Feathers…

Many things are going around lately and kept away from the blog for a week, beside preparing for a post in my other Arabic Blog too. I was going to cancel a post for this week too after a little incident and spraining my right foot, but things seem better now. Anyway, I will try to be quick here (and every time I say this I end up with a long post!).

Eanáir

I've stated before in previous post that there was a stack of projects on my desk (well, virtual desk that is) and I was going through them slowly. One of these projects is related to the month of January (which is Eanáir in Irish) with the group re-establishing this activity: A project for every month. This month's theme was Black and White with no specific limits to the subject to be involved. I previously had some ideas and after stating this theme, I thought I might merge the two together, specially after the lack of materials!

Entwine Series

I had some ideas already as I said, and I was looking already for white feathers, and then changed my mind to black feathers, but well, I couldn't find any. I was looking for the feathers for another project under a workshop entitled Art of Seeing which finished back in December! However, with the arrival of this project for January, I started to merge the two.
Since I couldn't find either black or white, and only colored ones (red, green and yellow), I thought it would be fitting now to shoot in B&W and mimic the black and white feathers! As thoughts were racing through, I made some abstract experimenting with macro shots as seen in Entwine Series above. I've made several shots and filtered them down to 3 only, and then asked for a vote from the group members to see which composition is, to them, feels better. Most of them picked #2 (the middle one), and this is the one which was submitted. I'm keeping the others for various projects as well; I like them still!

I went on working on some ideas and nothing worked out, but I had to move quickly from one to the other for the lack of time I was suffering with! A substitute idea was to throw some feathers on my Omani dagger and capture the moment in high-speed. Unfortunately, didn't turn as I wanted it to be for many factors, like space available and lenses, but I've sorted the shots into final 7, and again, asked the group to vote for one.

Aftermath Series

The vote picked #2 here too. I was hoping to record the motion of the feathers, but working alone didn't make things easier for me even with a 10-second timer. Anyway, I had to satisfy myself with these results after changing from the course of the main idea: A feather penetrating a knife; as I couldn't apply this idea in any possible way I could think of. My goal was impressionistic endeavor of how gentleness could come over sharpness and savagery. Thus, throwing feathers on a dagger merely has a potential for something or some idea. In fact, it was done completely randomly with no specific philosophical idea in mind! Anyway, image #2 was submitted as well.
I got special drilling bits later on, to drill a hole in a knife to apply the idea I was seeking in the first place, but it's too late now with my lack of time and I would, and should, be applying that some time later. However, for the irony, I loved the patterns and luster for those drilling bits, and decided to include it with my submission.

Golden Strips
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/32, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

I took many shots at different angles, and had many problems with the flash systems (which I really find a solution for!). I was using 430EXII Speedlite here mainly, reflecting it off a reflector (silver car shade in fact). To my surprise, this speedlite specifically has no inlet for external power source, and thus I had to work solely on batteries, and in time, the power of the flash diminishes: The 1/1 power with full batteries is not as much as 1/1 power when batteries are low. I even made several shots in hope to make a focus stack (f/32 was not enough to include the whole depth of field!) but sorting through the files later on, I realized I didn't do the stacking right; it still needs a rail to do it correctly which was not at hand back then. Anyway, I'm satisfied with Golden strips, which was converted to B&W and tinted with golden hue (#ffd700). Originally, the bits got a slight yellowish tint but reflecting the flash turns them more into silver tint. This is the only shot which was not purely B&W shot but a tinted shot in my submission.

Art of Seeing

This was the title of a workshop that was over with in December and yet we had to work on a submission specific to this workshop. It took me a while to look for the feather as I've said above, and decided to apply cubism as I was urging to apply this concept in my future shots. I think I got just the chance here. Even though I'm not pretty convinced that what I did does enroll itself under the topic of "Art of Seeing," but I got the green light from the leader of the group to keep on going with this. Yet, it has to be judged and critiqued.

Version 1

Cubism in photography is mostly about shooting individual images for the same subject (with or without motion) and merging them together in some way, mostly resembling squares. This is at least what I've seen from examples online. As I shot my series for this project (as seen in Version 1), I tried to include the whole scene as much as possible; with a stack of feathers it's easy to lose track. It does resemble working with a panorama to some extent but my options to work outside Photoshop were limited here and I had to work in Photoshop itself. But first, I had to cut down the slides into squares. Then, fitting them manually and stacking them according to my vision alone.

