RAW Fighter...

I've noticed that I've made a lot of typos in previous posts, so in this case if you are really reading what I'm typing here and found a typo, just skip it and laugh. I laugh myself for doing those!

A draining week. I could barely move around my own home and preferred to be in bed as much as I can, specially in morning time. Well, that's natural anyway I guess. I barely felt like touching my camera and do all the things I wanted to do. I've finished reading all my books, so I don't have something to fill the gap for the time being but hopefully I will fill it (at home) by working more on Ayvarith. I'm losing the touch with my own invention. I need to go through the dictionary again just to refresh my memory of some words. I think it would be awesome to speak it even with myself!

Despite the idle time, I've been working on some images from Ireland, from Co. Tipperary, and most of them this time were adjusted in RAW. Well, most, and not all. This said, the seventh album is ready to be sent by email as I used to do, but I'm delaying this a bit till I send some other mass email with pictures that are not from Ireland. I feel lazy to do this even.

Back to Ireland, I've discovered that there is a little panorama that I've done handheld and totally forgot about it. Maybe I didn't care about it much before because of its simplicity and my short-sighting about its potential, but now I can say it is one of the favorites on MostPhotos. The thing that pushed me to stitch this panorama (in HDR of course) is the curves. After reading some books now, I guess I've built up a sense of appreciation for some curves and lines in some abstract way. However, that was not the only thing about this panorama...

Moody Morning

The thing here is that I had to edit the HDR (in Photoshop) before tone-mapping in Photomatix. Not only for cropping which normal by now but also to set the tones myself before tone-mapping. As much as I wanted to add drama and an eye-catch, I wanted as well to make it look normal to some extent. My main concern was the sky which had some details that might not show properly when tone-mapped directly. Thus I had to add adjustment layers to divide the exposures of various areas of the image (generally the sky and the ground). Other adjustments were made later on after tone-mapping the HDR in Photomatix, like contrast and tones. This image is for the drive way of Thornbrook House where I stayed in Co. Tipperary, in Cashel town. The shape of the curve was of interest for me here though it might appear a bit tilted and not perfectly horizontal. It's twisted anyway.

It is for such details in a cloudy day that I tend to like HDR technique the most. It makes you see what you don't see with your own eyes on location even. Sorry HDR-haters, but you can't do such a compromise with a proper metering. However, with my love to this technique I'm still trying to manipulate single RAW files (even when I do take bracketed images). I would advise to always take bracketed images even if you don't tend to use the HDR technique. Maybe if you are a professional so far and so confident of yourself, maybe then you wouldn't need such an advice after all!

Editing images in RAW only is a challenge by itself. I've always used HDR to emphasize my own feelings about a picture (specially when doing some dramatic effect), simply because the HDR technique "memorizes" or "saves" all or a big portion of the luminance information of the scene, but in RAW you don't have such a capability even though RAW files do have some flexibility with all the data saved within.

Drama on Rock
Adding drama to the scene with single RAW.

The clouds in the picture above were not as they look after editing this single RAW file. It was but a play with Fill, Blacks, and Contrast that made much of the difference, and later on some adjustment in the Hue and Saturation. Aberration also is an issue that I had to check for specially using a Fisheye lens here. Not always perfect with that adjustment! I have a problem here and that is my 15mm Fisheye Canon lens is not enrolled in many profiles of programs that do adjustments for aberrations and distortions. Even DPP (Digital Photo Professional) that comes from Canon itself, as the new version (v3.8.0 so far I think) includes a list of profiles to automatically adjust noise, distortion and/or aberrations of the lens in a pre-calculated manner. Yet this list do not include the 15mm Fisheye lens. I feel like I'm taking care of an orphan here that needs a special care. Such a sweet baby!

Coelum Cashel (Cashel Heaven)

Although I was saying that HDR has the capability of saving a big amount of information about luminance, yet sometimes it is a problem when shooting with sun in the sky. Only a tough tone-mapping would put down the sun to somehow a dull level. However, this might not be in your interest at all, as the sun do add some disturbance into the histogram after all. The picture above was done from single RAW too, keeping the brightness of the sun as it is, trying to merge it into the composition as it is by keeping it in the corner (later I did some tricks trying to mimic the beams from the sun to the ground). The other thing here is using the Filters capabilities in the RAW editor itself.
The Filters effect in the RAW editor seems to be different than doing it in Photoshop, because in RAW -as stated before- you do have more data available at your hands and adding a Filter effect would somehow mimic more closely the effect of the real gel filter. In the image above, I tried to add more blue and more contrast to the upper half for the sky keeping the ground as it is. Later, some magenta was added to whole, making the horizon a bit pinkish.

What makes my work easier now with RAW and slowing my pace with HDR a bit, is the fact that I can work in ProPhoto space (more vivid colors) and then convert (and not assign) the space keeping the visual looks. One of the images that were already tended to be in HDR tone-mapping list, was done simply in RAW, and I'm satisfied with its "normal" look. Maybe if I wanted to go a bit extreme, then HDR comes in, but for the time being I'm quite pleased with what can be done from a single RAW for this scene...

