Playgrounds in My Mind...

Just decided to go on and write some words in my blog since I don't seem to be able to concentrate my words into a poem. Words come and words go but I just don't understand anything. I can't type or write anything. I hate this when it happens. Been fluctuating now and then between various songs for Phil Collins that hit to the core of the heart, and then change to Black Eyes Peas for some breathing away from my melancholy. Yet in all that process, the words don't stick together to allow me to write something, nor my daydreaming stops. In fact, I feel that my daydreaming is blocking the string of words from being complete and hence I'm jammed. However I try to write something, my pulses go passionate, always. I don't want to write another love story, and I'm afraid if I let go of my imagination and write something about my life or world, I would be going wild and violent. Not a pleasant picture if you ask me. Not for me. I'm not a rapper after all!
I think I need someone to aid me on completing the words or the sentences I make. Yet, this is somehow, a far away solution. 

An interesting experience though, that when I worked with my camera for some time now, and work on concentrating on my pictures (processing and so on), I tend somehow to lose myself into it, and forget about all the vivid images or daydreams that I've been into. I know that occupying your mind with something might help already but, till when? I don't work with my camera all the time. I barely took some snaps in the past few days even, and all of them were in a hurry, being afraid of any cops, or security people.
One of these shots were taken beside the shopping center where I usually pick up my breakfast every morning...

The Giant Chessboard.

To tell the truth, this is not the view that I wanted to achieve. However, the light is nice in early morning just like that. That's why I like winter more than summer, well, along with other reasons. I used my 15mm fisheye lens here, but maybe I should have used the 55-200mm instead (which I did the next day). I wanted this to be taken from some elevated point as in a bird's eye view, but unfortunately, this is hard to be done in that location specially with all security people being around the place and you just don't know when they might catch you in. I left the lamp post o nte right side as it is, just not to make the sky all plain an dull. To take this image I was turning on the camera (and it goes into sleep-mode automatically after one minute or two) and left it in the car as I went inside getting my breakfast, and once I'm in front of this I had to park and get down and snap in a hurry. My first trial was blurry, thus I changed to AutoFocus to do my work faster. All this fuss, for this snap. Yeah, how easier can it be?

My next snap was the next day directly, in the parking lot in my work place. I noticed that the light lamps in this place were awesome in the morning, when they are still on. The thing is, I thought these lamps work by solar inductance or whatever it is called, i.e. they are turned off whenever enough light hits the main switch or, again, whatever. I discovered then they are switched on and off manually. The moment I went there with my camera into the parking lot and just when I parked, the lights started to go off one by one so I had to take some snaps in a hurry. The result then, when I got back home, I didn't realize how lucky I was despite all the anger that was inside me for that incident...

Alone...

As you can see, I called it "Alone." The thing that happened here is that I snapped it before the other lights at the back turn off as well, resulting in one light post being off while the others are on, like if this post is isolated from the others. I think this is somehow a lesson to me that I should wait on bad things and bad happenings, and see what or how I can change, do or deal with such things. Valuable lesson, let's hope I have the nerves to apply it to my daily life...

On the other hand, there seem to be some panorama that I won't waste my time on processing it. It was the one taken from Salmiyah park last week. The place was really empty except of some trees and even a HDR processing didn't do much to attract the eye, so I had to do just anything. So, I went on with the "ant's view" again or maybe I should call it "tunneling effect". Later on I used the name "tunneling effect" for another image.

I didn't bother to give a name even...

The image here was processed in HDR, then since the saturation was high in general (and lowering it down was not attractive as well), I converted the whole thing into B&W with some touches of slight yellowish hue and adding more contrast to give a touch of drama to the whole thing. That's all I could think of, and as for the straight flat panorama of the same scene, I don't think I will bother with it. I might have worked a bit with it if the trees were more and dense a bit though.

Following now on the same trend, I did the same effect for more "interesting" scene. The one I took last Wednesday in Bayan park while I was there with my friend. I made 3 different projections of the same panorama. The time was in the morning so, the sunlight was interesting and gave nice contrast and hues already.

