Most Photos!

Here we are again. At work. After one week of holidays still I can't get enough of this. The problem even percist now because directly after this holiday, today, I do have to train some people in some special (simple) course at my work place. I don't know what is going on, but despite the fact that I hate to interact with people, since I've returned from Ireland last October, I've been even more isolated, let's say. I can't even stand dealing with people, and now I do HAVE to train some of them, and tour them around. I just need my camera...

Disperately, trying to put my life back again into order after my vacation. I have to admit, so far, I'm failing. My mind is clogged with ideas but so little to be done. However, I worked little bit on some images in this holiday. I hope I can push myself further and work on my Ayvarith project. I remember I've put a design for the Welcome page, but where is the damn file!!!?
I'm trying to make things simple for the webpage, and still I don't know yet how to do it. Beside that, I need lot of patience with voice recording (to show how to pronounce letters). To make things worse, my brother wants me to help him in translating some texts for a documentary. Ugh! If only I know how to time manage. I need some super powers in the work here. Something that makes me awake for 3 days with no blink of the eye! But even coffee had failed me now... the more I drink of it, the more easily I go to sleep!

In the holiday I worked on some images, from Ireland and from Failaka, but maybe the most exciting moment I encountered this week is the discovery of some new website to submit my images. Mostphotos.com. It is mainly a Swedish website, but the way they deal with images is cool and awesome. Mostly, all images are accepted, regardless of the quality (providing they are 5MP or more), and files are sold as either small or large sizes with prices from €5 to €25. The coolest thing in this website, unlike other stock sites, it is a site that patrons arts more than commerce, in a way that you can interact with other photographers, LIKE their images like on Facebook and comment as well. I didn't encounter such things in previous stock sites like Fotolia, Canstockphoto or Bigstockphoto. But one should be careful though, easy acceptance for such images might get you in the habit of caring less about quality!
I was happy to see many photographers do LIKE my images, although truth to be said, they are FAR better than I do; in their colors and compositions... etc. One of the most liked images and right now it is #1 as you login into the website, and that is the lonely road going out of the old resorts in Failaka:

I've been adding some images as well, old and new, and lot of them are having their likes as well. There are lot of HDR photographers as well that got magnificent images on the show. The cool thing about this website, you don't have to be afraid of HDR of being rejected for being "over-filtered" (always had this problem with Canstockphoto however I try to make images look normal). You can set your wild expressions with HDR as you like and as people like it, because people won't care much about the commerce or how much such image is marketable.

 One of the images I went wild with my HDR sliders, and still some people like it 

that way though I know it won't be accepted in stock sites!

Be careful though from that point of dealing with HDR. I tend to ask myself now and then when I have a new HDR slide at hands "what do I want?". One of the images that I worked with lately and posted in Mostphotos as well as Canstockphoto, is an image I called "Sisters of Hope." This image was also taken from Failaka, and it is a side view for the image above:

Sisters of Hope

In case you are wondering about the title here, it is just the feeling of finding such trees in almost in the middle of no where, on a deserted island. This image, despite the HDR combination, I had to pull myself back a bit and try hard to do my best without manipulating much of the HDR tone-mapping. The reason I didn't use one image here (and enhance it later) is that each image had a good portion of light in some area that the others do not have, mainly, in the sky region. As far as I remember, I combined generally two of the three images together and discarding probably the third image which was the most exposed one with so many bright areas. Since the image was taken handheld, it is naturally shifted from one slide to another, and Photoshop proved to be no good at aligning images. This was not the first time nor the last time. Many images I had that Photoshop failed to align properly, and for this matter Photomatix was superb, and it works on removing ghosting artifacts as much as possible. In some rare occasions I would need to tone-map manually with Photoshop, and hence I do have to use Photomatix first to align the images and then save the HDR slide and plug it into Photoshop. Not the process I quite like, but oh well... . But before tone-mapping I had to do some stuff like cloning some shades on the ground and brightening the soil to give a good contrast, and then tone-map almost without changing anything in fact! On a 100% zoom the image might look shaky because of the wind playing through the leaves, but I think with a print on A4 size, it might be quite interesting. This is what I'm planning next. I didn't work with my printer for some time now.