Mausoleum

Some contrast and saturation was needed to fix this image (maybe some of Fill as well). I think as a normal venture is desired, this will do fine for the time being. The only thing that I'm not satisfied with maybe is the composition itself. I guess I should have pulled the pillar to the left more a bit (of course not going to get a ticket right away and go there to fix such a tiny problem!). Yet, working with a single RAW like this, it is now a must for me to shoot bracketed images always. Sometimes, the desired amount of exposure might be on the negative side and not at 0EV, and adjusting the Fill and Exposure, with the RAW editor, starts from there.

Maybe you've read the first lines in this post (or most probably not, or even you are bored already reading all this crap!). Well, it is proved now that not only my typing that goes wrong, but even my life itself. I think I'm living a comedy show with a black tint. This is exactly what happened on Wednesday, when I picked my camera to work to catch something that captured my eyes.
I spent a day roaming around my work place after 12:00 p.m., and please don't get me started talking about the heat, when I've noticed some shadows play and some other features that I thought they would be good for some abstract imaging. Wednesday, my comedy started with bringing my camera and forgetting the tripod, as I was bringing the VR-head to take some vertical panoramas. The second comedy started when the weather suddenly changed severe with dust and wind by 12:00 p.m., as this time was essential because of the sun movement and the shadows that to be made by such movement across the sky. Anyway, I would miss the chance because of such mistake and misfortune (I hate mis- words!).

Leaning Shadows

Even with HDR and adjustment layers, I couldn't match the brightness and the hard shadows that would be made in a regular sunny day without the dust in the air. Anyway, the composition itself is not what I like. I think this shot is better taken from the top, but I can't go up there in my work place. Hmm, I might try! I cropped the image here and there to remove more distractions (though it includes some already here).
My VR-head was supposed to help me with some vertical panoramas that I was planning to do in such a tiny place. In the image above you can see an arch formed by branches at the end of the path; this was the desired place for the panorama. Tried to take it handheld and leaning my back up and down, but that didn't work probably because of my left-handedness and my tendency to make a curve rather than a straight line.
Another panorama, however, which gave me hard time stitching despite the simplicity, was done handheld, and in HDR.

Brick Lines
Stare on the vertical groove.

You can notice still some broken lines in the image above because of the bad stitching, however this is natural with handheld panoramas with no precision at all mostly, and with a shaky hand like mine. The black comedy begins when you stare at your VR-head yet you don't have a tripod to mount it on.
I was lucky though here because despite the heavy cropping in the image, but it is a panorama after all, and the image (originally) kept a resolution of around 21MP despite the cropping on all sides. Staring on the vertical groove gives me an illusion as this edge might be to the outside sometimes, and to the inside sometimes. However, originally it is to the inside.

Speaking of cropping again, I was going back to some of my images from Failaka taken last year, and I was going to crop freely to adjust some images but I realized that these were taken with my old Canon 350D, with 8MP only. Cropping can lead to less than 6MP resolution and lot of websites won't accept such a small size! I have to cope with small images (small to my usual size of images now!) without cropping as much as possible. Visiting old photos is always good, either for reflecting or for re-discovery...

Haunted Grace

Mentis Abstractivus...

Partially busy week. And I mean busy by sense of being busy at work itself. I'm conducting an experiment with my director (boss) in the field of gamma rays detection. Despite the simplicity of the experiment, but it takes so much time (around one hour and a half in good conditions). The first phase, for now, is supposed to take around 9 days, and I've done 5 already so far. Beside other things to do, I barely have some time to keep on reading. However, I'm almost finished with these books.

Fasting for more than two weeks now leaves my time restricted. I can't resist the afternoon's nap until the time to break the fast, and doing some work-out in hope to increase the vitality of my body, all of that leaves no time for some of my projects. Yes, my Ayvarith recording is still on hold as I don't know what are the problems I'm facing. I think I do have some mic-phobia too!
In a desperate move, however, I've been taking my camera with me to work for some days, and also tried to do some work with my sound trigger (that I've tried only once). Found myself, or should I say my brain, works more into the shapes. I really don't know if this is the effect of reading after George Barr or simply it is what you can find in modern architecture, but simply this is the catch of my eyes. I have to say I'm sort of glad for some of the catch.
One of those catches, again, got affective if I can say simply by cropping some portions of it. I said before that one of the illusions to make is to crop some areas that send the message of spatial recognition to the mind

Geometrical Play I

Geometrical Play II

Yes. The two images are similar with one little difference; one of them is turned upside down. Maybe you could tell right away which is which, but I can't judge myself because I'm the photographer and I already know which is which and it is imprinted in my mind now. However, one or two people did already miss it up and guessed wrong! I feel happy for the confusion here!