Flat

Little Planet

Tunneling

The last one of those maybe gained most of the popularity on Mostphotos.com. Despite the fact that this panorama was taken completely on a monopod (with 3 mini-legs), this is one of the panoramas that I didn't have much problems with broken lines in it. Notice that I'm talking about a HDR panorama, with 3 exposures on each angle. It was shaky as usual but everything went smooth that day (despite the breeze as well). Taking a panorama from a monopod, although it might be shaky, it is much easier than taking a panorama with my old tripod, mainly because the legs problem (they show in the lower angle slides, along with the body of the VR-head too) and because the monopod head is equipped with a screw that can fit the VR-head and can be flipped to fit a camera. I'm currently in the process of ordering a separate head (just a cheap one) for this monopod. The problem though remains: stability. The end of the story is, of course, a QTVR.

There are some times when you do process an image and then you find yourself being into melancholy because of it. I don't know how it happens but, it just happens!

Once Upon A Time...

This one is taken from the same place; Bayan park. Just like the panorama from Salmiyah park, I really didn't find something interesting about it except that it is a general view for the playground in that park. I tried hard to make it somehow interesting when I processed the HDR slide, but no use. Thus, after the tone-mapping was done, I decided to just turn everything into a dramatic black and white with a touch of golden hue. By the way my usual "golden" color is #FCC200. There are other hues for "Gold" that can be found in Wikipedia. When I stare at this image, I try hard to remember did I ever play in those? I sure did but, when? Frankly, I don't remember much at all.

For the time being, I'm thinking of a new project and this time, no cops or anything or any security involved. I want to do a panorama from the inside of my car. I don't know how yet, but I have to try this practically myself, and of course I have to be in a spacious area and not in front of this house, where you can barely jump into your car. Probably I would have to switch to the tripod here since a monopod is hard to be stable inside such a situation. I've been roaming some places now looking for some kind of a converter that makes a small screw head fit into the large screw hole of the VR-head, but no luck so far.

Now as I type these words and trying hard to squeeze my mind for some words I'm writing, let's hope I finish this. Work is dull, but I have to not complain, because it has been worse in the past few weeks. I'm trying here to seriously control my love for coffee in some way, specially after getting myself a 3-in-1 coffee package  and put it at work. This, can really screw things up. I've taken my camera with me this morning trying to snap the "chessboard" scene again but this time with a 55-200mm lens, but that didn't really solve anything. It won't do much unless I can snap that scene with a bird's eye view. However, I might shoot a scene like this again, from my work place...

Ad Coelem (to heaven).

which was shot originally by a fisheye. After tone-mapping this and cropping a bit (and still it is off the center a bit), I realized this better be in black and white because the colors were, dramatic, but to saturated and desaturating them, again, will leave it dull. But I think if I'm going to try my 55-200mm lens here,  I have to try some different angles. I tried it already on some junk around the place the other day but it wasn't a trial I worked hard for. Just for fun...

Government

Named it "Government" for obvious reasons, I guess. I tried to achieve some blur here but I think the distance in between the fore- and background didn't help. I wonder if a stronger lens like a macro lens would do the job. Mentioning that, I'm on fire, waiting for my first macro lens to arrive. It's a tamron 70-300mm. Although it is well-known that to get a sharper image it is better to take a picture with a stable lens with a fixed focal length, but I don't that now. Let me find my way with the macro, then I might decide about it. The most important fact now is my fisheye got a fixed focal length and this is way too important for doing panoramas with this lens.

Now, it's time for me to rest, from the whole world a bit...

Daydreaming...

The long week didn't hit its end yet but I'm already feeling sick of it. I feel lost, aimless, and the most dangerous part is... I feel I can't work on my photos for some long time as I used to. I don't know if this triggers my needs of socializing but for sure I'm not in mood to be around the people that surround me at the current time.
There are, unfortunately, some people that you tend to respect not for character nor for wisdom, but solely for the fact that they are older, but yet as much as you do respect them (because I do really have faith in my own faith and its teachings), they just tend to leave more scars in your mind by sparking more of the painful questions and memories that you just don't want to remember and work hard to overcome. I'm spending my time, as usual, in my room, but maybe more than before.

