Greasing The Engine…

Here we are... Ramadhan is over, and my vacation is over as well and I'm back to work with the usual greasing my engine problem like after every vacation. A number of stuff I've been doing with my camera through this short vacation, and somehow was trying to catch my chances before I get back to the humdrum of the daily life and the tired body. Sleeping was a problem of course, and can't imagine how my life would have been if I didn't take that vacation as well! I'm grateful though for one last miracle, and that is my shipment is finally here after taking a long route and some extra expenses through the sick mailing system we have here. Anyway, I might talk about that later.

Out of The UV

It has been a while now with my thoughts about trying a portraiture or a selfie using my UV filter. I even got myself some CFL-type blacklights to try out and experiment in shooting such portraits (with some plans of painting with sun screen). However, after working a bit and some testing, it turns out that such blacklights are not quite practical and/or useful for portraiture at least (might be useful and practical for static objects for tabletop photography). Anyway, I had my own little experiment with a selfie using these blacklights…

UV Man I

Googling around, I didn't find quite the descriptive article that describes how dangerous are the blacklights, and what is their damage on the long or short terms. Anyway, I worked with them anyway fixing my exposure to one second only and raising my ISO to 640. I was wearing my glasses without really realizing it, but then I thought they would be a good protection for my eyes. I've worked before with these blacklights and I noticed that I get some irritation to my eyes when they are on. All in all, the glasses were a good addition to the shot I believe, as I didn't plan for these reflections off them.

UV Man II

One of the signs of a good UV filter (or a combination of UV filter and a hot mirror) is that glasses appear black or almost opaque when shot with these filters and this is how I exactly realized that the DR-655 filter was a good filter because my glasses got dark when I tried to shoot some selfies under the sun before (when I first got the filter). That worked well here making my glasses like a mirror reflecting off the blacklights under my face (placed into desk lamps).

Transmission chart for
Kenko's DR-655 Hot Mirror.
Click to enlarge.

However, when I tried my speedlite (though I know it's not a good UV source) the opacity of the glasses was gone and my eyes appeared from behind the glasses, proving that speedlites probably fire some infrared BELOW the limit of 700nm (which is the beginning of the blockade by DR-655 hot mirror according to charts). This effect for the speedlite over my glasses persisted even when I covered the speedlite with somewhat thick blue and purple layers of cellophane with the hope of blocking the infrared range; However, no use. I've made several shots (and UV Man II taken before UV Man I actually) and I guess only 2 shots were somewhat the best of them all. I've used excessive sharpening with UV Man II here to compensate for the little motion blur in the image (probably doesn't show clearly when in small size). For this, it seems that there is no escape of doing my future UV portraiture projects under the sun; The summer's sun. Speaking of "escape," I think it is time to move to the next title: Escape.

الهروب - The Escape - Al-Hurúb

Somehow I loved to call the next shot in Arabic rather than, typically, in English or any other languages. Hmm, this has been a trend in my mind lately. Anyway, this is all about a panorama shot which I've been planning to do for a long time; I won't be exaggerating if I say that the idea had been there for 2 years, if not more. Initially, the idea for this panorama was to be shot in "normal" mode, so to say. However, when time arrived for its execution, I decided to do it in infrared (with my modified camera of course) as this would add more drama, contrast and visual impact.

الهروب - The Escape

I did indeed a panorama (a simple one) in this location before and I remember it didn't go well (it was in HDR too). It was so simple, with only doors showing. The idea of adding an element like this hand was the thing that delayed my work. I was thinking of using my bro as a model to show his hand only out of the (bathroom) door, yet I couldn't fix the timing with him and I doubt he has the patience for such work. I went as far as thinking of getting a mannequin (or the hand alone at least), and again, I couldn't get to that. Thus, again, I'm all by myself.  Unfortunately, I didn't take single shots to explain some issues, so I will go explaining some of these issues by points:

1. First things first: It's an infrared panorama, which means I need a good infrared source. Thus, I had to change the bulb in this small square space from CFL to tungsten bulb (150W!) to ensure my intake of infrared in the place (and I was not disappointed).
2. It was perplexing to position the tripod in the first place, and it was obvious that it won't be at the center anyway, so I tried to place centered with respect to the bathroom door where the hand shall be exposes.
3. Naturally, there would be overlapping of images when doing this panorama because of the added element (the hand). So, things has to be unchanged between the shoots as much as possible. For this, I opened the bathroom door and let it swing on its own to its own limit (the vent fan was on so the air sucks up the door a bit in addition to the door's weight). At this point, I've placed a marker on the ground (let's hope Mom didn't notice!). Later on, after shooting the panorama, I've gone inside the bathroom and extended my arm outside and tried my best to align the door with the marked line I did earlier. I took many shots with different poses for the hand and when stitching I really wanted to add them all in some sort of a surreal look, but because of the troublesome errors, I've satisfied myself with only one hand.
4. Even with one hand, stitching errors prevailed and to be honest, I'm not sure if the final product here has all its stitching errors fixed! 

The working infrared filter here is Kodak's gel filter (#87B) which has a threshold of about 820nm. The tungsten bulb here provided with just what I need of infrared and I started shooting at f/10, 4 seconds each, at ISO 160. Of course, no HDR bracketing here, that would be a far fetch somehow. In fact, even with 4 seconds, my hand was not that stable but it might not show easily in the big picture. Yet, with such a strong infrared filter, 4 seconds of exposure is plausible indeed. To ensure the proper exposure time, I've shot the bathroom door some several shots and checked their histogram to decide for the proper exposure for all of the scene (because this door is the most important in the whole scene as well), and that worked well. The black space under the arch was not dark in reality, but this is the main hall which was lit mainly by LEDs and CFLs, and these two do not emit enough infrared to show up clearly in just 4 seconds of exposure with this filter - It was just perfect! Well, there were some tiny white dots which I needed to clear out. The white-gray space under this black space under the arch is just the sofa covered with some "black" cloth to hide the details of the sofa. But you know what? I'm regretting that and now I wish if I made it ALL black there.
I've made various projections so far and still working on more out of this panorama, so I might leave those for my next posts anyway, but the priority was for creating a QTVR out of this panorama. Unlike my previous posts where I would post a little QTVR here (which requires QuickTime to be installed), now I'm going to depend on 360Cities.net embed my QTVRs here. And this one has been published already as well!

The Escape

Pinhology

During the last days of my vacation I started to get excited again about my pinhole (lens) and really wanted to do something about it. I was focusing on getting sharper image in the past but now, my focus is mainly surreal in essence. Thus, sharpness was not much of an issue for me this time. All I wanted to do is record some motion, and in B&W. Some of these images as I saw do have a mental effect on me at some level. Something out of this world, or simply psychological. With this though, I've dug deeper and learned further about pinholes and I'm seriously considering making one on my own for my camera (but first I need to clean my mental desk of some hanging tasks and issues).

المقرئ - The Reciter
Pinhole: 2m, ISO100.

My first idea was doing a bit of motion (as I stated already) and the idea was to make a moving silhouette. Easy said than done when the talk is about a pinhole lens. Using ND filters was out of question here (even though I do have some gel NDs and I could have easily stuck them on the pinhole). Originally, I wanted to have a light coming from above, but when I saw the window in this room of the house (specially in the morning) I really loved it. It was perfect for the job and in fact more plausible for a silhouette (even though more work was needed with dodge and burn when processed). The exposure of two minutes (plus 1 minute timer to prepare myself with the black cloth) was just enough to record this motion as I was flipping through the pages of my Quran (Koran). Maybe the background was not well organized but I can't complain. I've already had a problem with the camera to get enough distance in the room to get the framing I wanted (one more reason to think of some way to integrate pinhole work with my regular lenses). Converting to B&W saved the situation further, because I realized that my clothes showed up with all the fanciful colors and designs! 