Geometrical Play (original scene)

As you can see here, I've just cropped the ground. I think that point is what translates the image to the viewer and missing it up would confuse the viewer. Anyway, this is my aim in the beginning! Creating some illusion, but I'm not sure how affective it is as I said before, because I'm the photographer here. My only testimonial is taken from two viewers only. To add a bit to the confusion, I've numbered the turned upside version with "I" and the correct one as "II". Minds sometimes adhere to the order of mathematics and take for granted that "I" must be the original, I guess?

On the other hand as well, one of the abstracts that caught my eyes is the shadows play; specifically by noon time. The beauty of such shadows is simply, lines. Maybe there are no curves, but there are lines in a zigzag shape. I have to say though, it was not so easy to catch these lines from a proper angle, adding to that, without a tripod.

Linear Shadows

The shadows here are taken with low angle (I had to go downstairs some steps and lower my back). After all, there is some cropping of course and a tilt. The tilt is aimed at making 2 horizontal lines in the middle of the image. Well, maybe I needed to do some skewing here. The image above is prepared from a single RAW. One of the things that I've had hard time with, is the White Balance (WB). This is not the first time anyway. Shooting in the sun is always problematic even if the camera is not directed to the sun's direction, as the WB can make the decision hard to make. I feel the image being dull because of the tiling's color, and making them blue (cold temperature) would interfere a bit with the shadows, so I decided to leave it at that point.
On another occasion though, I thought working with HDR would help me on making a better decision, but I was wrong, again. The problem gets even more complicated when tone-mapping the HDR and adjusting the color temperature from there.

Shadow Tilings (HDR)

Not only the WB was hard to make out here, but cropping was so as well, and the borders of the tilings were more pronounced in this angle. The cropping was a must here and not optional, as the space was narrow, and using a fisheye lens (or even my 18-55mm) would include portions of the stairs and the building. The zigzag lines also, somehow, corrupted the symmetry that I was working for. Maybe it is something to re-visit at another time.

My journey was still going on with my work place. Sometimes you just have to look and "think" instead of just looking. I work in this place 5 days a week, for more than 5 years now, and guess what? There are features that I've just "thought" about and decided to check what I can do with.

Looping Loop

The structure above is hung or welded above the ground, between the pillars and the wall (you could see the edges in the previous images). Merged with HDR, tried to add drama with colors by putting down the saturation for the highlights and putting up the saturation for the shadows (which are settled mainly in Reds). Pushing the Black level a bit to help with it but I think I didn't like it much. Crops existed here too and some perspective corrections as well. If it was in my ability to shoot this again, I would zoom in more and go up to its level and shoot, but I don't have this capability right now, as the structure is around 3 meters above the ground. Anyway, I do prefer the black and white version (and some people already liked it that way).

Looping Loop (BW)

Moving now to my second trial with my sound trigger. I have to say it wasn't successful as I wanted. The main failure here is that I couldn't make the flash shoot for one time only. Adjusting the sensitivity of the sound trigger didn't help either. The experiment was done with playing cards deck, but after all I got some shots that I did submit to some stock sites already.

To Gamble

No. I don't gamble. It's just a title here! The movement blur you see is caused by the several flash shots as the sound of the cards when they are shuffled keeps on triggering the circuit, and in a shutter speed of 15 seconds, lot of pictures taken in this trial were blown out. It was indeed a gamble in the dark, and guess I've lost it. I have to think of some way to limit the number of fires from the flash. There is, however, another idea for this sound trigger that still in the process of cooking yet in my mind.

Last night was a sleepless night. Literally. I really don't know how I'm typing this right now (Thursday) as I didn't sleep a bit all night and came to work (and worked in the lab for hours and then coming here to post something!). Anyway, despite the frustration, there was hope. A hope in an image I've totally forgot about (again!).

Visitors

The weird combination of factors in this image makes it special to me and to my surprise, just when I pulled down the Exposure slider in the RAW editor, all the details of the sky and the clouds started to appear and the scene turned silhouette. The sun was rising and the sky was blue, but yet, it looks more like a black and white. Not completely, but what I mean is, the saturation is low in the sky. The high ISO level of 12800 made me desperate about this image in the beginning. In the beginning means like, when I took it in the first time back in October 2010. With lowering the Exposure (and increasing the Recovery factor in the RAW editor) seems that the noise level (specially the chromatic noise) got reduced significantly. That does not mean completely vanish, not even by cleaning plugins like NeatImage, for example, but the good news here, it is a silhouette. You have no details in the subject's shape to worry about! so, you can go a bit of extreme with your cleaning tools!
The image reflects my mood indeed, without me planning it. All what I was doing back then was chasing some ravens or crows in the sky. Suddenly it touches your mood once you play with it for the sake of playing with it! This teaches me to always visit what I was desperate of before. Who knows what you can get out of these images that you might think they are useless snapshots. But the main factor here is, what's your mood is about?
Some friends commented already on it saying it looks like something from Hitchcock shows, and later reflecting on it, it does remind me of The Lost Crown and Jonathan Boakes! I think I will print this one and see how it is. I'm sure some websites did reject it already for the noise level still. Oh well...

It's weekend. Finally. Guess what? My friend is inviting me for dinner for some occasion he had. Well, the bad news is... I wish I didn't eat the whole week!!!