Lately, I've realized that I might have a real and serious problem. Daydreaming. Or maybe to be precise, Maladaptive Daydreaming. I know that I should ask for some opinion and ask some professionals in the field about it to make sure that I'm indeed having this case or not, but I know one thing for sure now. It is embarrassing. I'm tending to get some vivid images and in fact I thought everything is normal. This had been there since I was 7 or 8 years of age. Started from being with cartoon characters and trying to imagine another scenario for the story, until growing up and being... more serious. The spark for this "consciousness" was the realization that I'm in fact hurting myself. One moment living one beautiful dream, then BAM! Reality. I think this is what has been causing depression in my mood for big time of my life now. Add to that, the embarrassing moments when people tend to ask why am I laughing, or why I'm doing some gestures with my hands (this had been seriously out of control lately) and then I realize I'm not alone, and my answer would be "sorry, I remembered something funny," or "yeah sorry I got some itch there". I've been following news around the net and checking around people who has something like this. Some of them take pills. I don't want to do this now. I hate chemicals. I hate medicines. This state of mind made me somehow abuse coffee beyond my daily limits and intake. Around 3 to 4 mugs a day (preceded by some coffee cups from vending machines at work and a redbull) is not really what I wanted to do with my day. But what you know, sometimes I feel it really helps me to write. Write, write, even if it was a nonsense at all.

Maybe it is not that bad after all. To dream a little bit, maybe? I've been pushing myself to write some words here and there and glue them together, trying to form some sort of lyrics form. Maybe I'm not that successful in lyrical form mainly because I don't play any instruments but within my dreams I was there playing some guitar or a piano, and in fact, usually I have some background music mimicking some already existing song. In one of these trials I've created what I've called The Beggar of Nothingville. Some piece, I dedicate to someone, engulfing that with some meanings in it. Depending now solely on what people might think of it, they say it's a good one. Some people even commented that it might be a song, meaning they did indeed feel what I want to pass through, but of course I'm not sure about the tone. My mind was kind of working on a country style music.

Monday. I didn't go to work mainly because of sleeping problems. My schedule had been a mess. In fact, it somehow solved a problem for me, but of course I had to sign for a "casual leave" the next day. I only have four days a year of this type of leaves, and now I've already lost one with the beginning of the year still. I just had to. I couldn't push myself to raise up from bed at all. Besides, I was supposed to be in some gathering in an open buffet that my boss told me about. I really am not in the mood of socializing that much for the time being. Thus, circumstances came altogether, two in one; sleepy head and unnecessary socializing. Despite the fact that I was indeed going to go to that buffet, at least for few minutes or just stay in one corner to avoid unnecessary questions and remarks.
On this day, I, since I didn't go out to work in the morning, decided that I might have some power to go out on my own and do something outside. Just anything. The house was squeezing my brain out; shouts, screams, yelling and crying... all sort of those beloved sounds. Please note the sarcasm. Sometimes, I seriously think of just getting married to whatever who in whatever manner in whatever shape without any care in the world for a single drop of love in between us, just to live in my own place. Rentals here are like fire and I, alone, can't take it. However, the journey took me to a near by park. Salmiyah park. I worked in that place last week to take some readings in the very early morning with our 12kg device (~26.4lb). I liked some features in the place despite the fact that people tend to be around the place from the very early hours of the morning even before me. Thus, on Monday, I decided to go there and try my luck. It wasn't really something I worked so hard for or planned for. I was just going to be away from the house for some time. The first thing I did was to take a spherical panorama on my monopod. Shaky, but went fine. I've worked on some snaps from that day also and processed them, mainly some cut pieces of a tree trunk laying around the place.

Annuli Annum (Rings of The Year?).

In fact, the shots taken from that park (even the panorama) were not that impressive. To me at least. What happened is that I was hoping for some good light in the park with the sunset on its way. Long shadows and warm kind light to my lenses, but seems my notifications were only valid for sunrise, when I worked there in the morning. At the time of sunset, there were barely sun rays falling down on the place. Thus, I decided to look for anything impressive and tried hard later on to do some "action" with HDR rendering. I think all my trials failed or it could be that my mind was not in the mood of creating something, maybe?

