Bad and Happy...

Thursday. TGIT. Not only that, but a long holiday is coming for the national day here. Weekend (Friday, Saturday) then 2 extra days (Sunday, Monday). Thus I won't be working until next Tuesday. Some long time I needed, at least so that I can sleep as much as I want. Last night I slept as early as 9 or 10 o'clock, but stil it was hard to raise up around 5 in the morning.

I got some news this morning, which I don't really know whether should I be happy or worried about it! I was promoted to a senior level. I don't know how much extra is paid for this promotion, but it surely means more responsibilities. The other bad news here is... I've been buying chocolate and candies to people I know for these news! Who's the beneficiary here?

I've finally wrote reviews for the items I've ordered recently from B&H. The hardest ones to write were those for the small items. There is nothing to write and I didn't like to just skip it! Like the adapter ring for Cokin filters. What I'm supposed to write about it? After thinking for like 15 minutes, I ended up with "it fits my 55-200mm lens perfectly"! I just don't know what else could be mentioned about such items! There is no operating or anything!

Been hit lately with some waves of disapproval for HDR photography, either personally, or simply by going over some articles. Some people hate it because it doesn't reflect reality properly, and some people told me already that HDR doesn't make you a photographer, while some people simply said this is NOT even photography. The amazing thing about these arguments is, all of them discuss the nature of HDR, and not the beauty of the product or the artistic touch in the final product. I admit that I still can't control the exposure metering and I'm not a master in that field, but I developed somehow a vision to imagine things in HDR prior to my work behind the camera. I think this is called a "skill" I'd say. I'm trying though to expand my horizon with exposure metering. I think I will plan for my next book in photography. The portrait photography book...

 

I'm thinking as well of getting an "intervalometer". I got myself an "intervalometer" from the local Canon shop here, and I have to say it is of course a bit more expensive than the one on B&H website, but if you bear in mind the costs of shipping and duty,  I guess I will be paying the same amount of money (or maybe more!). Intervalometer is a device that would allow you to take several shots on a fixed interval of time, remotely. It's the tool I would need to make a "lapse-time" photography (or cinematography). I'm pretty sure you, as you read this, know these motion pictures where everything moves so fast (sunset, sunrise, plant growing up, ...etc).  Several pictures are taken on some long interval of time (relatively) and then combined in a sequence to form a movie. I've tried it already (manually) but I still can't fit it into a movie form. I was shooting on the roof all afternoon for around one hour and a half, and because I didn't have this device, I had to rely on my own timer, taking a picture (bracketed) every 5 minutes.

Start of the sequence after tone-mapping the HDR slide

Now, this intervalometer from Canon is like a Swiss army knife. It has many purposes concerning timings for taking your pictures, even controlling how long the Long Exposure (bulb) mode should last, or simply, it can work as a shutter controller instead of the IR remote (which can be annoying at times). The bad news is, you can't take bracketed shot in a single moment. When you set the option for the bracketed shot, then the program of the intervalometer will take a single shot of the sequence only each time the time comes as programmed. I made a review for this device already on B&H and mentioned that point.

Along with the intervalometer, I also got me a new tripod. I think the time has come to give up the old tripod which belonged to my father before (and majorly it was for those old large VCR cameras). I got it from the same shop and I tried to write a review about it but strangely, all the websites I've found were n Hebrew!

Cosmo LN-28

my new tripod

The tripod is good so far. Its value is reasonable (13 KD, that's around 46 USD). Might be somehow much for some people but to my expenses, this is reasonable. Since I didn't find a place to write my review about it, I think I will review it here and maybe someone will be reading this.

The body generally is made of aluminum and I believe it can take a heavy load. Despite the fact that it is larger and somehow bulkier than my previous tripod, but its weight is reasonable. It has a handle on the side to carry it (and comes with a special case to carry it around as well). It uses the click system, where you screw your camera to the base and the base is clicked into the tripod and can be removed easily in case you want to use the camera with hands.

