Ayvarith Blog

Dipping...

2012-01-26T07:30:00.002+03:00

What a chilly week! Now it feels like a REAL winter here. Our winter is not like it is in other countries where the temperature goes below zero (talking in Celsius) but anyway, in this week some areas were reported to be under zero by the night or mornings.
Now the challenge was to try and take some shots at night from the beach area, where the weather is severer. Went fine, but I had to bear with joint pains a bit until I got into a warmer place.

I was lucky with some timing for the low tide and like the previous time, I had to bear later on with increasing water level on the beach in this cold weather. Sometimes, only some times, you do like it when you suffer so much to create one image. My image, however, was a panoramic and essentially required such suffering!

Urban Romance I

I was lucky with the atmosphere somehow and the timing as well. I didn't know there is a crescent in the horizon (though I regret now that after I finished, I didn't take a single shot for the crescent). This allowed me to do two perspectives of the same panoramic scene (flat, that is) just by changing the perspective of the moon itself or the rocky beach.

Urban Romance II

Maybe the water in this location didn't cause me so much of a hard time, but to walk on all that soft sand from the parking lot to this piece of land and carrying my stuff was enough to give me some muscles stretching.
Of course there are other projections and styles, as usual, but maybe the one I liked the most (with some loss in details) is what I called the Sky Hugger.

Sky Hugger

It is in fact some form of the Wide-View angle that I used to apply for lot of panoramas lately, specially those from Ireland, but the concentration here was more on forming a unique curve in the shape of "U," with equal distances from the sides (from top). I don't believe this projection style is suitable to any panorama anyway. There was also a little planet projection, but maybe I did some sort of a mistake here for not cropping the outside portion to enlarge the planet itself:

Planeta Petris

The reason for not cropping the outside portion (or the space around the planet) is that in the original size I wanted to show some stars. However, and because of the high ISO (800) that took over the whole process, I had to resort to some tricks (mainly the median trick) to eliminate lot of the grain noise. With that, lot of stars got eliminated and we are left with blue space only. There are some tiny stars still left (and I tried manually to control the median effect by layer mask) but anyway it was a tedious work.
The title Planeta Petris (Rocky Planet) and also for the images done before like Planeta Ignis (Fire Planet), they gave me an idea of creating a series of "planets" if I should say, and each one of them will point to some element: Fire, Water, Air, Earth. Seems, for the time being, we have already two at hands; the fire element and the earth. How on earth I'm going to do a water and air planets, this is something I need to boost my imagination about (and certainly, daydreaming).

The night after this, I headed again to the beach and it was a REAL low tide. That is the minimum level of water and I worked in relatively a close portion of the beach, away from the water. This time it was just an experiment with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens and long exposure. The main aim was to record star trails, but I think I miss chose my location.

Fluorescent Shades

As you can see from the image above, the shadow of the tripod is apparent. It was not a good picture after all but experimenting is made for learning after all. In this spot, Burger King was at my back and its lights, even though being pitched darkness almost, did affect the location and cast a shadow of the tripod on such a long exposure (10 minutes). The scenery wasn't specifically attractive to me and I believe I should have done it in the previous location the night before, but now I remembered that I moved from that location in the first place because there were some unexpected visitors (at 4 a.m.) and I didn't like to be asked what I'm doing by curious people (and harmful ones at times). The trail was not long enough though, and I think I would need more like 15 to 20 minutes to create long enough (impressive) lines in the sky.
Despite the icy weather, I took off from the location with some pain in the joints (knuckles specially) and dragged myself to my car then took off to buy some goods.
In that location specifically, which I took a shot for before in some long time ago, I did try my Rokinon lens again and I had to do it fast after I finished shopping. Working fast was for two reasons mainly: a) security people, b) to finish before any glimpse of sunrise. The ISO, however, proved to be problematic. I've set ISO to 400 just to speed up the shuttering time, but that proved to be a great mistake and was unable to fix the weird noise, but finally I had satisfy myself with one of the 3-bracketed shots.

Forest of Lights

Forest of Lights (old)
Canon 350D, ISO800 f/18
Small panorama.

That said and done for now, I've finally received my shipment from the DHL (arrived by Saturday and got them finally on Tuesday). Three books are now added to the queue line and I'm squandering my time between 2 books (one of them is purchased some time ago, about swords!). Among other things I've got now is a set of gel filters (which I have to make some time for and cut some pieces of it). These gel filters are supposed to be used with my Canon 15mm fisheye lens. I've some pieces already from the three types (1-, 2-, 3-stops) and tried them out and they are fine so far. The only problem is with storing them properly since they all come together in one plastic bag and they are not separated according to their values in separate packs.
There are flash gels (to color the flash shots) which I tried briefly so far, and they seem not bad except for the velcro stickers that keep on dispatching every time I want to remove the gel from the flashgun. I'm not sure how I will be using these for the time being but it's good to keep them on hand just in case. They are good for light painting, definitely. Storing them and re-using them is a problem though.

All of this is on one hand, and my other projects, like the Geltani conlang is on hold for now. Not really on hold, but the progress is slow and I'm still doing some tests here and there about it. As for the new recording for the Ayvarith project, I didn't record yet my 5th part yet. Let's hope, this coming week? Maybe! If only I can get rid of my emotions...

Laboriosus

2012-01-19T08:01:00.000+03:00

Something went wrong this week. I don't know what is it exactly but all I know is that I've been idle and unable to perform well, with my mind or my camera. Well, at least I did something last week (after my last post) with my camera, otherwise, the week was vague. I'm trying to push myself to do some work out, even simple ones, just to activate my body somehow but even that was a fail. Anyway, in the "good news" department we have a new recording available, this time for chapter 4 of Alexander's story. You can check the English version (text only) here, and the Ayvarith version with sound clips here.
Now, let's hope I don't lag behind with chapter five.

I. More Geltani:

The progress with the new conlang and conscript is slow, yet I'm trying to work around it as much as I can. I'm settling my mind here and there about some aspects of syllables and seems I will be deriving a syllabic system out of the original Geltani script which will be dedicated for writing foreign names in Geltani. Ironically, I'm not sure how to write down "Geltan" in the Geltani script! Most probably I would make a name completely different in pronunciation.
One of the real problems that face me right now is some of the ambiguities encountered because of the abjadic nature of the Arabic orthography and script. Abjadic systems (like Arabic and Hebrew) tend to record the consonants alone and add only signs for vowels (in Arabic case, short vowels only are represented with signs and long ones with letters). Just an example from Arabic to elaborate this idea, the possibilities branching from the letters MLK.

MLK [ملك]

Mulk [مُلك]: Kingdom/Ownership.

Malik [مَلِك]: King

Malak [مَلَك]: (he) ruled/owned (Also "angel" in some context).

Mulik [مُلِك]: (he) was owned.

All of these versions of simply 3 letters (and the Arabic language is full of such examples) makes it hard for me to think of a way to go around it when forming words in Geltani based on Arabic. The original idea is mimicking the Arabic letters in form of lines in the first place, but I didn't plan for mimicking the vowels and their signs as well. I'm not sure how to go around such a problem yet, but maybe it lies somewhere between inventing new shapes and symbols and/or creating more sounds for them, or maybe exchanging short vowels for long ones to make the original Arabic word more like alphabetic in nature rather than abjadic. I have yet to think about it.

Another problem on the line is the packing of strokes and whether or not to allow one word to be written into 2 diagrams (or characters). Most probably I would try to fit all in one character as much as possible, because for the time being, and adding some grammatical twist to the whole language, I've decided to let preposition articles to be placed after the word in one line (while the sentences are written vertically top to bottom from left to right).

I'm running to simplify the grammar as much as possible (and that might be awkward when expressing some moods and modes). One of such cases is the conditional (if statements) and the habitual (would statements). So far, I've created a special character for regular and passive tenses, plus the conditional "should". Who knows, I might as well add to the already established characters for verbal words.

The initial design for verbal characters and their divisions. The tense is designated by the number of dots (not the placement of the dot).
Studying possible combinations of both divisions, regular and passive, in order to express more moods and modes.

Other variations of the same characters

II. In Slow Motion:

The beach area was a target, again, to my camera. This time though, although close to McDonald's area where I usually shoot, but it is the first time I land on the sand. I have to admit though that I went there in a hurry and didn't completely equip myself properly (specially with flashlights). The wind was strong and chill but I was determined to work with my lenses AND my ND filters as well. The ND filters caused me another problem but this time I had to investigate after this problem and I discovered that it is something reported widely for Cokin's ND filters. More details will come later on.
The clouds were nice. Not scattered much like cotton balls as I wished but they had nice shapes after all. The first thing was to try my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens with some long exposure before the sunrise above the horizon. The timing here is critical since I don't have any filters to fit fisheye lenses, so I have to time my work with darkness. The best I could get was within the range of 2 minutes exposure after all, and more than that proved to be problematic somehow. To add to my problems, as the time was a morning time and the sun would rise abvoe the horizon, then once you calculate the time required for the shutter, you have to expect that you might get blown highlights because of the gradual increase in the light level in the atmosphere.
However, it did work out well with me in the beginning with my 8mm, and made two shots; vertical and horizontal one.

Racing Heaven
~100 seconds

Race of Heavens
~120 seconds

The clouds' race is more obvious in the landscape orientation (naturally since it shows more and wider view of the sky), while the first one probably is good in the contrast between the sky and the sand.
Both images were fixed from distortion by DxO Optics Pro. This software got the option to fix the distortion without cropping (to keep the aspect ratio of width and height) and hence it gives more stretching effect on the sides and I think it is a good thing for long exposures of this kind. Notice in both shots here, the sun didn't rise yet and it was relatively dark on location.
After being done with my fisheye lens, comes here my EF-S 18-55mm lens, which is the widest thing I have right now which I could use filters with. The sun here started to show a bit, or let's say the sun rays, but the darkness was diminishing slowly. For now, although I do use metering by camera to judge how many ND filters I would need, but I got somehow a grab of sense on it. Not firmly, but a bit. I directly used 3xND8 filters (that is 9 stops: 3+3+3). One minute exposure was enough but as time was progressing, it came down to 30 seconds exposure which made the scene that I want. However, I got the same weird problem again, which eventually I've discovered that it has nothing to do with the white balance, but rather it is the make of the ND filter itself.

The scene directly from RAW file.
30 seconds exposure.

As seen, the scene is reddish and I used to get this many times in my trials with long exposures. They say a good ND filter would NOT give such a result and the colors should remain with no change, at least virtually. However, some mending process did the job to some extend the scene was recovered; but the question is, is that useful every time I take a long exposure with those filters?

Coming

I have to say though, despite the apparent "malfunctioning" of such filters, I do like the reddish look indeed. But maybe not this time.

III. Re-Visited:

The panorama taken 2 weeks ago from a deep point on the beach was something hardly can be done again (although I'm thinking about it seriously). For this reason it was hard for me to satisfy myself with what I've done before about this panorama. I felt there is more to be done.

Nox Salmiyah

Planeta Ignis

In the previous formations done with this panorama particularly, the white balance was not changed when the HDR was made out of the shots. The white balance was Daylight back then. However, with me having RAW files, I have the flexibility to change the white balance significantly.
From previous experiments with the night sky on the roof of my own home, I've realized that Tungsten white balance works better with such atmosphere. It simply adds some magic. But first, I had to recombine the whole set of images into HDR slides and setting the WB to Tungsten. It was then time to work with PTGui again, which was not an easy process (spent around 2 or 3 days trying to fix some images in their places).

Topmost

Personally, I did like it better than the previous two. In this shot however, which looks like a single shot with a fisheye lens, I've used the Mercator projection in PTGui; a projection style that I don't use much and to me, it doesn't differ much from the cylindrical projection except in some stretch in some areas (the height specifically). However, I think the Mercator projection here helped on curving the horizon upward and forming a shape of Earth's surface from outer space.
Hence we conclude, a change in WB can change the mood and feel of the image completely.

IV. Waiting...

Finally, I've placed some orders for some books and simple stuff for my camera. Things I've delayed for long until now and I think it's time to have them. This year will be starting with some heavy debt on my credit card but I need to. My plans for a vacation seem to be delayed for now and I'm not sure I will be traveling this year even. Traveling to me is more than a vacation in fact; it is a time for photography.
One of the most important items I'm waiting for right now, is something that would supposedly can solve the matter of long exposures with my Canon 15mm fisheye lens: Gel Filters.

Source B&H

Supposedly it is a pack that contains four 1-, 2-, and 3-stops filters of each. Frankly, I'm not sure it will fit in the place of the filters at the back of the fisheye lens, or would I have to cut it (as I've been told before) but I'm going to try something new after all. The thing now is to try to use such thing, if possible, with my other Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens.
Another set of gels was ordered but not for lenses this time. They are supposedly to fit my flash head in case I need to change the color cast of the flash head. No plans for using them now, but they would expand my options and might create new ideas in the near future.

Source: B&H

Finally, on the "tools" section, we have a bracket that will help me to place the flash a bit away from the camera or on the side, while still carrying it along with the camera.

Vello CB-500 Dual Shoe Bracket
Source: B&H

Now to the books section. I'm waiting for 3 books, but one of them is not about photography, but about some old passion inside me that is still burning; Archaeology.
I've stopped reading about archaeology for some time, but I felt that I have to get back now and kindle this passion again. Too bad I couldn't study this field in my early days. Anyway, the book is entitled: Forensic Recovery of Human Remains: Archaeological Approaches.

On the other hand, there two photography-related books:
1. The Photographer's Guide to Making Money: 150 Ideas for Cutting Costs and Boosting Profits.
2. Mastering Canon EOS Flash Photography.

As you can see I'm sort of dedicated to understand the flash unit more and how to control the light. Let's hope this field is digested with this little mind of mine, because I did find it difficult before to "paint" an image with light in my mind. Quite an essential capability if you want to deal with portrait photography in the first place.

Well, I've put so much in this post for now. Hope you didn't get a headache going through all of this. It's time for me to put it down, and hit the sack. So much headache involved in doing this blog... gosh!

Geltani...

2012-01-12T07:30:00.002+03:00

Not bad for such a week, even though I got myself screwed up a bit, but seems it is the sense of adventure! Details about that will come later on anyway, when it comes to my talk about my work with the camera. As for the time being, I'm busy thinking more and trying more for creating my new con-script and conlang; Geltani. All I can say about this week for now is: it was nice. Started with some work and hopefully ending with some inspirational work, all what's missing is some good news!

I. Geltani:

As for the new conlang, I'm still working on the basics, like general shapes and logograms (pictographs) and also putting the first blocks of the grammar itself. The grammar is not supposed to be as complicated as Ayvarith is (and still Ayvarith's grammar is simpler than ordinary languages). So far, I made a decision to neglect the masculine and feminine cases and neglect the definite article (the) but use an indefinite article (a, an) only - like the case is with real Chinese and Turkish. I've developed, as well, some special logos for other grammatical cases, like the verbs, and the plurals, as well as putting a rough sketch for the numerical system which will be decimal of course (base 10). The test is still going on however to see how flexible such symbols can be when writing them down in combination with others. But the hard part didn't begin yet.
In my previous post I've explained the main idea of dividing the word into syllables of two, where the first phoneme is the leading sound and the next would make an effect. For simplification, I've decided to call them Leading and Driving respectively. To explain it more I would refer to my previous post's example (the word "Honey"):

Honey: RLW

RL - W

[RL]: "R" Leading and "L" Driving

However, I'm constructing still the major sheet that explains the values and sounds of the Driving portion of the syllables. Almost not much concerns about the Leading part, since the sounds are specified already. It is a relation, somehow, of a cause and effect. It is close to the way aspiration and eclipse work in Irish Gaelic, to some extent. I'm shifting values here and there and there is a big uncertainty in this matter still.

Example of initial values for Leading and Driving sounds (click to enlarge)

I have to think as well and decide, whether to allow duplicates in sounds in this large collection. I also think of adding some Semitic elements to the Chinese-like conlang by adding sounds like fricative "H" (Hebrew: chet) and Glottal "A" (Hebrew: ayin). There is still long work to do on that, and then later I have to think of some way to present my work to Omniglot. Think, think, think...

II. Soak or Not:

One of the most beautiful aspects of this week is the fact that we had rains. Yes, rains. I should start a feast and a special holiday for announcing the first drop of rain to come on this land. However, despite the amazing weather (which might not be so for some people, specially those who live in rain-soaked areas) it is of course hard to work in such conditions, but all I can do is open the window and listen to the drops of rain until I snooze.

Anyway, after some wave of heavy rains, I've discovered that the "playground" or the parking place where I usually park in my work place has turned into a swamp of mud. I almost slipped there, many times, trying to find my way into or out of the building. However, the structures there gave an idea of some shots to do, and luckily I was having my camera and tools with me!

Mud Rider
Rokinon 8mm @f/22

I've erased the car logo from the tire's cover for commercial purposes. In the shot above, I had to expand my tripod's leg and make it lower to the ground level (and getting dirty). One of the hard things to control is to take a proper shot with 8mm in such low and extended legs' level. However, after merging to HDR and before tone-mapping, I had to get to cloning out some portions to remove tiny parts of the tripod's legs showing in the shot. It is always better to clone in HDR before tone-mapping. Also, there were some cropping to remove part of the building on the left and also to pull back the tire into the lower right corner and make it closer to the sides.
The weather was nice (to me) but the problem with such weather is the hardships with the WB and how to satisfy a specific mood. things were hard with other shots around the place and in fact, after close inspection when I got back home, the images hardly impressed me. Maybe HDR tone-mapping is not always a good idea in such situation and maybe I should inspect the images in single RAWs.

Liquor Lucis

Anyway, this tiny session around my work place was not the big bang of the week. The greater event started the day after I posted my last post in this blog; last weekend, and to be specific on the early hours of Friday and before the sun started to rise above the horizon.
Everything started right after doing a check on the tidal level when I packed my stuff (and wore enough clothes) and headed out. Actually, the tide level was not what I really wanted but it allowed me to go a bit deeper on the beach (more precisely, the beach shelf, or the hard ground under water at high tide time). The tide was minimum at around 3 a.m., but I went out around 5 a.m.. For this reason, the water level was rising slowly as I was working on my panorama.
The thing that I was really afraid of is some fellows to block my way or annoy me (you know whom I'm talking about, right?) but gracefully, everything went smooth, somehow. I soaked myself a bit but that was OK. I think the whole thing paid of (despite the annoying fact that for long exposures and for high ISO levels, there were some annoyances). However, the first result out of the whole thing was a flat spherical panorama.

Nox Salmiyah

Now, despite the bluish shades and hues in this image, the original WB during the whole process was set to Daylight (i.e. a yellowish shade). Adjustments were made later when tone-mapping and also in Photoshop in the final steps. Anyway, further trials with other WB when merging into HDR are possible ventures to tickle this panorama.
Stitching, naturally, had some problems because of the big portions from the sky (night sky, no clouds visible), but there were some nice stars visible in the long exposure slides but wouldn't be visible to the naked eyes. I've set ISO to 800, which is high, but it was necessary to ensure that the exposure at +2EV won't exceed 30 seconds long. Cleaning the noise anyway took several steps and in the original file, it might not be as perfect as I wish. There was cleaning with NeatImage and Noise Ninja and then smoothing out some areas with Median trick.
Another trial, however, with this panorama and this time without changing much of the WB which was yellowish or golden in shades, but this time the simple work of enhancing the image, turned to be a graphical design of its own.

Planeta Ignis

The glowing luminance around the little planet of Salmiyah here inspired me to work on such a design and mimic a burning comet or planet. The awkward moment here is that most of these effects had to be done in 8-bit format, since they are not available in 16-bit format in Photoshop, and this might caused, at some point, some banding. around the planet. Maybe of the hardest things to fix in both images is the weird color spots (hot pixels) which is not something new to me by now.
After this little adventure on the beach in the pitch dark dawn time, this location in fact was not a prime target for me. My real target is on the other side to the left of this location (facing the sea). That location specifically has nice rocks lying on the bed at the time of a low tide, but this place better be targeted at low tide rather than a time when the water level is coming up, like I did in this trial. This said, I have to watch out now for my chances in the coming weekend, as well as checking for other potential locations along the sea shore line (and surely be careful of cops and security people).

Well, I hope to drop this now, and get back to my Geltani project. Just thinking about the future time pressure because of these many projects makes me nervous!

Ex-Fantasies...

2012-01-05T07:30:00.001+03:00

I just can't believe it's Thursday (or becoming Thursday). It was a slow week, and to make it worse, it feels that I couldn't do much within it, except for one thing that is not very brilliant from my side: Daydreaming. Fantasies are chasing me back and that urge to scribble and doodle all the time is hovering in my mind. I keep an eye over my camera with sorrow not knowing what to do about it. I need to move on. On the other hand, there is that recording I'm supposed to do for my Ayvarith project and the story of Alexander, but everything just hit the Pause button and like if I lost the remote to let it go on again.

I. Fantasy Strikes Again:
Fantasies are attacking, back again. Maybe they popped up in the form of Ayvarith, a project that I'm trying hard to keep up with, but now they are back, chasing me back and urging me to get out something out of my head; Something that was kept in this head since high school in fact.
When the story of Alexander was created and many places or nations were mentioned; like the Bulughman and Zimuran, a writing system was devised then even though I didn't proceed much deeper into these systems, other than creating the script. The nation of Geltan that I've mentioned in Alexander's story, however, and which was one of the first nations that Alexander encountered, was left without a mention to a script related to them. After I finished writing the English version of Alexander's story, it was then I thought that I might break the spell by doing a "pictographic" system this time instead of Abjadic or Alphabetic systems. However, this pictographic system will be based on "radicals" and these radicals are based in their origins on Arabic. The whole system is somehow complicated, and all was formulated in high school. I was fascinated with Chinese back then.

Some of my doodles in the new script

This system was not concrete back then and I've left it untouched for a long time. Now, however, I need to push myself to do more about it and finalize something that I've left for more than 12 years. The main task for now, to me, is to transform the regular straight lines into a curve form and deviate the script from the general Hanzi or Kanji look, and along with that comes putting some basics. Exhaustive job for my brain, but this is not the bad part of the story, it is the fact that I can't stop thinking about it. I call it bad because, as much as I like it, it is a new project that I must dedicate some time to. I think this what happens when I stay away from my camera a bit and not doing panoramas as I used to do for some time. More about the camera work will come later.