Cropping Away...

Week of delays and troubles, yet I'm still alive. Trying to forget some aspects of my own world and life by trying to work more behind the camera. Some ideas come and go, but seems like I'm running out of time...

Friday, on a sleepless morning, I've decided to break out the vacation from my camera and do something. It was morning time, and not in mood to drive, so I just decided to take pictures from my home. My first goal was to catch something from inside the house with some scene made by sun rays striking the stairs. Unfortunately, the maid was working in the hall and I didn't want to give her a hard time (or should I say the opposite?). Anyway, seeing this I've headed outside just roaming the vicinity.

My home's yard

The picture above is for my house's yard before some adjustment that appeared later on. I have to say that I'm not happy about the changes that were made later on by my brother, when he added some small bathroom outside for guests (although we have one inside). Anyway, just for fun, I've decided to do some experiment with this structure (even though I hate looking at it).
First of all, it was some trial for some abstract art I would say. Nothing special about this little bathroom from the outside except when it's cropped, or so I'd say.

Cabin Cut

A friend once told me that one of the tricks of illusions is to remove the edges and let your vision swim freely into the object not knowing where it starts and where it ends. I was trying to do this here when I removed the top and the bottom of this cabin or bathroom. I think it would appear more flat if only these screws on the right side were removed, and the vent fan would be removed as well. I didn't want to crop more than this or to clone out. The shot was taken from the side, centering the corner of the bathroom. Cropping here beats the depth I guess.

The original cabin before cropping.

After "snapping" this shot, I went around and fixed my Tamron with my Vivitar teleconverter and went on trying to catch something, aiming at the little cat (veeeery annoying one) that lives in the yard. With a manual focusing and handheld camera, it wasn't easy for sure, but I got something after all, which made me think of a particular theme!

Beast

Instinct

Wild

The images got a colored version but I don't like them as much as I like the black and white version (with the last one being selectively colored). I have to say that I didn't get much out of the collection, but I might work out something other than the ones above. I've found myself, having an image of animal in my mind, that I'm naming them with some basic elements of behaviors (animal or human). I didn't plan for such a theme for the 3 images, but it just came out, and that makes me think of doing more around this, either now or in the future. Maybe...

Cropping, cropping, cropping. This is all what I'm doing recently with some of the old images that I've forgot about; mainly those taken from Ireland in 2010. One of the pictures that I've totally forgot about (intentionally) because I didn't find any much interest in it, is re-visited. Well, it was there in one of my albums for Co. Tipperary, but this time, with cropping, lot of people (specially on MostPhotos) appreciated it...

Raining

As a background, the image was taken in one rainy day in the lounge of the Thornbrook House. I think it was taken on October 2nd, 2010. In the beginning, I was going to work with a single RAW, but decided to go with HDR to pronounce the greens more and brighten the white frames, and also pronounce the rain drops on the glass, as a single RAW would show some and hide some for a single EV value.
I started cropping from the top right keeping the frames visible, but some friends online suggested to crop more. I think they're right. It would be nicer to hide the frame. My main thought thread when I did this was to make the frame as a frame of the image itself in that corner. I also noticed that the lower left corner needed some cropping, but I didn't notice this till I uploaded the image.

Usually I crop keeping the aspect ratio of the image. Unless I'm doing a panorama (more specifically, small planet projection), I like to keep the aspect ratio of the image because in case of prints are to be made out later, or some email of pictures I'd like to send over to someone, the images would fit within each other like bricks; same height and same width, with almost equal visibility.
After reading further in George Barr's book, Take Your Photography to the Next Level: From Inspiration to Image, it kind of pushed me to break the "taboo" as he calls it. Well, I don't think this kind of break is or must be done every time I crop, but there is one image that got me into that situation. I have to admit though, I've just discovered that the image was taken wit a wrong tilt, but on the bright side (at least in my own brain that is) it makes some kind of optical illusion...

Over Suir
single RAW.

I really can't remember how I was sitting to take this image but apparently I didn't frame it correctly in the camera's viewfinder. Some edges were swollen already. Anyway, I had to crop the sides and keep the top and bottom untouched (to remove a trash bin!). I can say that going down with a low angle wasn't comfortable at that location!
However, I've been preparing some stuff from Ireland that I, myself, didn't like as well. There are times when cropping or whatever you do won't work out on such an image, but oh well, the image can still be dear to you for some reason (specially when it is from a vacation!)...

Moment of Silence

The only thing I really liked about this image above, is the sun rays coming from the upper right corner. I didn't like the colors much too (prepared from a single RAW) so I changed it to Black and White. Try my best to add such a drama with the contrast, but yet, I don't think I did it quite well. Still, some people liked it in fact, and like George Barr says, you wouldn't know if the picture you hate the most from your work, can be the one that the public admires the most. The image above was taken from behind the gate of St. Dominic abbey in Cashel town. I was going around the ruins trying to find a way to get in and stood there taking these pictures of the graveyard, just before a lady comes out from next door to ask if I want the key! Days... I really need a vacation.