Escape 2
Pinhole: 39s, ISO100.

The streak of "inspiration" did not stop with that room, as I'm starting to notice the light patterns wherever I go now and truly putting my mind into this pinhole work altogether. The room this time was the guest room and the light was coming through from the door that leads to the outside. Again, it did capture my sight (even though it was getting dusty by that time and got extreme after I've finished, luckily!). Had some go with simple poses like in Escape 2 (thought of it as a sequel to The Escape panorama). Even though my body was not completely stable during the 39 seconds exposure, but the image looked stable enough. During the post-processing phase I did decrease the clarity to give it the dreamy-like (or should I say psychological horror) look. Also, and again, there was some work with the dodge and burn to be done and I made a compromise here between showing little details in the blacks but not quite enough to figure out any shape. To keep things in black here, I had to wear my t-shirt turned around to hide those designs! Anyway, I couldn't stop thinking about keeping myself in motion, because motion in such long exposures, to me, resembles the life of the image and somewhat like resurrecting something within the viewer when he or she looks at it.

Escape 3
Pinhole: 39s, ISO100.

Thus moving to the next idea, with only one hand extending through (not behind the glass door) and this time moving my fingers only, and the result as you can see in Escape 3, it did have that motion effect somehow. However, instead of reducing the clarity when processing this image as in the case of Escape 2, I've increased it. That way the shades of the fingers appeared clearly further. These shades of the fingertips were made by the motion of the fingers actually. By the end, I still had one more shot to take and this time I did have some motion by head and hands but the end result was not much to be noticed, and the whole thing appeared as if some Anonymous person standing behind some glass. 

Anonymous
Pinhole: 39s, ISO100.

The focus on pinhole photography made me expand my thinking a bit; Somewhere behind the pinhole lens that I've purchased and in many occasions I would find myself senselessly digging myself into numbers and calculations trying to figure out or visualize the outcome of various light wavelengths, diameters, and even focal lengths (despite for me it has been fixed at 44mm). I think that shooting with the pinhole for some time would, naturally, push the photographer further to focus on the light and its quality, as was the case in the classical times with films. Of course, it is still digital and one can shoot and check it out later and fix it later, but still, the length of the exposure alone makes it worthy to invest some time in focusing and reflecting on the light available and what to do or how to do the shoot. All that, I believe, would reflect back and add to the experience of the photographer and his eyes and vision when working with regular lenses. Right now, I'm thinking seriously as well of merging speedlites with the work with this pinhole (in terms of a stroboscope). Needs a bit of thinking…

Finale

Neewer Set of Infrared Filters.
IR720, IR760, IR850, IR950.

A bunch of ideas are roaming my mind and with me being back to work doesn't make it any easier for me to work on them, but I shall try. I know it will be some long time. Miraculously, I got the shipment that was wandering the globe before my expectations and in my hands now a set of four infrared filters that need to be tested. I have some curious interest in the IR950, which supposedly has a threshold of 950nm; Such a high value for an infrared filter and I've been clicking around with it using high ISO (12,800) here and there. I might post these results later. But I need to go beyond that as well; I really need some scientific method to get a concrete idea of the capabilities of such filters, specially after being tricked with Tiffen's Hot Mirror before! All I can do so far is just click and test against known sources of IR like the sun and tungsten lights, as well as speedlites.

Seems I've been away from poetry for weeks now (again) but I do have these visits of some words which do not quite settle down in my head. I think I've been running with my pace in life lately specially with the end of my vacation, focusing on my camera work. I need to get back to that. I really don't know how to pass this summer, specially with no solid plans for traveling in the near future. Things are getting so narrow; So narrow that make me chest feel like crashing on its own, but as if nothing to be done. Sometimes, depression would not be clinical nor mere sadness, but simply feeling to be in the wrong time, in the wrong place, simply surrounded by stupidity. All I can do, then, is to keep myself amused, on my own…