The system as mentioned before, based on Arabic as well (just like Ayvarith, but without Hebrew and Aramaic) and the main "algorithm" to create words comes from assigning each Arabic letter to a Latin letter, which means some additions will be there since Arabic is composed of 28 letters while Latin (English) alphabet is made mainly of 26 letters. The radicals and their shapes were inspired also from Arabic letters, and there are Arabic features or letters that a radical was made for directly and a phonetic value that do not exist in the English alphabet was given. One of these features is the Hamza [ء] and its unique phonetic value is [chi], with "ch" as in "church". As you can see it is largely based on Arabic, because back then in high school, I didn't have the resources to get into Hebrew and Aramaic or other languages - all what I had in my pocket was Arabic and English.

Another example

The idea, for now, is to divide a word (after converting from Arabic to Latin) into syllables, and in each syllable there will be a leading part and the other is an effect on the leading part. Example:

Honey [عسل] = RLW

RL/W

Rung-wə

Only an Example

In this example above, the first syllable is [RL] and [W] is singular and it inherits a schwa (little short vowel almost unnoticed). In [RL] combination, "R" is the leading part, and "L" gives the effect of "ringing" with "-ung", and hence we end up with [rung]. Saying this, it means that for every radical or letter there should be two values given to it. A hard task I should say and the whole thing is not well-cooked yet. I need to formulate a big table with all the letters and make combinations of syllables. Finally, the whole system is supposedly to be memorized (like in any language) like people learning or speaking Chinese or Japanese would remember Hanzi and Kanji.
The idea is threatening. I never thought something from that era of high school, when it was the time that I've developed my interest in codes, ciphers and secret writings, never thought such ideas left behind more than 12 years ago, or in fact more than 15 years, would come back to this mind. It is a burden to my mind and I can't neglect it and it will be a burden over the time that I'm already screwing it up being unable to manage it properly to work on the various aspects of my life.

II. Camera Work:

Last weekend I've been to the beach around dawn time trying to capture that special light quality of that time. This time though, I didn't head to the vicinity of McDonald's on the seaside, but to a place near my home, and I wanted this place mainly to reach it as fast as possible before the sunrise begins. The place near McDonald's here would take me lot of traffic lights to pass and hence more delay to reach the place, while this location near by BK restaurant can be reached with almost no traffic lights in between (one only and doesn't make your day harder).

Caeli et Terrae

When I reached the place I started to work directly, but I was disappointed in the beginning because I was hoping for some clouds in the sky, and later the next day I found out that clouds form nicely somehow in McDonald's location as if the sky is different on both locations. Anyway, I had to forget about some long exposures with blurred skies for the time being, but then I headed downward when I saw some rocks showing (as the sea level was a bit down but not a complete low tide), and there, I've tried to do some long exposure experiments, but the adventure just began when I had to go with all these clothes on me and trying to stand in between the rocks on a muddy ground.

Nuclear Morning

With many trials, using the 18-55mm lens and holding the pack of ND filters in my teeth and wearing the camera backpack on my back, I did some long exposures but not exceeding one minute, as 60 seconds do really sound such a long time with all the struggle with the tools in the middle; it is a time when I thought I must hire someone. However, the sun was going up and up and finally I shot a 30 seconds exposure for the scene, which turned out to be better than the other 60 seconds shots. Also, something weird happened (which happened before in fact) when the original image was actually purple or violet and I had to fix the WB. Probably because the WB was set to Fluorescent. This same effect happened when I made one-hour exposure to my wall clock.

Hurry Up!

The colors were then fixed when the RAW file was edited. It seems that when using ND filters, the white balance becomes more critical and it is better to pick up the right one. Even though it can be fixed later on using the RAW editor, but after what I saw with such strange shades of purple and violet, I would say the results are unpredictable, and I wouldn't count on my luck every time to fix the colors that way.
In Nuclear Morning (a.k.a Den Nukleära Morgonen), I did an exaggeration with the WB to turn the image into a warm scene instead of the cold one (even the real scene was cold too).
The real struggle on location was to put the ND filters in the slots and re-focusing again and again. In the beginning I used 5 stops (ND8+ND4) but then I added 3 more stops (ND8) and the total became 8 stops. Such situations make me wish if I can use the welding glass, which alone would provide for 11 stops at once. Re-focusing the lens was done manual each time I put a new ND slide, mainly because of the low light level which won't make the autofocus function properly. At the end, I had a minor accident when I dropped one of the ND filters, and I would need to clean it with special cleaners then.

Working with long exposures of course didn't hold me back from taking some HDR sequences, which turned out well. I tried to keep them normal as much as possible (i.e. no dramatic light) but there was a scene that sparked my imagination a bit while working it out in Photoshop.

Unbekannt (Unknown)

Right now and after this little adventure in this mayhem, I have the urge now to do some panorama in the open there somewhere in between the rocks, with such cold weather. Something to think about for some time, and in winter, it is certainly hazardous.
Away from that, and just for fun, a scene at home captured my eyes. After going around with my camera and tripod, I decided to go for a two-shot stitch, which also had its own errors! I wasn't using the VR-head of course...

Esperando El Amor
(waiting for love)

Dramatic effects while tone-mapping gave out some nice views, but that wasn't really my intent. I just wanted it some how dark and gloomy a bit. Manual tone-mapping was a fail from my side, as usual, so I got back to Photomatix as usual. However, many other adjustments were made later in Photoshop, specially the glamor haze in the highlights. A picture that comes in a time in which I need every quark of hope in my heart...

I Hate Those...

2011-12-29T07:47:00.000+03:00

Not so brilliant week. Was fluctuating between being idle and tired and being busy and... tired. I didn't use my camera much this week, so not much to be posting about really, nor did I work with my Ayvarith project for some long time now (even before I go to Hajj). Just one experience with photography lately, in which I've used my flash, again.

I like to think of it as the electrical chair effect. In this shot I was dangling the flash unit above the lazyboy, and I had to suffer from some awkward moments when the lateral extension would slide down each time I raise it up high.

Settings of the shot

I know. The room is a mess. Always been a mess. Anyway, in order to keep the flash this high, I had to hang some weights (dumbbell weight disks) on the lever. Maybe you can see some black circles in the image.
In the beginning I was trying to take this shot with my 18-55mm lens, but then I changed it to the 15mm fisheye lens to include more space (took the shot again with me sitting on the lazyboy and my foot didn't show with 18-55mm lens).

I'm thinking now of doing experiments with all my lenses to find the "sweet spot" as they call it sometimes, which is supposed to be the f-number at which the image is the sharpest (and this has nothing to do with the depth of field). It will be a long process somehow and eye-tiring one, but hopefully I will get some useful results from all of this. In the mean time, I do really need to work more with my camera. My mood swings are, sort of, getting out of control.

My car is not fixed yet. The parts, as the vendor people say, will come in two weeks. The expenses for this are higher than I expected. I hate cars. I hate cars more than I hate hell itself. The discount they offered is like 20%, so I'm flattered for such a generous offer. And please note the sarcasm...

Darkness, Mornings...

2011-12-22T07:36:00.000+03:00

Maybe not one of these weeks that I would call "brilliant" but I had the chance, at least, to work out with my camera. It's weird when some times you feel the whole world against you and still, you survive.
On with the latest updates now, my car needs around 600KD at least (~$US 2100). This, alone, will make me delay a lot of plans I had in my mind. I will pay for this by credit card so I can make installments myself. I'm so sick of cars and so sick of driving this piece of junk specifically. It seems my luck with cars has never been friendly.
Lot of things now will get delayed as I said. A vacation plan, new orders of books and tools, but maybe the worst of all is that I won't be able to take the chance right now with such purchases, since the dollar is low against the dinar for the time being and it would be nice to order something right now. I don't think this status will last long.

I. Good Mornings:
Been trying to push myself to work a bit with my camera, specially with such an idle and boring weekend. My sleeping time was a bit disturbed and I used that to my benefit. It helped me out to rise up in the morning (well, stay awake until morning is more accurate) and rush to do some work by the seaside. This time though, I decided to go a relatively far away place from my home. My usual spot was around Burger King restaurant on the seaside, this time I picked McDonald's site. This site specifically was a point I remember very well when I took a shot with my very old Sony Cybershot W-30 (I hope the model number is correct though!!) which was 6MP only back then. Boy, wasn't I so happy when I first got it for around 89KD (~319 US$ in today's rate). It was a big deal of money back then. Now, I do wish if I can find a good deal for this amount of money!
The first trial on first day of weekend was lucky for me because of the clouds scattering in the sky, but one thing unfortunately was forgotten; a long exposure trial.

Good Morning Kuwait I

Good Morning Kuwait II

Good Morning Kuwait III

Good Morning Kuwait IV

Good Morning Kuwait V

Good Morning Kuwait VI

Patefacio Gazebo

I was working in a fast pace and changing my lenses as fast as I can because, as well-known by now, the sun would rise so fast above the horizon. Mainly I've used the 18-55mm lens @18mm with the first 4 shots, while the 5th and 6th were done using my relatively-new 8mm Rokinon fisheye lens. I think the 5th and 6th shots are nice in terms of depth (typical for such a fisheye lens) but I think I've screwed it up with my framing skills. Feels like the edges are not right.

The final shot, Patefacio Gazebo, was taken using Tamron 70-300mm @300mm plus vivitar's x2 extension, which makes it @600mm. If you look carefully at the previous shots, you will see that this gazebo-like structure was on the other side or shore, on the line of the horizon.

The main problem in all of that is the chromatic aberrations, specially using the 8mm Rokinon (even at f/8 or so) and using the Tamron. The images are, of course, HDR processed, and this helped me naturally in pronouncing the colors more and controlling the light of the scene, but however, the HDR pronounces these aberrations more severely that it is hard to remove them. Patefacio Gazebo was the hardest to deal with and yet in the original image you can still see cyan infringing lines around the edges. I tried to hide the cyan and magenta lines around the edges by using Hue/Saturation adjustment layers, which reduced the effect, but did not solve the problem.

On the next day, I ran with the same schedule. Been to the same location around the same time or a bit earlier even but I got struck with two major problems:

The azimuth (the place from which the sun rises, measured from the north direction) seems to have changed significantly the next day.
The sky was heavily loaded with clouds like one big mass instead of the scattering that was there the day before.

The reason I got back was in fact to try to take a long exposure (something more than 30 seconds in general) and with such a mass of clouds maybe the effect won't be pronounced very well. Not to say that I was planning (and did use) my 8mm Rokinon fisheye lens, and to work with the stops here you have to provide it by changing the aperture size and/or the ISO (for example). However, I made some trials by placing my Cokin filters held by hand in front of the lens and I got funny shots really.

Aurora Cuvaitum

Despite the heavy mass of clouds, I decided to go on with my trial for a long exposure. I did many 60 seconds (and one or two of 80 seconds) but the one above seemed more appealing than the others. The long exposure was somehow enough to record some movement and blur some parts of the sky because of the clouds' drag across the sky. It would be far more better with a scattered cloudscape but this one seemed fine It gave out an aurora-like formation (hence the name), and also of course, some chromatic aberrations. When dealing with long exposure it is after all one RAW file (or JPG, but not advised to work with JPGs) and no HDR technique can be used, theoretically. I can take maybe 3 images with 3 different exposures manually, but that would be impractical and time consuming (imagine taking 30, 60, 90 seconds). However, it is an interesting experiment to do one day specially with moving objects like the clouds.

II. Darkness Gush:

For the time being, I'm also enjoying doing some "darkness" work. Vampires, creatures or whatever you may call them. My brother had been helping me with these stuff too and in fact, he gave me a lot of advices concerning some features. I can tell though not many people like what I do here, as I received a lot of dislikes (and some were horrified indeed, but that kind of makes me happy!).

Der Höllesstreunender
The Hell Stray

Why I chose German to name this image is something beyond my own understanding even. I simply felt it fits there. I've received a comment about the hand; some people like it that way. My brother, however, made some comments about the looks in general, specially the fangs. I have to keep those in mind for any further work in this venture. I'm still trying to work on some of those images from that session. Too bad it got rejected from some stock websites (for technical reasons). The work was a heavy load of Liquify usage in Photoshop, beside some stretching and scaling process, and that of course caused some pixels to be "abnormal" and/or blurred.

After this week I'm sort of happy for getting into the winter mood and being able to catch something, even though sleeping is the price to be paid. I'm looking forward for more, and also some panoramas to be done, when feasible.
I'm still thinking about the project that I had to abandon. I'm somehow attached to it but... how to go on... this is another question, and definitely requires a periphery of different people other than those surrounding me right now...

Lurking...

2011-12-15T10:51:00.001+03:00

Seems this winter will be over before I make a nice shot outside. This is how it feels for the time being, at least. I just hope this feeling won't extend further to the rest of this season.
I've been busy lately with chores here and there, and I'm relieved for now after finishing my car license renewal. Still though, the car is making me a headache with gear problems. I hate cars. I really do. I have to check this problem as soon as possible before something serious happens to the gear.

The skies are beautiful in the morning and for some time I used to pack my camera and tripod with me wherever I go just in hope to get something on the way, but with heavy sleeping and heavy clothes being needed now (yeah, I'm getting old), it is harder to do it. I don't take my camera with me everyday now. Despite the beautiful sky in winter wherever I go here (daily, as I go to work), it is harder to capture something because of the locations; cars, buildings on the way, unwanted trees... etc. It would be nice to take such shots with such skies in a cityscape format. For this reason, the only thing to think of is to get myself busy (with the camera) at home, for the time being.

What to do at home? Well, I've been experimenting little bit here and there, and since I allow myself some extra Photoshop editing unlike many other concrete or precise photographers that I've encountered so far, so I decided to take some snap shots and modify them later to suit my aim. My main assistant here is my younger brother, either as my model or as the cameraman when I'm in front of it. Yet, I guess one of the best shots that I've created for him so far (even he was surprised for the result himself) is when I turned him into a vampire. As simple as that!

Lurking

The image is not cropped. It was merely a concentration on one quarter of the face. In this shot I didn't use my flash unit, but instead, I've pointed my little LED light (key chain LED light in fact) to this portion of the face and taking the shot then. The idea was to take a shot of myself since I have longer canines (the longest in the house I think), but with him not being into cameras so much, it was hard to teach him how to zoom and focus and use the panhead (where you control the camera's direction with one and only one joystick or lever). Anyway, as a beginning, I asked to get in front of the camera and I will do the job.

In the beginning I was thinking of giving the picture a bit of a cold hue (slightly blue shade with slightly reddish lips), but I went along with the black and white version because I feel it gives more drama to the situation, and more of a sense of fear.
The "fangs" here were done simply with selection tool (I used the pen tool personally, anyway different situations require different techniques I guess) and, after selecting one of them solely, I used various transformations (wrap, skew, distort...etc) to elongate the teeth (a good idea is to copy the portion after selecting by Ctrl+J; this will move it to a new layer). Of course, some additions were required just to hide the width of the original tooth where it was required.

I'm tending now to take more pictures of this type. In fact I just did take some shots of myself and my brother (well, he took pictures of me of course) and I'm planning to retouch them in the same manner. My face is ugly already as it is without touching in fact, but well, I just want to mimic fantastical creatures when I touch! I was planning to put the pictures here today but unfortunately I couldn't because we shot late and such editing needs time (sometimes in days). I do think such tendency with my shots (or such way of thinking) do reflect something in me, and I do indeed look for answers for such tendencies about creating scary stuff.

I was talking for weeks now about a panorama? Well, still thinking of how to do it. As I said earlier, the chores and the bad sleeping times (mainly for totally exhausted body) render me motionless and mood-less for such work for now. I just hope things go as planned for the few weeks left of this year, and the car gets fixed with no problems... this is all what I'm wishing for myself with this year's end... no big hopes no big wishes, I just need these small stuff done. Projects await.

Run Away...

2011-12-08T09:03:00.000+03:00

Here we go again, after one week of being off from this blog. I actually didn't have the material and still in fact don't, but maybe now I can put on some stuff.
Things are going complicated in my life lately. Ups and lot of downs I'd say but, I'm walking the tunnel. I had an idea of doing some kind of a project, related to places specifically related to us, Shiites, and doing some sort of a catalog out of these images with some information about these places. Unfortunately, a clash in the family seems to be holding me down for now. I don't know if I can do it in some other way or by means of another path; I'm trying to look for alternatives. It's hard to work with people who don't understand you.

In the mean time I've finished my 9th album for pictures from Ireland 2010 (Co. Tipperary). This album doesn't have a specific theme, but I did a mix of heavy Photoshop editing, and many RAW file editing only (no HDR).

Hore Mysticis (sketch-like editing)

Quodam Loco (Place in Between)

The image Hore Mysticis was heavily edited to make it look like a sketch, while the Quodam Loco was simply RAW editing (beside some enhancement in Photoshop for contrast and hue of course, but this is not a REAL editing I'd say). The pictures here don't bear any watermarks or signatures because the work was already established before I go to Hajj. My decision to put on watermarks, again, is actually considered when I got back from the Hajj.
Locally now, I don't have much of opportunities to snap some pictures. Either a busy schedule or simply a plain weather. We don't get much clouds even in winter. The only time to have some nice chances is early morning, and sunset times. However, I've noticed that around 12:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. there used to be some formation of clouds when I'm at my work place, but not everyday. I tried to do some long exposure with this situation in order to make an effect of blurred moving clouds and a static building. Anyway, my experiment was not done completely and I had to be satisfied with one shot (well, not completely satisfied let's say).

Cube from Heaven

It was merely one shot, and ironically I didn't notice the cubic shape that I've got here. My focus was set on the cloud and the way they move. It is only one shot with some RAW editing to enhance the highlight and shadows and also the saturation. Now back to the calculations, which I had some hard time doing it in time back then because I was going to leave my work place!
Using my Tamron 70-300mm, I didn't really need to zoom in much. The maximum f-number (smallest aperture) was f/32, and remember the f-number is in fact a ratio and not a size number (i.e. the ratio between the diameter of the aperture and the focal length in use, and sometimes in my Tamron lens it can reach up to f/45). Setting the value to f/32 and the Exposure Value (EV) to -2/3EV (with a good light in a sunny day, this is just to avoid overexposure, and we can work out in the RAW later on), that yielded a shutter speed of 1/60 seconds. At that time I didn't have time to get my calculator out and calculate really. However, after doing the calculations back at home, I realized it is somehow hard to do, or let's say, tedious work is waiting for me.
Using the formula T = S * 2^x, we can "easily" get the stops required for a, let's say, one minute exposure. Easily, if you are good with maths or at least with your calculator!

T = S * 2^x

1 min (60 sec) = (1/60 sec) * 2^x

3600 = 2^x

log 3600 / log 2 = x

x = 11.8 stops.

In this case now, I have two options to work with: a) work with my ND filters, which means putting more than one in successive order to make up for 11.8 stops (and I don't think I can reach this number of stops with what I have), or b) Use the welding glass which has a green tint to it and can give me up to 11.7 stops. A good deal, but unfortunately, I have to stand still holding it with my hands since I couldn't cut it down to the size of Cokin's filters, hence, I can't put it in my filter holder. After that day, simply NO CLOUDS ever showed up in the sky since then. I'm waiting though.

Using my welding glass for this experiment, as said before, it will give a green tint to the whole image and I'm not sure how useful it is to fix that tint with WB change in the RAW editor. I tried it before with a simple light situation, but not in a complex scene like this. Complex by means of the elements involved that is.

with tint

after adjusting the tint by WB

I mentioned before as well there is some idea for a panorama that I was thinking of before I go to Hajj even, and I'm still thinking of how to do it. The problem, as I've mentioned before as well, this idea needs some physical effort. I'm hesitating between the living room and the kitchen. The kitchen would be something new to me, although technically I have a problem because of the small space and the occupation of the place. The only time to do such a panorama is by late night when no visitors are expected!

That's for now. I'm off, and let's hope this week will pass with as little clashes as possible... lesser than last week. I need to run away with my camera to somewhere...

And here is just a little gift for SOME friends... haha!

Grease and Sketch...

2011-11-24T12:19:00.000+03:00

Here I am again, idle without doing anything with my camera in this week. It is annoying indeed but I've been somehow busy with... being idle.
I have some idea for a panorama as I said for long time now (even before I go to Hajj) but the main problem here is that the idea needs lot of physical effort. I'm not sure how to do so with the minimum amount of disturbance (disturbance of scene = stitching errors).
I'm trying also in the mean time to make up my mind for another purchase. More books and more tools if possible, but of course I have to take it down slowly with some planning in the budget, and I'm concerned as well for the stupid political situation in this country and what some stupid senators stir by the name of doing good, and in fact it's all just a s**t. Probably such situation would affect the orders I'd make and how things work out in the customs. I heard customs employee are striking as well. The world is going crazy from my side.

Not really stopped everything but since this week I have been on a training course (of some sort) away from my real work (but I've started my work already, supposedly) - in that time and in between lectures or in breaks I would just hold the pen and let my fingers wander on the page. I've been reading a little from my new architecture book and I feel I want to sketch some structures, or just anything. I wish to be good one day, but I guess that is all related on how much effort I can put into it.
I've drawn something lately that I've been attached to somehow, in a strange way. A house made of a mushroom. I really don't know how I got this idea, but I just got it done before and after one of the lectures...

Gnome Home

More to come about the watermarks later on. The sketch was made by ink on a regular paper and of course I had to go on enhancing after scanning it in grayscale format (the B&W scan was so bad). I might call it a conceptual sketch, where usually artist make it out as a basic for a more complicated and finer art piece, but this is too early for me to indulge in. I had a crazy idea myself of amalgamating a mushroom house like this with a Gothic style structure! I don't think this is ready for me yet as I'm not sure how this is done. You need a strong imagination to imagine the minute details in such structures and a fine motor movement of the hands to get around the curves and lines. However, I'm sort of proud of this. It is a sketch made thoughtfully and not as usual with a wandering mind.
Also, before this sketch actually, there were two others that I did before this one but I don't think they were that much of a good sketch.

A Tower, supposedly...

Skeletal Hand, with feathers.

Now, back to the watermark topic. I've decided to get back to the old habit of stamping my watermark on my (small) images that I show to people and put here. I've realized that some people are in fact taking some of my pictures and use it as a wallpaper or something of that sort. Some of them are friends actually and I kept silent about it from the perspective of friendship, but I also need to restrict this borrowing and make myself known; however bad the picture might be. So, from now on, expect to see more watermarks on the upcoming images in the future. I know it is annoying, but I need to protect my stuff one way or another.

