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Here we are again, after some weeks away. I thought I wouldn't post again but here I am; Trying. This post won't be long though.
I had to stop blogging because of being overwhelmed with my personal issues and life (and still). September had been a heavy loaded month with drama and other stuff at home and my personal life but anyway I've tried to seize the chance here and went on to do something with photography.
During most of the September, I've tried to use my phone only to take photos around the house (because, naturally, I can't be anywhere else) and deliberately shooting in Monochrome mode in the phone camera. Editing was done in Photoshop later on.
The challenge here was not to use DSLR with flexible lenses but to catch things plainly and do think in B&W solely. I'm lucky that the Monochrome mode in the phone camera app has a "Pro" feature which provided control over the exposure value and other few things which helped significantly in adding the mystery or the drama in the shots. Most of my shots were taken at -2EV and things where adjusted later on in Photoshop. Of course, all the work was done in JPEG and not involving any RAW files. 

Each shot of these actually has a story of some sort and some story about the processes involved but I've decided to keep it short here and I've made this video slideshow specifically to showcase the images I've taken during the span of September. Some of these might appear too dark, specially on smart devices, so increasing the brightness might be needed for some of them. I work with a calibrated monitor, so in these dark areas of the images there should be some minor details that I kept, but in non-calibrated devices, things might appear too dim to notice any details.

Probably it would be better to view the video in a bit larger window. I've already posted this video on Instagram before posting it here and I've posted even some of these images before the video there. As I said, this would be a short post relatively, so I won't go into the details of each image, but I hope you'd enjoy the show!

Finale

I'm in a time of my life, I guess, where I wonder if this is how it feels to be in the so-called "Middle Age Crisis". However, being in my early 40s, it seems to have come to me early, apparently.
September was a heavy loaded month with family issues and mood swings that I've needed to (or rather forced to) leave everything behind for a while, including blogging. My plans to do an Arabic blog post once a month has long gone stray already.
Dealing with the family, and the mother specifically, with an increase in feelings of isolation, or being isolate, and the need to be isolate (in my own space) all came up together as a mental tsunami. My urge to travel is re-kindled but this is, again, just not the right time to do any of that because of the situation at home (and the care I have to give to Mom) and the international situation. To culminate this upheaval, I'm actually typing this blog post with the fear of a power outage at any minute now (had been a favorite recurring event lately) and with connection problems that lingered for 3 days now at the time of typing this (Tuesday). I can't help but to feel everything around me is being filled with misery, as if facing waves of negativity is some homework I need to do on a daily basis; The more I try to change my environment, my mental attitude towards things and life, the harder down I dip myself (or be dipped). 

Such a mental turmoil and I really don't know where am I heading right now. All is left at the hands of God. It is such times that I wish I can drive safely to wherever I want to if not for the damned Retinitis Pigmentosa. But I guess I can't complain, for some of the benefits that I've gained from it already as it is. For the time being, I'm just praying that October would be a calmer month, relatively. 

As for this blog, I'm not sure where I will go with it but I will try to see what I can do with my camera. Funny how things had changed regarding this blog, from being about a conlang (which I don't work with anymore right now) to something about my photography, and my personal life. I definitely need to rest, some way, some how…