images just now!
There had been some drawbacks however, since Canstockphoto had asked me to identify two plants that I've snapped from Ireland and I just don't know their names, otherwise, I can't re-submit the photos back.
One of the panoramas that I've stitched lately got a serious problem in size and my memory capabilities, and in the tones that I could produce. Photomatix is not letting me go further with processing the image and finalize it and save it, while Photoshop needs a professional to produce the perfect curve for tone-mapping and get a nice contrast. Chromatic aberrations are another issue in this image. I wonder if I should just forget about it as a whole anyway...
Well, I'm coping hardly to stay awake at this time and I really don't know how I'm typing this, but I'm doing it! Guess I'm going for a cup of coffee, again.
Note to self: do not cut mostache and beard to tiny hair.
What a busy week. It was a good thing that I've decided to take a leave from work for one week to do all the business related to my car leasing back again. I hate cars, this is for sure.
After 3 days of struggling I managed to lease the same car for one extra year and this time no automatic deduction via the bank but I have to do it myself, manually, either personally or by online. I hope their online service is as reliable as they said! The bad thing is, when I tried to pay for the first pay by visa, the card didn't work there and I had to pay by k-net (i.e. directly from my account). Judging from later events and how I used the visa card many times in many places afterwords, I got a feeling that I was fooled by the guy behind the counter. The visa card worked perfectly in several occasions and never failed to!
However, I had this little semi-vacation for myself; sleeping as much as I want, but yet I had to wake up early most of the days in this passing week. I had a plan to go to Miskan island alone yesterday but I didn't feel like it and I preferred to stay home (and in fact I slept afterward), plus the weather was (and still) windy. Might not be a good time for cruising in a ferry.
However, yesterday was not a completely idle day just like that in fact. I woke up in the morning and went out of home just right after the morning prayer and up to Soog Sharg. Don't remember that place? Well, here it is:
I had a plan earlier to take a photo for the parking lot just in front of this mall. I liked the view of these columns carrying light lanterns with a background of purple hue at dawn, and for this, timing was so very important.
I speeded up my way to there and parked some where as much isolated as possible and went on clicking with my camera in many angles and then finalizing my work with a hasty work of panorama. All shots were taken with bracketing exposures between -2 and +2, and I was flipping the aperture size here and there. The light was strong since I was close to one of the columns so I think those images taken with a large aperture were not so much what you would call, innovative. While those with smaller aperture made a star or a sparkle around light sources.
Large aperture (small f-number)
Smaller aperture (high f-number)
The disaster in fact was, when I got back home I discovered that all my shots were taken with ISO 800, and that gives a big amount of noise or grains, so I had a hard time combining the images for HDR (which increases the grains almost like triple) and working on cleaning them and such (which is never perfect anyway specially with such large number as ISO 800). Photomatix was not much of a help in fact because the noise levels became so much exaggerated and its internal "noise reduction" did not make any wonder. Thus I had to refer to the typical HDR merging in Photoshop, which I don't like much, but I had to.
As for the panorama, and because of the problems mentioned afore, it was also a hard task to make one and also it is not perfect at all with many errors. After all, I gave up the idea of combining HDR images (in OpenEXR format) and stitch them together, but I got a hold of the +2EV sequence and that, to my eyes, was the best solution. As for the errors, I tried to do my best with Photoshop but yet, it was not much of a good work. It is sad to see nice colors gone that way with erratic stitching (and mainly because of my lack of proper tools);
The funniest thing in all of that was the security guys in the place. In Kuwait, you can't take a photo of your own house I believe without a permission of some sort. When I finished shooting the panorama and was on the go and collecting my stuff, this security guy came to me asking me where do I work and whether these photos for some magazine or for some newspaper, but I just replied with "I'm a hobbyist, and this is for myself". The guy couldn't do anything and just wished me good luck! I went into my car blasting with laughter!
You might think that a permission is needed indeed because it is a private property, but it is not. It is a public parking lot and a permission should not be necessary, specially that no trade marks are shown in the image or anything. However, I got away with it this time, I don't know if I can do it another time though! Imagine yourself being a hobbyist and required to make a permit for everything that your eyes see as beautiful... this is ridiculous.
In the mean time I'm still not finished with Ireland and the Irish beauty. There are still some issues not settled about some of the images and panoramas. Panoramas taken from Ireland are a critical matter since I can't go back and take the pictures again, so I try to spend more and more time with my images and try to make them as much acceptable as possible. At least to some viewers.
Some of these images are repeated as I added them beforem but this time I think they got more enhanced colors. Not all people appreciate the weird-looking tone-mapped HDR images, so I try to keep them as much natural as possible.
On the other hand, there was a great deal of a chance to make my first spherical panorama (i.e. 360x180) but again because of stitching errors and technicality, I had to reduce this dream to simple 360 panorama. The panorama is for the small tower in Aughnanure castle from the inside. The panorama makes the space looks so wide open, but the truth is, I could barely move inside with my camera!
Also, while flipping through many of the effects and coordination systems, I discovered that I would get some nice effect with a "circular" panorama (not spherical);
It has that nice look for peeking through a keyhole I guess! Now this panorama is what I call a hard stitching process. It took overnight to be done. I know for prefessionals this time is nothing, but to me and for my humble poor PC, this is too much really.
With this, I should try to examine all my choices when I do any panorama even if not a 360 one.
As I'm not going to go out today, I might write some words in my diary which I didn't write anything in it for long time now (since my back from Ireland!). I shall see to it if I can do something about the translation work with Alexander's story... if I had the power (or urge) to. I'm almost close to finishing it and I hate the feeling of laziness just when the work is about to be done. But this work, when done, will open the gates for a heavy load of work to be done later, specially with the awaiting website for Ayvarith conlang.