As for now, I'm typing this on Wednesday just to post it on Thursday, and I don't know when it will be posted at this moment. But I'm praying for more action with my camera. The weather is chilling down and it is just awesome. Winter is the most beautiful season for photography in Kuwait; if only you have the ideas to apply...
Just one instant when I was lucky, I took this shot from the roof and it was only one shot. That one only and I got down from the roof, mainly because I felt some drops of rain (and I think it rained that night).

Saga
15mm FE f/2.8 @f/20

In this particular shot, I've increased the f-number just to produce enough sparkle in the light lamps there, and although I did take 3 successive shots for HDR merging, but I think it wasn't necessary to do HDR here, and the hue and shades of colors were enough to give a mystic look like that. Now, it's time to post this and check for things to do... or maybe have a nap...

Disappointment...

2011-11-17T10:19:00.000+03:00

A sluggish week passed on. My vacation is over by now without doing something useful with my camera (or other projects). I was concentrating more on my camera work in fact.
I wanted to spend a night on Failaka island but the schedules with the ferry were screwed up and it was jammed in the middle of the week! I've never knew that people would go on it in the middle of the week that much; I was wrong with my calculations or it's just my luck, as usual. So, pictures from there was a far-reaching idea now.
On the other hand as well, I've tried to go inside the Aquarium, in the Scientific Center, to take pictures again like I did back in April, but I was disappointed and slammed out. I live in such a melancholic world indeed. Makes me urge myself to start some new vacation ASAP just to get away from all the restrictions here.

I've worked on plenty of images before going to Hajj, but it was a fast paced work to fill in my Ninth album from Ireland. Not much to be mentioned really. One panorama which was done before was done again but with time with change of the WB, which transformed the whole thing into some sort of a night scene. It was good enough for a QTVR but I was lazy to do a small one, only a large one (50MB in size) was done and kept for my own reference.

Living Night in Dominican Graveyard

Well, it's Thursday now and who knows what will happen. Nothing so special about this Thursday since I didn't start work yet (by next week), but maybe there is hope to do something with my camera? I hope...
In the meantime, I got two new books to read (or see). The first is How to Draw and Paint Fantasy Architecture, by Rob Alexander; the one I have has a different cover design than the one in Amazon, but the title and the author are the same!
The second book is The World Encyclopedia of Swords and Sabres by Harvey J. S. Withers. The one on Amazon is a bit different in title and cover colors, but the cover design is the same as mine. Ugh, the damn Amazon gadget in my blog window doesn't work to put the pictures of the books more easily!
I didn't start the second book yet. Hopefully, I can enrich my imagination and my sense of art by reading and viewing such books. I don't know how it would help me in photography but it might as well push me to do my own sketches, though I testify for myself that I've been bad with sketches, forever.

Well, time to post this and see what home chores I have to do (beside sleeping and eating). Until next Thursday, I hope more chances present themselves to me. It's really sluggish to have a camera without using it or being able to use it. Just out of boredom, I've decided to do something out of the context a little bit...

eĞalíŧ eĄiramramán yi adam liYifąal, hú liYadaą húta yisfal baYáħavah.

And don't ask for a translation please...

Here I am...

2011-11-10T09:09:00.000+03:00

Here I am, this is me, there is no where else on Earth I'd rather be... I'm back finally from the Hajj ritual and accompanied with some slight sickness in the nose and throat. Typical. The good thing is, I got it at the very end while I was packing my suitcase and getting ready to leave Saudi Arabia. I've endured so many hardships in the pilgrimage (beating, squeezing, crushing, ...etc) but all of that made me stronger somehow, but at the end I had to fall down for a virus!

I didn't take a camera in my traveling and I shouldn't in fact. It is a sensitive issue and also I would put a burden on my back to take care of my camera in that world. The rushing was abnormal. Simply, it is like the judgement day or a miniature of that in some sense. Millions of people go altogether. Anyway, here I am, alive. There were nice natural views (the mountains and hills of Medina and Makkah) but oh well, I had to pass. Now I'm trying to get up from this sudden sickness (which was not weird thing to happen really) and I'm trying to get up on my feet again. I have many things to do now and my vacation will be over by November 17th; a week from now. I will start directly then with a training course that will last a week too.
For now, I'm trying to find new ways for curing my coldness. After shaving all my hair (as a requirement for Hajj), now, temperatures that sounded OK with me are just too cold now! I need my hair back!!!

Kuwait is chilly and I'm glad I'm back here. The temperature this morning was ranging from 8C to 14C. Simply awesome. I like winter....

Goodbye For Now...

2011-10-20T11:43:00.000+03:00

Here I am. With my last post before I travel next week to do the pilgrimage. I've started my vacation yesterday, Wednesday, but to start it I had to pass through 3 days like hell. I've fallen sick in the stomach (not the first time to have this) and that changed a lot of my plans.
Anyway, before I start this vacation I've already worked in my work place and took some shots and panoramas. The only one thing interesting in all of this is my use for the first time for the Photek lateral arm to take a shot for the nadir point. To do this, I've connected the VR-head on the usual tripod, and the lateral arm on the monopod. This way, I've expanded the monopod up to around the level of the camera on the VR-head and tripod combination, and then I've kept them away and ready.
The panorama didn't go without problems but anyway this is usual now and the nadir point shot was a bit off maybe, but however, I think PTGui did some nice job in aligning and compensating for the shift difference. The QTVR here needs some time to load in case you have a slow connection.

Well, that's all for now folks. Hopefully to catch up after around 3 weeks. I won't have any technology with me when I do the pilgrimage, and I won't take my camera. It's better to be busy worshiping rather. Thus, I'll be far away from technology for some weeks. Until then...

Continuus...

2011-10-13T09:34:00.001+03:00

Here we go, another week with tiresome days all the way. It has been a trend of somehow "busy life" in the past 3 weeks; struggling with my brother going through all the bureaucracy of hospitals, chores, work, and lately lectures for preparation before going to Hajj. As a consequence to this, I didn't have the time to work with my camera although I do have an idea in my mind to work with, and also I didn't record anything for the Ayvarith project, and I think this will be delayed until my return from Hajj in November. November will be also a busy month for me anyway. I can't wait until my vacation starts on October 19th. It is a vacation that will, after all, be busy as I would prepare my stuff for traveling to do the Hajj, but after all I won't have to wake up in the early morning... and also stay late as much as I want!

I didn't do much with my camera as I said earlier, so mainly, my work was to get busy with the Grand Mosque panoramas, and I made a QTVR in some good... compromise let's say; without the nadir point.
I've made another flat (spherical) panorama other than the one that was done last week which was done in a haste. The new one has some adjustments to the blinds and also a better saturation I'd say. Compare!

Mosque Magnam I

Mosque Magnam II

The stitching errors were enormous and hard to fix in the first version while it was relatively easier and lesser in the second. All that with just changing the Blend Priority. The second version was also the base of the QTVR that I've made later, adding a logo (sort of) of my own. Will show this later separately.
This new straight and enhanced spherical panorama, then, was the base of newer stitches in various projection styles. Believe it or not, I spent around 3 or 4 days stitching these panoramas, simply because I thought everything was OK, then it turned out that I've optimized the "Flare" along with the "Exposure" in PTGui. A mistake that wasted my time and made me do everything back again. The Flare option, in the Exposure Optimization section of PTGui, is the one responsible for producing weird color spots in the panorama AFTER stitching. Everything would look normal on PTGui viewing screen, but the sting comes after stitching! After that I had to stitch it all over again turning off that option and everything was fine, almost.

One of the amazing aspects of such a place as The Grand Mosque is the emphasis on geometrical assemblies, not only in the architecture, but also on the ground; on carpet. The lines of the carpet helped me a lot in making some sort of a fantasia if I should say. Maybe two of the most beloved of these projections to me considering this location were the Little Planet, and the Wide-View...

Flos Lucis (Flower of Light)
Little Planet projection

Orbis Fidei (Rings/Orbits of Faith)
Wide-View projection

The straight lines in the carpet made it perfect for such an illusion, even though it was harder to clone out as it was in case of panoramic work from Ireland; where the ground was random and the VR-head can be cloned out easily. The removal of the VR-head in the wide-view version was relatively easier than other versions, while in the planet projection, I've decided not to waste my time and simply stamped a little logo that says "ألا بذكر الله تطمئن القلوب" (Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest - Quran:13:28). I was lucky to find this phrase in a font called AGA Islamic Phrases, which can be checked with other stuff here. From this font I stamped the calligraphic phrase on a black background. The writing became blue after tone-mapping in Photomatix.
On the other hand though, removing the VR-head remnants was not an easy task in another interesting point. It was another Wide-View but as viewed from the side of the praying hall and not from the back as in Orbis Fidei.

Radii Fidei (Beams of Faith)

I can't claim that the cloning was that perfect, but probably it is less severe when viewed in such a size, but could prove a disaster when viewed on a large scale. The "tunneling" effect of this scene made a very interesting pattern that reminds me of the days when I was a physics student...

Fields of Faith (Argos Fidei)

It was done in the very beginning originally and hence the name was in English first, then I decided to move to Latin with the projections done later. Anyway, as you can see the yellow lines from the carpet make a magnetic field pattern (remember the experiment of the iron filaments and a magnet under the paper?). The broken lines from stitching errors were apparent here and fixing them was sort of easy but not perfect still. Also some weird black spots appeared on the edges after tone-mapping (apparent in the lower portions of the image). I don't know what caused these exactly but this is one of the aspects of the new Photomatix (v4.0); the tone-mapped view is not exactly what you will get at the end when you press the tone-mapping button. Sometimes the difference is so great that you won't even believe that you did it yourself.

QTVR

In the beginning I wasn't really up to it, but then I figured, with the second trial of doing the flat spherical panorama, that it's worthy of a QTVR after all. The eternal problem, of course, was for the bottom image, or the nadir. Here though, I've cut down the lower portion of the flat panorama (which has the VR-head remnants) and then, instead of doing a completely new slide with logo of mine (the same as above), I've instead opened the "real" nadir shot and made the logo cover the proportion of the VR-head in that slide. I've prepared this slide with PTGui to bend it and then fixed it with blending mask in Photoshop.
In this mess, I've totally forgot that with what I did, I can actually put the logo BEFORE stitching completely. Because the logo would cover only the VR-head proportion, then the general features of the HDR slide would still, probably with some gambling, be saved and enables PTGui to blend it in the process of making the panorama. I've never thought of this before! I better try it as soon as possible.
Just a comparison for how it would look like when you have a flat logo in a flat panorama (and it's not easy to imagine the general shape and how it would look in a QTVR)...

Mosque Magnam II - Cropped

Mosque Magnam II - QTVR version

Of course there is no point in adding the nadir with all its hassle around the VR-head for a panorama that is supposed to be displayed like that. However, I should think ahead of doing the panoramas directly and cloning originally in the nadir slide before the stitch, might saves me big headaches. I can't believe I didn't think of this before! Damn head...

Now, I'm going to post this for the time being, and I'm going to get busy. Suddenly all the work pressure comes with me getting ready for Hajj. I've received my injections (3 of them I don't know for what!) and I feel like a mesh. I just hope I won't be suffering from fever as a reaction to this. Weekend is coming, yet I'm not sure I will be able to enjoy it...

Mente Turbata in Mosque Magnam...

2011-10-06T08:12:00.003+03:00

What the hell was going on with me in the past two weeks is something I wouldn't understand, ever. Stress, fatigue, injuries and finally, personal issues; feels like being dead and alive in the same time. Ah well, what's the difference after all... wasn't it like that most of the time?
I feel like nothing is left for me now except of my camera. I guess I will put it beside me on bed and hug it instead of getting a teddy bear myself. I spent this week somehow trying to test and use my new toy, the 8mm Rokinon fisheye lens and trying to adapt it to my panorama workflow.
For the time being, I'm still not so sure that I will adapt this new lens for my workflow. It is a double-edged sword. In the same time that it lowers down the number of shots and effort (and time), but on the other hand, in the same time, it reduces the resolution drastically. Although my usual size for panoramas ranges between 8,000-10,000 pixels in width, but with Canon's 15mm fisheye lens you would have the choice to expand beyond up to 20,000 pixels in width, while with Rokinon's 8mm fisheye, you are limited to 13,000. The depth of field and the sharpness are still under the scope for more testing. Setting the VR-head with Rokinon's 8mm was also a struggle and it pronounced the tripod legs and the VR-head itself more often and makes it pronounced more; talk about hardships in removing them. I need to try more and see if I can get comfortable with this for real.

Test image with Rokinon's 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. Mom didn't like to move so I blurred her!

I didn't care much about tone-mapping the HDR here. I just had the urge to play around. Not an image for the stocks after all. As you can see, such shot would require maybe 2 or 3 (and maybe more a bit) with Canon's 15mm fisheye lens, but here it's all taken with one shot. Well, 3 bracketed for HDR processing of course. The tripod was elevated to around 2 meters high.

My joy in the past week was with some shots taken here and there with my photography class. I had to work in a haste little bit to prepare the images for this post. It was so much of a headache to work on these photos specially now, on Wednesday, after a really sick long day.
Anyway, our class went first to Al-Babtain's Library for Arabic Poetry (Let's call it BLAP for now). On Tuesday however, and unexpectedly, I got a phone call almost one hour before I leave work saying that we have a session today with the class in The Grand Mosque; a great mosque in the capital and beside BLAP building. It was a real hassle, as my tools were at home because I thought we won't go to a second location after BLAP. It was an exhaustive day.

I. BLAP:

BLAP was an interesting place, not for its construction only, but also because it is the first time I hear of it. The interior design was nice but unfortunately I went there without my VR-head. The architecture in the place is generally modern-type, but maybe with bits (only tiny bits) of antique-like structures, like the pillars for example.

Columnae

The pillars here were outside and on the side of the main "yard" if I should say. It is a bit like an open corridor. This shot was my first in that session (and here you see the tone-mapped HDR, but the RAW is also good). To take this shot I've spent almost 5 to 10 minutes trying to adjust my tripod and the tripod head (Velbon panhead) to make the perfect center. However, seems after all it is still inclined a bit (or is it an illusion?). I've having some hard time with keeping things straight (specially when it comes to panorama making). At such moments it would be useful to have a tripod with central lock like I used to have before, but on the other hand you lose some flexibility after all. My current tripod is nice, but also can be light that you might knock it off and shake it before you put the camera. Talk about clumsy movements; welcome to the story of my life.
The occasion was also a good one to give my new Rokinon 8mm another trial. In fact, I'm less impressed for the time being in putting this lens into my panorama workflow, but nevertheless, it gives some really nice shots in singles. I have my own doubts about the claimed sharpness though; could it be I'm doing something wrong?

Reading Hall
Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens

One thing was for sure though; a simple tilt in the center means a severely tilted image as a whole. This is true with this fisheye lens. Although in this picture above, I've spent also around 5 minutes adjusting and leveling the tripod and the camera accordingly with the vertical straight line of the door, I've just found out when I got back home and after merging into HDR that the whole image was quite apparently tilted; it is mostly apparent in the sides, while the center was a little bit off. I'm not sure how to solve this problem further.
And there is that one shot that I "stole" from my teacher. He was taking it and I told him I can do the same, so he said go ahead! It's weird how I didn't remember such point: the most interesting views are those taken above or below us. It is a true statement, and was stated as well by George Barr in his book,Take Your Photography to The Next Level: From Inspiration to Image.

City of Mirrors II
or maybe I should call it Zenith.

It was taken in front of the entrance portal (or door, or whatever it is). This HDR version in fact doesn't differ much from the RAW version, except of maybe for adding more halos to the light bulbs. My teacher here fixed for me a problem with the tripod as well, which was not being able to point at 90 degrees up. The solution was simply to rotate the camera body itself (unscrewing the base little bit). Might be shaky situation, but it was the only solution I got. I tried hard to keep the space in the middle in the center of the shot.
In case you are wondering why it is City of Mirrors II, well, naturally there is a first one that I didn't mention here.

City of Mirror I

I won't go through all the details here with the tilt in the image as well; I guess you know it by now. However, I had to pick my location carefully in hope my reflection on the glass won't appear (and guess it didn't so far!). The glass translucent, making an interesting pattern from the inside and the outside mixing them together in a surreal look. Maybe this is one of the fewest things I like about the city life; architecture. There were some issues with the clarity of the image as well, but oh well, this is a typical problem with my 18-55mm EF-S lens. Now, thinking about it, could it be that I see things tilted because of some barrel effect? 18-55mm lens DO have a barrel distortion and I've tested it before.
There are other shots that I might keep for myself or add them here later on. But one day after this event, I got that surprising call for a session in the Grand Mosque; a perfect place for a panorama!

II. The Grand Mosque - Mosque Magnam:

Maybe I'm not that so-religious person, but surely the Grand Mosque here is a chance not to be missed. The whole thing was a hassle in the beginning, but rewarding later. Even my teacher was surprised when he got a phone call saying that we were granted a permission, as he said. It was a last moment phone call.
Anyway, because I went to work with no intention of photography work for the rest of the day, I had to sign for a short leave as soon as I got that phone call about the session, just to avoid the apex of the jam here. Went back home, prepared my tools, and then after a one-hour rest I headed to the capital with ALL my tools. What are all my tools?

Backpack: containing my camera and all my lenses and filters (with the adapters of course), and also contains my little spiderpod.
Tripod and panhead.
Lateral extension arm.
Manfrotto 303SPH VR-head.

For the time being, I don't want to talk about the weight of these things. It is not a pleasant memory! As I headed there, I was the first one to be there as usual, and remained there till others arrived and my teacher as well, and I, alone, waited for something around one hour in the outside.
As we went inside, the first thing to do was to do the hardest part: the panorama. There will be plenty of time for single shots later on.

Mosque Magnam

It is not the first time to work with people going around; I've already done that in Ireland, in the Ardeaglais Cormaic in Cashel Rock. However, here it was a bit harder with fellow photographers since some of them had to remain in one position for minutes and I have to give them their own time to take their shots.
This image you see above is done in a haste in fact because I wanted to put it here as soon as possible. There were lot of stitching errors (that might be related to the moving bodies in the scene rather than bad alignment), and I might give it one other try and try to fix these stitching errors by using Blending Priority if possible.
In this HDR panorama I preferred to use the (M)anual method and put the basic shutter speed at 2", while ISO was 400. As my teacher stated in earlier classes, and in a humorous tone "... using high ISO with a tripod is an infidelity!". This is true, but in HDR the situation is different a bit. I had to make sure that the +2EV bracket won't exceed 30", and the place was low in light (the workers in the mosque didn't turn the lights on until the dusk time after I finished the panorama). There are other projections on the way, like the vertical and the tunnel-view and the little planet. All will come in time hopefully, with a QTVR.

The dome of the place was a bit problematic. As you can see from the panorama above, there is a glass cabinet which contains a handwritten Quran with some writing tools. It is said that it is a Quran written by hand by the 3rd ruler of Muslims back then. Anyway, this cabinet was exactly in the middle of the hall (where I should place my tripod eventually), and it is exactly at the center of the dome. Although I finished my panorama placing my tripod as close as possible to the cabinet, but that didn't stop me from trying to take the center in exact position. It was the time for my lateral extension arm to be in work.
The bad thing is, I didn't bring my other camera to take a picture of the setting, but anyway, it was simply done by using the later arm to extend my camera with Rokinon's fisheye lens above the glass cabinet. Shaky, and dangerous and I could have been in trouble if the camera fell down on the glass and... break it. In the beginning, as a precaution, I was placing my hand under the camera body as it pointed upward, but Rokinon's fisheye has a really wide view and I have to give my trust to my tools and leave it hanging in the air like that and bow down to avoid capturing my head as well...

Tholus Magnus

Maybe a little bit off the center, but it was rewarding I believe. Would be off with a close up zoom, but the general geometry is fantastic as well.
There were many shots but I don't want to put everything here for the time being. I'm just glad this week is over and hope of a "brighter" week. I feel sick being myself now. Wish if I can sleep, and wake up when the world is over...

Gloriae Campus

Waiting...

2011-09-29T08:05:00.000+03:00

It feels more like running after something you can't catch and never will. This how my week was. Traffic jams, anger bursts, and completely thrown off by mood swings and not able to manage anything, well, almost everything.
I was hoping that my shipment would arrive by the middle of this week to have some time to test them, but unfortunately, thanks to the customs and procedures, still the shipment is not released up to this moment so far. The shipment had been in the country since last Saturday.

My shipment consists of 3 items: a) Rokinon 8mm lens, b) Lateral extension for tripods, and c) adapter ring from Cokin (62mm). And yes, the 8mm lens is a fisheye lens; another one!

A. Rokinon 8mm Fisheye lens:


Rokinon 8mm Fisheye lens Source B&H

According to the specs, this lens is specially designed to give a 180 degrees in the diagonal with cropped (APS-C type) camera; like my Canon EOS 7D. It is in fact designed specifically for Canon. This lens hopefully will give me more pace and speed when I work with panoramas (for the larger angle) and frankly, I'm not sure it will work completely fine but if I didn't try, I won't find out. Just to think of all the re-calibration for the VR-head to fit the new lens makes me shiver a bit. I was lucky with my Canon 15mm fisheye lens because the default setting of the VR-head was almost enough to reduce any parallax. But with this, I don't know how it will go. One of the biggest concerns for me now is the chromatic aberrations in hard light conditions.
My teacher in fact provided me with a new info, and that is, panoramas are usually taken with a 50mm lens (or normal lens) because this lens provides an angle of view almost identical to human's eye. Thinking about it, and with the crop factor in APS-C cameras, that means I would be needing something like 31mm lens to do a panorama (which is something I have in fact with my Canon EF-S 18-55mm). An idea for a new experiment with my lenses, but in what place and how, I don't know. Fisheye lenses though provide me with wide view and it is suitable to include full bodies within complete slides without the need to take 2 shots or more to include one body, just like I did previously with my work place panorama.

I'm Busy

I'm just noticing that the image is tilted a bit! Anyway, such inclusion of bodies in images would be hardly done on 30mm range because it will be zoomed in, unless of course the body is far away from the camera.

B. Lateral Extension:

Photek Tri-X-2500
Source B&H

I got the idea to purchase this extension after a little experiment with some of my prints. After thinking for a while I thought this might be helpful for me as well in taking a shot for the nadir point, providing that I get it elevated to the same level as the camera during the shooting process. This, however, is still debatable in my mind, because I will have to carry more tools with me, with the already stuffed bags and shoulders I'm already having. it would be awesome though to fit this on my monopod (which I didn't use for a while) and keep it ready with me so that after finishing the panorama, the nadir point would be the last to take in a quick manner.