To make out something from this piece here, I decided to go on Photoshopping all the way. I decided to mimic, to some extent, the bukkeh effect that my lenses cannot produce. Not at such a distance. So, I made 3 layers and blurred them in different amounts, making the stump blurred a little, while the far tree blurred more, then I blended them in using Layer Masks. I guess my blending was not that precise, because some areas around the edge of the falling trunk here do look a bit sharp. Anyway, I worked hard on the HDR settings just to illuminate the rings of the trunk. The White Balance here was a big problem. I couldn't settle my mind with any color temperature. Finally I decided to go with Fluorescent and give a cold, dead sense to this image.

I'm still working on the panorama I've made that day, and frankly, it doesn't look good for the great difference in exposures between some areas. I've already stitched a flat one and a little-planet one, but need some work on cloning out some areas, the usual, for nadir. Also, I might have to fix that difference in exposures manually with adjustment layers, and of course all the work must be done in HDR mode still before tone-mapping. Memory exhaustion on the way.

Wednesday now. I had a little work-out or an adventure if I should say with a friend that I didn't see in a long time (but chatting from time to time over the net in fact). We went on "fishing" for some shots in a park, this time in Bayan area. Both of us were sick of the laws and regulations and simply, for the lack of nature in this place that barely enables you or inspires you to do something with your camera. Maybe that's why in fact most people in Kuwait tend to go on with the portrait venture, simply because there is not much to snap with the camera and if there is, you would need to get a permission of some sort. This is exactly what happened today when we arrived there. For the first 5 minutes of our snapping, everything was fine. Then the keeper came and asked for the permission from some ministry (huh?) - and of course, we told him that we don't have and we are taking pictures "innocently". He said he would call the "ministry" to ask or maybe just to scare us. However, we continued to snap pictures around and I had one panorama from there without his intervention. It was generally a trial on some architectural photography since the nature there was almost absent except of some trees. I also made a panorama, again on a monopod. The difference here though, last Monday, the panorama I made in Salmiya park was done in a low level (the monopod was completely collapsed down), but this time in Bayan park, the monopod was a bit raised higher than my waist level. Of course the VR-head holding the camera over the monopod would add to the height after all. I'm still working on that panorama.

The single snaps of images varied, and there had been also a little handheld panorama done in a hurry, which can be counted for as a single image regarding its size and ratio anyway.

My friend working on his shot while I took this little panorama 

at his back and blended with vedutismo projection.

My friend, however, had his own pace, world and story. He might not have the tools I have, but he surely KNOWS what he is doing and what he is catching. In fact we had argued many times about the benefits of actually owning the tools to create the effect you want for an image, and creating the effects with HDR and go completely computerized. He is a pro for the first opinion while I'm for the second. Of course, he is not wrong about that, specially that he talks about official photography contests and what is accepted and what is not, and I have to admit that this approach, I think, does indeed make a successful photographer because, simply, it will gradually build up his knowledge and acknowledgment of his or her surroundings and how to adjust the eye and imagine the final product. Me, myself, did say to him on our way to the park that I tend to see every scene in its HDR equivalent and my eyes simply, analyze the scene for possible HDR-ish outcome. My view of things is different a bit as I don't consider photography contests as a big event. I concentrate my effort on the final outcome; A beautiful scene. Thus, I wouldn't maybe squander my money unless I need a hardware badly to create something (e.g. considering now getting a macro lens). Such images cannot be created simply by HDR or Photoshop or anything like that. You have to own the tools. As for the filters that my friend is trying to get, some of them can be already mimicked. By the way, I do envy him for his "coolness" when it comes to work with the camera. Maybe because of my usual problems with guards and security people, I've made a trend for myself that I always take pictures on the go and feeling always followed or soon I will get kicked out of some place for taking images. This feeling accompanied me in Ireland, even though I'm on a vacation. For my friend, the situation was a bit different. He works in a slow pace and wanders his eyes slowly in the place and picks his shots carefully. Yeah. This is how a photographer should be. I act more like a paparazzi and, no, a paparazzi is not a "real" photographer for me. Not when you work to expose other people's lives (even if they're celebreties, they have their own private lives, don't they?).