I'm still looking for some way to calibrate or make a profile for my printer+ink+paper combination using my scanner though, since my ColorMunki tool that calibrates the monitor is not a tool to calibrate the printer and prints.

The previous days were also of some surprise as well. One of the panoramas that I went wild with HDR tone-mapping with, just to give it a spooky look despite the sun outside, got accepted in one of the stock sites, unexpectedly! Here goes the story:

Bank of Failaka. Any ghosts around?

This image is for the bank (I suppose) that I took a panorama of on November 5th. I made a previous version of this panorama (of course it is all done in HDR mode) but in the beginning I didn't like it. It was somehow cheerful in colors despite the apparent damage in the structure. So, I went on going wild with my sliders in tone-mapping this HDR panorama. In the beginning I was not aiming really to submit this image to stock sites because I know what they want. They want marketable images, not slices of art. Well, it is their right however. Just for fun, I've submitted the panorama to Canstockphoto, and Bigstockphoto. The first declined the file for "over-filtering" as usual, but the surprise was, Bigstockphoto, accepted that image! This incident really encouraged me to try my luck with heavily tone-mapped HDR next time when it comes to Bigstockphoto. Of course, the image is there on Mostphoto.com as well. If only now I can find a place to give away my QTVRs. That would be awesome I guess!

My work with the photos now is really a messy schedule, but I'm hoping to do some of the panoramas, specially the one that I got stuck with, from Ireland. As for now, I have to concentrate on the translation project that my brother wants my help with!

Lonely

Failaka, Back and Forth.

First day of work, with no mood for anything really. I feel numb and sluggish, just like how it was in summer days. Yet, lot of work is waiting to be done, that is work-related work. Real work if you'd like to call it? Anyway, the job involves visiting some places and taking readings from various places.

Images wise, I've been somehow idle with pictures from Ireland but on the other hand I've been trying to process some images taken recently from Failaka, but unfortunately because of memory limitations and my laziness to restart the PC, I didn't do much about it, but at least I stitched one panorama that I specifically went, last Friday, to Failaka for. It is that spooky place that was filled with bullets.

The place of the panorama. A Bank?

The day was not really quiet one as it was a weekend and some foreigners were there as well as locals, and all in all it was annoying, specially those teenagers who were on bikes or teen girls with their families. Upon arrival to the island I directly drove to that place which until that moment and since I started visiting the island back in 2008 - didn't know what it was at all. When I parked there it was few seconds and another car parked beside me and 2 ladies with a man got inside with cameras taking pictures as I was setting my monopod with the VR-head and the camera, another man then got in, a local, greeted me and tried to start a conversation but I didn't really give a chance to. He was asking me about this place and what it was, and I simply replied "I really don't know" and went on setting my things up. Later on, and after the man and the group of 2 ladies and man left, a family came in; a mother and her teenage daughters (and maybe not all of them are her daughters). They started crossing over as I was trying to take photos in the process already.

The problem was that, in fact I finishd the panorama already just after the 2 ladies and the man left the place, but I discovered all the camera settings were wrong and I had to start all over when then the family came in and started moving around the place. Once they went upstairs, I started working as fast as I can and hoping the camera won't shake much with this simple monopod. As I was finishing, the mother came to me to ask about my work with the camera and gave me her email to send her some photos! Which I did upon my arrival back home then.

I had the chance to go inside and upstairs looking for some nice views or something. The surprise was when I got into one of the rooms and saw a great safe-like door, and then I realized that this building probably served as a bank! Which bank? I don't know. Just a bank. I took pictures of that door but until now I didn't process anything. Will do later on for sure. Nothing was out of the ordinary there and I drove all along the island here and there trying to look for someting interesting to catch, but not much was to be done in fact. The weather was good, but in my opinion, a good weather is not good weather; in other words, a good weather is not a good one for taking photos. Notice the image above, which was taken in April 2010, and notice the clouds. It was taken at the end of winter back then and the weather was sort of good to the senses but with some unexpected rains sometimes, yet the view was dramatic.