Prints
The shot that made me think of a lateral extension.

C. Adapter Ring (62mm):

Cokin 62mm Adapter Ring
Source B&H

This adapter ring will be fitting my Tamron 70-300mm telephoto macro lens. Not sure how often I will be using my ND filters with my Tamron but to make things complete, and since I do have adapters for the rest of the lenses (except of the fisheye of course), so I thought I better complete the set with this ring as well. With Tamron's minimum aperture of f/45 or f/39 and some ND filters, this might enables me to put a new limit for long exposures experience with me!

I. Troublesome:
One of the problems that I've remained several days trying to fix is an old panorama that I've decided to re-do in a different view point. It's my home's panorama under the dust...

Being A Grain of Sand

This time though, it is about changing to WV form. The main problem was to eliminate the remains of the tripod and the VR-head, as usual. But here, the ground is unique and ordered, and there was no chance for random cloning. After spending days and days just looking at the ground and thinking, I seriously gave up. I've just cloned in a random way. Not a beautiful view, but no other way for me to do such a delicate work.

Under The Dust

I named it, by mistake, as well Under The Sand. Personally speaking, I'm not so fond of it like the older panorama. I've used Photo Filter adjustment layers and layer masks to make a contrast between yellow parts and the blue parts (boosting both). Well, the blue part specifically was not there originally but it had a tiny blue reflection on the car shade from the outside and gave me the idea of making it as you can see here.

II. Scribbles:
Back to the old habits a bit. I was given, for some reason which I don't know, a pack of soft papers, somehow like glossy papers but not glossy really. It's a small pack to be used in the office like stick-it-note but without the sticky part!
This type of paper is good for scanning in high resolution because it does not contain obvious pores. In previous times when I used to sketch randomly on normal papers, these pores would cause me troubles in scans and I would have to use excessive Median filter to eliminate these artifacts.
Anyway, I'm back to my random thoughts for some time now, and I seriously don't know what I'm doing...

17880

In case you are wondering why it's called 17880, just concentrate and you will know; maybe. After scanning, the sketch was copied 3 times and stuck together to form the shape above. In other words, my sketch was only a quarter of this design. I guess you can think of it as some... African art maybe? Anyway, I got problems saving such designs in vector format. I need to learn more about these files. Every time I upload the file I get an error from websites.

Now, I have to admit I've been lazy working with my Ayvarith recordings again but I need to pardon myself for now. It was really one heck of a week. Time to sit and wait for this shipment to be out from clearance...

360...

2011-09-22T08:08:00.000+03:00

A fast paced week somehow. Nothing new on my camera level except of visiting a mall with my class to do some practice, but otherwise, no new panoramas, except of working with old ones. I keep looking at my Ayvarith papers and my microphone connected to the PC and ask myself when I'm going to work with it. Hope soon. For the time being, there are games on my list I need to finish. Games, are important to me. For the time being I'm trying to finish a game called Gray Matter. A nice one with sci-fi theme and magic stuff; oh, combined with some psychology as well! After that, I'll be in hunt for Jonathan Boakes' games Bracken Tor, and TLC3. These corners of the UK that really need a visit one day. Mystery, is what keeps the mind alight. But I might not be able to play all those until the time of Hajj comes, by mid October. I'm busy, somehow, sorting my schedule and my leaves to do the pilgrimage. My work place is somehow giving me a headasche for the time being with their stupid laws and regulations.

I. Failaka Re-Visited:

Under the light of considering further possibilities with panoramas and changing the viewing angle, I've re-visited older panoramas, and specially the one for the "Ghost Bank" taken for a deserted bank building in Failaka island back in November 2010 (after my return from Ireland).

Ghosts Bank

This time the twist was for other projections as well, which I've never thought of back then. Anyway, the tone-mapping is quite different of course. I knew beforehand that Photomatix will give me a headache with some errors related to the size of the final image, but after all I didn't make it smaller and went on with it. For some weird reason, when Photomatix v4.0 encounters HDR images as large as 8000x9000 pixels, it would give an error for memory issues. Doing a "batch single files," which does not require a visual examination, would still not work. Photomatix v3.0 on the other hand, it might show some errors related to memory limitations, but batching single files would work fine (and of course takes a long time). For this reason, the planet projection of this Ghost Bank panorama was tone-mapped in Photomatix v4.0 in the beginning, and the tone-mapping parameters were saved, then loaded into Photomatix v3.0 and the HDR image was tone-mapped accordingly in "batch single files" process. I don't know what's the deal, but it might be a time-consuming process.

Dark Aspect

One of the aspects of this panorama is the fact that I was working with the monopod. Shaky, but with cloning out the remnants at the end, not much of a headache. If the monopod was raised to a low level (to the level of my chest almost) that approximately raises the VR-head and the camera to my chin level. At this level the shake might not be so apparent (but there is some of course). I had to use back then because I didn't have the appropriate tripod.
The second venture after this was a vertical panorama. I made a mistake here but might be considered a surrealistic look after all.

الحلم الكئيب
The Gloomy Dream

For some reason I just named it in Arabic. However, the viewing angle was tilted and hence the tilt on the top part of the panorama is apparent, and that, caused me to name it a "dream" because it has some surrealistic look.
This vertical view was cropped (typically) from the sides and the edges to remove the remnants of the VR-head and the colors were altered a bit by adding a Photo Filter adjustment layer before tone-mapping the HDR. The Photo Filter was Deep Emerald, to give a creepy look. Also there was Exposure adjustment layer to pull back the exposure values accordingly to the whitest spot in the place (the entryway at the bottom).
Maybe the most beloved aspect (point of view) for me was the WV or the Wide View angle. I had to work a bit with adjustment layers a bit before tone-mapping in Photomatix.

Cold Alone

I had to crop little bit in the beginning just to bring things to the center a bit. In this image, and instead of fighting back against the purplish hue (because WB was set to Fluorescent back then) and make out the whole thing in vibrant yellow and red, I've decided to move to the next neighbor of purple; Blue (remember the rainbow? ROY G BIV rule?). In my work with HDR slides in Photoshop so far, I've rarely used the Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. Most of the color adjustments were done actually by Photo Filter adjustment layer. I find it giving more realistic looks and adds to the color instead of shifting the color. That does not mean I don't use Hue/Saturation layers, it is just I don't find them useful all the time.
In Cold Alone, and after fixing the Exposure as usual, I needed two Photo Filter adjustment layers. The first one is to add the general bluish cold look to the whole scene. In this layer, I used a layer mask to remove this effect from the yellow-reddish ceiling here. The second Photo Filter layer was added to increase the vibrant color of the ceiling (by using one of the "warm" presets) and also using a layer mask with it, but of course it is the inverse of the previous layer mask used before (just a copy paste of the layer masks). Weirdly though, in HDR mode in Photoshop, you can't use the inverse command (not from menus nor with the short cut "Ctrl+I"). To do the inverse of blacks and whites, I would use the Levels command (Ctrl+L) and flip the black and white arrows at the very bottom of the dialog box. To avoid any fuss, I would remove the black arrow to the middle first then the white to the other end, then push the black to the place of the white arrow. Sometimes it becomes so hard to know what to click when the two arrows overlapping each other.
Just imagine the blue ink you will be losing for printing such an image!
For the time being, I'm considering visiting Failaka again, specially that summer is on its way out, but I can't decide which time. Since I'm preparing for Hajj journey, I might not have the needed time yet to go there. It would be nice to take a tour with my camera on video inside the car like I used to do on the mainland. We'll wait and see...

II. 360:

Last Sunday it was another workout session with my Photography class. This time we headed to a mall here called 360. As you might have inferred from the name already, the mall is circular in shape. I spent around one hour and 30 minutes trying to find that place, moving from one jam to another.
Architecturally speaking, I didn't find much of interesting in fact. Although we had the freedom to go into shops to take shots from there but as it is with me always, I hate to contact people or ask for permission, so I got stuck to my ground; roaming around the mall trying to find some interesting angles. We had around 2 hours of time but personally I spent only one hour or so and decided to head back home before the darkness hovers over. However, it was a spark for an abstractive mind. I had to bear little bit with annoying people as usual, but the main point in the whole practice, as I think, is to learn how to concentrate in the middle of a fuss (quite the point if you are a journal photographer).
Although most shots were taken in bracketed exposures for HDR later on (except of few ones taken in long exposure), but a lot of those were uploaded after some processing in RAW then converted to JPG.

These are some abstracts, and there were plenty of others that I just need some time to reflect upon. As I said most of the images were uploaded directly after processing the RAW file, but there was a trial at least once for a HDR. But tone-mapping the HDR (in Photoshop) didn't spare me from using extra adjustment layers.

Wooden Arches - Processed RAW

Wooden Arches - Manual Tone-mapping (Photoshop)

Wooden Arches II - Photomatix

The contrast was a bit enhanced when tone-mapping but the major blue shade on the top was added by a Photo Filter adjustment layer after tone-mapping, and then adding a layer mask to avoid touching the lower portion of the image. I tried in tone-mapping to do the best to lighten the wooden pillars a bit but I guess it didn't work out well. I still have Photomatix which, as usual, proved to be superb to Photoshop and my manual tone-mapping. My main concern, in fact, to do the HDR slide was my hopes in eliminating some movements on the ground from people going around (yeah, so annoying, no one would even try to respect you *sigh*. OK, I'm kidding...). However, after merging into HDR it turned out that procedure didn't help much and I had to clone out the movement myself.
We are left then with some long exposures. Long exposures here is something longer than 2 seconds for me. Accordingly, depending on the lighting inside the mall, a single exposure at around 0EV takes around 8 seconds. Enough time to make a water line look silky with its flow. For this reason, my first target was the fountain. I took several shots in fact, but maybe the best angle was from the top.

Vortex

The vertical line in the center is a matter of the fountain itself and helped me much to achieve a sci-fi look. I tried to calculate the time it takes for the fountain to spur the water vertically high up, but seems the process was completely random! I had to depend on luck little bit here (isn't photography, majorly, a matter of luck after all?). I had to crop the image little bit because I didn't realize that originally, I didn't include all the fountain, and the edge was cut from the right side, so just to go around it I've cropped more to concentrate the body of the fountain on the lower right corner. Hope this visual trick helps.

General view of one side of the mall and the fountain.

In the image above, it is more like documenting in fact rather than being an abstract itself, but it was taken in a long exposure as well (around 13 seconds). The long exposure here, specifically, helped on removing the excessive movements going down there on the ground. You would think the mall is empty, but no, it wasn't. This is one of the benefits of long exposures in such situations (beside the night photography thing). Sometimes, people might occur like ghosts passing by, however, this is a nice effect too in my opinion. The fisheye distortion was fixed to straighten the wooden pillars (and that makes the image smaller in looks).

Now, for all these pictures you see... I've forgot my flash memory at home when I went to my class to discuss the images and finding my errors. Now, doesn't that suck? Yes, big time. My memory sucks, and I suck...

Been days now since I wrote something, and been weeks since I worked with my Ayvarith recordings. Seems my fatigue is slipping me the chance to do anything (well, except of using my camera maybe). I'm not sure when I will start recording again. I've arrived at chapter 4 so far. Chapter 6, will be the great burden on my back. As for now, I just wish if the Hajj season comes like a blink...

Cuvaitum At Work...

2011-09-15T07:17:00.000+03:00

My mood has been off lately. Trying to smile and laugh just to cover up for the bleed. Ah well, who cares anyway. At least I had the chance to play with my camera and catch a panorama in day time, away from the cops and security people. An experiment that I might be willing to do again, some time...
Previous weekend was specially weird. I did sleep so early. So early that I won't be sleeping like that for work itself! And wake up early too. I didn't want to miss the chance here so I went on to have breakfast on the beach and look for something to capture. I took my tools including my Manfrotto 303SPH VR-Head (was it a coincidence?) and drove along the beach. It was around 7 a.m. or a bit before that when I settled behind Kuwait Towers and started to do my job in a hurry fearing the usual. One panorama was enough to keep me busy for a while now. There are lot of things to do with one panorama, as different viewing angles do make a difference now and I won't let go, from now on, of a panorama until I exhaust my options with it. However, I didn't miss the chance to take some single clicks here and there. It's nice to add some icing to the cake isn't it?
Just before going on, I would like to talk about my previous "homework" in my photography class.

I. Homework #1:

It was our first homework in the Photography Class L1. The main point was to criticize the images in general. Along the years that I've been working with my camera and specially in the field of HDR techniques, I've faced many useless comments and criticism that just don't consider what I'm trying to say in the image. Anyway, I think my mind now has developed a sense of what is a "real" criticism and what is "trash". For this reason, I tried my best to do the shots in JPG only without RAW and without any adjustments at all. Since my teacher is the one who will criticize me, then I have no problem at all and I would learn here, instead of putting up with depressive non-sensical comments. Anyway, our homework was to take 4 shots, and I did take several shots for same scene and then picked the best as I think for this homework. Some people brought 5, 6 and even 10 shots. I wonder if they have problem with mathematics!?

Nail in a Wall

My first shot, nail in a wall. I don't know what happened to this nail, anyway I was surprised for its shape. The fact is I had only 2 hours probably to take the shots before my class starts, thus my mind went on thinking so fast about a solution. The idea was to have a long shadow of the nail but unfortunately, the sun was not in the proper angle in the afternoon. I tried to fix the proportions according to the law of thirds as much as possible, as shooting in this angle was hard. The nail is on a column and a bit high from the ground level, and also on the edge of a small stairway. I had to play around with my tripod until I made it stable and high up above the stair steps and the ground. My teacher said he likes the texture but because he didn't want to announce the names of the photographers when he viewed the pictures, I decided to keep silent and not explain my motive and the things that went wrong for me. The main concept of this image is loneliness, and if there was a shadow it would complete the meaning I had mind. Loneliness vs. Greatness.

Metallic Design

The second picture was taken for the rail of the stair way at home. After taking the image and uploading it to my PC I've noticed that the front portion (top left corner) is a bit blurry which is something I didn't want in fact. Anyway, my teacher liked the concept but, like I thought also, he said the door and the books on the left were a source of distractions. Unfortunately, I can't remove them, and if I was to take the shot in portrait I believe more distractions would be included. He liked the angle and the blur effect (shallow depth). I would crop the distractions but as I said, I wanted the images untouched as much as possible.

Floral Design

The third image, Floral Design, was also from the stairway rail. I had this idea long time ago (but thinking of a panorama for the stairs alone actually). The image was taken with my Tamron 70-300mm, and probably at 200mm or close to that. I was pointing to the rail from a distance of around 2 or 3 meters (~ 6-9 ft). The reason for this is simply, from a close distance I would be able to put my tripod calmly. Because I didn't use a timer here to take the shot, seems the image was shaken a bit, or it was blurred slightly because I used manual focus (always use it with my Tamron). My teacher noted that there is a little shake in the image when viewed in 100%. At this point, my teacher said that apparently this person (i.e. me) likes textures, which is true. I'm not so fond of portraiture.

Qul

I don't remember really what my teacher said about the fourth image, Qul, but the image you see here is actually the adjusted RAW and not the direct JPG that was viewed in the class. Anyway, it is simply a zoom into some Arabic calligraphy engraved on a wall clock in the main hall (living room). Tamron was also used here and I had to raise the tripod higher than my head. The play was in the WB to give more golden streak to the whole thing. I think it was Flash WB.

The clock in the hall (old picture with illusional adjustments)

My teacher is a school by himself, and I guess I'm lucky to be one of his students. Trying patiently to wait for the big bites of info that will make my brain jump a bit. So far, in Level 1 now, the info encountered are mostly well-known to me. Left to say, all of the images except of the first one were submitted to stock sites, but after RAW adjustments. No HDR this time.
My teacher has an impressive photostream on Flickr. Give it a try. He's a genius! As for me, I still hate Flickr for some reason I don't know. I just reject it mentally!

II. Cuvaitum:

One of the surprises that I've encountered this week is, when I wanted to name one of my pictures in Latin, I've discovered that Google Translation engine did include a translation for "Kuwait" in Latin. I didn't know there would be any translation for it really, as mostly the name, specially Kuwait's, is copied as it is in English into various languages. Kuwait was translated as Cuvaitum.
Last Friday morning, and because of the amazing adjustment in my sleeping time, I woke up in the very early morning (with ease), something that doesn't happen when I think of going to work! Anyway, I didn't want to miss the chance and picked my tools, and specially my VR-Head. I can say, I picked it up half-intentionally. I was hoping that I will do some panorama, but I didn't know just yet for what. After having breakfast I was staring around trying to find something, and even drove along the seaside trying to search for a potential. Finally, my eyes was set on a location that I deem, usually, a taboo. I did take pictures from there before but this location is always dangerous to me (me, being someone with past experience with cops). Kuwait Towers.
Now, Kuwait Towers are a pretty nice target for photography at night more than it is in day time (probably only in very early morning or at sunset when you get some special light qualities). I did take some shots long time ago for the towers when I was experimenting back then with my Canon 350D. Sweet old days.

Humid Towers

Kuwait Towers in A Windy Day

But this time the circumstances are different. Completely different. Day time, early morning, the sun is rising and, a panorama. Maybe one thing is common between the old and the new images: all are HDR, and all were manually tone-mapped.
Since I'm working with a panorama, I had to do it as fast as I can for fear of any "undesired" visitors in the early morning (a bit before 7 a.m.). I skipped working out with the nadir and took only direct shots that I didn't use later on. One panorama, many opportunities...

Towers of The Rising Sun

I know that Japan is the land of the rising sun, but are there towers for the rising sun? Oh well. The main difficulty here lies in cloning out the lower portion. I've cropped a bit from the lower part where the VR-Head shows, but this was not the difficult thing to do. It was my shadow with the tripod. Because the ground had a pattern in formation, it was so hard to make it unique, or maybe I'm out of patience to finish this and I couldn't bear in mind working slowly and copy brick by brick. It is possible to make it unique but it's not for me now. I don't have all the time in the world nor the power (cloning work is done in HDR mode, meaning more processing power). I approached the situation with many tricks, the last was to copy a portion of the right corner and paste it over the left portion where my shadow was (after cloning it already) and then do a layer Blend as in stack focus.
The tone-mapping was done manually, i.e. in Photoshop itself and playing around with the curve of the histogram myself. I've been a good boy here and didn't touch other slides like the Threshold and the Radius which caused me grief in the past, and will never learn how to do them adequately. But before tone-mapping, I had to reduce the luminance of the sun and that was done simply by adding Exposure adjustment layer, and with the White dropper I click on the disk of the sun. The image appeared darker in the beginning while the sun was like a dot in the sky (which is the thing I want actually). You have to bear in mind when you work in this way that this is HDR. The luminance data are there and not gone; maybe shifted, but not gone. With this simple correction in Exposure, I've moved to tone-mapping. All the later versions of this panorama, were tone-mapped in the same manner, but maybe the fixes for my shadow were different a bit.

Planeta Cuvaitum

The great advantage here in tone-mapping with Photoshop (which is something I rarely do right now) is that you have a control over certain areas, even though Photoshop's tone-mapping algorithm is considered Global, meaning it effects the whole pixels in the image in the same time. However, with the help of the curve and the histogram. This way, I was able to make the sun as a disk with a halo around it by doing a "U" curve at the end of the line. This "U" curve simply means "high-low-high"; now imagine this to the sun disk (out-middle-inner part) and you will be getting a bright circle, then darker circle, then bright spot in the middle. Are you following? Hope so! Such control is not possible in Photomatix and I did try indeed doing some effect but nothing worked to my taste.

Although I almost chose my location randomly in the area behind the towers (and hoping to keep me a bit hidden from the eyes wandering on the street in the front), I think now I was lucky to pick this location! This was apparent when I went on doing a TV (Tunnel-View) effect for this panorama...

Crescent Sun Towers

The shape of the crescent was indeed random. I didn't plan it. It just happened to be there when I twisted the panorama. Only one thing is annoying me here though; the patch in the sky. Cloning problems are apparent here as you see. Cropping further to hide my shadow or the bad cloning would cut out the fun from the rest of the images with nice patterns made by the pavement, so, I guess I have to bear it as it is.

Two projections though, didn't appeal much to me but I had to do them after all just to make things complete. The Vertical and the "Wide View" or WV. The WV is a term I've made out myself really, since I didn't find any proper names for it. It is a manipulation of the Little Planet projection by changing the angles of Pitch and Roll mainly and fixing the orientation with the Yew.

Nos Regulam Solis

Cropping the sides in this vertical panorama was a hard issue for me and I'm still not satisfied with the final product here. I felt cropping was screwing the balance of the image in general specially that the sun and the towers are not exactly on the same alignment. I had to do the cropping to the side to remove the highly stretched pixels (which is normal in such type of panoramas of course). I think what makes it so hard to decide with the crop is the diagonal lines in the image itself which, if straight, would make for a unidirectional look on the whole thing.

Dancing Towers

Not one of my favorites really. The Dancing Towers is supposed to be something with a comedy twist after all. The twists in the tower were made in HDR mode before tone-mapping by using the Wrap option in Photoshop. The tone-mapping (and adjusting curves later on) didn't help me to add some strong contrast but rather darkening the ground. The other problem was that the ground and the sky portions were too much compared to the main subject: the tower and the sun. I had to crop and cropping here wasn't easy either. The subjects of interest are nudged to the left rather than the center or one of the points of the law of thirds.

QTVR

I was drooling to do a QTVR out of this panorama but unfortunately, things were not easy. The fact that the panorama was tone-mapped manually in Photoshop made me lose one key option here, which is very important for making a QTVR: the seamless blend. In Photomatix, this is simply done by ticking one option while tone-mapping; the "360 panorama" option. I don't know yet how to blend the left and right side seamlessly still using Photoshop as my search on the net was in vain. I even tried to put the final panorama into Photomatix and stabilize the sliders as much as possible to keep the look (changing only the Gamma to fix the contrast) and turning on the 360 panorama option, but even that was in vain. Probably the only real benefit that I've gained so far from such search is to know how to add a label or a logo to my panorama instead of the nadir point in more comfortable way, using PTGui. You can find the tips here in the Support/FAQ webpage of PTGui (with many many other useful info that I didn't read before). The QTVR might need some time to load, plus, of course, the QuickTime plugin.

III. Land, Paper, Wall:

On land, it was the ruins of Hore Abbey, which moved to my camera's sensor to be printed later on. Mom desired something to fit in the living room to change the scenery and she was so fond of Ashford castle in fact, an awkward handheld panorama taken back in 2009 in Co. Mayo, Ireland.