As I've mentioned before, I was going to try to print something noisy and see how would it look, on A4 size. The target image was Companions, and I got the basic shape without filtering the noise, and in fact, I've made sharpening in NIK plugin , under Glossy paper profile.

Companions
filtered here.

The print was acceptable with my HP Photosmart (I think C4783?). I made the print with HP Premium PhotoPaper (not Premium plus), and the result was fine. makes me think really about the realistic attitude for eliminating the noise from the images I take. Noise is my nemesis and seems I'm always losing the fight. Removing the noise would remove the details and so on. But, is it really necessary to be that way? I think I've adapted such approach because of the stock sites that rejected many pictures because of the noise level. The image above was taken with ISO2000 and printed it without filtering the noise, and with sharpening. I don't see it was a really bad print even though I have to say it is a small version, and when used in other publications it might be even smaller in size and the noise level would almost disappear then. I think so, at least.

Left to say, we had a lunar eclipse on Wednesday (yesterday), and it was a chance I didn't want to miss, but as usual, it was not easy to catch. There was dust and wind, and things like that get on your nerves when working with a tele-lens. the slightest movement will shake the image and so on. Although I'm the one who was working on it, but I have to say it was like a nightmare and I'm glad it's over!

Lunar Eclipse
Wednesday, June 15th 2011. Around 10:00 p.m.

This shot was taken at the end of the process in fact. The real thing was a time-lapse photography with my Tamron. However, I had to zoom out a little to automate the process of the shooting the moon phases (every 2 minutes). I was planning to take images all along the span of 3 hours but the movement of the moon, while you zoom in, is so fast to catch up with. One hour is enough to see the moon going from the lower left corner of the frame, to the upper right corner. Well, I could zoom out a bit, but I doubt any further zooming out will give any indication of the eclipse. Add to my troubles, some frames were shaken as well because of the air blow to the set. However, I've managed to do a little time-lapse clip, though I'm not quite satisfied with it.




Well, it's weekend now, almost. The time has come to wash away some of my hard time with some good sleep, if any. Been a slow week... full of discomfort...

New Addiction...

A slow week this time. Started to fast and that makes it one hard week to cope with. Hope it is just for some time, till I get used to it. My work with the camera is lesser than before but I did some work with it in the beginning of this week (Friday morning). I just felt sleepless by the morning and quite active, thus I decided to head to the beach area, my favorite spot, by the sunrise time and take pictures. However, lot of things are on hold or seems to be so, because of my fasting AND, my new addiction to sudoku! I don't know why, but this game is completely getting my full attention. I think it can organize the files in your brain automatically. Detectives must play this game often! I play it on DKMsoftware website. They have a nice applet.

Despite the fact that I didn't work much on my camera this week, and only 3 pictures are available online from the shoot on Friday morning (and the weather was dusty), yet I've spent lot of time checking my old pictures from Ireland (2010), Co. Tipperary, and trying to figure out more stuff to do with them. Specially that I'm slowing down my pace with HDR usage. With the advantage of converting color spaces of the image (and not assigning them) in Photoshop, I think I've grabbed some rescue point here. But under the light of what I'm reading at the current time in George Barr's book, Take Your Photography to the Next Level: From Inspiration to Image, I'm trying to be more critical for what I see. Cropping and dividing the image visually into lines and corners and/or studying patterns for various things including the light is a new practice now. I can almost say that I feel insane already... well... that's not new, is it? Ah well...

 

Back to the beach session last Friday, I've done some shots for HDR and made one HDR, but that was only for a specific effect I wanted to achieve. Two images added to my online "gallery" as well and they were single shots with RAW enhancements. Despite the dusty weather and the yellowish hue, there was a glimpse of colors in the horizon with the sun rising. I've decided that the best move to do now is something I've (almost) never done before, and it is somehow dangerous for the camera's safety; shoot near the water line with low angle on a spiderpod.

Mare Nostrum (our sea)

The shot above, despite my trials to blur the movement of the water by applying a longer shutter speed, it was captured with 1/100 (ISO200). I was not intending an HDR shoot from the early beginning (but done later) and I was relying heavily on the belief that ProPhoto color space will provide me with the power! Well, guess I wasn't disappointed. It was just a matter of adjusting the RAW file little bit and boosting the saturation somehow. Now to the problems, or maybe what I think is a problem ('cause lot of people liked it already):

• There was a little pump in the lower right corner made by the water line. It was easily fixed with cropping a bit. That pump gave me an impression of an incomplete curve and should be removed. So far so good, problem solved here I guess!
• Then there was the problem with my attention. I was focusing on the sun and trying to put it in one corner of the image (using a fisheye lens). I think my approach here was wrong. I guess I've eaten up the depth with this move. I believe I should have made the shore line longer, and if possible run from corner to corner (lower right to upper left). Even the sun, as I noticed just now, isn't quite in the upper left corner.

