Post-Morten…

Well, I barely have any time to type this blog post, but after stopping for a week for mourning I think it is due right now even though I don't have much material to be posted here. The mourning is still going on though and many hearts have it as a heavy burden to see such a great man who created a big portion of Kuwait's history to pass away in a quick whim of destiny. May he rest in peace.
Not much have been going on in fact, except some trials now with my August project about books so I'm going to talk a bit about it here, and a little bit about some idea that I'm still working on.

Leabhair

As the month is going on, I'm still working with ideas for this project, and frankly, I'm not satisfied yet about any of these ideas, but I'm trying.

"Creativity"
Voigtländer 20mm (R), f/11, 30s, ISO200.

My first trial was, typically, with a macro approach as can be seen in "Creativity" where I used Bruce Barnbaum's book, The Art of Photography, p.301, as my subject where this word exists in a paragraph. I was not sure what I was thinking, but my mind called me for an extreme macro just like the days when I used to shoot into my microscope some weeks ago. Here, with the camera dangling vertically over the book, I shot various segments of the word (which was extremely magnified at about 3.17X by using Voigtländer 20mm on reverse). My aim here was to create a collage like I did before with Killing Evil, but the circumstances and the fact that I'm zooming to 3X+ and the camera is stable on a lateral arm (while the book is hard to be moved around with ease), all that made it difficult to take various segments easily and randomly, and forced me to take the shots in a sequence and finally overlapping them to make one whole word. The only clue which I've added later to note various segments is the difference in gamma level, while the skew at the end of the word might be a clue as well. I couldn't use speedlites here so I raised the ISO and had to bear with the long exposure for 30 seconds!

Killing Evil

All in all, the idea of shooting a word in a book, as I think, do not resemble the real idea of the project about the importance books. It is merely a word, an element, inside a book - but not a book. Thus, the search did not end yet about something to shoot for this project. In fact, concerning this same word and this same book, I do have another idea to apply just yet, but without magnification up to that level. But I kept myself busy with other things lately that I didn't get the chance to shoot this.
Meanwhile, with the help of my brother, I got to shape a new idea out of scratch fed with some background "legend." And I say legend as I don't really know how accurate such news are (specially in this part of the world), but before explaining this "legend" let me first introduce the image.

وفوق كل ذي علم عليم
{and over every lord of knowledge He is more knowing.} (Quran: 12/76).
Canon EF 50mm, f/11, 1000^-1, ISO250.

The legend says: At the time when Muslims ruled Andalusia, pupils who studied various arts and crafts come to the end of their studies with some ceremony or oath-taking, for which they invented the graduation cap as we know it today with a flat top, to place the holy book (Quran) on top while taking the oath and to apply the verse (and over every lord of knowledge He is more knowing: 12/76) from Quran. Anyway, I'm not sure about this story, but it was a spark in my mind to do this image.

Since I needed to kill the ambient light, as well as for the candle's light, I had to go on with the HSS mode (High-speed) to do this shot and compromise with the aperture a bit. Even though f/11 has a good depth of field for such small scene, but I like to always keep it on the safe side and push the f-number a bit further. However, I had to step back here and stop at f/11. One more reason to increase the f-number here is the desire to create a spark or a burst around the candle's flame, but that didn't happen! The real setback though was the need to place a dark yellow gel on the speedlite, and that alone takes 2.5 stops away from the power (as noted on the gel itself). Thus, even with full power, there was a need for some extra light, and at that point I've decided to use two other speedlites with no gels; that explains that mix in colors in the image above. Moreover, I've resorted to use the flash extender which I didn't put to practical use before this time in hope that I would give some strength to the pulse; which it did but slightly. I had to get my speedlite as close as possible to the set. It is evident from all these setbacks and problems that there is no escape but to raise the ISO as minimum as it could be (and I did have my struggle with the noise when processing the image above).
On the other hand, my brother had some remarks about the image and suggested some changes which I'm willing to try out as soon as possible (already did before typing this but the results weren't good). Here are some of his suggestions:

1. Wait for the candle to melt down further, which is something I've done already.
2. Shoot the set with the light from the candle alone. Tried that, but didn't really work, and the candle itself has a weak flame. 
3. Get things closer together.
4. Change perspective and move up further (i.e. shooting looking down to the set).

These are the major notes he made and I'm still trying to apply them (using Voigtländer 20mm lens instead of Canon EF 50mm) but still it didn't work out in a good way. Probably changing the lens was not a good idea after all and I would have to get back to 50mm. I'm envisioning the usage of my pinhole cover to shoot this set as well but I'll keep that for later.

Finale

As these words are going on, I'm pushing my way alone this time trying to get or grant a permission to shoot at a special place: A theater where a mural for the deceased artist was painted there with the opening of this theater after renovation (which now bears his name in gratitude to his services to the comedy and arts in general in this country). So far, official channels seem blocked and no one is giving a listening ear, so I'm resorting to some connections in hope that I will get this grant to shoot some ideas there. I'm doing this work solely alone without any help from anyone, as I'm trying to find a name for me somewhere out there rather than being dependent on my group.
Meanwhile, it seems that I'm giving myself a break from the group again and this time it might be for good indeed. I'll try to keep my activities minimum. There are more important things that still bug my mind, e.g. travel and creating ideas. I'm working on the latter, but not sure about the former. I'm getting nervous here... panic attacks had been frequent lately with insomnia. I need some good relaxation time before I lose my mind, and myself as well.