Version 2

As I finished Version 1 manually, it occurred to me that Photoshop has some useful bundle of commands for panorama making that I could use. I'd love to discuss the results here but I have to conclude the final matter here with Version 2, which was composed using the Reposition option under Auto-Align Layers command. So far, I can say that these two, Version 1 and Version 2, are the ones that I like most. Merging these layers seamlessly doesn't look good at the end, and no need to mention how Photoshop consumes memory already, and with this number of large-size images, it was a hectic process. A question that still going on in my mind is: If any of these were accepted and must be prepared to be exhibited, am I going to print each slide alone and try to combine them physically as they appear in the image file? Or simply print the image as it is? Time would tell I guess.
The idea in the beginning was about killing peace, and that's why I wanted to use white feathers. Even though I always felt that the composition needed something extra. However, I've noticed that the grip of handle of the dagger is already white, so it is better to use black feathers to add contrast, and there came in the change in the original idea: Killing evil (instead of peace); and probably things has to be violent to reach the peace of mind at the end…

Finale

As it can be seen from this blog now, things are more drifting into photography rather than conlangs. Should I abandon my passion for conlangs just now? I'm not quite sure but I hate to think about it even. My life seems racing itself to nowhere. But I'll try to look into that matter later on. The only connection I do have with my beloved Ayvarith right now, is my instagram account (@ayvarith) which I post in weekly. I even managed to add new words to my lexicon.
From the events in this week, it seems I'm losing my grip on the handle slowly and the call for a vacation is even getting stronger. All incidents happening to me last Monday and my foot injury, all caused by a simple show of anger, and over a video game (yes, video game). I didn't play this type of games in a long time, probably since high school, but seems this anger is still roaming inside. I remember how it was when I used to get mad at such games back then and I didn't have this spark of anger for such stuff in a long time, and it's all back now. Makes me wonder if I'm really in need of anger management. But definitely, the thing that would sooth my ailments is, a travel.

Schnell…

Messy, messy, messy. This is how my life is right now. Thus, this post won't be going long for the time being. Good thing is I'm doing some new experiments with my camera and trying to capture some still life, applying some ideas out of imagination so to say.

In the air there is a chance for another commissioned work, to be gotten via a friend. On the other hand, I'm surprised that the client of my first commissioned work (back in October) doesn't want me to spread my own work. The agreement first was until the calendar they are going to do is produced, I have to keep custody of the images. Now, however, the calendar is made and the client doesn't want the images to get spread. I'm wondering about the legality of such action since the rights of these images are not taken. I'm trying to consult some people in the "know" but yet no reply so far. In the meantime, I decided to make a glimpse about one the panoramas done for my first client! Well, this wouldn't count as spreading the image, would it???



This is one QTVR only (and there is a larger version for it). I'm planning to do more from this location on QTVRs, but it would need further work with composing a nadir stamp or logo. A somewhat lengthy task.

Kbir Qaddis Ġużeppi - BW

On the other hand, I've started the process of converting some of the new panoramas into B&W; mainly those from Oman and Malta, but the start was with panoramas from Malta, as it can be seen with the first one to experience that: Kbir Qaddis Ġużeppi. Under this impression, it struck me with a surprise that I did not even think or tried before, to do a QTVR out of a panorama in black and white! Most of the QTVRs Ive made or even those I've encountered personally online, were in color. Panoramas in black and white would probably give an atmosphere of what I like to call now: Jonathan's Style, in reference to Jonathan Boakes and his famous game "The Lost Crown." Probably the only problem here would be with the seam line between left and right edges of the panorama; because this was usually done by Photomatix in the tone-mapping process for the original HDR panorama altogether. I'm not sure I've turned this option on when processing most of these panoramas (if not doing them in Photoshop already instead of Photomatix).

My mind now is so busy with many ideas. Visiting some art events like the famous Den Gallery (here in Kuwait) and the 16^th Theater Festival - these visits did spark my mind a bit and this what made me turn on the camera and work on bits of ideas (while abandoning some old ones). I wished to spread the results here today, but there is much to be done still and a long sorting process must be made to these images. I'm trying to extract every bit of possible angle for the set.

Time to post this and head to bed now… I'm not sure I want to see tomorrow though, but the only thing I want to do for tomorrow is work with my dear camera…

Anocht…

It sounds like a slow-paced week here. Probably because it comes after the holidays. Ah well. It's not the first time. People here, most of them in fact, live from one holiday to another, and from weekend to another, and nothing to be called "living" in between. This is the case with me too, but I try my best to keep myself busy with my own projects as much as possible (despite the physical fatigue). I'm still learning the art of "time management".

Anocht

I've finally managed to go out at night and do some shooting! Seriously, it does feel like a miracle happened of some sort. Anyway, the trick is not to sleep afternoons, but later, to wake up a bit late! Oh, and to pack your tools and stuff earlier so you won't have to do them on time before going out - this thing can be a real hassle and put you down (specially if you are as moody as I am).
The chosen location is somewhere on the seaside (as usual); a pier. This pier specifically was closed for a long time as far as I remember and only been open some months ago. I paid a visit the week before to see what was the situation there and get myself familiar with it. Unlike the pier in Sharg area (Soug Sharg that is), in which I've worked before, this pier seems busy at night somewhat and doesn't get quiet a single minute!

The new location (red arrow) compared to the Sharg pier (blue arrow).

The first experiment there wasn't of much interest in fact. I got out with 3 shots, and to my standards, they are regulars. The architecture of the pier is not fanciful like the one at Sharg, but I'd say it has a potential. I don't think a panorama is possible there with the busy fishermen out there but it seems quite a place for some long exposures.