Well, some people liked it already and I do appreciate that from them. I do ask myself though what is the limit for being hard on myself with my images. There must be a reasonable criteria to judge myself and my work. Well, all I hope for is my own knowledge, and my own sense of spatial arrangements and organizing. Yes, I'm a single guy with  messy room but I do still have some ordering of lines in my mind!

The other trial was for HDR this time, without a specific vision of what will happen later or how I'm going to tone-map it, but a simply play with the RAW file made me capture an idea, when I changed the Temperature for one of the bracketed images and noticed how it looks and feels...

New Hard Day (Begins)

As the name suggests, you know my vision of it now. This is the HDR version that I've made later in same location. Of course there are adjustment layers added later to enhance some colors or looks. It is dark, which I think most of the stock sites won't accept it that way (except of MostPhotos) where some people liked it already. The colors (and the haze that was there already) made me feel the hardship and the hard life caused by the weather we have here. I didn't care much about the sharpness of the image and even the blurred motion of water here made it almost invisible. All what I was concentrating on is, color...
After that tour close to water, I put on my Tamron 70-300mm plus the teleconverter (x2 the focal length) and went on chasing for pigeons, trying to catch something useful. Pigeons on the beach are common here and aren't really impressive to me, but I thought of trying out my luck. It was hard with all the tools I was carrying. Anyway, I managed to capture some stuff and finally settled down with one image that, to me, was a bit of funny, but oh how much I miss the birds of Ireland by now...

The World Behind Me

Maybe the least liked by me. All what I like about it is the stand of the pigeon and the show of "carelessness" to this world. Like I do. Using manual focus here didn't work out well, as the focusing area was more to the pigeon's back instead of being on the pigeon itself. However, some people did like it too. Always keep the faith in your worst. You don't know when people do give it a meaning!
At this point, and after the many pictures that I've taken for birds on the beach and most of them aren't to my liking, I came on hesitating. Reading different books now made me brain twist some aspects of what I do.


Hollenbeck states in his book (or their book, as I think it was authored by Cliff and his wife, Nancy) that you should toss off the failed pictures, mainly for space requirements and secondly to take your mind off of pictures that won't work. Well, that's an opinion of a freelancer and I hold it true.
On the other hand, photographers like George Barr in his book mentioned above, advises that you keep the photos that you don't like (specially with prices of storage devices coming down by time now), because you don't know when you get an idea or suddenly, just like that, you might love the image, or something about it! Of course that doesn't mean keeping those totally blurred images (unless this blur is intentional of course). As for me, I tend to go on with Barr's methodology so far, but who knows, I might change this way when I become a true freelancer? God knows... As for the time being, I'll just toss away those blurry images and keep the bad ones just in case. A glance to what I did so far makes me think of... a stronger telephoto lens.

Back now to my images from Ireland. I'm preparing the seventh album from Tipperary. Too bad I'm not going this year, but I will try to have my joy with my memories from there as I look at my pictures. I thought that I've exhausted all my options with these images from last year, but I think I was wrong. I'm digging left and right, up and down, and trying to find something, or least experiment with, and it was there!
One of the images that I've previously forgotten about was a shot from some farm. It was cloudy day and the mode was Tv (shutter speed priority) and the ISO was high. It is bad already when seen on full size, maybe a bit better when minimized, but I wonder how it would look when printed?

Companions (ISO2500)

The problem is, I think, is that we (or I) spend so much time on the digital venue and forget about the other representations of the image. I need to sacrifice one more glossy paper and print out the image above to see how it looks on A4.
I remember one time in some restaurant, there was a huge image hung on the wall of some old ships, and the image was nice and clear. However, when I got closer and looked, there were obvious chromatic noise (red-blue dots). Anyway, from far away, and its normal for such huge wall picture, the image was fine! I need to work on making some visual remarks of how much noise is acceptable in a printed A4 form, on a glossy. Can it be that bad?
I'm not happy with the image above though. I've used some cropping to make a visual division of the image (on the trail of Barr), but I didn't like the idea of removing the red patch on the upper left corner. I visualize the image as divided into 3 unequal thirds, but the wooden pillar and the fence. Go figure...

The thing I'm afraid to do now is to stare too long on my previously made images from Ireland or elsewhere, for the fear of being too critical about the distribution of spaces and lines in them. Ah well. We are on the way of being better I guess. I shouldn't be scared, should I? I'm aware even now that I don't like much the first image I made for the seventh album!

Tower in Vane
I don't like the position of the tower now. Could have used some cropping.

And in vain trying to find some hope with my geometrical view of things, I've found out one of those images that I've never looked at before; for noise, for blurring...etc.

Solitarius

The crow here is blurred, and it was indeed my aim when I shot this. I got sort of disappointed when I saw that the crow was blurred and not clear enough. However, with a mind twisting games and ideas, I thought that the tree itself has an interesting shape; something raising from the lower corner. Thus, I kept concentrating on these branches and their colors and sharpness, in hope that they would catch people's attention instead of the crow. It is of a course a single shot not intended for HDR, or pseudo-HDR.

