Unprecedented…

Two weeks of upheaval with sickness. Respiratory system infection, and then Conjunctivitis; I was surprised to know that the two are actually connected, as mention in this article. The bright side of the story is a 3 days of medical leave from work, connected to weekend. Not bad. My health still shaky with the tearful cough, but it is the usual story I believe. Coughing always lasts for some days if not months after treatment. I'm not having any medications to treat all of that, just some eye drops and cream for conjunctivitis.

With conjunctivitis. It was redder than this!

With this, and with the closure of Winter's end, seems that my plans to go out at night are somewhat, or completely, diminished. It is clear that my health and immune system is not what it used to be. However, I got myself little boots just in case I need to get a bit deeper into the shore. With this temperature it might not be a good idea to do long exposures here for the level of noise will be something unprecedented, but with more technical knowledge that I've gained along the years, hopefully I'll manage, in case that happens.

Infrolling

Because of the lack of opportunities to go outside at night, I've decided to work more on some infrared shots indoors or in the yard. Some simple experiment. Experiments like this refresh my mind a bit and breaks my idleness with the camera. Thus, I don't necessarily have a goal of achieving a good shot in my mind.

InfraPetals
Canon EF 50mm + 56mm ET, f/16, 4m20s, ISO100.

My first (and second trials) last week were with some small blooms in the yard. Despite the lack of breeze back then, but the shots were not sharp enough, and probably it is for the fact that I didn't adjust the focus (after focusing without the IR filter) to fit the IR range. The Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens has a marker for infrared re-focusing, even though, to me, it looks useless - because the distance ring is not marked thoroughly but only at specific distances. Thus, sometimes, you must use intuition and approximation in moving the focusing distance over the red dot for IR focusing.

InfraQuad
Canon EF 50mm + 36mm ET, f/20, 4m20s, ISO100.

The second trial that day wasn't any better. Anyway, I'm not planning to upload those to stock websites (or might try to do so into specific ones). The problem with this quadratic bloom is the way it should be cropped to be enhanced. In fact, I've never got myself satisfied with it, but I tried to remove some of the excess lines.
That was a simple trial outdoors. However, the real work was later done indoors when I noticed a vase with withered flowers and roses. It was made ready to disposal so I picked the vase to my room and made a simple setting. Probably the hardest part is moving around with the Speedlite without fixing it on a stand. The space in my room is not suitable anymore, and spaces around this house were taken. Anyway, work started and first it was by using two Speedlites.

Sigh
Canon EF 50mm, f/8,
5s, ISO100.

It seems, as seen in Sigh, that two Speedlites were not necessary after all. The major one was that made the effect was handheld and pointed directly to the dead rose, while the other one was placed on the side and bounced off a metallic-like surface supposedly to light the front. However, this second Speedlite proved to be a major problem when it showed glare on the glass of the vase, and hence I had to spend a considerable time cloning that out in Photoshop!
Thinking about it now, I could have used the second Speedlite to light the background a bit, but unfortunately, I do not have a proper background here, and nothing was behind this vase except the mess of my room! Anyway, it was a lesson learned the hard way. Yet, Sigh gained some Likes after all for its dramatic look. I doubt it is printable or to be uploaded though for the humongous level of noise, despite the short exposure time of 5 seconds only (and both Speedlites were on full power!).

Eski Güzellik
(old beauty)
Canon EF 50mm + 20mm ET,
f/22, 40s, ISO100.

I wasn't over with this subject yet. I liked the idea of some long exposure "indoors" with this infrared filter. The lights in my room are all energy-saving CFLs and those are a bad source for infrared radiation. Thus, naturally, the exposure without any help from Speedlites is going to be a long shot! However, I tried. The estimated time was about 5 hours and 20 minutes! I did it after all in overnight; put things on and went to bed, and tried to sleep with lights on! To my surprise, the camera didn't record the time properly (probably for the unusual time period) - it was recorded was 15 seconds only! The image was bright and good but unfortunately, shaky and the noise level wasn't promising. The shake is surprising in fact, but probably the only explanation for this is the working A/C in my room which delivered gentle vibrations to the set. Anyway, decided to do it again but with a spot light bulb (which should produce quite enough brightness and infrared as well). The result, Eski Güzellik, received many likes and favors as well. It does have some abstract sense with a side of melancholy to it. Considerable work was done to crop it, and then rotate it (and flip it). For some reason which I'm not sure of, the actual positioning was not quite right for me (maybe because of my left-handedness?). I've finally settled down with the look shown here. And that was the last trial with infrared in past few weeks.

The set used for the final shot.

Finale

Well, I would have liked to talk a bit more about the panoramas that were stitched, specifically old panoramas into new suit, but probably I'll leave that for another time. As always I'm having here a time crisis and I've realized that with my systematic time-schedule to work on some of the projects, I did in fact neglect lot of things, and specifically my Geltani conlang. I'm not sure what's the solution to this so far, but I guess I have to give myself some free time first.
I guess, at least how I think it is, I've been indulging myself into projects and stuff to work on just to let myself forget many things in my life. But this is leaving me exhausted and I'm not sure if all of that is really keeping me going forward. It feels numb here. It's hard to feel something anymore...

An Loch Codlata
(the sleeping lake)