My brain started to organize some words and I've put it down in some poem (if so to be called). I think the heart is on the move and got me some sparks on my fingers. This time however, I didn't write it down, but typed it directly into my computer. I called "Wherever, Whenever." I was reluctant about the name and I was going to name it "May there be," I think I do have already some piece of likely close title. I hope the gas in this brain won't be over and I would need some time to fill it again, to be able to write. I think I'm still in the greasing mode, when I would look for my life pace as before.

Isn't it hard, when you just can't help it but to love, yet can't help but to keep silent about it?

Aspergers?

A Quiet week, sort of, and thank God it's Thursday! I can't believe it has been 2 weeks since I got back to work, because it feels already like I'm here for the past 6 months already. Not because of work pressure, but because stupidity pressure around me. Sometimes I feel if I eliminated the stupid people from my periphery the population on land would count as much as 12 persons only.

I feel a bit of relief now as well, because my friend made an interview in my work place and technically he passed it without my intervention but the only thing left now is the paper work in the administrative office, which takes in an optimistic season, 3 months. After all, sooner or later he will be here eventually, I hope.

Camera-wise now, I've been doing things slowly here and then and trying to fix some of those bad ones I made already. I've already sent a collection of 20 images so far by email to several people, and it is the second mass email if I should say. I decided to change my practice of making a batch of 30 images and send them in one email. Instead, I will be making folders inside my Photobucket for each batch of images, with 20 images only inside each one of them. After that I will be sending a link to the album itself instead of putting the images in my email composer, which takes really long time to fix. The link to the album of the first batch can be checked here:

First Album

The work after that started with a panorama for Hore Abbey. Specifically, for the main hall or it seems the place where masses were held probably. I call such places with different names really and most of the time, I call them "Yards" mainly because now, they are either filled with grass or pebbles like a yard outside any house, but I'm quite sure that such places were once roofed and had many facilities and chairs or benches and the floor was tiled in most cases I believe. Probably I should call them "courts". However, Not much troubles, gracefully, in this panorama except of some chromatic aberrations that tend to show up strongly because of the fisheye lens usage with a strong sunlight.

Hore Abbey, Cashel. The main hall (court).

Of course after doing this flat spherical panorama, I wouldn't miss the Little Planet projection as well:

Hore Abbey, little planet projection.

Despite the geometrical shapes here with little planet projection I do feel it's not quite well specially with the cut out wall on the far left side of the image. However with a QTVR, it was a nice view specially to see the ceiling with its unique geometrical design; a fingerprint of medieval art, and probably this is what is to be the gothic influence.

It was until I made the QTVR, I realized that the left and right sides of the panorama are not coherent in tones, and hence a thin line cut through one side of the QTVR because of this. I did all the process again all over, but in a haste and maybe made the QTVR look paler and sharper with white sparks. However, I do keep a larger QTVR with higher quality, and in case I need to do it again I would do it slowly. No need for the rush. I will try now to concentrate on more single images to process.

In case you are wondering now about the title here, Aspergers?, well, that might be some false alarm, but nevertheless, got me interested in the subject. Asperger syndrome is like a special case of Autism, and with some cases of Autism in the family, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that I do have some degree of this. I don't have quite the information about it, but one simple test called the "The Autism Quotient Quiz," which I did online, yielded some high score. Some friends said that such tests conducted online cannot be really taken seriously but they are only screening tests, and they are somehow, culturally dependant. I did the test two times, and the results were 36 and 38 respectively. 

I've been reading some texts online and figured out some people do some things that I do: cleaning shining objects, untidy room, sleeping problems and hard time waking up, repeating things, listening to a song all over again several times until all words are memorized or so, routine and feeling disturbed when something changes with some specific routines. All of the signs above had been partially diagnosed for some people as Asperger Syndrome symptoms. Now this makes me more thoughtful of visiting a professional to do what it has to do to know myself better. I might solve an everlasting problem of mine, that is the inability to focus for long time (only in rare occasions).