One of the first things I've aimed at was the sliders in the playground. As I told my friend, metals are a good subject for HDR making, whether they're shiny, or corroded. In both cases they give the drama you need, or the natural saturation you might want. All what is left is the angle from which you snap your image...

One of the angles (and done lot of them from here)

My friend made me aware of this angle after he snapped it with his 17-55mm lens, but 

with me I went with a Fisheye 15mm lens.

There are other possible ways I guess to play around with those images. HDR got many potentials and simply changing the white balance of the original images can produce astonishing results. I do miss working with ProPhoto though. The vivacity of colors is just unbeatable with ProPhoto and seriously tempting and seductive. I want to blow everything off and simply work in that color space. There is one specific image that I seriously wanted to keep in ProPhoto but I had to put it down to Adobe 1998 space, and then I had to compensate for the lost vivacity with some adjustment layers.

Boards (Waiting for Children)

The fisheye here made the trick of giving the spacious look while this square of wooden boards is lesser than a meter in width and length (around 3 feet). The white balance here was on "Shady" which made the image yellowish generally. It was a game for me, and although I could have changed the white balance while merging the HDR slide originally, I've just left it as it is. Later on though, I had to go on and put some adjustment layers to assist the cold look and add a bluish hue to the scene. The ProPhoto version (not what you see above) was almost direct to the point and I think I wouldn't need to change anything about it (except of some noise cleaning and sharpening), but since I had to change to Adobe color space, the fuss began with adjustment layers trying to compensate for the lost colors. There is another similar shot that I didn't prepare for the same subject but in a different angle.
Left to say now that after coming back from the park (and taking a tour to Baskin Robins!) heading back to work, the usual headache began again. Some visitors checking the place (and believe me please when I say they have nothing to do with my work place nor any interest), and extra fied work on the list to places I don't know anything about (and, I thought it is over by now). Yeah, hit "Bad Day" again. This is the national anthem from now on.

I've finished my fourth album for pictures from Ireland (2010) and already started the fifth one, but the progress is slow. As I said before, I'm kind of lazy to work on it. There are some smal panoramas that I didn't process their images yet into HDR format even to be stiched later. Should I dig more around for more junky places and architectural features to snap with my camera, despite all the regulations that make me sick here? I really need to spend more time behind my camera.

I've been trying to work on my webpage but, lazy again, there was no luck getting some things sorted out. At least I made the "About" page and it's ready to be converted into HTML format. Just some text really. The next step then is to prepare the Fonts download page and create samples for each font. I remember there were 4 fonts in the old webpage... or 3? Anyway, nevermind.

I think I will post this now, and try to get my brain connected with some music and write some poetry or lyrics or whatever it is to be called...

Crazy Me, Crazy World...

Finally I can say we got winter. The weather is getting chilly a bit in the morning, and sort of nice at noons. I want to spend more time in the outside but then, with my life pace and the tiresome body and mood, I don't think I can do that in the current time.
I'm struggling to get back to my writing habit, writing and joining some words from here and there and calling these stuff a poem or lyrics. The latest was done yesterday and called it Alien. It is about my feelings in the current time. Just lost in space and time nd I don't know where or what I'm doing really. All I know is, I need to be alone. I'm using now a tool that helps on pushing my thoughts about the words a bit, or brainstorming if I should say. The website generates a random word and asks you to provide some words related to that random word then you should make sentences linking the idea of these keywords to the main idea you want to write about! It is so random that I like it really. Some people say that Alien is nice, but I'm not yet sure it is that good. The website can be found here, Creativity Tools (check the left panel). I think it is mainly for story writing but it serves everyone right I guess.