Ashford Castle

Unfortunately, when viewed in 100% I've found that the middle portion of the image is out of focus. Probably I was working in AF mode (a big mistake in panorama venture). The greens also don't appear as they are when converted to CMYK system. I had to convert because of previous experience with this printing shop which seems RGB is not appreciated much (although an expert told me that it is a single print and they should be able to produce it properly in RGB). Anyway, the mistake with the focus was a killer enough to abandon the idea. So, mom picked another shot, the ruins of Hore. I have to say I'm really proud now that she picked my stuff!

Ruins of Hore hanging on the wall of the living room.

The print and the frame prices were fair I'd say, but while watching the process going on (in 2 days) I really wished to have my own tools. I fell in love really with the HP designjet 800ps in the printing shop, but unfortunately it is discontinued, and for sure it costs a fortune!

My signature. Still think it sucks!

However, one of the things that I was limited with is, the type of paper that I could pick. In fact, there was only one variety. I'm sure there are several papers out there that are better (and more expensive, I know), but there was only one type so I had to put it down with that. I wasn't ready to move around to other place to check.
The next thing was, after the print and checking the colors, I went to the framing shop. As I expected they were not that professional I would expect but they did a good job with the frame. I was a little upset about it because when I went back to the framing shop to give them a leaflet with my own signature, the print was rolled up and kept between other stuff. I was a bit angry inside because this is not the way to deal with a print. Also, the matting they provided was not thick enough and seems merely like a cardboard. The leaflet I brought was not stuck or anything but merely fixed, and I didn't get the chance to sign on the matting myself. Anyway, after all, mom is happy with it. I only wish if I have the money to get all these stuff together in one place and do my own prints. My printer supports A4 size maximum, but I wish to have one with A3 size capabilities. Would be awesome and in fact, more elegant to frame in that size I think.
I'm trying now to finish this lovely thin book which my friend got me for my birthday (but didn't get the chance to give it to me in time). It is a practical book and to the point, for beginners. I want to write something for now, but I don't know what. So much is gushing out, yet little words are coming in my mind. For one moment I just wish if I can sit down, one leg on the other, and my palms behind my head, and stare into the world... maybe thinking of No Other Worlds...

Back on Track...

2011-09-08T07:48:00.000+03:00

One busy week. Ramadhan is over and I couldn't post on time on Thursday because of the feast (Eid) that, for me, is an occasion to sleep more and care less about the world around me. I neglected for a week now or two everything related to my "duties" toward Ayvarith recordings and just spent my days sleeping and eating, and of course looking for something to catch with my camera.
During family gatherings I worked with my camera a bit as the habit goes but well, this time not many good pictures. Plus most of them are private and I wouldn't be able to show. Now, I'm back to work with a severe insomnia forcing me to leave to work without even a nap for few minutes before going to work. Well, it just struck me for 2 days so far, and I hope I won't have this situation again. I do already suffer from insomnia and not enough sleeping as it is, but I don't go to work without sleeping at all like that!

During the last days of Ramadhan I was working heavily on "old" panoramas taken from Ireland back in 2010. I've figured out that I have more power with panoramas to create certain view points that I didn't imagine before. This was apparent specifically after working on my night panorama from the roof top some weeks ago...

Lonely Night

This thought made me go ahead and try various aspects for those panoramas I've done before, and thought my work with them is done so far. I was wrong anyway, there are things behind the little planet projection and the tunnel view, and even behind the flat and vertical looks and the QTVR rendering. The task, though, was not easy as I thought, since I've deleted most of the HDR slides after doing the primary panoramas with them, to save some space in my external hard disk (which sizes 320GB by the way!).

Ríocht na Ardeaglais
Kingdom of the Ardeaglais

Irish Home VI

These are jut two samples of the newly made views of the old panoramas. The effect mimics, to some extent, the fisheye lens effect on a full-frame camera. Maybe the view here is wider though, and stretches the horizon further. This stretch adds an illusion of space into the scene. Some people, for example, commented already about the second panorama (which if the side garden of Thornbrook House B&B) saying that it is such a large lawn to mow! Well, the garden was relatively small to other gardens I've encountered and not as large as the front yard for example (which mostly people didn't comment about its size in normal panoramas). Anyway, not all new-looking panoramas are supposedly to be stretched that way and to give a spacious look, because I think, after all, that it depends on the location and the scene.

To Salvation

This panorama for example, for St Dominic Abbey interior in the heart of Cashel town, does not necessarily give an indication of such a spacious land (mainly because the court here is narrow in fact), but the main concentration in mind here was on the geometrical shapes created by the pillars on the side wall, and the oval shape illusion of the ground, to make a mix of shapes. The sunlight, too, played a role, hence the name of the image "To Salvation," as if the sun rays are coming out of the gate at the far end.

Now, the previous panoramas were achieved with some twisting in parameters, starting from a little planet projection style. This is not the case all the way. A flat regular panorama can be used to create something out of the ordinary, other than the vertical panorama, like this panorama of Hore Abbey:

Curvae Hore

All what was really needed here after setting the regular panorama, is to pull the center down making a wave-like shape of the sky and the ground. Would be useful for future considerations if there is a valley-like feature to be introduced in a certain mood. All of the dramatic colors and effects were done of course after tone-mapping and with adjustment layers later on in Photoshop. This image was rejected from some stock sites for "jagged edges". I think they didn't accept the hard contrast between the two portions of the image. Isn't it supposed to be so?

But one of the surprises for me was when I've discovered that there is indeed one panorama that I didn't touch at all, all this time! Probably the reason that made me forget about this panorama a bit is the fact that it doesn't bear much of distinctive features (and that caused me also trouble stitching it). To go around such problems with stitching this panorama and just to make it worthwhile, the solution was to do a twist as well.

Crystall Ball Fantasy

The panorama was heavily edited in HDR mode first before tone-mapping, and in fact I was planning to remove the extras on the corners, but then I've realized that it does serve as some effect like a crystal ball (hence the name). On a large scale, the details are not to be praised in fact because of the black level I've added. Anyway, this angle was away from the stitching error point (which I just don't know what causes it). In panorama world, the more space you have in location, the more error-prone stitching you might have because of the inability of the software to find control points properly or mismatching control points because of similar features that do not belong to the same position.

I've decided to do some self-advertisement if I should say, by taking a photo for my own prints. Not prints that would qualify to high quality ones but they make a nice subject I guess. This tiny little experiment inspired me to "something" after all...

Prints

The problem with this shot is the fact that I was laying the prints flat on a white cardboard. The cardboard itself was flat on a table and to get a direct, on-plane shot was almost impossible. For this reason I had to do my best with after-shooting procedures to straighten things out a bit (and cut proportions of the table apparent in the image). The result was fine, but with somehow elongated or stretched shapes of the prints. I didn't want to hang the papers on the cardboard for various reasons, thus I had to satisfy myself with this, for now. This experience made me think of some tool to take vertical shots with ease, so I hit on B&H website again and I think I've found what I need...

Photek TRI-X-2500, literal arm extender
Source: B&H

Not only it will solve such a tiny problem but it might be a good solution for the eternal nadir problem for me, but the problem for nadir is the workflow on location itself. To use this to shoot the nadir I "must" use it at the end of my work with the panorama and I "must" elevate it to the same height of the camera on the VR-head, on the tripod itself, and most importantly of all, I have to unscrew and screw things which would take such a long time. Such a fuss and a mess for one shot? Well, seems it's really not paying. However, this item is on my list for next purchase that I might place at any time now.

I'm starting my photography class now (since Tuesday) and I will be having 2 hours class every Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, from 7 to 9 p.m.. It is a basic level, and I need it to go up on the stairs in a proper way. Who knows, maybe such class also will make some contacts for me to avoid troubles taking pictures outside in the future! It is so hilarious when I sit and think between myself and I, and find out that most of the architectural photography that I've done, is actually done outside for 90% of it. Time to get busy with life I presume. Oh how much I miss Ireland...

Cerebrum Mysticum...

2011-08-25T08:54:00.001+03:00

A mystic week of some sort. I've suddenly felt the urge to go on and read about mystics and occult. Well, I did have the urge for some time in my life and such things are really normal to strike in my head now and then, but this time I'm thinking of doing more to it into photography.
Now it is the time of the last week in Ramadhan and sort of the time is clogged (specially with my disturbed sleeping pattern) with many things to do. I'm also planning to register in a photography class for beginners after Ramadhan directly, by September 6th. Yes, for beginners. No matter how or what I did before or what advance level I might be in, it is always good to look back at small things that you did not know before. Despite my work so far, I still think I need to learn more about the basics of the camera and exposure. After that class I might take other levels as well (more expensive of course) but we'll see about that later on.

At work seems more busy days are coming on the way with new phases in our "little" experiment taking place now, thus I have to check that I need to type this blog entries as early as possible to be posted in time! Well, which means, in return, that I might have lesser contents to put in here. That is if... anyone cares anyway :)

Because of the disturbance this week, I couldn't put my mind into reciting the 4th chapter of Alexander's story. Well, I'll be frank. I was lazy and playing a game I like. Hope that doesn't count as a sin! But hopefully the engine will get to work by next week or so and more recordings on the way.
The lack of work on my Ayvarith projects, however, poured something on the other side. Ive finally had the mind (and courage) to write something down. But this time, since staring on the notepad on my monitor was not enough to gush out words, I referred to my old method; a paper and pencil/pen. I had the words for some time now but I didn't pin them down until I faced the pen and paper in my office, after working on that experiment. I called it No Superman.I've submitted this one to some websites, and in one website actually, some user notified me asking how did I write such a thing! Well, Thanks! I really don't think I'm good at all. It's just a gush of feelings to a certain matter that makes you spill it out.

I. Mysticis:

Seems my night on the roof last week under the full moon made me literally lunatic, or maybe inspired? Call it whatever you want to, it is just a weird feeling of seeking opportunities to take photos of anything in rhyme of Mystics. I will get back to that panorama taken from the roof after a while.
One of the first ideas to do something mystic kicked in when I finished reading the holy book.

Chapter of Mary (19)

There is a little story behind every aspect of this image. First of all, it was taken with a fisheye lens and hence, even with a high f-number I realized I might not be able to grab everything into sharp focus; so it was a call for focus stacking. However, I had a problem with the shadows' cast on the book itself thus, I had to turn off the light and use only one source of lighting (the usual old desktop lamp with power-saving light!).
I've fixed the WB value by using the custom K-value in camera. Since the power-saving light is bluish and I wanted to add a sense of antiquity to the book, I had to exaggerate a bit with the color temperature (K-value) and probably pushed it to something lesser a bit than 10,000K! Anyway, while working with these photos (taken with bracketed exposure for HDR merge) there was another story. Because when I was testing the different WBs before the final approach, I've realized that Tungsten makes some interesting hue, by turning the book blue and the red lines in it were glowing hard; so eye-capturing, but later on I had to give up this idea in favor of Daylight WB when I started to merge into HDR (you can change the WB before starting to merge into HDR in Photomatix).
Now, all the HDR slides, after merging, refer to different focus points. In total they were about 5, with each slide bringing a certain area of the open book into focus. I had a little problem merging first because I didn't use the alignment in Photoshop (I thought it's not needed because everything was relatively stable) but then, seems I was wrong and I used to correct for the broken lines. I made 3 versions of the HDR slides changing the WB from Daylight to Fluorescent to Tungsten BEFORE merging into HDR, but seems the desired look in my mind was in Daylight (the other WBs made some weird noise and hot pixels occurring here and there).
Maybe keeping the front portion of the book, where the title of the Surah lies, and blurring the background (the other page) was a nice effect, but because the name of John (first word in first line in second page) sounded a bit important to the whole story of the picture, I've decided to include it into a focus-stacking method as well. Cropping and rotating the image (it was originally in landscape orientation) was done later on after tone-mapping (Photomatix of course) and adjusting in Photoshop.
This was one trend of mystic (and I mean mystic not as mysterious only but also on a spiritual level) and in fact I was doing more work before that with long exposures (since I became a bit obsessed with the idea). Maybe working with clocks is not a mystic thing but the concept of time and using time was always an issue in my life (and probably of many around the world), hence, we can consider it a mystic concept of our lives, as we try hardly to catch upon life. More about it to come later.
Left to say one thing. The image above was rejected by Bigstockphoto because of some "copyrighted material" issues. Seriously? I'm going to ask God for a permission to take a photo of the holy book? Sorry dudes, that doesn't make sense...

II. A Treasure of Perspectives:

Since having a night with a full moon is not something you be able to catch every day, sorry, every night I mean, I've decided to mangle and go through the panorama again and again trying to extract more perspectives, and in return, more meanings from every picture I could make out of this (spherical) panorama. The first version, however, was a typical little planet form (posted previously):

The Lonely Planet

Well, I guess the name tells it all. I liked the effect myself and I went on trying to extract more from this panorama by changing the perspective. One of these changes makes up for almost a landscape orientation (or let's say a full-frame) image but with simple difference: everything is twirled.

Over There

It is not a panorama, but it is extracted from a full spherical panorama itself. After setting the stitching projection to "little planet" in PTGui, I started to play around with angles of Pitch and Roll trying to discover more perspectives. Until I've finally arrived to this angle which resembles the full moon at the end, in the horizon, like calling as it is a light at the end of a tunnel. A spark of hope in the middle of the night. I didn't mind the distortion in the surrounding structures, as I was reliant on the moon to grab the sights more than the surrounding structures. However, they do add some surrealism if you are up to that!
Before, I've stated that in long exposures at night, sometimes the stars that do not appear to the naked eye can be recorded, and they are here in this panorama, but they are usually erased with cleaning the noise and doing other techniques to smooth out the sky. Here, however, I decided to pick (some) stars and exaggerate their sparkle by using the regular brush in Photoshop. After all, I added some Photo Filter adjustment layer to put on a reddish wash on the whole scene to break its severe blue shade. Hmm, I think it adds a bit to the mysticity.
A vertical panorama was done as well, naturally (but I didn't think of it first!) and here I needed to move the central point to make some interesting perspective, of two skies, up and down. I didn't experience though how it would look if the skies met in the middle!

The Underworld

But I was taken more by the tunnel view for this panorama, which many people liked on MostPhotos...

To Another Universe

This perspective specifically was just an experiment to test how good it is to do a Twirl effect like in those Sci-Fi stuff. The problem with the Twirl effect is that it might smudge too much and not achieving the proper look I'm aiming for, and, you have to work in 8bit format, since it is disabled in Photoshop in 16bit format. In other words, you have to step down a bit with color's resolution.
The original work was stitched with 4000x4000 pixels. Usually I go for 8000x8000, which requires a lot of processing power and time. Since I was thinking it might be a failing experience after all, there is really no need to aim high and 4000x4000 is just enough.
The looks at the time of tone-mapping this tunnel-view was totally different and dull, despite the fact that the HDR slides were merged using ProPhoto color space. However, after tone-mapping and opening the image in Photoshop (which I've fixed on ProPhoto as a default color space) the image appeared as you see it above with cyan patches around the ground. Comparing the two looks, the Adobe 1998 and the ProPhoto, I thought the ProPhoto space is more adequate to the mystic and sci-fi look I'm seeking, and this is what you see above.
The twirl effect was done to the image on a separate layer and I made it carefully in a small amount to add curves but not diffuse the image totally. A twirl alone is not enough as a good effect and this is the reason why I made it on a separate layer, so that I can retain the position of the moon in the horizon back to its place by using layer masks (to erase the twirled moon and put on the original moon back in its position from the lower layer). The name is obvious I presume; did it take you to another universe!?

III. Tick Tocks and Blinks:

As I've stated earlier, I was (and still) obsessed a bit with the idea of long exposures, time, and, clocks. This obsession raises up from my interest to see things, slow things specifically, run fast. How would it be to take a long exposure of a moving snail, or a turtle, of a long night sleep...etc? Maybe my interest in night photography lead me to this point now, but however, it is not something new really. I've already created an image of a little long exposure before (and unfortunately rejected from major stock sites).

Busy Life

Maybe the above image was one of the best I've did so far. In fact, and because I used my Tamron lens raised up high above the watch, I didn't use here any ND filters to control the time. I don't have an adapter to fit my Cokins. However, this effect after all was not done by long exposure alone, but I had to take several shots over a period of around 6 minutes and then blend them together in Photoshop in layers (using Soft Light blend).
Same concept was done but with a more time-stretching aspect this time, taking shots at an interval of around 3 minutes and some few seconds for one of my watches. This time I've faced a problem with the proper WB, as I wanted to add some more luster to the golden patches in the watch itself but then there was a problem of being "over-average" with that effect.

Mixed-Up Schedule

The WB was fixed as the RAW files were opened in Photoshop and the effects were synchronized with all the slides. The reason for setting the time to 3 minutes AND few seconds is that I didn't want the seconds hand to end up in or around the same place with every shot taken at exactly 3 minutes, so I had to add few seconds (something like 10 or 15 seconds) to the interval between every two shots to give more chances of finding the seconds hand somewhere else, other than the previous position. Each image, in fact, was itself some sort of a long exposure (my room was partially dark) extending from 15 to 30 seconds each.

Still though, I didn't quite achieve the effect that I want, that is recording the seconds hand going over in a full circle around the clock face. Tried this already with my wall clock for which the seconds hand ticks continuously non-stopping in every second, but it goes smoothly all over the clock face. With the help of some ND filters, I've managed to get a long exposure of one hour. Despite the weird reddish shades that occurred in the final image (which might be related to the change in the sun's angle outside, because sun rays still pass with my curtains off, but I'm not sure yet), however it was not a big deal to fix the image and make it look normal, but it was a big issue with the noise. Anyway the image didn't achieve exactly the desired look I'm seeking.

Hurry Up!

The Median method was a companion all through the cleaning process (along with cloning to remove the brand mark, otherwise it won't be accepted in stock sites!). However, the small circle inside is formed by the seconds hand, but the seconds hand is larger than this and should, probably, made a bigger trace. Same thing for the minutes hand which appears blurred between 3 and 4. This is natural since the light is introduced (with the help of ND filters) slowly into the camera and to register the final movement just before the close of the shutter, the minutes (and seconds) hand will be in a certain place. The shutter then closes finalizing the image and the hands' movement all the way were not recorded except in a few portion of the clock face. In other words, to record the movement of the minutes hand across the full clock face, then we need an exposure time more than one hour. This will make things harder to do indeed.
The look of the blurry movement and the stable background of the clock face cannot be compensated by taking photos in intervals and layering them with a blend. The blur has its own taste and feel. I'm trying to find any website (official that is) related to the manufacturers of these watches and clocks just to seek my luck in asking for a permission to put an image of their products for sale. It is not possible to clone out the brand mark all the time!

That was the ticking part of this final portion. Comes then the blinking part. Just for fun I was running with my camera in the house taking pictures of my niece playing around (and getting on my nerves as well) when I decided then to take pictures of my brother's eye. This little experiment made me believe more than not ever overexposure is a bad thing and not every "bad" image is really bad. The image got accepted in some sites and rejected from some stock sites (for model release aspects). I have to give credit to my brother though because the poses (or looks) were his ideas in fact.

Photographer in The Eye

In case you wonder about the name, it is because my reflection is there, inside the pupil. This is one of my favorites, and it is not a tone-mapped HDR at all. Simply taken with a flash unit mounted on my camera and zooming into the eye with my EF-S 18-55mm Canon lens. Some adjustments were done later on of course in the RAW editor. The thing is, I didn't plan it. I merely took the image to see the details of the iris later on, but the whole image just happened to be awesome for me. More sharpening added a grunge look, which somehow might be not good looking for other images and concepts. See, overexposure is not a bad idea at all, to limits. I've printed this image on a white photo paper, which probably if mounted on a white wall (and erasing a bit of the edges in the image itself) would be an awesome effect on the wall! Surprise your fellows with an eye popping out of the wall!
The other two images were also done with the same lens but without flash, and the pose was also suggested by my brother. They are interesting, but don't beat the one above I believe.

Enlighten
looking at the ceiling.

The interesting thing about "Enlighten", beside the reflection in the eye, is the sharp eyelash line and eyebrow. I added even more sharpening (with noise cleaning) and also some change in saturation and hue to pop out the eye in between a dark skin (his skin isn't that dark really!).

Psycho

"Psycho" on the other hand was a good concept in color, but two reasons made me convert it into Black and White and try to increase the contrast from there to give a tougher feeling. The first reason is simply the idea of a psycho, which I believe is represented better in Black and White instead of color. Remember that Black and White images tend to make the viewer concentrate on the concept and the composition instead of the color gradients in the image. The other reason was that a bluish streak around the eyes that I didn't know exactly how to remove properly, so along with the first reason I thought it is better to have the whole thing in Black and White. Maybe I should have done some skin smoothing (Median method again). Well, it might intensify the effect of a Psycho with such a skin!

Almost, this is what I have been doing this week. I'm still looking forward for more experiments to do but I need some planning. I took some photos for some instruments and devices in my work place, but I don't think I'm allowed to put those here. However, I think they are sort of boring, except for geeks of course!
T.G.I.T. Finally a day when I can't complain about my sleepless night, nor I have to wake up so early....

A Bulughman In A Lonely Night!

2011-08-18T06:43:00.000+03:00

Officially 31. Not much to do about it really, except of having a casual day to myself and sleep as much as I wanted. Well, that won't exceed 5 hours in best conditions. This week was slowly passing really, but I didn't have much to do with my camera, so maybe this is the reason why I felt it as slowly going. Anyway, I was pushing myself forward with my Ayvarith recording and finally recorded and finished Chapter 3 of Alexander's story. I could hardly stop laughing at myself while recording, so please don't mind the quality and the awkward presentation!
Ayvarith: here.
English: here.
Memorizing now these moments and all that work I had to do with this story makes me smile a bit. I've totally forgot about the other conlangs that I've initiated but totally forgot about them, specially the one named Bulughman.

Beside this recording, which took on several days actually and not a single one day, I took the chance to use the full moon for my benefit and have a panorama made from the roof top. Almost a complete panorama and not only a 360 panorama. Not so satisfied about it but it was an experience that I liked indeed.

I. Outtake #1!
I can say it is my first night-time panorama for the time being. I had to use the full moon to my advantage before it disappears from the skies so I was willing to work whatever the temperature would be. Anyway, the temperature was not as bad as before (gone down to 30s C as told by forecasts, while it was in 40s last week!). It wasn't all perfect of course and the noise played a major factor in this, but well, it's a lesson. But the most significant thing about this panorama is the lengthened workflow, which probably was not a good thing to do after all...