The legs can be easily expanded vertically and horizontally, and in fact, the central support has a lock, enabling you to close the legs a bit and lock it that way to give more height for your tripod. The bottom of the legs (hooves) are also flexible. Very useful in case of setting the tripod on some rigid ground like rocks on the beach for example.

The neck is expandable. The total height of the tripod with the neck expanded to it's max point, and the legs are totally spread vertically and horizontally, is around my height (173cm, ~5'8), despite the fact on the package itself, the height is mentioned to be 163cm only. Maybe the meant without the neck expanded to the max. The height is very useful for my case when I try to take pictures for the sky and I have to bend my back just to look into the viewfinder. 

It has a hook at the bottom of the central support. Good for storing I guess, but I'm thinking of other uses for this hook as well (like hanging the tripod with the camera upside down. A bit shaky situation!). It also has spirit level to ensure that your setting is not inclined to any direction rather than the other.

The bad points now. As a left-handed person, this tripod can be hard to use, as the main level for leveling up and down is on the right side. I'm not sure I can flip it around though. Also, they didn't provide a screw converter (to fit in my VR-head). But I think I can manage with that one.

The thing that I still can't understand, why 99% of pages I've found when I googled this product, were in Hebrew! The product is marked as "made in China" though!

Ayvarith-wise now. I've mostly finished the main part of the Ayvarith text of Alexander's story, along with the preface in which I give a description and a guide of pronunciation. I think in this weekend, and since we are not going out because of the fiesta in this country and the jams, I will be working on the audio files a bit. Also, it is a good time to spend the night on the roof, even though it sounds a bit spooky. My photography progress is so slow in the current time and I barely have something to submit online. Also, because of my work with the Ayvarith text, I didn't have the time to write a new poem, even though some words are there floating in my mind. I think I will submit this now and go ahead and try to figure out to write something! Instead of writing some new I've taken the time to submit what I did already in the past few weeks and put them in some contests just to receive some exposure. There are good comments about them, specially The Beggar of Nothingville. I leave you now with a clip that I just can't stop laughing at... be careful, it has some "adult" contents!

 

Here We Go...

Sometimes, your life can be so catastrophic that being screwed up at work is considered a happy event. This is somehow my new quote and motto. I've been out today (Wednesday) to do some field work in two locations. The work was smooth, but as I expected, this single field work event will trigger others I don't like. The sea is beautiful. I have to plan for more visits with my camera there. The weather is nice; chilly but nice, and windy. My hair was a mess after each location. This field work sparked my passion and hopes again to visit Miskan island, and also a thought of Auhah island (north of Failaka, south of Failaka respectively).

Still working on proof-reading the Ayvarith text for Alexander's story and going on with part VI. The process was sort of an easy one when it was for the previous parts and I would finish one part in one day (around an hour), but with part VI, I'm trying as much as possible to get an average of 200 lines to be proof-read in one day. This estimate can reach 300 or 400 lines even when the blood is bumped into the veins. There is pressure in the air though with the start of the new semester and my boss being back from his vacation. There is some work waiting for me. Too bad I can't work out recording my voice at work, because the time I spend in the work place seems to be the only time I would work with my Ayvarith projects, so far. Not only that, but mostly the time that I mostly write in some of my poems, like the recently done Daydreamer. An amalgamation of feelings that I do get either from being alone, or being awake from a dream. There are things I do write at home of course, but most of the heavy load of thoughts visit by morning or noon time, when I'm at work.

I'm technically trying to reduce my intake of music. Music is one of the well-known triggers to daydreaming, but cutting it out is hard. Specially when I do some work with my Ayvarith text for example, or do some work on some photos, but in the same time, it takes my feet away from my stable ground. Sad ground, but stable. Maybe that's why singing or listening to music is some sort of a taboo in pure Islamic way. The debate though fluctuates among scholars whether it is an absolute forbidding, or just a not-so-virtuous act, while religious singing is allowed as far as I remember. Yes, I do listen to music even though my teachings say so. I'm not an angel myself but this has been the way I steamed off my anger, depression, hate. I guess scientific- and psychological-wise, this Islamic judgment for songs and singing seems coherent to what such things cause to the human brain. I'm officially addicted to music and songwriting (somehow) that stopping them now seems to drive me crazy a bit. I'm exchanging this with running something else on Youtube for example, but the main problem is what to do when you drive your car in a stupid traffic jam with stupid people around? Yes. A big headache.