I've started to work a bit on a new facade for my webpage and I've made a general graphic representation then divided that into several parts using Photoshop and saved it as HTML. somehow piece of cake but yet, this is just the tip of the iceberg. A load is coming and I need some time to do the rest. For the time being, all I need to do is stick links to these cut out pieces, and the race with time begins on finishing various stuff. The dictionary that I've made for Ayvarith will be one big headache. My mind is already shattered and scattered that I've forgot that I'm supposed to go on a field work this morning and must, again MUST, go tomorrow, Thursday.

Camera-wise now. I've managed to take some pictures of myself in order to work around with them, even though I'm not quite satisfied with them. I need to study the light more AND I would need more tools to control the light. A desktop lamp will not do any good and a flash source is not always adequate in such situations. I've started morphing the image already in Photoshop but stopped now for some time doing some other things. The process of morphing my face to apply the idea I have in my mind is quite challenging for me, because I've never done such a thing before. I was looking forward to see if there is a plugin that can spare me some of the tiresome tasks I need to do, but no luck. I guess I need to do all by myself.

On the other hand I'm looking forward to order some stuff for my camera, and most importantly, a macro lens. The options are wide open, but to keep it under a certain budget, I've decided to go for something else other than Canon. Also, and because I don't seem to need a macro lens very often like I do with a fisheye lens in snapping architectural features and panoramas, I've decided to take one with a range of focal length and not a fixed one. The thing about this feature is that a lens with fixed focal length usually gives a sharper image. Besides, a lens with adjustable focal length tend to have some "creeps," that is when the sliders tend to be easy to move with a slight shake or movement. The main aim now is for a Tamron, or Sigma lenses.

Some of the options.

Along with these lenses I'm thinking of getting a new backpack to hold my camera stuff and lenses. As with a new lens to the group, my current case will be stuffed, ridiculously. Then there is the matter of the moving ball head for my monopod, and who knows, maybe a whole new tripod even? I'm not sure yet. Expenses. I'm trying to hold my horses back a bit and forget about my credit card. It already has unpaid amounts hanging on.

I've finished my fourth album recently for pictures from Ireland, 2010. For the time being, I'm taking a kind of a break. I don't upload images to Mostphotos.com that often right now. I used to upload around 3 images a day, in average, last month. My rank stepped back a little now because of my laziness, but until the end of the month I will be in the front page as the photographer of the month. I'm working somehow on uploading one image a day and give more space for comments and "likes" in the website, because too many images at one time might cause some chaos and people might not know even that there are new stuff in your profile.

One of the images though, that people seem to like it a lot, was one image I called "In Terra Gigantum," or "in the lands of giants"...

In Terra Gigantum

This image was taken with a mini-tripod that I think it is supposed to be used for webcams (since I got it from a computer store from here before going to Ireland). I went wild with it for some reason, I think that was my mood with the saturation of the image. I didn't like it much. It was too much reddish and I don't remember I was that cheerful that day. The best thing I could find in my mind was to make a vivid image with weird settings (typical for HDRs). This image at this angle really revives my hopes of a panorama on a low level to the ground. The technical problems are there but hey, here comes innovation. I think I should think of something but before this, I need a location. Imagine looking at a scene from the perspective of a smurf! Voila! I would some sort of high support to fix my VR-head on the top of this small tiny tripod on the ground. The tripod already flips over when I attach it to my camera and lens, be it my Canon 7D (heavier) or Canon350D (older and lighter somehow). Now imagine putting the weight of something around 2kg (around 4.4lb) on the top of that WITH a camera. The only good point about it is, once fixed the balance, you just need to rotate the head of the VR-head itself and not the tripod. I need to think about it and try it technically to decide what to do about it and how to balance.

Again, gone wild. With Mostphotos you really got the chance to show the world how crazy you are. This time, with a simple golden clock antique that was in the lounge of Thornbrook House. Most of the crazy part here was done in Photoshop after the tone-mapping, with many adjustment layers...

Lord Time.

Maybe you can call it an emphatic image about the importance of time, as for me, all I wanted to do is pronounce this clock and show its details. Along with my work I've found myself radiating the blue part and so it was. The main reason to do all of that was the position of the clock with that wall at the back. I was not free to remove all the distracting elements. It was hard to do so. Hence, the only solution that came about in my head was to simply, attract the eye by colors and their contrast as if the subject was hit by a spot light.

