Cold…

The engine is non-stopping and steam is venting from every ventilation route possible. Well, this is what I'm trying to do. My stuff are scattered around the house and I feel so pressured with time, and yet I didn't achieve much. I was hoping that I would be over with the project RED soon, but this wasn't the case, despite the encouraging feedback to my images.

Cold Love (II)

My first trials with the project resulted in Cold Love series. I had one idea in my mind and many liked the image but understood it as something totally different, but nevertheless, it's a good thing they liked it. What I like about this project is the push it makes (despite the pressure and stress) to make up the image, instead of waiting for a chance to make it. The first trial with this idea were good but not good enough and I was given some instructions; unfortunately though these instructions were challenging. First, the rose must be a cast inside the ice heart (which I made using bakery molds by the way), and the petals should be removed as they make a distraction. I tried 2 times more to make these instructions into fruition, but to no avail so far. However, I'm going to put on these results in the coming sorting meeting. If all fails, I think I will need to sort out to Photoshop to fix some of these problems (but not all). More ideas are waiting to be implemented and I've wasted enough time with this one and another idea involving strawberries (which will never see the light).

Black and white version from
a test shot from the project.

Meanwhile, my other trial for Selfie theme was also rejected for some technical problem (away from other problems in composition I believe). The focus is said to be on a portion of my back hair behind my ear rather than my eye. Well, with f/9 probably this is too obvious though on my monitor it wasn't pretty obvious. It's hard to do such a shot again because I'm doing it all alone. No one is going to set the focus for me!  Anyway, it's done and that's it. Now off to other projects to finish. This is getting really tiresome.

Little Universe (II)

 In the rush of projects and ideas, I've started to process a series of shots I've taken a while ago and totally forgot about them in such rush. A repetition for my previous trials with glass marbles and reflections. This time though I've changed the lighting method from dark field method to bright field method. The difference is obvious I presume. Here, however, I tried to get out of the typical scenery of reflection images by, first rotating the image, and then cropping the main subject and keeping the reflection, while cropping into a square (too much white area) and fitting the contact point between the marble and its reflection in one of the thirds' contact points. The reflection of the black boards on the sides is something I'm not sure of how to feel about really. Sometimes I see it as an ambiguous reflection and some other time I see it as something breaking the monotonous trend of such shot. I'll keep that for the next meeting to sort it out, though I'm not even 50% sure that such shot would pass. After this shot was published in the media, some friends suggested other variations to the main idea, so probably I'm not yet done with this experiment just yet.

Source: Amazon

As I go through my recent projects, I'm also reading this awesome book (which I've discovered it is volume 2 in fact). I'm trying to implement some of its tips in designing shots to my work with these projects. However, my reading pace is slow as I'm having no time to read except at work, and mostly at noon time just before I leave. The book discusses elements of design for the images in an abstract sense, as it connects between the human perception and basic elements of the image. At some point though I have to be careful about it because these interpretations are based on a Western view about the surrounding environment, and there might be critical differences between that view and our (Middle Easterners) view. For example, lines that slant to the right (/) in the image would give a sense of increment because eyes subconsciously follow the direction of writing and reading, thus making the line going up in direction from left to right. We, however, might see this line as a sign of going downward because our native writing and reading direction is right to left. This is just a simple example of the amount of information included in this book. The amount of information included makes me a slow reader as well.

Finale

Chain Reaction
Using Dark Field method.

Looking at my life now and all the things I want to do. I'm really running out of everything and time is such a huge pressure on my shoulders now. One of the projects that I've realized that I've stopped for long now is the Geltani conlang, which really saddens me to see it hanging there without a progress. I even thought, in moments of despair, to call it off and cancel all that progress, but I stepped back and said to myself "let's wait and see." I'm so taken away with photography now that it makes my life pace on brakes, and I don't know when I'm going to step on the acceleration paddle. Every time I try to manage my time and do some time management, things just slip out of my hands. Drastically. Makes me wonder now: do I need a long vacation away from my camera? Maybe…