Been trying my new tools, but not so much to be done so far. One interesting venture though, trying to capture the night sky with the new Tamron telephoto macro lens (70-300mm). I've concentrated on a bright spot in the sky (after failing aiming to the moon which was around 90 degrees above my head and it was so hard to aim that way), later on I've found out this spot is actually Jupiter. However, I was trying the bulb mode with my Canon EOS 7D (never did as far as I remember). With my trials with the old Canon EOS 350D in bulb mode (and it was altogether set with (M)anual mode), the trials were kind of a failure and it was hard even with filters. Now, with my Tamron, and because of the hood around the lens as it seems, the "star trail" for Jupiter was obvious and I got a nice single line after 5 minutes of exposure under f36 (yes f36 not 32). I tried for few seconds and for around one minute, but the 5 minutes exposure was the longest in line and the black area around the trail was starting to get bright. The thing is, the brightness in the sky didn't happen so fast and I think the hood had a critical factor in the matter here. With my 350D and 50-200mm telephoto lens, the brightness was happening so fast in bulb mode.

One static shot and 3 trails for Jupiter blended together.

Another experiment done with my filters this time and my 55-200mm which I got an adapter ring for lately. I've tried to take a long exposure shot for a candle. Simple as it seems but we have some problems here with a candle. It's hard to make some interesting shot about it.

1. Luminance is centered. The metering method plays a crucial part here.
2. Not much movement involved in the flame itself in a quiet room, making a long exposure barely interesting.
3. The candle was not easy-burning one, meaning a long exposure is REALLY long one. I don't have a time-remote (which I plan to get some time later) which can program my Canon to take certain shots at a fixed time interval.
4. Fixing the WB won't change much of the yellowish hue of the candle and its body.
5. HDR can hardly work for such flaming body (but still trying).
6. For HDR, filters might not be a good option after all, and also tried to limit the EV to -/+2.

In the beginning I tried some relatively short exposures like 30 seconds. Later on for one minute and gradually raised the limit to 15 minutes. Maybe the most interesting result was the one taken with an exposure of a bit more than one minute (if I remember correctly, 102 seconds).

In The Dark...

In this shot, which to me looked like the most interesting one, I had to be on the side of the scene blowing air into the candle with some piece of paper trying to make some movement into the flame and move it. That's why you see the flame being spread to the sides a bit instead of being directly up (as it should be in my quiet room). The candle stick is green by the way and not pink, but the luminance plays some tricks here (along with hue and saturation fixes). This candle is supposedly aromatic one, but I left it burning for more than 30 minutes and yet I couldn't smell anything! Moreover, the stick didn't melt much, meaning if I was going for a really long exposure, God knows how much time (and power) I would need to record a slight movement in the height itself. An interval time-remote control would be a good option here. Unfortunately, I don't have it now. HDR trials with this scene were filled with grain and noise, so much beyond repair, thus I've neglected the idea.

Still checking the astronomical charts for the moon, and I wish if I can just head to the desert to do some star trailing with my camera, but going to the desert in somehow in the middle of nowhere, needs two instead of one person. My social situation is so awkward that sometimes I don't care about anything, yet I don't have anyone to go out with to such places. Thursday is a holiday here, and I wonder if I will be able to make it to Failaka. I just need the mood.

The time for a vacation is pressing so hard, but my life is a mess that I can't seem to decide even whether to go or not. How is it in New York?

Nemo Audit...