Squeezing my mind hard to write something and came up with something I'm not totally satisfied with, as usual, but oh well. Something! I've called it, The World of Broken Hearts. As for the Ayvarith project, I'm still trying hard to do something about these technical problems. This is getting longer than it should. Fasting also makes me a bit harder to follow up with it, but with some time management I guess everything is possible!
And to someone dear, I dedicate this...

Dancing Under The Rain...

A smooth week, in some ways. Nevertheless, it was not out of minor troubles that I hope they would be resolved soon. One of these problems is the delay in recording the Ayvarith text for Alexander's story. I'm going to restart recording in 32bit format (or sometimes called "float-point audio"). I've noticed some glitches when recording in 16bit, and I thought I might better use the 32bit format now. However, the glitches are still there. Some weird stops occur in the middle of the recording out of sudden, as if the mic do not catch any sound at that particular moment and then back to normal. Seems it is another memory issue with this "lovely" PC. Please note the sarcasm! Anyway, let's hope I go on with this project as it is weighing heavily on my shoulders now. I feel dull sitting without doing something about it and the least I need now is, a technical problem like this.

I've not worked much with my camera this week, except of a tiny experiment that I will explain later. Seems the vacation session is on, but nevertheless, I'm still working on photos from Ireland. I've remembered for a moment that there were two albums that I needed to complete; the sixth album and the black and white album (for the images from the sixth album). The process was slow but since I'm not working with my camera, I worked on boosting the process till finally finishing them off, and been sent already in a mass email message. The idea here, I think, is to create a turmoil of emotions in the eyes of the viewer by sticking the black and white version next to its colored-likeness. The gap in emotions between a colored image and a black and white version of the same image can be a huge one; personally, I do think it can be from a happy top then down to a melancholic one. Usually, the black and white images (majorly of landscapes, architecture) make a sense of mystery to melancholy somehow, because black and white is usually linked to history and old times (thanks to the history of camera developments). Anyway, the creation of emotional turmoil was not an aim from my side, but in the early beginning it was simply a notification of some image that I had different feelings for it, when every theme meant something to me, and from the moment I decided to make a separate folder for the black and white images specifically for these images in the sixth album.

Realistic with increased blackish tone reflecting the dramatic death I suppose.

Mysterious. Desaturated just before being totally black and white. Gives me an impression of Egyptian tombs and secrets of the past. It adds a sense of antiquity.

Cruelty of death. The plain truth and end. Black and white, no other options available.

I have to say that all of the three images are originated from a single HDR image which was tone-mapped and then enhanced in Photoshop later on. Please, if you are a purest and see HDR simply a toy and not an art, then remove this blog from your list. I create what my emotions tell me to do. Left to say that this gravestone is actually old, but not antique. It dates back to 1800s era, and most probably from the time of the Irish famine. Maybe the change in colors would create some dating way before this era, so I have to state this. There are other graves around Cashel town, in Co. Tipperary, that date back to the 1700s and even 1400s. This town has a fermented history scent to it.
Finished now with these two albums (which you can check them out here and here), and started already a seventh album for pictures around Co. Tipperary. Frankly, I'm not sure what will be there, as it seems I've used all tricks in my sleeve. The choices I had in Tipperary are not as much as those in Galway in 2009. Probably because I have a passion to the water and the lake there more than simply farm lands. However, each one of them is fascinating in its own way.
The picture that started the album made a nice catch for me in two ways. Two things that I've achieved by coincidence with this image. Well, not really achieved, but noticed by coincidence.

Tower in Vane
A tower in Cahir castle in Cahir town, Co. Tipperary.

The story of this image can be listed in two points:

1. In the beginning, this image was merged into HDR. The bracketed sequence was not catastrophic and I've noticed some nice portions of each slide of the 3 images composing the HDR; mainly, the -3EV and 0EV brackets. It wasn't until later that I've realized that a bracket of -3,0,+3 does not necessarily make a good bracket for your HDR. However, I've tried in the beginning to set the images into layers and trying to substitute the layer masks around, trying to cover some portions of here and there to give a nice tone for the overall look. Didn't work. Tried merging into HDR within Photoshop, but as usual, Photoshop has the archaic problem with memory requirements when it comes to such operations. I had in my mind some manual tone-mapping because the image with its natural look is nice and I don't need to add weird tones to express my emotions, at least for the time being! Anyway, I had to merge in Photomatix and save the file into Radiance format (.hdr) and then open it back in Photoshop.
   After opening in Photoshop, I worked with an adjustment layer of Exposure and fixed some shadows and some highlights manually without harsh effects, and with a soft brush. After that was done, it's time now to the real manual tone-mapping and converting into a 16bit image. This was done also without grand breaks in the histogram curve, just darkening some portions and lightening some others a bit further and so on. Cool so far.
   The thing that I've noticed here is, the noise level is way below what I'm used to see when I tone-map in Photomatix. Does that means Photomatix is responsible for ADDING a certain noise level to the image? I was technically satisfied with the level of the noise when I zoomed to 100%, but for the sake of some sharpness, I ran NeatImage with "slightly blurred" profile in use, to make the image slightly sharper. This noise level notification makes me think further of how should I do things with HDR. This comes at a time that I'm indeed trying to reduce my "HDR intake" and depend on the best shot I can get within a bracket and adjust its RAW.
2. Then there was a surprise. The trick that might solve my problems with color spaces. I've always wondered about the difference between "Assign Profile" and "Convert to Profile" under the Edit menu in Photoshop. Seems this made it clear to me, somehow, or at least I know what to do next time I work in ProPhoto space and preparing an image to be uploaded to some website that doesn't identify such a color space.
   The whole thing started with me, by mistake, using the Convert command, instead of the Assign command. I've converted the space into Adobe 1998; the usual. I've noticed that the colors didn't change or coming dull as it usually happens. I've undone the command and used Assign this time, and the colors were put down. The sky you see above, literally, turned purple-like and the image was darker. I've undone this command again, and used Convert to convert the image into Adobe 1998, and there was no change. Now, checking the general space of the image yielded Adobe 1998 indeed, but the looks are those of ProPhoto space! Awesome! When the image was uploaded to some websites, there was no change in colors as it happens usually. Great! Now, I have to keep a mental note:
   Assign: moves the whole set of colors into the destination space and putting down those out of range to some specific limits.
   Convert: converts colors from one space to another (and tags the image with the space of the destination) while keeping its visual looks as much as possible.