Now away from my crazy mind, there are moments that are crazy by themselves, e.g. my life. Last week and in a day like this, I was out in some sort of a secret mission if I should say (yeah and I'm talking about it here) with a group from the military. We were supposed to go to Boubyan island again, but then suddenly and when we were there, the plans changed. They decided to go to some where in the middle of Kuwait. Some area that was a junk yard for destroyed military vehicles and weapons. We checked 3 locations generally and in the first, I was surprised for that tank, that after we finished the general check-up work there, I snapped several images for it and made then back home several versions from HDR slides.

A series I called "Bellum et Pax" (War and Peace).

The junk yard is always a good spot for HDR images, with all the red and yellow hues of the corroded metals. The funny thing here is that the gun of the tank is missing as you can see from the images. Been told by the soldiers with us that some Asian workers come here put a tent over the junk and by night they come back to work and weld off the parts they need away from the eyes of patrols. I really don't know what they would do with it, but it sucks!

Our next stop was in an open area where some containers used to be collected, but nothing was interesting for my camera there (despite maybe the barbed wire that I wanted to snap but didn't find it attractive enough for my eyes). The third stop was the one that really made me hate such field trips once and for all and wish I wouldn't go there anymore. We drove into a field of junk ammo that didn't explode, with my own eyes I saw a huge bomb, obviously it's not a tank's or a normal gun. It got to be an airplane's. We stopped thinking about the matter (or I should say they were thinking and I'm stuck in the car) but then they decided to retreat backward and went around that junk, but yet, we were still surrounded by ammo, maybe lesser in amount than the location before. One of soldiers told us that this area was a mine field before as well (and who knows if it was cleaned in a proper manner or not!). We had to walk in a straight line following some traces of car tires on the ground to make sure that the land where we step is safe. At the end of our work, I picked the camera and snapped only one scene for the horizon, where the clouds where gathering in what was somehow a sunny day...

Forgotten Grace.

I called it "Forgotten Grace" because, maybe, for some time, we really don't know how lucky we are that we are alive still. After these moments in a mine field amid the ammo that can explode at any minute, who knows what or when or why your life might be taken. It is just a flick of an eye sight, and you're not here anymore. Praise it, as long as you can...

The image here was bracketed (i.e. for HDR) but I merely used the technique to show the details of the clouds and pronounce the more. Nothing crazy about this as the feelings and the situation, were not adequate for such a crazy mood.

Life goes on... but till when?

Happy New Year. Really?

Happy new year. So they say. Anyway, not much difference to me, for all days seem to go on one direction in a monotonous rhythm.I didn't even touch my camera for a month or more, well, except for trials to take a picture of myself to work on my idea for Asperger's but even that was a fail. I need a hand at this, but all I have is myself to work here.
I've began to really hate the start of the week for all the bad news that might come to my ears, just like the situation with my dear friend, who gets all the heavy dose of bad news in the first day, in the early hours of the morning as he steps into his work place.
I try to amuse myself now and then in my idleness by working on some of my photos from this year and the last year, and of course most if not all of them are from Ireland, as I didn't capture many photos from here. I did however catch few that are somehow worth the mention, mainly two, from Boubyan island 2 weeks ago, which brings me to the point here that I'm supposed to go to Boubyan tomorrow, Wednesday. The news makes me sick somehow in that it is, again, with the military. The view is nice really, but I'd rather work in a different environment. Moreover, we are limited by time in that we have to get back to my work place for the damn fingerprint scanning.

Boubyan incipit, Boubyan fines.

A road on the island.

As mentioned before, I've started to use Latin to name my images, thinking it gives some sense of power or mysterious hue (but Irish Gaelic can be included sometimes of course). The name here means "Boubyan begins, Boubyan ends," denoting the fact that this island is simply, clear. The long road won't make much difference in the views. Well, maybe in the middle of the island it is different, who knows! Tomorrow we are supposed to go deeper into the island. I will try to bring my camera and see what I can snap. On the right side you can see the bridge that leads into and from the island. I took a small panorama of that bridge from the same position but I didn't look after it. I don't think the angle was good.