Trying to pour all the jam of anger and despair about the stupidity of this life in some words. I call them, words of wisdom. For this, I've decided to make a document file into WDC, and there, I type all the foolish words in some sarcastic way, just to try to mock my life and have a laughter, at myself. The document will be edited and added to every time I think of something. Since it is about life, it has a bit of "adult" terms, let's say. Thus, I won't recommend reading it for someone under 18 years of age, even though I know, children of today cuss and swear more than I do in my leisure time. But oh well, just to be honest.
I'm trying to squeeze my brain even more to write something new, after all the turmoil at home itself. Sometimes, you do feel that you speak a completely different language that no one understands except of you alone. I think the frustration is on increase and hitting hard on chords of melancholy and daydreaming. Music don't stop. I don't allow it to stop. I want to just rock my world away. Maybe in my daydreams people do understand me a bit? Maybe.... I was almost gone into some accident today as I was driving because I was completely absent. I don't remember my thoughts though. It's dark, in bright daylight. Nemo audit, nemo videt, nemo considerat.

However, finally, my stuff are here! It took around 2 weeks of waiting (and lot of payments) to get these stuff here. I'm still in the process of trying those things, and my progress is slow so far. I want to do it slowly because writing a review for these things is important, for me at least. I'd say, I enjoy being honest!

Some stuff I've ordered (top to bottom): Adapter ring for Cokin filters 52mm, 

Canon backpack, Tamron 70-300mm macro lens, Velbon Panhead.

And beside these, there are the two 8x ND filters from Cokin, and a cap for one of my lenses (in place of the one I lost in Ireland for my 18-55mm). The test for the ND filter will require some work though. I have now 3 of 8x ND filters (each one of them reduces the light by -3EV, totaling then -9EV), and I want to test this in some moon photography, hence, I need some time to think how to do this thing. I do wish for a star trail photography but this needs to be in some isolated place, far far away. The Velbon panhead (or tripod head) is for my monopod mainly but seems I will try to use it on my tripod as well. The head has its topmost piece that attaches itself to the camera, detachable. In other words, it's a click-system, where you can attach the camera to this piece and lock it to the head and whenever you want to remove the camera for a handheld shot, you just need to click a button and there you go. Useful for an old tripod like mine I guess! Besides, they provided also something I was looking for in a long time now; a converting screw, which makes a small screw fit into a larger hole. This head, I believe, will solve much of my problems with tripods. Only thing left here is to try and make the monopod more stable when using its 3 small legs, somehow.

I'm trying also to do more test with the new Tamron macro tele-lens (70-300mm). It is decisive somewhat and I need to get used to the way it works and focuses on objects. Of course, tripods or monopods or anything to make this ting stable is a must here, also a flash. Could be useful to get nice image of the eyes of some sort. Lot of ideas for the time being but I'm not sure I will be able to do them all. However, once I got it, I went on shooting randomly, handheld, like a mobster. One of the shots, so far, was good but maybe not to the level I want it, generally because the image was dark.

My niece

This shot actually was taken while I was standing somehow far from my niece, a toddler, and took it without any flash at around f5.6, and at ISO800. Despite the settings, the image was sort of dark. It was quite a normal and regular shot so I tried to add life to it somehow by doing what you see here; a black and white image with a colored eye (with some effects on it a bit). I wonder though if the distance was closer than it was, would I get an interesting shot for the eye again? I'm not quite sure. The macro lens makes me feel I'm using a regular telephoto lens but with some extended range! I will have to read the specifications paper again there might be some tips I'm missing. There was also another trial to catch my "tartaloza"; my metallic turtle that I keep coins in. This time, and with a monopod again, it was sort of hard to stabilize. The longer the focal length is, the more sensitive your picture will be to any shake.

Tartaloza

I used here f32, which means a longer shutter speed (or time), in a dark room with a desk lamp concentrating the light on tartaloza. I've put the monopod around one meter away from the subject here as it is the optimum distance for doing a macro with this telephoto lens (as mentioned in the specifications paper and on the lens body itself generally). The main part of the face was sharp but the rest was gone under blurring effect like if I was using a larger aperture. I have to check the Hyperfocal distance principle again here.