A Lonely Night

The Workflow (The Drama):

In the beginning and after settling with my tools on the roof top, I went on doing some metering just to estimate the time I would need. The necessity to work as fast as possible (the moon moves across the sky) made me trade off with raising the ISO to 1600. Since I'm going to take a bracketed exposure for HDR (-2EV,0EV,+2EV) it was essential to ensure that when I go on with auto-bracketing that the exposure time won't exceed 30 seconds. 30 seconds is the limit in Av mode. I've metered some spots across the sky and the building fixing the EV to +2 and raising the ISO to 1600 which was the minimum ISO I could have an exposure time lesser than 30 seconds (15 seconds it was). However, the camera also had other plans of itself! I tried to choose an ISO following the stops starting from ISO100, but not the ranges in between, that is: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, ...etc. Although there are some ISOs in between as 160, 250 and so on, but according to some articles that these would be more noisy because of the circuitry involved in increasing and amplifying the signal, and it is better to have an ISO within the range of full stops.
To be on the safe side, I've used the hyperfocal principle again, and fixed the aperture to f/8. This aperture, however, did change by itself as the automated process was going on. There are some spots across the panorama that, apparently, required more than 30 seconds to achieve the +2EV exposure and I've noticed at some points that the f-number did change by itself within the camera to f/7.1 (i.e. larger aperture than f/8) to allow for more light in.
The white balance is fixed according to effect and not in desire to achieve a true balance of colors. My previous work with the moon on the roof a week or two back gave me an impression that the blueness of the sky is better and more attractive than a normal regular one. The whole thing was set by using the LCD display (which is not a good judge after all but a good estimate let's say) and from there I've fixed the WB to the minimum value of 2500K. Blue.
The work on the roof continued normally and my eyes adapted slowly to the darkness there but I needed my small LED light to check the scale on the rotating disk of the VR-head to make sure it reached a 0 degree after a full cycle. I didn't bother about a nadir but I did take 2 shots for zenith, which later proved unnecessary, specially that I have no intent for a QTVR.
Now moving to the lab, i.e. my PC. I think my first mistake was made up here. In order to reduce the noise level which I was almost sure of to be unaccepted because of using ISO1600, I've directly converted all RAW files into TIFF 16-bit format (using Photoshop this time and not DPP). I made this move to run NeatImage on the TIFF files and clean the noise accordingly (and put little sharpness as well) but seems it was a wrong step. Reasons will come later.
After running NeatImage and batch processing all the TIFF files for noise reduction, I ran Photomatix for batch HDR processing. I have now 41 OpenEXR files created from the "cleaned" TIFF files.
In PTGui now and because of the nature of the HDR files and the night scene on the roof, and because so much sky was involved in some slides, there were many slides that PTGui could not identify any points for, hence the slides were astray and "orphaned", meaning not connected to any image at all. There I decided to go on with "model" method.
The model method, as I call it, is simply to batch process the individual HDR files into JPGs or TIFFs and plugging them into PTGui. This way, usually, PTGui is able to find more control points more easily. We save the file, which contains all data about control points and other parameters and positions of the slides and apply this template to the HDR panorama we are working with. A lengthy procedure but at times, it is a must. I went on tone-mapping the HDR files in a batch process in Photomatix, but first I picked one of the darkest slides (and it was one of those that didn't connect to any other images) and tone-mapped it to make it brighter and clear in most of its regions. The settings used in this tone-mapping is saved to be used for the rest of the slides.
To my ill luck, after tone-mapping all slides, PTGui still didn't identify some of these tone-mapped images and could not connect them to each other although many features in the scene are obvious. Seems however, and after a close check up, that the difference in the noise level between two adjacent slides makes it difficult for PTGui to put on control points between the two despite the "visual" apparent common features. Here, and at this point, I realized it was wrong to clean all the TIFFs from the early beginning, and later on, more confirmation to this thought appeared.
I had to put my own control points here although it is a process that is tiresome and I really don't like it because, let's face it, a human being won't be as precise as a computer and needless to say someone like me who can barely concentrate for a long time. I'm not sure even how I'm typing this! Anyway, the addition was done and the file was saved, and the template or model was applied to the original HDR panorama in PTGui. Everything was organized almost with some few broken lines that I directly decided to fix in Photoshop instead of wasting time doing a game with blending priority.
The HDR panorama is now stitched and time for the fixes and cuts in Photoshop. Beside the regular fixes, I had to make an adjustment to the exposure (putting some areas down and raising up some) but before doing all the "local" adjustment, a major (global) fix for the exposure was due by using the white dropper on the brightest possible area in the scene. This is to bring some balance and brightness to the scene (which later on resulted in a good HDR histogram relatively).
Tone-mapping the adjusted HDR file proved more that cleaning the noise in the early beginning was a wrong thing to do. It became more obvious that there were batches of noises while some areas were relatively clean. Seems that I have to keep the noise reduction procedure at the every end of the workflow to make sure that I don't get such patches of noisy areas and clear ones. To over come this problem, and back in Photoshop after tone-mapping, I went doing my usual Median trick that I do usually on skin to eliminate rigid features. This though made me lose some interesting dots in the sky with the rest (stars do appear sometimes with a long exposure. Orion belt was even obvious in the images though it wasn't visible to the naked eye).

The histogram of the panorama in gaussian-like shape. Might not be always a good sign to have most of your exposure around 0EV, but it's good that there is no sudden cut in the graph itself.

II. Outtake #2!

Although the previous panorama was uploaded to stock sites (only one actually), I couldn't say I'm satisfied yet. For all the points and the drama I've mentioned above, this time I did make up my mind to make HDR files out of the RAW files directly, without any filtration and noise reduction. As expected, the matter of the noise became lot easier and lot "unique". This time and just for the sake of a change, I've made up a little planet projection, which proved quite interesting more than just a plain flat panorama!

The Lonely Planet

As long the panorama contains big portions of the sky with relatively interesting atmosphere in it, then I guess a little planet projection should always be considered. The moon here looks like a sun, making me wonder if all the "suns" we see in photographs are really, a sun!
The procedure here was the same as above with exception that the HDR files were composed directly of RAW files (in Photomatix v3.0).
I've used the previously made model file to arrange the points and the stitching errors were the same in fact; the same broken lines, but at least the noise was relatively easier to handle here. When stitching the panorama, in PTGui you are given the option to choose an "interpolation" method and usually I don't change this and keep it by default to Lanczos. The interpolation is concerned with the pixels of the image as a way to predict locations and values of pixels on the image when your image is stretched or squeezed and so on, which is something normal in case we are talking about panoramas made out of several images to be stitched (and the images are distorted originally because they are taken with fisheye lens of course). I believe there is some relation between the weird color spots that I used to see in my previous panoramas and this point of the workflow. For the time being I think I will use the Bilinear or the Nearest Neighbor methods to stitch my future panoramas as these two are more regular in Photoshop itself, as Lanczos method is not an option in Photoshop.
Photoshop editing was essential as well to balance the exposure little bit (but the histogram this time was different and not balanced around 0EV like before), and after tone-mapping (which gave me a headache for memory problems and again, Photomatix v3.0 was better to solve this problem and not the new v4.0. Sometimes I wonder why did they make a new version!!) it was time then to plug it again into Photoshop.
NeatImage was run to clear the noise in general (specially the chromatic noise related to the high ISO of 1600). Yet, there are some portions of noise that were hard to remove by NeatImage and I had to sort it out with the Median trick, again. This type of noise apparently is related to the temperature of the atmosphere and they were more apparent and so obvious to note in the sky area, while in the occupied areas in the middle where the ground and the bricks rule, this type of noise needs a bit of concentration to notice. I've lost some stars in the sky, again, when I did the median trick but well, I smoothed the sky. The lower portions of the image specifically were hardly struck by such noise more than the upper portions.

I think the main reason for such stitching errors is the movement of the moon, which caused the shadows to move as well and with such movements in the scene it is natural to have stitching errors. Beside the moon, my own shadow as well would be a cause for such errors. In fact, despite the fact that I've cloned out most of my shadows with the camera and the tripod combination, I've discovered that are still some traces of my shadow somewhere. Go figure!

This is it for now, and I'm thinking now if there is a way to reduce this amount of noise caused by the heat. Seems next time I'm going to bring a hand-fan with me to cool down my camera while I work! Ah well... just kidding really. I need to look up new things to photograph hmm...

Ouch, My Head...

2011-08-11T06:37:00.000+03:00

Seems that in Ramadhan and despite the fact that people are fasting, I'm the one to be buzzing like someone struck with ADHD. I'ts not all bad but when it comes to sleeping at night before going to work in the morning, this is the real headache. With all this fuss and sleepless nights, I've decided to go ahead and finally record something for my Ayvarith: the story of Alexander. The recording is still going on and I can't believe it is that much fun even though it is a headache to edit the sound files and correct them and remove these parts where I cracked up laughing! The progress is just beginning, and the real heavy work is left for chapter 6!
You can check Chapter 1 in Ayvarith transliteration, and you can listen the text. Hopefully it is a good quality (MP3 files): Chapter 1 (Ayvarith). It might be a good idea though to read the Preface before checking Chapter 1. The whole story in English can be checked out here.
The process of adding these sound recording is going slowly though, but at least I'm pushing myself now and trying to overcome my mood when I see my papers scattered around me without working on them. However, I had different stories to tell for this week!

I. Kackerlacka in The House!
Done it! Finally, it's here! Well, not so perfectly done in fact but still the best I could achieve with some minor errors. I had to plan for this procedure and I have to admit that it is impractical, but after all it is still the best I could do.
The panorama that made me sleepless is finally done. A low-level panorama in the bathroom, mimicking a view of a cockroach! Well, the first thing that would give you a headache in such panoramas is the narrow space that you have to work in...

General setting in the bathroom

This time though, the tripod legs were pulled back a bit and shortened but the camera level is almost the same. I didn't go further as to elevate the camera upward for 45 degrees, but it was enough to test the theory I've planned on paper to achieve a 360 panorama on a low-level. I'll make an analysis in a form of points to make it easier a bit to understand what we are working with here.

Target: Low-level panorama in a narrow space (my bathroom) using my new tripod, whose central column can be flipped upside down to fit the camera downward closer to the ground. An impressive perspective if you ask me!
Problem: Tripod legs must show. The whole planning is to eliminate these legs in the final stitch of the panorama. To add to my misery, there are shadows (but I didn't bother much about them) and there is no lock on the central column of the tripod; meaning, if I want to rotate the tripod by lifting it from the hook on the top, the legs will definitely flip back and won't be kept steady in their places to rotate them. This recalls for another treatment: using both hands to keep the legs as they are.

The first and the main part of the problem is the legs of the tripod. I knew a solution to this is to actually take the panorama twice; each time with the tripod legs in different positions. This is natural thinking I believe, as the goal here is to get specific angles with the legs showing once, and then another time with the legs not showing then, and overlapping the two to eliminate the legs completely. This requires a VERY measured workflow. Another solution would be to simply hang the whole thing from the ceiling without the help of a tripod and we wouldn't have to bother about the legs at all! Simple, isn't it?!

The Workflow

1. In the beginning, and to make it easier to align things perfectly, I've decided to align the camera forward to one of the legs. But first, I had to rotate the VR-head disk (which clicks every specific angular amount as you specify) and fix it on Zero, and then I've loosened the base to rotate the whole base freely and aligned it to one of the legs. This can serve as a starting point and will help us to align the angles as perfectly as possible later on.

The camera (C) pointing to one of the legs directly

2. This alignment, means that we can start from exactly the same point, when the tripod is rotated for 180 degrees. All what we have to do is rotate the camera (and the VR-head) 180 degrees as well and we can start from the same point to do the second panorama. This angle of rotation, 180 degrees, is best in this situation because it guarantees that in the two panoramas, the 3 legs of the tripod will NOT fall in the same place or angle between the two panoramas. If any of the legs in the first panorama falls in a certain angle and another leg, in the second panorama, falls on that same angle, then our overlapping goal fails and the tripod leg in that specific angle can't be removed! (Make a mental image and rotate the triangle in the figure above to 90 degrees around its center).

The camera (C) starts for the second panorama from the same point as before after rotating the tripod 180 degrees (half a circle), and also rotating the camera 180 degrees to make it point to the starting point.

3. As stated before, it is hard to rotate the tripod from the hook on the top, because the legs would close down and I would have to stretch them back as they were before, and in doing so I will definitely loose coordination. Hence, I needed a method to align the center of the tripod in the same point after I rotate it with my hands. Unfortunately, this was impossible to do because the VR-head occupies the space and it was hard to align the center to the ground and put a mark there. I had to resolve the problem in another way, away from its center! Simply by noticing that a two overlapping triangles can form a circle, we can sort something out!

The two positions for the tripod for each panorama. The tips can be connected to form a circle.

4. Instead of aligning the center, we can then use the concept of the circle to point and predict the position of one of the legs when it is rotated. The best leg to be rotated here is the one aligned with the camera (this is the reason in the first place to align the camera to one of the legs). To predict its place after rotation, we measure the the distance between the leg tip to the center of the tripod (radius: r) and then count as much on the other side, and put marks on both positions (mine yielded a radius of 49.5cm).

The radius on both sides: the original starting point for the first panorama, and the predicted place after rotating the tripod for the second panorama.

5. That's it! After doing the first panorama (360 panorama) with one orientation for the tripod, I carried the tripod with both hands and aligned the leg+camera alignment with the second mark. At this point, I've rotated the camera 180 degrees to the back to start from the same point as the first panorama. This order is critical when files are managed by PTGui later on.

The whole process took around 45 minutes, excluding the time spent to adjust the tripod out of the bathroom, and adjusting the camera and lens settings as well. I tried here to use the hyperfocal concept to ensure that the whole range is in proper sharpness, because setting the fisheye lens to infinity here (as I usually do with normal panoramas) will make the floor closer to the camera blurred too much. The camera was finally adjusted to a hyperfocal at f/8. Simply set the camera to f/8 and manually rotate the focusing disk to fix the infinity symbol over "8" on the right side of the middle point.

Canon 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens
Source: B&H

Then after, the struggle of PTGui begins. In fact, the stitch was not at all perfectly good but it was way far better than my previous trials! I'm happy for this despite the broken lines and the weird exposure spots and noise (say, even a normal panorama has those!!). The HDR images were prepared in Photomatix 3 instead of 4 to spare myself some headache. But later on I used version 4 for tone-mapping only.

As a beginning, I've decided to make use of the Blending Priority in PTGui before I begin aligning the images in the very beginning, and this option is supposedly only a numerical value that bears priority but nothing else, i.e. the number you put there is not entered in any calculations but PTGui uses this number to order the importance of the images and which to blend the most and the least (However, I tend to think of it as how much radius of the image is taken into). By default all images are given a value of 100, and as a starter for me, I've reduced this number to 50 for every image that has a leg from the tripod. The initial result was astonishing, and some tuning was done later on to some images to hide more from the legs or broken lines around the toilet seat, which worked as well (but not for the tripod leg which I had to clone later on).

Kackerlacka

In case you wonder about the name, Kackerlacka, it means "cockroach" in Swedish (yes, again). I just liked how it sounds, so I've changed the name from Cockroach to Kackerlacka!

The major fixes were done in HDR mode to hide the remnant of a tripod leg (above the bath tub) which is something I couldn't hide using Blending Priority option. I had to cut a piece from the adjacent walls and stick them there over the remnant of the leg. Also, some spots of colors were there, in HDR mode, under the washing basin and I had to clone these out too. The other fixes were done after tone-mapping the HDR panorama and majorly they were broken lines on the floor and else where, but I didn't fix them all. I was happy enough that my plan worked already and decided to give myself a rest from all the headache of fixes! Taking a row at 45 degrees upward was an idea, but I've neglected that for the time being because I do need to raise the camera a bit more from the ground. In my first trials with this panorama, the camera rotation when it was tilted, caused the setting's center to shift from its place causing more chaos when it comes to stitching! For the time being, this is enough, and might even fit a simple QTVR!

II. Moon on The Roof:
Spent Monday night on the roof trying to test some long exposure procedures. It was a hasty work really and no intention to make some art work out of it. I barely metered and settled everything on the roof (and forgot that the WB was set to K3000). However, with my fisheye lens not much can be done and lengthen the exposure time because I don't have the proper filters that fit to it. I wanted to use this lens specifically for the distortion and the wide view, but I might try to test my 18-55mm lens since I have a filter adapter to this one.
Anyway, this experiment was useful in some aspects. I've realized some problems and aspects that might be helpful for me in the future.
The longest exposure I could get was for 8 minutes, and for some reason I was not able to automate the whole process. I had to come back and forth to the tripod to do the exposure again, as I had some overlapping layers in my mind. To make sure that the breeze won't move the camera I've hung the camera back on the hook on the central column.

Lance Keimig in his book mentions a lot about the histogram and doing tests before doing the long exposure, but I have to admit I didn't do any of that. I was working in a haste. One thing though was proved as Lance mentioned: the heat produces more noise. The temperature was around 40C (~104F) and that definitely produces not only luminance noise, but also chromatic ones like if the ISO was not set to 100. However, the results were interesting indeed...

Falling Moon

In the beginning I've decided to work with DPP (Canon's software) because as, again, I read in Lance's book, the software of the camera manufacturer is best suited to deal with the noise recorded into the RAW file, while third-party editors, like Photoshop or Lightroom, do not identify this data (but they do give a way to clean the noise and sharpen the image). Long story short, it didn't work. It didn't fit my workflow and I made some mistakes (converting the RAWs to TIFFs in sRGB space) and DPP do not provide ProPhoto space (the highest space I guess was Wide Gamut RGB, which is still lesser than ProPhoto space). One thing though surprised me, sort of, and that was the "Linear" option in DPP. In fact, the Linear option, when turned on, did change the image into the "real" atmosphere that I was looking at on the roof!

One RAW slide before ticking Linear option.

The same RAW slide after ticking the Linear option. This how the sky was in real.

Anyway, I didn't want things to go the normal way, so I followed my old routine with Photoshop. Fixing the WB made an interesting blue sky, the only thing that was missing is a long line made by the moon. However, since I had shot several exposures, I wanted to overlap them. It was not an easy task and the auto-blending in Photoshop didn't help me much so I had to do things manually, and that was awkward! All in All, it was a struggle against the noise and I tried to make a trade between details and the noise...

Luna Cadit (Falling Moon)

Another surprise was waiting for me in this scene though. This little surprise was a delicate one, that with some noise cleaning it just disappears. My place is in the middle of a urban area and of course in such places, it is hard to see stars. Seems, however, this is not the case always...

Click for enlargement to see more clearly.

I think I can learn now for sure that the longer the exposure, the more lights from the stars can be in even in a busy area with so much light pollution like the city. But, this is not an excuse for not going to the desert or any isolate place to take some star trails. I'd love to do this one day, if only I got the means. Hmm, maybe light painting is my next target? Who knows...

III. My Busy Schedule:
After managing some aspect of panoramas in the past 2 weeks, specifically in the Kackerlacka and Asylum panoramas, and looking at the knowledge gained in the past weeks specially about what is related to the Blending Priority in PTGui, I've decided to go for another round and do a panorama that was done some long time ago (and probably in a time when I didn't have even a VR-head). That is a panorama in my office, including myself in it.
I've learned my lessons already from the previous trial, but I never thought I would be doing it again. One of the critical things in such panoramas, and because I have no one to help me out as it should be, the scene must be STATIC. Yes, in bold. A slight movement can screw the whole scene for you. In my case now and with my new trial with this, I did face further problems, as I do with any panorama, yet, I did fix some aspects that did make troubles for me before. I learned new lessons as well this time too!

I'm Busy

I won't go and talk about the nadir point this time. I guess, if you were following the past posts, you know already what kind of headaches involved here and that's why this one is cropped from the bottom (yet, a QTVR can be done later, and this is what I'm thinking of).
The panorama was done completely in the beginning (including taking the nadir and zenith points) and then, carefully without moving the tripod, I've tilted the camera down 45 degrees (because on the couch, my feet won't be showing if the camera was not tilted down). After putting the camera down, I've decided carefully for my places to sit (or lay) and I had to do this VERY slowly to avoid moving any object (and holding the wireless remote of course). I've added myself three times in three close positions on the couch and this was a mistake. The couch stretches and changes its shape when you sit on it, and this is not good for the stitching process and I had to sacrifice this appearance and drop down two slides for me sitting on the left and right. Attention to such details is a MUST.

Playing around with Blending Priority (raising and lowering) was fine in the beginning until I discovered after the FIRST stitches (I made already 3 projections of this panorama) that there was some "blending errors". Some portions of me disappeared (knees of me sitting disappeared and the elbow too, and in other places). Trying to fix these errors in Photoshop was not a good idea. Hence, I've went on and tried to change the blending priority again for several slides and here, I had to do some trade off: when I increase the blending priority for really important slides (mainly those I'm in) I will be ending up with broken lines. I've decided to do it that way since broken lines are, relatively, easy to fix in Photoshop.

The settings for shooting this panorama were critical, mainly the White Balance (WB). In many occasions and many times, whenever I go around my work place shooting under various lights, I always end up with a problem deciding what WB I should use, and henceforth, what color temperature to put when I tone-map my HDR images. This time though, I've decided to go on with a simple test. Since the wall in my office is supposedly called "white" then, why not use it as a Custom WB? Simply, I've took a picture of the wall under the current lighting conditions and configured this image as a custom WB. They say though that it is more accurate to set the WB using a 18% gray card in the location but I think I've made the right decision here, and when it was the time to tone-map the whole thing (after heavy editing in Photoshop) the picture was majorly neutral and natural, and all what was needed is a bit of blue hue to be added (by putting the color temperature in Photomatix down little bit). Although you can set the WB manually later on when you edit a RAW file, but you always see in books some advises about the importance of doing the right WB in place. I think after this experiment I can say it is completely true. Many times when I take pictures from my work place, the WB was hard to be decided for, and usually I would end up with too much bluish images or with purplish ones. Here though, I made use of the Av mode and not the (M)anual mode, since it was so hard to decided for an intermediate shutter speed between highlights and shadows. The difference was vast.
Beside the corrections in Photoshop for the stitching errors, there was also a minor edit to put up the exposure value for the whole scene while putting down the Exposure for the light sources and window. This is my usual way for emphasizing the details in these areas (although the light sources, when blown out, can be attractive as well).
____
After all of this fuss this week, I'm really wondering where am I going? Seems that the more I work with my camera, the more I get isolated, somehow. I still have some ideas to do with my camera but I didn't have time to do them this week, and probably will work on them soon by next week, and until the time comes, my mind will keep being busy with daydreaming, keeping me a dead with open eyes, and imagining how things would evolve around me in a reality that will never happen. I can hear it now going... tick... tock... tick... tock... ... ... tick ... ... ... ... ...