Post-war Traffic

This truck maybe was the best catch in that trip. The rusty metal is always a good subject for HDR composition, with its destinctive reddish hue. The soldiers gathered around their officer and discussed the matter of the bullet hole in the front glass or the windshield. Some say it is the one that killed the driver while others say it is an after-math process. What an intellectual dicussion! I tried to catch the scene again with a fisheye lens but in fact, didn't make much a difference. I think I should have stepped a bit further away from the truck to allow more space for the land on the right, and to give a clearer view of the fisheye effect.

Beside those, there were many pictures processed from Ireland, old and new. I've finished my third album and going on completing my fourth album. If there is anything worthy living for right now, in my life, is the pictures I make. I'm trying hard to put my feelings into them, but I do give some space to technical matters as well sometimes. On the technical side, I'm fluctuating between sRGB and Adobe spaces, but I do become naughty sometimes and feel like I want to work in ProPhoto even though I know it won't fit my needs perfectly. It is just the need for vivid colors that makes me eager to work with this color space.

I'm tending now to use more and more adjustment layers (after tone-mapping the HDR slide of course). All to give the vivid or the mysterious look. Not everyting can be done in the tone-mapping process but at least, controlling the light and the sharpness of some zones in the image. Not much panoramas now since I worked out most of them in the early trials as I arrived back from Ireland, but nonetheless, there was one or two and some of the small ones that I needed to do. One of those was the panorama taken from the front yard of Hore Abbey, which in fact, generally in shape, didn't differ much from the previous done panorama from the inside of the abbey:

Hore Abbey in the front yard.

Hore Abbey from the inner court.

I think the two differ only in the amount of details of the structures, of course. In order to make the new panorama a sort of a magical place (and I called it already Horeus Magicalis), I used many adjustment layers to control the color of the skies and the grass (which was green of course). I preferred the yellow here because normally it adds a good contrast against a bluish sky. One of the major tools that are in use in my work is the Selective Color adjustment layer (of course beside the normal and everyday tools, like Curves and Levels). This adjustment layer allows me to blend-in different colors into some other color in varying degrees, and that affects the appearance and the mood of the image a "lot". Having the mood I want for an image is a serious, hideous and tedious work when it comes to sRGB space. Thus, as a norm, I tend to use Adobe 1998 color space the most. Ghosts and artifcts forming in HDR slides is another problem, along with the chromatic aberrations which Photomatix doesn't seem to fix them properly, hence I need to use Hue/Saturation adjustment layers often to eliminate the magenta lines from the edges (and sometimes cyan as well).

One of the small panoramas (vertical this time) that I've done recently was the chestnut tree taken from Cahir town, along the long path beside the river bank leading to the Swiss Cottage.

Castán (Chestnut)

This little vertical panorama is weird a bit because the upper part of the tree is in fact dangling over the path, i.e. it was above my head when I took the shots for this tree (handheld). Here it appears likeif the tree is springing outward like a flower and not really bending over my head! Just the effect I want! The problem here though was, as usual, fixing the colors AFTER tone-mapping. If I remember correctly, the space here was sRGB and it was so hard to convince myself with the saturation in general, but here you go. I was aiming really at elaborating more of the trunk's color and make it more reddish like. Nowto include the whole tree is another story. I would have to take a wider and higher panorama, which in fact would be probably better be done in a 360 panorama. The situation there is complicated!

Now in the mess, I'm starting to work just a little bit on my web page. Just a little and not much. The previous design I've made before was not really to my likings, so I decided to work on another one. This time I will try make the whole ting in GIF (with transparent background) and then cut it out into slides and convert the whole thing into HTML. Hope, that won't take much of the connection speed needed, and the design is simple I believe. I finished reading my book about manuscripts, and hence I have some time at work to do something about my webpage. All I need right now is just a push and a flare in my brain. I tend to sit idle in this place not able to do anything because of the bad mood.

I need some push with my poetry. I didn't write anything in a long time. I just hate it when this happens. I got the damn feelings, but I don't have the damn connection to put them together. What's happening!!!