Mercator…

Back to normal (and moderate) life again now after the Expo has finished. It's time now to shuffle my cards again and try to do some stuff that I've been postponing for a while. However, this is not the end of the story with Expos, as we are planning to get enrolled again in another Expo hopefully in March. I do have my own plans for this "show" with the group, but of course I have to discuss matters with them.

Failure No. 1

For some time I had this idea of doing some "portrait" shot with infrared. Yes, portrait. Not my cuppa tea I know, but this time it is combined with infrared, which means long exposure. I've seen some artist which use property for creating a soft touch for portraits, and I thought of experimenting with that as well, even though I don't remember if they did use infrared filters or just a regular long exposure. Anyway, since I have no model to bear with me, I had to do it all on my own.
I made up a simple setting for experimenting with this concept and I made sure that I can rest my head somewhere so it won't move much, but only little shakes (normal body movement). The idea was a table with stack of books (just an addition) and resting my chin on the table (while sitting on the ground). Focusing and directing the camera wasn't a problem, but the problem was majorly the VERY long exposure with ISO100. It required about 65 minutes! I wasn't sure I could rest my head that long! Thus, I tried to use ISO400 instead for a total exposure of about 16 minutes. Boy, did I not sleep while waiting for the exposure to finish!
Unfortunately for me, the final image was pretty much noisy and almost impossible to clean, as well as not being soft much. For this trial, I used the B+W 092 infrared circular filter with my Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens. However, I've began to understand IR filters further and one factor that this circular filter does not yield more interesting results is the fact that its cut-off wavelength point (the point after which waves are allowed to pass) is somewhere around 650nm. On the other hand, the KODAK IR gel filter which I use with my Canon EF 15mm fisheye lens usually, has a cut-off point of something around 900nm. This means that the circular filter from B+W does allow more amount of "visible" light to pass and hence the results aren't interesting as much as those results obtained by the gel filter from KODAK, which filters off more visible light. Of course, in the case of the gel filter, the exposure will be even longer!
The next step now is to try regular long exposures with the help of ND filters only, and probably using IR filters later, but with the help of some extra light source to light the scene (my face) further and help on shortening the exposure as well as "producing" more IR in the scene; I heard tungsten bulbs do produce a fair amount of IR.

Twisted and Vertical

My work is continuing with panoramas taken from Ireland, and this time adding to it some of the old panoramas from other places as well since the occasion of the Annual Book Fair last week. My attitude was a mixture of presenting panoramas and single shots when any process of sorting is scheduled by the group as I don't want to confine myself to a specific category. However, it turned out that panoramas from my side can play the "winning" card in many aspects - and for this reason I've developed some ideas for the next group's activity but they need to be discussed first. Anyway, this is not the matter to discuss here for now!

Talamh na Neamh
(Heaven's ground)

I've been working on doing more vertical panoramas lately, as I've figured that it was the lesser projection in my collection of panoramas, probably because of the lack of straight or longitudinal features in many of the scenes that I usually shoot for panoramas. Anyway, I thought maybe I should try to discover the possibilities in variety of places even those with no distinctive straight features (roads, corridors, ..etc).
However, one of the major problems in such projection is the quite stretched sides of such vertical panoramas which require a crop most of the time because they bear no distinctive or legible features. This is somewhat a minus point for this projection because the cropping limit can be hard to find, and the vertical panorama can be way too thin. But seems there is a promising solution to this in the atmosphere. Mercator.

Táim Suas ag Dul
(I'm going up)

Dhá-Taoibh
(double surface)

It never occurred to me to use Mercator projection, needless to say in a vertical format! I have to say here things came in as a coincidence. The Mercator projection is usually looked up as, simply, an elongated form of the cylindrical projection. However, when it comes to vertical panoramas, the difference is clear. With Mercator, the vertical panorama appears wide in the middle area (like a bulge outwards) and this gives for nicer views and more details. Cylindrical on the other hand, renders this area small and far. Probably vertical panoramas like Talamh na Neamh and Táim Suas ag Dul are more elongated (they are vertical panoramas from regular spherical flat panoramas), and the geometry of the place did help here as well in achieving quite the view without such a bulge. However, panoramas like Dhá-Taoibh had not many interesting features in the regular spherical panorama in vertical format. Mercator was more interesting here, despite the problem in the middle area of the panorama because of the distribution of the grass in the scene, which is a problem already in the spherical vertical panorama; because it renders the place unbalanced in this dimension. With this notice, I'm adding one more creative brush to my palette for the future rendering of more panoramas, and probably solve problems with some panoramas!

Finale

I'm here. Sweeping through life like a pinball game right now from side to side wondering what I really want. I'm planning to increase my activity within the group, thinking that it might give my life a further meaning with all the collapsible dreams that I've been watching fall down so far. I've been told once that things would look and turn for the better after 30; I wonder where from did they get this?.
In the meantime I'm giving work and home my back (almost) and all what I'm going to do is just work on my own projects, my own photos, and on my reputation as a panorama-maker. Say, what do they call a person who makes panoramas? Panoramer?
I leave you know with this musical which I fell in love with. Gentle as it may be, violent on my heart it is. Simply the work of a band of geniuses: The Chieftains...