I have to post this now and, get lost with my music. The only thing I can talk to right now...

Brain Squeezing...

I think squeezing my brain trying to find out some words to pin down was sort of successful. I had to surf the net a bit trying to find new ideas and new ways to break the writer's block, and maybe the most and easiest solution was: take a walk. Of course my main course of walking is during my working time, and now with the semester being over, the campus is almost empty and the weather is nice and helps a lot on taking a mind journey. My first trial was finalized and called it: My Golden Days. Another trial took place then after the next day and I could hardly squeeze my brain for the past 2 days trying to find the words, but then I remembered, a poem or a lyrical piece isn't supposed to be "necessarily" long. It is just how you feel, and hence I finalized a short piece called Send Me An Angel. The rhyme in this latter one might not be a strong pattern (abacc), and it does sound weird even to me, but surfing the net a bit I've found that such patterns do exist but mostly in old folk songs. I do imagine though if this is to be a song of some sort or played somehow, it's going to be a slow music tone.
I do understand now how writing is so difficult I guess, specially when you have all the feelings but not enough words in your mind to put them down, or the ability to shape your expressions. I would be able to write single sentences but to stitch them all together in some sense and rhyme, this is even harder than stitching a panorama!
I also got some positive feedback on my previous piece, The Beggar of Nothingville from one of the judges in one contest. I'm not so optimistic though that I would win even though I got 5 out of 5 stars for this, but the important thing for me is to expose it to as much as possible, hence I posted it again in one of the contests after checking the regulations of it.

On the other hand, started to upload the Ayvarith transliteration of Alexander's story into WDC website. Along with that process, I'm trying to unify the notations of writing which I changed by the last chapter (chapter six) of Alexander's story. The process is giving me a headache as well, naturally, because there were lot of typos as well. Some words I'm trying to check again and they are not in the dictionary! Well, I must have been trapped in my own trap; going around some words by using parallel expressions. If you are wondering what that means, think of it that way: instead of saying "I went downstairs," and in your conlang, you didn't make up a word for "downstairs," you might as well say "I went below by the stairs." Long, I know. But this is the way I used to go around some words. The process of evading some words is essential as I think though. It helps on creating a trend of the conlang as it is a language by itself, a stand-alone, not mimicking the grammar and the order or the ideology of other languages. Somehow, in the process of creating a conlang, you must always check that your mind is isolated and not completely dependent on some base. In my case, I do need the base; somewhere to begin with the conlang for sure! That's why I make up words and take up some aspects of Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic.
I'm thinking as well about adding some sound files. This is to explain some of the pronunciations of the sounds to help on reading the transliteration texts. I might as well add a reading for the story itself in Ayvarith. I did some before, but I think I've lost the files, and now I have to work all over again (with some corrections added this time). I think WDC allows for some audio files to be added somehow. I will have to check and see. Meanwhile, I'm working on the website slowly, but seems Fortunecity, where I keep some files now, has a problem with the FTP upload. I remember in GeoCities, the FTP option was allowed for paying members, but in Fortunecity, it says it's for free hosting members as well. Unfortunately, I tried the FTP and it's not working well. Error in password always though I checked it over and over again. The new design I've made is simple but yet contains lot of GIF images because of slicing the main image in the facade, and I will have to upload every single GIF image (after creating a folder inside) if I don't use the FTP client.