Back now to my tiny little experiment with my camera. I did that yesterday in fact in a hurry, but the results were as I expected. I was able to turn the light on and off "digitally". I did this experiment before (in the bathroom) but the results were not so good for various reasons, but now I can say that I've did it.
This time I used a desk lamp, and I made sure that the light bulb was transparent and not translucent. I think the translucent characteristics achieve some kind of diffusion in the light coming out of the tungsten filament inside and that might give me hard times. However, after fixing the setting, I shot several bracketed sequences in the range of 2-stops only (-1,0,1), and then moving the sliders all the way from -7EV to the max I could get (6EV). Tedious, yes. All of that was to ensure a smooth transition in the luminance data when the HDR slide is to be done. With any sudden cut in the luminance (can be checked in the HDR histogram) then I can say my experiment would fail and I can't "turn on or off" the lights as I want.

The histogram after merging the RAW shots (Photomatix)

The shots were all taken in RAW format of course, since this format keeps as much data about the scene as possible. When merged there were some messages about a duplicate exposures (i.e. some files had the same EV value), so I had to drop down those and merge the different ones only. The histogram above is concentrated in the middle of the graph (a good sign) and without any severe cuts on the sides or in the middle, but there is a smooth transition. The thing I'm wondering about is, why there is 2 peaks in the graph? The only explanation I could think of is, probably, the right one is corresponding to the luminance level of the light bulb itself, while the left one corresponds to the luminance of the cone or the reflector around the bulb.
I've saved the HDR file and opened in Photoshop just to play around with the exposure and test the turning off and on of the light bulb myself, and I can say I've done it! All I had to do is play with the exposure slider at the bottom...

Recorded from my own monitor after a struggle! However, notice how the shadows form inside the cone around the light bulb, and also, when the brightness go extreme; it looks real on the monitor even though the real setting and scene did not have such view or level of brightness. Seems it is embedded within the HDR image the data to predict the luminance of a certain scene behind the real limits of the scene itself at the time of the shoot.
Don't you get the feeling that this bulb is dimmed by a real dimming switch and it's not an image on a monitor? Personally, I got that feeling. This is the power of HDR. Real HDR and not tone-mapping HDR images. This makes me think about possible and interesting uses for such criteria and if there is any way to simplify it. It is this tool that can make you a super visual artist. Visual digital artist, if I should say. You can control the light as you like, all what you need now is... imagination.
Of course in this rush of joy with such results, I couldn't resist tone-mapping and uploading such an image of this beauty bulb. The tone-mapping here though was a mix between the Photomatix and the manual tone-mapping in Photoshop (because Photomatix produced high noise level in the black area around the cone and I wanted to remove that). Add to tht, some few hue changes and contrast addition.

Tone-mapped tungsten bulb

On the other hand I'm busy reading my books and Amazon is waiting for a review. Writing a review for something I have is like a duty to me, and that makes me stressed little bit. However, the two books are bout portrait photography (which has loads of technical information about light and tools), and the other is a book by George Barr; Take Your Photography to the Next Level. I have to say that this book made a jolt to my mind somehow. I'm walking around places and trying to figure out patterns of lights and lines that usually don't get my attention enough. The book has practices on how to THINK as a photographer and what to SEE as a photographer. The book is also fun to read as the author has his own sense of humor!

I've been pushing my mind so hard to write something. It is a damned feeling to have a lot of emotions to talk about yet, you can't express or write them. I was thinking of some lyrical form but anyway, I created a simple thing just to get myself satisfied, thinking that I did something at least. I called Dance Under The Rain. Maybe it's my way of saying "Screw up the world." Who cares anyway...