A Struggle...

2011-08-04T07:43:00.000+03:00

A week messier than the one before! Frustration, vexation, a heart attack, name it whatever you want. Any term that gives a resemblance to "annoying" would work perfectly here.
I've been trying so hard to do things prior to this post to be able to put some work, but I kind of failed, but hey, I tried! But the thing I'm regretting the most is, not being able to work on a simple task as recording my Ayvarith texts.

To start with a failure, I was trying to take a panorama on a low level. The new tripod gives me new and interesting capabilities (and yes it is made in China), and for this I was trying to work with a panorama in the bathroom, again. The location is chosen for a certain idea that I wanted to imply, however, there was one difficult task to come over (and I couldn't); The tripod legs. Simply, impossible to clone out, unless of course I would decide to work for one full week on cloning them out. Despite my trials to rotate the set from above and take the panorama again with the legs of the tripod out of their former place (and then overlap the 2 results), yet, that didn't work quite well and PTGui didn't help (nor Autodesk Stitcher which I don't know how to use still!).

The setting in the bathroom!
The floor is clean don't worry! :)

Another work had to be done in my work place. Now it's Ramadhan and the working hours are shifted and shortened generally but however, I'm still on my same routine. Not affected and hope to remain like that till the end of the month. Anyway, I try to finish whatever I have to do in the lab by the early hours of the morning just to do whatever I like the rest of the day. If only I can bring my PC to work to do something about these images and panoramas!
Last week I did take a small vertical panorama for the corridor but when I got back home, the process was hard to be done and to stitch, hence, I decided to go on and do it again last Monday but this time, a full spherical panorama. I think I got my lesson now from all of this. Always go for the full and then part whatever you want.

Branches
Despite the fact that it's not a full spherical panorama, this vertical panorama taken from under an arch of bushes and then cropped. I realized that I almost done a full panorama here minus some few angles.

- Struggling With Failure:
Back to the main headache of this week for me. A panorama from my work place, and specifically from the corridor of labs. As stated before, I took a limited panorama from there before but I was mistaken not to make it a full spherical one. Also, this time I decided to take the whole panorama with (M)anual mode instead of the (Av) mode as I usually do. In brief, the process is about metering the highlight and shades in (Av) mode to check the shutter speeds, and then choose an average shutter speed in (M)anual mode, and that way you will make the exposure time to the camera more constant time-wise, making for a smoother transition, as it seems, as you move your camera while taking the panorama, from highlights to shadow areas. On the other hand, the WB was set manually to about 3300K, instead of relying on the presets of WB that already exist in the camera.
This time I tried hard to take a shot of the Nadir point but things later on were not that easy either. I've been struggling hard to achieve a suitable blend but seems I need more work with my tripod. I went through much fluctuating between Photoshop and PTGui trying to fit the Nadir point in its place.

Nadir shot taken after moving the tripod away from its original place. Not a good shot!

The idea in fact is simple, and I've read a lot of documentations online and from the PTGui help so that I might fit the Nadir point perfectly. The idea is simply to stretch the Nadir shot which I took from an angle (after changing the tripod position) into its place on the completed panorama. This simple idea, was not simple to do at all!

Asylum
Vertical panorama.

As a brief discussion for the colors; here I tried to add a dirty look resembling asylums and places of maniacs that we usually see on movies and such stories related to psychos. My main interest, in general from the very beginning, is the linear shape of the corridor and that is what drove me to do the panorama (twice). Yet, when it came to the tone-mapping and fixing colors, the philosophy in the mind begins. Seems I do have a certain pattern of thinking when it comes to such workflow: Notice, Shoot, Add philosophy with colors.
Back to the nadir, here, you can see the middle block in the vertical panorama is totally covered. Not perfectly covered though but compared to my other trials, this is considered superb, I guess.
It turns out that my VR-head, Manfrotto 303SPH, is not one of the best VR-heads available. Not because of its weight, but probably because of its size. By coincidence and as I was surfing the net to find a solution to my nadir problem, I've discovered that MY common problem of having parts of the VR-head into my shooting process is in fact, normal. Other people who used this very same VR-head did suffer from the same problem, and if you are not going to make a QTVR, then this should not be a big problem; a simple crop would do the job.
Yet, my main problem is, I insist on doing this and I wanted to add a nadir point to make a suitable QTVR. There is always, however, an open option for me to create my own nadir which is something common as well: a title block.
In the processes that I've been through, which were so complicated and so memory-exhaustive, I've learned many things for now, but that does not compensate for a good nadir shot. There are methods mentioned on the net for such way to shoot the nadir, but lot of them are impractical. I've learned some new options in PTGui that are said to be helpful for nadir stitching (like Blending priority) but they were useful for other ideas in my head. After all, I've managed to stick a fixed and isolated nadir (from an original angled shot) which did not fit perfectly, but yet, to me it is a glance of hope...

Asylum II
The isolated and fixed nadir was way larger than the piece I wanted to cover.

One of the problems that occurred here while stitching (or after actually) is the weird splashes of colors that are not originally there. There had been some odd blue bands, and you might see them as well even after cloning (never been good with cloning!). I'm not sure what causes such weird colored occurrences, but it might be the process by which I took the panorama or the effect of the original WB? Thinking about it now I really can't decide how to research this topic! And to add to the drama, Photomatix is still acting weird for adding white spaces to perfectly aligned images!
Finally, there was this simple QTVR (I didn't do QTVRs in some time now), in which I've forgot to turn on the option that says "360 panorama" when tone-mapping in Photomatix. For this reason you might notice a sudden change in shades as you rotate in the QTVR. You need the latest QuickTime plugin to see the QTVRs on web. If you downloaded QuickTime and installed it already, the plugin is supposedly installed already...

The final twist to the epic of such panorama is, a tunnel view. I was going to make a little planet projection of the scene but it turns out that it does not make much difference to the vertical panorama that I did before. Thus, a tunnel view projection is more interesting I'd say!

Asylum (Tunnel View)

It was a struggle indeed. Made some advancement and got some failures as well, but let's hope I did learn my lessons here. Originally, the images were stitched on relatively larger sizes (not relative to what you see here but to what have been submitted to stock sites), but after all I had to compromise and give up some space to have mercy on my PCs memory.
All of this work got me back to a spark of memory in my head, when I used to be an active member somehow in the Wild Minds network; a network dedicated to Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD). The vertical panorama specifically, which was the first in this series, got me back to myself to realize that I didn't do much against my MD habits. The ups and downs in my life got me even deeper into this. Getting closer to 31 in few days does not make it any better as well, as socializing is already harder for me to do. Maybe I should get back to the network, to people who are, to some extent, like me... just wondering where to this is going...

Salute, to such a hectic week, with a little dedication inspired from the essence of the strokes of bad luck during this week...

Busy Life
Long exposures (25") layered with "soft light" blend.

Moody Philosophy

2011-07-28T06:03:00.001+03:00

Been a really messed up week. Busy and time flying by without control. Ramadhan is going to be next week (not sure which day I need to check the calendar). It is not a big deal for me as I'm used to fasting now, but because of the time shift in general, and because of the traffic jams that are just unreasonable, I would be getting tired more often.
Today's post will be somehow a long one, generally because I had some mood to do the experiments and things I wanted to do for some time now. Yet, I didn't include everything of what I did this week (like pictures I took from my work place!). Hope you find this useful anyway.

I. Beacho-sophy:
Been to the beach in early hours of Friday after a sleepless night, despite the tired body I got then. I really was not in the mood to drive but I didn't have anything better to do, so I went there one hour after the sunrise time, and it was annoying indeed. You would think people have been spending their time overnight on that beach, and needless to say how the many annoying barbarians do act when they see someone with a camera. My main fear was, though, that some of families there might cause me a headache thinking I'm taking pictures of their kids. Very annoying.
The sun already rose above the horizon with some angle at that time. The light is not as warm as I wanted it like when it is at sunrise time, but it did make enough elongated shadows for my use. The problem with summer, and I believe it is something general and not only in this region, is that the sun doesn't give that warm yet not so harsh light quality in the morning or by sunset, and this is related to the relative inclination of the sun's path from one point of the horizon to the other. In winter, the qualities of light of the early morning or at sunset times are the best for more interesting play of light and an interesting play of colors (think of mixing the white cover of the snow with the coming warm light rays of the sun at sunrise or sunset making a balance between warm and cold into some interesting composition; alas, we don't get snows in this part of the world!).

I think I've went into some state that opposes the general trend of thought, or maybe this is what I think. I roamed the beach after breakfast in BK aimlessly in fact. The high tide didn't make any good spots for me. A low tide timing is the best to discover the rocks beneath, and those are the ones that do give an interesting look, like the old shot called Silent Observer.

Silent Observer

However, under the light of the book that I've finished lately, Harald Mante's Serial Photography, I kept my eyes open for different and ordinary objects that can make up a theme after all. In fact, thinking about it now I do have a lot of photos that can be grouped into some unique themes of themselves. After all, however, I rated the book for 3 starts out of 5 on Amazon. I think it needs more order and organized writing, but nevertheless, it is a source of inspiration!

Having this book in my mind, you would see things in a different way somehow, or in fact you might just begin hunting for pictures of things that people usually don't care about: mob, rocks, chairs, doors, rags... etc. This is exactly what I noticed myself when I came across some large stones and rocks that lay on the beach, but I have to say that HDR helped me here to emphasize the idea that I wanted to deliver. The image was edited first in HDR mode in Photoshop just to change the saturation and add some adjustment layers to fix the exposure and other color casts. Gave it a try with the manual tone-mapping, but, as usual, I've failed with an honorary degree! Anyway, I realized that a sharper look can be achieved when tone-mapping this adjusted HDR in Photomatix after all.

Rock and Rocks

Despite the fact that this image is already rejected from some stock sites, but I'm satisfied about it because I have an idea behind it. It is maybe a matter of Philosophy, or simply Psychology. If you are sure of something and expressed something in a way you are satisfied with, it wouldn't matter, maybe, if others refuse it after all. Of course this can't be general, as we have matters in life that enroll under "etiquette"!

My idea is uniqueness and being separate from the rest. Being with others and being alone in the same time. In fact, I did take images from Ireland and from here that can be put under such theme. I'm thinking seriously of making a "tableau" or a large image that contains smaller images or thumbnails of images that go under the theme of Uniqueness, Alone, or Different. Good thing though I didn't dip myself so much into the water while taking this shot, as my feet were going down into the mud and the sea water was tickling my feet as well!

But if the previous image was done in a thoughtful way, this was not in fact the whole story. There are times when the concept comes later after the visual aspect. I like to call it a Reverse Philosophy, as it is simply a reflection on what did you take a picture of, and trying to find a philosophical meaning for it AFTER taking the picture and not while or before taking the picture itself. I think it is simply put: being the photographer and the viewer in the same time.

This happened as I was walking on the beach and found out a grating of some sort that I just don't know what it is used for, and apparently it was a really old piece because of the corrosion. The idea in the beginning was purely systematic and abstractive. I planted the grating in the sand to try to make a shadow the curves with the sand ripples. I thought it is a good thing to have an image where straight lines, make curved shadows at the same time...

Grated Shadow

Tried hard to make some interesting geometry or illusion by moving around and pointing in several directions toward the grate, but I guess this one was the best. It seems that I'm in the process of making my own style in shots, where I tend, automatically, to play with the visual lines of the object and swallow up the object to make it simpler or illusional. My spell-checker doesn't approve "illusional" so I'm going to say: tricky!

Another shot was made from the back in portrait to give some depth to the essence of the image. The sea water was included in the scene but was cropped out later, leaving the grate and the sand.

Beach Remains

The picture above followed the rule of thirds originally until it was cropped. Both of the images of the grate were actually processed from RAW files, but when I shot them, I did take bracketed sequence to prepare the scene for HDR processing. However, I deemed that unnecessary to do as I liked the colors and the exposure in one of the slides for each scene, and started from there trying to adjust more of the colors. It is dramatic enough as it is. I didn't clean the above shots from the litter dropped on the beach intentionally, as I wanted to add some "motion", specially in Beach Remains, to simply show for real, Beach Remains! It is the message of what we do to nature. Everything on this planet is beautiful, until we arrive in it. However, Grated Shadow specifically was a point to stop in my thinking. The meaning that I give to this image was simply added AFTER the shot and the processing and on location I really didn't have such thoughts at all. I can see it now as a show of how straight people in the apparent, do have crooked personalities at the back. Are we what we say we are? Are we straight (in manners) indeed, or it's just a bubble we are living? When the sun shines over, our shadows will become clearer to the observer, but in the same time, we might be indeed straight and good, yet the background makes us look evil. In the second picture you can see that the bent grate is actually forming a full circle despite the bend in its structure from the top. Go on and think about it. How would you interpret that with yourself?

Walked off from that location to hear a rumble on the road in front of the beach, to see that an accident just happened before my eyes! Two buses crushing each other's sides. Anyway, while everyone was looking, I prepared my tripod to shoot one last image. The shed. It is a common target for my camera on the beach but this time my thought was aiming at making a play out of it. An illusion that I was not aware of before. You can visually make the shed stand on 3 legs instead of its regular 4 legs!

Geometrical Play IV

This one too was processed from a single RAW even though I did take bracketed sequence, and guess what, I didn't notice the clouds in the horizon behind the shed. Things were like washed out in the location but the details started to show up when being processed. With adding some adjustment layers to fix colors and luminance, some banding in the sky appeared and I had to use some blurring techniques to render it smoothly with other areas of the sky.
I did try making a 3D image out of this scene but seems that I swung my tripod head so much, thus making the final 3D image containing a strong visual ghosting effect. However, my aim was to change my procedure somehow when I work on creating 3D images out of HDR slides. It is another story to tell, maybe on another day...

You might be reading the title Geometrical Play IV and wonder where was III? The fact is I didn't put Geometrical Play III in any posts on this blog. But just to make a good sequence (a new series?) I might as well list them here accordingly...

Geometrical Play I

Geometrical Play II

Geometrical Play III

As you can see, Geometrical Play III is only a merge between I and II. I had to overlap the two and manually blending the middle area to make it look like one pillar after all.

II. What Stop Are You?:

There was an experiment that I wanted to do some really long time ago, but since most of my work and inspiration comes essentially from a spark of a mood, I didn't really feel like doing it until this week arrived. This experiment is just to know how many stops does the welding glass (got it from ACE few months back) put down. The settings was not easy to work with and in fact I started in a wrong way in the beginning, because I was using a halogen light source.

I was thinking of a halogen source in the beginning because I thought having a strong light is essential, since I'm going to use a glass that is almost opaque. Yet, my measurements using the camera metering did not work quite well because of the hard light and the shutter speed went far beyond the speed of 8000 (max shutter speed for Canon EOS 7D), and that was with the highest f-number (smallest aperture) that my Tamron lens could give (f45).

I had to re-configure the set and use a less intense light source, so I chose a regular tungsten lamp of 60W. The camera was set on Av (Aperture priority) mode so that I would change the f-number and the shutter speed would be shown up by metering. The ISO was fixed at 1600, and this high value is just to make the sensor more sensitive after putting the glass in front of the lens, and of course this value must be constant before and after putting the glass.

The set after re-configuration

Of course the experiment was carried out in a dark room (almost dark as the time was day), and I used my Tamron here mainly for two reasons: A) it has a macro mode so I can fill the lamp within the viewfinder completely and put the filament of the tungsten lamp in the center (for spot metering), and B) this lens has the highest f-number among my other lenses (can reach f/49, but in the experiment that maximum was f/45). After obtaining the results and putting them into spreadsheets, I managed to get the Stops from the simple equation that I usually use to measure the time required to take long exposure shots: T = S * 2^x, where T is the time after applying the Stops, and S is the shutter speed at metering, and x is the number of Stops. Simple algebra turns the equation for number of Stops as: x = [log(T) - log(S)] / log2.

Results of the experiment

The time here (or shutter speed) is in seconds of course. F-numbers below f/14 were neglected because the shutter speed required was faster than 8000 (that is 1/8000) and such measurements can't be considered for comparison. The maximum shutter speed for Canon EOS 7D is 8000. The average Stop number from all these values yields: 11.6635808068826; Of course I'm not going to include this number in my future calculations!! Thus, I can say the Stop of this welding glass is 11.7 as an approximation.

Another problem arise with using this glass, which is the tint. Welding glasses are usually tinted with some color, but fixing the WB might fix the problem as I did in this little experiment with the halogen lamp before. I'm not sure though how it would when it comes to a real scene with various colors around...

Halogen lamp with tint from glass

Fixing the tint with WB in RAW editor (added a bit of yellowish hue myself)

Now with such experiment, I might be able to use various materials and not necessarily glass to make up for filters! However, I'm stuck now trying to cut the glass piece to the size of Cokin Z-Pro filters so I would be able to fit it in the adapter as a regular filter. I'm lucky too that the thickness of the glass is acceptable and fits in the adapter, so all what I need is to cut it. So far, I couldn't find a shop to cut this piece and one shop told me already that I need a special type of shops that make glasses for cars' windshields and the like because this glass (the welding glass) is a special variety and might not be cut properly with regular methods! I might end up having to make up the holder myself in some DIY-way! Even with that though, I'm waiting for the release of new quantities of ND100 filters from Cokin which put down 6.6 stops. I read on some websites that the product was called for from the manufacturer for some reason. However, I'm waiting for notifications to my email from B&H whenever this product is available.

Finishing off this camera-trend with long-awaited writing capabilities. I've been busy with work lately. I have to do an experiment with some apparatus and take some readings, and I prefer to do it by early hours of morning so I would be able to do other things the rest of the day (at work). I really need to work on hard brainstorming on both fields: photography, and writing. Not an easy task at all.
I'm spending my time reading the last of the three books, which talks about the basic of the digital camera and photography, even though it would feel like I'm coming late to the class, but I'm learning new things still even if I know how to use my camera. Well, I can use the basic functions in the camera but still there are lot of things that I need to work and sort out and read about.
However, I've been trying hard to put some lines that were roaming around in my mind into some verses, and I had to sacrifice my time at work that I would specify for reading this book, to write what I wanted to write. I think I suck at time-planning, as usual. I need to sacrifice more for my Ayvarith projects and the sound-recording that I'm still not able to do. Anyway, my new written piece (call it a poem or a lyrics, as you like) is called Of You, All I Need, and maybe I should say, it is a dedication...

Of You, All I Need

Thinking of you till it hurts,
six thousand miles to fray.
Mimicking actions of love,
passionate dreams as they may.
Wondering about,
Searching around,
All what I envisioned seems untrue.

Seven seas or lands,
staggering winds won't stand,
for a peek into these eyes.
A signal is all I wait,
a heck of improbable fate,
watchin' it goes on by, by my eyes.

Through the distance,
I've burned my fire,
in hope of a glancing heart.
Through the silence,
I sought the patience,
when my world was fallin' apart.
Just a glance, though,
just a glance, now,
of you, all I need...

In the matter of the fact,
whether dead or alive I stay.
My mind is a conquered,
and my soul went astray.
Wondering about,
Searching around,
for something without a clue.

A flame of desire,
driving me to the higher,
to something ever untouchable.
If only this hand,
expands to stand,
some of this worried collectable.
I'm into pieces...

Through the distance,
I've burned my fire,
in hope of a glancing heart.
Through the silence,
I sought the patience,
when my world was fallin' apart.
Just a glance, though,
just a glance, now,
of you, all I need...

O my saviour in the gloom of troubles,
my smiler when my frowning doubles,
how did you leave me,
at a broken heart?

Casper...

2011-07-21T09:23:00.001+03:00

A sort of an idle week. Been trying to figure out some ways to use my camera here and there and totally forgetting about my Ayvarith projects COMPLETELY. There were attacks of fatigue, maybe because of my long gone fasting, I'm not sure really. However, it didn't go out completely idle as I was able to reach my camera somewhat, but most of the time I was working on old pictures from Ireland, dating back to 2009! Simply, I just felt like paying a visit to these pictures and having some rest myself, and tried my best to touch the RAW files only, without creating HDR.

Done an experiment just to test how it is to do some long exposure. If I remember correctly, the longest exposure I've done before was for 5 minutes on the roof on my house, when I was testing my new (back then) lens, Tamron 70-300mm Macro lens. I was pointing at Saturn if I remember correctly and made a little trail.

Trail of Saturn. Two trails imposed on each other.

This time the experiment was a bit different, and with me reading the new book I got about Night Photography (a great book, makes me want to try my luck with film cameras instead of digital ones), I'm getting inspired as I read, but unfortunately lot of my dreams need some nice landscapes and some nice people to be surrounded with. I went into trouble with cops before and I'm really not intending to have more at the current time.

My little experiment was to use a longer exposure time, but not outside. Simply in my room. I got the idea as I was reading the book (as usual, in my bed time to help me fall asleep more easily). The process to measure for the required time was somehow long, and I had to use a ND filter in an awkward position, because I was using a Fisheye lens, and in Fisheye lenses you need to a Gel filter to be placed at the back of the lens and not in the front of the lens, but I did it anyway and I stuck it with a duct tape even though it fell down later on because of the bad quality of the tape! That didn't affect the result much. It is an experiment after all and the results were not to be published in stock sites.

Night Photography by Lance Keimig

In the beginning I've fixed the camera in one corner and turned off the TV just keeping my PC monitor on (need it). I mounted my Fisheye 15mm lens to get a bigger portion of the room and went on configuring the setting that I would need. In fact I was aiming to expose for one hour but with all the mess in the mathematics the maximum I could achieve was 44 minutes, theoretically. I wanted one hour to give chance for more blur as I would lay in bed later on and, as usual, I would flip all over the place.

I've fixed the mode to Av (Aperture priority) and pushed the ISO to the maximum value "H", which counts for 12800. This is just to take the reading for the time needed at this level at 0EV. The time reading was about 20 seconds, taken while setting the metering to Center-Weight. I used this metering because, logically, I want the whole area to be measured and averaged and not only one spot of the scene. However, with some calculations and keeping in mind that going up and down in ISO in stops, will increase or decrease the time in doubles or halves accordingly (a stop = 2^x), all what was to be done is multiplication (20 seconds X 128, or 2⁷, that is 7 stops) and the result was around 2560 seconds (i.e. 43 minutes approximately). The ND2 (one stop) was stuck to the front of the lens hoping to increase the time of exposure and keeping the exposure as it is but seems I've done some wrong calculations here and there was no need for it. With my intervalometer remote control then I've fixed the exposure time to 44 minutes, and changed the mode to Bulb of course for such long exposures (and had to change the battery to be on the safe side).