Trying to push myself to be busy somehow, even though I do have some games waiting on the queue line. On Sunday, and right after I got back from work with no appetite for lunch, I decided to drive out again in my Seat Altea 2006 and do some washing for the car, and then I headed to my work place again just to park the car there and do some panorama from the inside. I spent like 20 minutes trying to settle down with the tripod inside the car. It was a so damn hard process. In the beginning I tried the monopod in fact, but it didn't work at all because of the extremely horizontal 3 legs it had at the bottom. Finally, with some stretching, a tripod was fitted in somehow and I started to work and moving from one door to another in order to move the VR-head in all directions. I made the panorama without a zenith or a nadir, because generally I don't have an aim for a QTVR. It was just a trial. It took me already one hour or around that to take the panorama with car turned off but lights on inside the car. Made me worried after all this time about the battery; it could have been dead by that time. After finishing the work with the panorama, I've noticed that the tripod's situation is a good one to even shoot a video inside the car! I thought of turning on the video and going around driving till I get back home, just as a trial as I never ever had any experience not interest in videography. However, it is interesting and I'm going back to read the manual for my Canon EOS 7D and learn more about the basic functions. I recorded a bit more than one minute successfully until I got out of the parking place and out of campus, then the tripod's leg got loose and the camera fell down to one side. No great harm, but I was upset of this betrayal!
Back home, the stitching process was sort of smooth, but not completely out of errors and broken lines. Before taking this panorama I tried to pull the camera back a bit instead of the "center" position which is the default setting, and probably, the broken lines, are caused by this pull-back. So far, two versions are stitched: flat spherical and a tunnel (ant view) one. Lot of work was needed with the clone tool to correct the mistakes and other things!

Seat Altea, 2006.

I think, however, that the ant-view (or tunnel) view is not that good, thus I will stop my trials with that and be satisfied with what I have here, so far! I think I could try this again with another car. The question is, would my plans for getting busy most of the time would work on braking down my daydreaming process a bit? Frankly, I'm not so optimistic about it. Maybe a mental process is more useful to brake those ideas, like thinking of a line to write in a new poem. This is what I'm trying to do recently but no hope. It's like I'm keeping my mind busy for nothing, and soon, I will escape to another world.

Maybe some people who read this now would say I'm exaggerating about the daydreams. Well, let's think about it a little: 10 minutes in the bathroom just to wash my face sometimes (and sometimes forgetting what I wanted to do there even), driving completely unaware of the movements around you, the inability to focus or concentrate on the long run, specially when reading something (greatly affected me during high school and college), and sometimes even talking or making a gesture with no sense. Now, if you think the things I'm mentioning previously are serious enough, then, I'm not exaggerating my fears from daydreaming.

However, trying to put some effort with my pictures from Ireland. I feel that I've almost done everything I can with those pictures. I do need to work on the camera more somehow. Anyway, after the "likeness" of my Tunnel Effect for the playground from Bayan park, seems that I will be visiting the old panoramas from Ireland and try to stitch them in that projection and see if there is any interesting results. Also, I will work on them in Adobe 1998 color space, as some of these panoramas were done before in Pro Photo (my beloved) space. The first of those to be visited was the Ardeaglais Cormaic (Cormac's Cathedral on Cashel Rock):

Ardeaglais Cormaic (Tunneling)

Usually, when doing a full spherical panorama, I do consider stitching the panorama in 2 projections: the flat spherical, and the little planet. The little planet projection was, I thought, more suitable for panoramas taken outdoors where you can engulf the main structures with the sky that you would be taking in the panorama itself, but I was wrong. The little planet projection proved to give interesting results when done for indoors panoramas as well. Now, this consideration for the LP projection, encouraged me to add one more projection to the list of "must be done," that is, the Tunneling (or Ant View as I called it before) projection. The tunneling projection (also a term coined by me. I don't know if there is a specific name for this) is simply the reverse of the LP; in LP you look from above to the scene, in Tunneling you look from ground level (or from below let's say). Compare? Would be fun!

Find your way around

I will post this now, in hope of doing something interesting with my camera in the coming days. I'm studying (or let's say general reading from the web) more of lights and other camera aspects, as well as looking for some opportunities to upload the BIG QTVR files (50MB+ in size), and show them to other people. I leave you now with a Scottish tune that I liked so much and been listening to all week! (you don't have to understand a thing just enjoy the music!).