TC-80N3 intervalometer (remote control)
Image Source

Snapshot from ACR (Adobe Camera RAW editor) with the time of exposure circled.

The histogram above is not a good histogram under the light of what I've read recently in Keimig's book. It is better, as mentioned, to have a histogram pushed toward the highlights (to the right that is) as much as possible (and clipping would occur most of the time) and it's just a rule of thumb, as this would grant a good exposure for the shadows. The histogram above was adjusted to avoid clipping from both sides. Few minutes after fixing everything and after opening the shutter (with a timer to give me time to go to bed first!), I've heard a sound of something falling down, and no wonder, it was the ND filter. I knew it would fall down with this bad quality of tapes! I didn't try to fix it but rather left it like that to see the results later on and the fact is, it didn't change much of the exposure.

Sleeping Ghost
general view


Sleeping Ghost (cut) zooming into the blur movement

In fact during the exposure I did indeed get up to do something with my PC and get back to bed but such movement was not recorded in this long exposure because I would need to stay more into one position and then move to record my image on the sensor. My movement to the PC and back to bed was fast so it was not registered on the sensor, but instead all what there is to see was my flipping in my place. A nice experiment that makes me somehow confident about my approach to this matter. Hope I can target the sky soon.

Another trial took place, with my little gift to my niece for her birthday. Well, I have to say it is a cheap one but I guess she wouldn't mind :). The take was to take a picture of it with a candle light, simply because I was sick of using that softbox I've made myself. It's clumsy and bigger than it's supposed to be I think. The shoot was done with Tamron 70-300mm Macro lens, as I wanted to get a closer look on the stones.

Juveler (jewels)

Juveler means "jewels" in Swedish. Why I chose Swedish? I don't know. Probably because I have now many Swedish online friends via MostPhotos, anyway the sound of the word was appealing to me. Yu-ve-ler. Has a sense of Turkish if you ask me (plural article in Turkish is -lar or -ler)!.

Despite its simplicity, the white balance here was hard to pick up and I had to adjust it by the RAW editor. Anyway, I preferred the hot tones to reflect the goldish hue (gold is attached to money and jewels and richness in general) even though the bluish hue when using Tungsten WB was appealing as well. Many ideas were crossing my mind just to shoot this simple bracelet, like long exposure (but there was no need for it really) and focus stacking. Focus stacking was probably more reasonable to do, because in such macro lenses the shallow depth is common and it depends on what kind of effect you like to achieve. If you want to increase the depth of field, then, focus stacking is the solution (and more work awaits) to include the whole subject into the depth. After looking at this result here, I think I can say I'm satisfied. The blurring effect at the back is nice enough. One thing I'm not satisfied about is, the luster of the stones. I wanted them to sparkle but I think I should have changed the angle of the light or the camera. I need to read more on this topic specifically.

Still working on some vertical panoramas and trying to understand more about the looks and trying to make a decision what would look good or bad about them. I can say that I've discovered that not all locations might be suitable for this. Naturally! Not all structures are suitable for such panoramas (or for other types of techniques as well). This is nature I believe. There are often times though when flipping (rotating) the point of view (the roll) would be better, but you might sacrifice some aspects. This is exactly what happened to me.

Alice in Thornbrook

Considered, by me, one of the worst panoramas I've ever made. This panorama can't be stitched directly in HDR, but I had to go around and tone-map, then stitch. However, what I like is the light lamp in the ceiling which gives an illusion of a tilt while the ground is straight still, and the window on the right which gives a depth to the inside. The image is for the dining (or breakfast) room in Thornbrook House (B&B) where I stayed for 14 days. Miss those days.
Another panorama, which was a bad too, and even worse than this one because of the shake and shifts of the tripod and the VR-head rotating my camera. This panorama even got severe stitching errors even after stitching the tone-mapped version instead of the HDR version.

In Terra Horologiis (in land of clocks)

I like the tones, and the window on the left, which like the previous vertical panorama gives some depth into the inside, but the bad part is that it has so much distortion in the chairs and clocks, and other furniture pieces. Unlike the previous one, which was a simple room, the lounge was filled with objects making distortion in such locations appear so severe. Conclusion: Always check the location and see if you can re-arrange objects in case you would think of doing such vertical panoramas. Also, don't forget the roll part, which can be a good trade between good features (like a window in perspective for example) and the good looks (not much distortion in vital parts).

It's Thursday, finally. I'm praying for some rest now after a week of unexplained fatigue. Words are stuck in my mind and can't put them on paper or on monitor. A sense of panic and fear occupies me from time to time but I don't know why, and my daydreams are having a great toll on my mind with negative thoughts. I'm going to hit this Post button and try to forget the world while reading a book... by the way, did you know that I hate Internet Explorer? Yeah...

New Heights...

2011-07-14T10:08:00.001+03:00

What a mix of a week. Slow and fast, but nevertheless, I'm happy it's over already. To me at least since it's the last day here and the beginning of a weekend by tomorrow. Started out the week with a drama when the AC stopped working suddenly and the weather was humid, at a time I was already planning to do some experimenting with my camera on the roof. Anyway, after fixing the AC and after having a shower in sweat (then a shower with real water), everything got back to normal. Literally speaking, on Monday, July 11th, I did NOT sleep at all, and even went to work the very early morning without sleeping prior to that (I was awake since 7 p.m. the Sunday before). Could not sleep until the next day, Tuesday, at around 2 a.m..
I got some story here to tell, but before I go on talking about it I got to announce that I got a new tripod now (headless) and I think I've should have had this long time ago. It fits my VR-head perfectly giving more stability and on the other hand I can fit a previously-purchased tripod head (or panning head) separately. This pan head has one handle to rotate around making it easier (and faster) to handle rather than using two controls for panning sideways and vertically. I couldn't find this brand on the net or on B&H, but it's called Fancier, followed by some model number.
Just as a little review, the tripod is extremely useful for my work specially when it comes to panoramas, and it extends to some lengths longer than my previous tripods (only matched maybe by my monopod). The camera can fixed on the central column of the tripod either way (up and down). The weight is not an issue, but I have to say it is a bit heavier than my previous aluminum tripod. The legs can be stretched out to low levels as well (giving me some ideas now).
Now to the bad points: It doesn't have a handle to carry around. To carry it around I'd have to put it in its case. It does not have a lock around the central column to hold the 3 legs firmly, making sliding legs a possibility.
I've measured the full length of the tripod extended, with central column completely stretched, and having my VR-head above that, it gives out a length of around 204cm (~ 6.69 ft), and that inspired me for a little thing to do, as I will explain later. Now let's start the little story...

1. Chapter One: Idiocy:

Yes; Idiocy. I admit (but maybe you need to look in the mirror in case you are laughing now, ahem). Early this week, I was going on and on trying to figure out a way to extract a vertical panorama out of a full panorama, which I did successfully, with delicate calculations and procedures. To explain this, I might need to draw a little diagram.

Panorama Plan

Instead of using the slide numbers that I usually get after converting to HDR images for the panorama stitching, I'm using simply numbers for angles. The outer circle is for the horizon or 0 degrees tilt, and the inner circle is for 45 degrees upward tilt. There is no need to use a downward 45 degrees tilt when we talk about vertical panoramas, but maybe in certain occasions it might add some depth by putting more of the background. The middle point "Z" here means the Zenith of the panorama. I will be using the notion "^" for angles on the inner circle.

Now, an example to work with. The first target to work with was the Ardeaglais, as I explained in the previous post last week. This vertical panorama followed with the same plan, but as a comparison I will put it here again...

Suas agus Síos (up and down)

To make out this panorama, I've started with frontal angles first [12,1,2] and start from there going upward [12^,1^,2^]. At the zenith, I realized one slide from the zenith won't be enough, so I must take others on the side, i.e. [10^,4^]. Now, the hard part, which had to be done outside in Photoshop then plugging in the results into PTGui. The coming part includes the slides at angles [8,7,6] at 0 and 45 tilts (notice that I keep the order from left to right). I had to rotate these slides upside down to mimic the view of upside down (duh!) because simply, I couldn't change the rotation of these slides within PTGui without affecting the whole stitching process. The stitch was successful, to some degree, and the image was there online.

Later on, I thought that this is not enough. The vertical panorama was too thin to my eyes. So I decided to include more width, and that is by taking angles 11 and 3, and also 9 and 5. This inclusion meant I had to include more from angles 10 and 4, and other work related to flip the images of the lower side and... wait a minute! huh! How come I didn't see this coming...

The Hanging Dominican
more width added.

2. Chapter Two: Spark of Light:

In case you wonder why I named the last chapter "Idiocy" and didn't know why yet, well, here it is! After working with the above panorama, The Hanging Dominican, I realized that I'm practically... using the full set of the panorama! Should I flip some and keep some? Is it really easier than I thought? It's really amazing how we lose our conscious when we concentrate about details of procedures and forget about the whole picture or concept! The whole procedure of flipping images before stitch, picking the proper slides, and all the fuss in the memory because of that - all of that could have been avoided by a simple touch. Changing the pitch parameter for the spherical panorama and point it upward to the roof! As simple as that! The width of the panorama can be controlled then later on by cropping in Photoshop after all.

Monkish Design
full spherical panorama with changing pitch orientation

3. Chapter Three: Complicated Simplicity:

Now, this is something related to panoramas but it's not related to the previous points before. I explained above some aspects of my new tripod and I had plans to try it out on the roof. I thought such good height that this tripod can provide for me would be a good start to see how it works with a simple panorama from above. I had to climb on the highest point on the house and from there spread out my tools. My aim was a simple panorama; a 360, i.e. one horizontal line.

Homeland Summer

Despite its simplicity, the stitching took me hours to fix, and I'm still not satisfied with the results. Technically, the process of taking the panorama took me less than 5 minutes, literally. To take this panorama, I used a method that I've read about before but never used it, which uses metering for highlights and shadows of the scene with a fixed aperture (f-number) and then take the shutter speeds that you get from metering, and work in Manual mode, fixing the shutter speed to something in between the two shutter speeds (of the highlights and of the shadows). This way would make a coherent exposure across the whole set, but it didn't work quite well probably because I'm in the open sun (and I don't want to talk about the heat).

For some reasons unknown to me, there was always break in lines even in this simple panorama, and optimization would fix this but with some weird stretching lines (caused by distorting some images to fit some areas down there). The biggest problem was one of the slides didn't have control points to stitch with others, and fixing my own control point did make the situation worse. I tried to optimize the exposure in hope that would fix the control points problem (exposure might be a factor for not recognizing some points or pixels on adjacent images, sometimes), but that didn't work out. There was some crop in some of the slides, but it was not much of a big deal (one to three pixels I believe) so this reason was rolled out.

Finally and just to get the process going on, I gave up stitching in HDR. I simply tone-mapped the whole set, and stitched from there. The set was stitched nicely without any loss in control points! Since I'm satisfied with the colors already, I thought it's not needed to save the control points and stitch back in HDR to tone-map again. No need for this. There were some broken lines and optimization saved the work, but with some stretching in the lower portion (can be apparent even after cropping it in the image above). Left now with problems of noise and grain pixels which were hard to remove without losing some details. I still don't understand why such problems occurred in such a simple panorama as this one...

My books arrived now and I can "waste" some of my time reading. Three books they are:

Of the three, the Night Photography book is the one that captures my interest the most. Did I mention that I have an artificial language to look after?...

Arithmetical Endeavor

2011-07-07T08:14:00.000+03:00

I can't believe it's Thursday already. I don't feel even being in this office and typing this! I'm fasting, true, but who said I can't sleep more? I'm just hoping the weather would stay stable as it is now...

Yet, who said you should adhere to the bad weather? Well, maybe from the safety side, yes it's better not to do anything with your camera without proper cautions taken care of. Well, I don't have such cautions, but I decided to work in the dust when we had a strike of a dust wave (as usual, every weekend). I didn't do much with my VR-head for some time now so I've decided to go and try it out there, in the yard of my own home...

Still a Home

The tone-mapping of this HDR panorama got me by surprise. My aim was to find a yellowish hue for the image but when tone-mapping I found out that however I change the slides it just turns out with some shade of magenta. Even Color Balance in Photoshop did not correct much of it. Not planning to do it as a QTVR, so I've decided to cut out the bottom and some of the top instead of cloning out as usual. I'm studying now more methods for easier Nadir shooting. I have to admit though that I was lazy here. I needed to do more of "selective" tone-mapping; like tone-mapping two versions of the HDR and then overlapping them and do some masking between the two. The level of black is exaggerated to add some melodrama and melancholy to the scene by the fact that it's a dust wave accumulating on the ground (taken at noon, the dust wave started around morning).
Not one of my favorites I have to say, anyway I had to do one more task with this panorama; tunneling. This time though, I had to go further before tone-mapping and do some edition in Photoshop to ensure the yellowish hue for the whole panorama and avoid that magenta look and shade. Some cropping as well was used just to remove a remnant of the tripod handle in the stitched image.

Being a Grain of Sand

The title was inspired by Simply Red's song Say You Love Me, because when I saw such a view after the final adjustments, I couldn't help but to feel tiny compared to the structure (which is supposedly to be my home!). Speaking of yellow of course doesn't mean to make it bright (I hate yellow), but a dark golden hue is fine. I think it's attractive to the eye.
This simple experiment now is pushing me further to think more about abilities and capabilities in panoramas venture. I'm quite convinced now that my tripods are not useful to this VR-head at all. Specially that the handle of the tripod would show up in the panoramas (and it is large and needs to be cloned out carefully). One of the methods for shooting the nadir might be useful in compensating this and dropping out the appearance of this handle in the panorama (by using Point of View optimizing in some detailed work). I hve to try this out one day.
Beside the tripods, I've realized that I can subtract a vertical panorama out of a full panorama! However, it's not going to be an easy task and if I'm aiming for a vertical panorama originally, then I better do it that way. The thing is, I never tried doing a vertical panorama with my VR-head, and to do so I need to flip the Vr-head (L-shaped) to make it horizontal, so the camera would rotate in a circle vertically. Not an easy task with such head mounted on such tripods I have already. This is one of the reasons to think about a new specialized tripod with exchangeable head, if possible.
However, beside this technical observation, I'm not somehow aware of the necessity to stabilize my work with panoramas in a coherent way; that is to make my procedures with every panorama I tend to do more regular and similar. Such regularization would make my work easier on computer in case I needed to extract a file from the whole set for any purpose, like that for a vertical panorama. Making a mental note now, I've decided to:

In each row, I will be taking 13 angles (0 degrees to 0/360 degrees) instead of 12. Used to do a mix between the two method, but I have to fix the number of angles in each row to this. One extra shot might be useful later on.
Despite the difficulties that I will encounter, I need to take a row at 45 degrees up and down. In the above panorama of my home, I tried to take two rows down at 25 and 50 degrees, hoping that would help to clone out the legs of the tripod naturally, but I was wrong. We are back to the old ways.
Two zenith and one nadir shots will be taken, each perpendicular to each other. This would help me out later on in case I need to extract a vertical panorama from the full panorama. Usual angles are 0 and 90. Complications expected for nadir.
Shoot the upper 45 degrees first, then 45 degrees below second. This is to keep the numbering of the slides unique for every panorama I would have to go through, e.g. slide #14 will always point to the shot taken at 0 degrees tilting 45 degrees upward (0,45).
Always shoot Zenith and Nadir at the end. Zenith first, and Nadir second. Nadir though is still to be considered as I'm trying to find ways to overcome this hard angle.

This said, it leaves me with some calculations to do to know where I stand and what I'm needing here, excluding the fact that I always shoot for HDR panoramas, I will count the number of angles as single images:

13 angles X 3 rows (0,45,-45) = 39 shots.
2 Zenith + 1 Nadir (might be 2 with complications) = 3 (or 4).
Total: 42 shots (or 43).
Slide numbers for the 4 basic directions would be (number,angle of rotation): [(1,0),(4,90),(7,180),(10,270),(13,360)] @ 0 degrees vertical. [(14,0),(17,90),(20,180),(23,270),(26,360)] @ 45 degrees upward. [(27,0),(30,90),(33,180),(36,270),(39,360)] @ 45 degrees downward.
Zenith will be on slides 40 and 41. Nadir will be on slide 42 and beyond.

I hope this systematic division of the panorama procedures would make it easier later on to solve problems as well whenever they occur before stitching (e.g. adjusting the exposure with respect to the surrounding slides).

Ardeaglais Cormaic Into Play:

Speaking of the vertical panoramas above, I've had a try with one of the first panoramas I've taken back in Ireland, in Cashel: Ardeaglais Cormaic, or Cormac's Cathedral, situated on the top of Cashel Rock hill, along with the castle of Cashel Rock.
The reason I chose this panorama specifically to work with and try to extract a vertical panorama from, is the dome that decorated the zenith in that place. I have to admit though I didn't situate myself exactly in the center under the dome but it was good enough to show the details of this dome. It would look great, I thought, to find the pillars that hold the dome in a weird shape going up and down and connected to two grounds; up and below.
Several difficulties arose. First, I had to re-merge the images into HDR, because I've deleted the previous files that were done for this place (to save place). Picking the required slides for this vertical panorama from the whole set was relatively an easy task (but a matter of memorizing the place in mind and picking the required ones). At this point, the matter of having a vertical panorama done directly at the place, and with the camera moving up and down in a circle, showed evidently. If I was do it again, I would set the camera in landscape orientation and go from horizon to horizon in almost a full circle (excluding the nadir point). This way, with a fisheye lens, I would have a wide-enough view to stitch over.
Our case here was different. The full panorama, and because of the VR-head, was taken with the camera being in portrait position, and because of this I had to consider 3 shots for every elevation or level. The total slides needed for this vertical panorama totaled 15: 3 at 0 degrees, 3 at 45 degrees, 3 at zenith (zenith + 2 on its sides), 3 at 135 (or -45) degrees, and finally 3 at 180 (or 0 backward) degrees. Now imagine we do this landscape orientation, we would probably need 5 slides only considering the wide (horizontal) view of the fisheye lens.
Second hardship appeared shortly after, when I realized that I can't flip certain slides in PTGui and make them stitch upside down. Maybe there is away and I don't know of it yet, but I didn't waste time here trying to figure out. I realized the best way here is to flip the slides themselves (i.e. open them in Photoshop, turn them 180 degrees upside down, and save them into a new file). Mainly, the files that were causing the problem were 6 slides that come after the zenith level (i.e. from 135 degrees and down to 180).
Third problem occurred when, after stitching, there were some high level of artifacts in the final result. Hot pixels (weird colored pixels in the dark areas of the panorama) and other splashes of colors. I had to go back to PTGui and tried to change the settings I've used to do Exposure Optimization in the previous stitch, and after that I've saved the file in OpenEXR format (.EXR) instead of Radiance format (.HDR). The problem was greatly with some need of fixes still, but it was much better than previously done. The thing is, I don't know what solved the problem really; the file format, or the change of exposure optimization settings? I've noticed some differences before in quality and other parameters between the two formats for HDR files. I won't be surprised if changing the format from HDR to EXR did indeed solve the problem. Finally the result...

Suas agus Síos (up and down)

There were of course some adjustments as usual and some blue strikes that I had to put down by Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. Before tone-mapping as well, I went on fixing the white spaces between the arches to give out some details before the process of tone-mapping, by changing exposure and gamma values. Over with this project, now I would think of other panoramas and try to predict their outcome in vertical panoramas like this.

I'm trying now to understand the concept of exposures more, specially for night photography and long exposures. Along with that, I'm delving more into the concept of metering as it is an essential part of the whole process for long exposures and night photography. I even got myself a new calculator to keep it up in my camera's backpack just in case I'd need it to estimate relative stops and exposures. I don't know how it was hidden from me all this time but the concept was simple all the time: a "stop" is a factor of 2. Increasing stop meaning doubling the exposure, and putting it down then we are halving the exposure. Then, a simple formula can be used in a certain manner to have a long exposure (with aid of metering), and thanks to the many websites that were filled with tips (too many to mention here):

T = S * 2^x

where T is the time needed to get the same exposure at metering, and S is the shutter speed (time, in seconds) at metering, and x is the number of stops in play. Now depends on the situation, the formula might change for something else other than the shutter speed, but here I'm sticking myself to metering the scene in Av mode (thus knowing the shutter speed needed to achieve 0EV level). We would have to add several factors in case we are changing the stops in more than one way, like changing the ISO and the f-number (aperture), as well as the shutter speed itself.
Now, to my experiment, and here I've been changing the stops simply by adding ND filters. The experiment was simply to shoot a light bulb behind the window bars, and adding water sprinkles to make some sort of halo around the light source. In this case, we have to do a reverse engineering of some sort. Not exactly, but simply use the formula the other way around: I want to know how many stops I need to put down to make the shutter open for 5 seconds; long enough to sprinkle water in front of the camera.

Behind The Bars

With simple algebra, we fix the time to 5 seconds, and we have the shutter speed known from metering the light bulb, and what is left was the number of stops only to know what ND filters to use.

log_₂(T/S) = x

or in case the calculator can't calculate LOG for bases other than 10, then it would be:

log(T/S) ÷ log(2) = x

Using this formula, the result was 3 stops. Thus, I need to use ND8 filter, which reduces the light by 3 stops. Bear in mind that there will be fractions, so approximations are in use here. The result was as I liked, all I had to do is click the shutter speed (with 10 seconds timer to give me more time sprinkling water in front of the camera). I tried to shoot normal HDR for the scene but merging into HDR was problematic with the noise level, despite the nice blue shades in the shadows that showed after changing the color temperature, when merging, to fluorescent. I gave out the idea of HDR for this scene and I'm satisfied with what I achieved with water sprinkling on the scene. I have to say that water seems to increase the the luminance of the scene a bit, and probably it will be a dramatic increase if it was not sprinkling the water!

Weekend is here, and I'm so frustrated at what to do next. So much in mind and so less in power! I have to burn this mind for some photography ideas. I'm planning to order a new set of books for now. Would be good to spend time at work reading some of those. Not sure yet about the books I wanted, but surely one them would be about Night Photography.

Uh Oh