Canon EF 50mm, f/16, 20m, ISO100.

The first wasn't good, mainly because of nudging aside to allow people to pass. The pier's passage was narrow so I was forced to move a bit to the left to give some space. However, my aim was to get some "depth" despite the very simply structure. Anyway, can't complain. But probably I should have used a fisheye lens here rather than 50mm lens. I tried to fix the perspective in this image but it didn't work out well, and the trails (probably for planets more than stars) were not abundant (probably because I was facing east at this point). Processing was a compromise between contrasts of various regions. You can see in the horizon some blue flashes made by LED lights that fishermen use in their work, but anyway they were not a problem for the exposure after all. The blue spots on the passage are probably caused by fishermen passing by back and forth (as far as I remember it was dry to reflect anything). Probably this image can serve as a minimalistic one, but definitely not for printing with this amount of noise; which when cleared, will reduce the trails even further.

Midnight Showers
Canon EF 15mm fisheye, f/9, 9m, ISO100.

The second shot was, again, another trial. I had hard time framing Midnight Showers, specially with the dark atmosphere on the pier. I didn't have the time to use the white balance disk so I just fixed the WB value to Fluorescent WB, and all should be fixed later in RAW editing. I had to crop it a lot and because of the curvature of the horizon I couldn't really balance the image (fixing one line tilts the others). Even though I could have processed it in a proper way to make everything smooth and crisp but that would put down the few star trails in the sky. Thus, I've decided to abandon the idea of a "good" print and just processed the image in a way to show as much trails as possible, and cleaned the noise as much as possible. The nice thing about this image (though good in small size but not in a large one) is that star trails did really appear while city was surrounding the place. Probably if I used a wider aperture a bit the lines would be more prominent (but the exposure would be shorter of course). And like many do successive 30 seconds exposures for star trails and merge them later, probably successive long exposures would be possible too! I did that already in fact but in a sense of HDR merging (by reducing the exposure time to half between one shot and another).

Luminance
Canon EF 15mm fisheye, f/9, 65s, ISO100.

The last shot was toward this city this time. The main interest for me was the reflections on the water surface, which seemed like colorful columns. It sounds bad already for not having a book with me to read a bit while long exposures are done but anyway it was a good thing to meditate around and notice such colorful columns of light. In Luminance, the long exposure here is not only essential to achieve the required exposure for a good image, but also essential to smooth out the water surface. The water surface was relatively calm (seen a raging sea around here before) but the small ripples surely can benefit from a little longer exposure like one minute to be smoothed out as seen in Luminance. When thinking about it, in fact in a raging situation or higher tides and quite active ripples, one would need a shorter exposure relatively; at least this is what my experience foretold so far!
With these simple 3 shots, I'm hoping to get active in the last few days of winter before the weather becomes unbearable here. Going out this time was in the spur of the moment; no planning or anything, unlike in the old times when I had to observe the times for high and low tides. Coming to think about it, it is probably time to get back to the old locations along the beach of Salmiyah where I used to take shots in the old times, and this time try to go deeper in a low tide to have some proper long exposures. However, I might as well benefit from having boots!

Twitching

In the meantime, I've began already working on converting what have been previously done and processed of images from Ireland last year into B&W. Not all seem to fit of course so I'm trying to pick specific ones. Most of the time this conversion to B&W comes with a tint.

Uaigneach agus ag Fanacht
(lonely and waiting)

Na Riasca Gorma
(the blue marshes)

In most of these conversions, my starting point would be by using the Infrared preset in Black and White adjustment layer in Photoshop. Thanks to its unusual toning, this preset provides a somewhat inspirational kick for the coming steps later on. Some images were tinted with a monotone, like Uaigneach agus ag Fanacht many others, and some were tinted with a duotone like Na Riasca Gorma. However, in general, I wouldn't go with a duotone much right now for the large portion of possibilities and it's quite hard to settle with a combination (beside the different ways available to apply the effect). Images like Na Riasca Gorma was quite familiar in some websites and instagram and was favored by many for the combination of colors (blue and gold), which were complimentary. There were also some panoramas involved in this process but I'll keep them for later probably. My 9^th album of images from Ireland 2014 will be completely made out from B&W images of various types (landscape, macro, panorama, ...etc).
Along this trend, there is another line of thought (and it is giving me a headache already!) which is going back to old panoramas and trying to achieve something new under the light of the new projection styles that I've discovered, or let's say noticed. Panoramas from my visit to Staten Island, NYC, are of particular interest in this but I'm going back also to my 2010 visit to Cashel, Co. Tipperary in Ireland.

Hell to Heaven

In particular, the panorama taken from the Grotto are of special interest to me for the particular atmosphere attached to it. Unfortunately here, and for some reason I didn't realize yet, Hell to Heaven was stitched with patches of colors and some smudges (caused mainly by out-of-range HDR slides). I don't remember this thing happened in this panorama particularly specially when I printed it first time and sent it to my friend in Staten Island. Anyway, because of my intentions I didn't really care much about the matter since the overall and the final image is supposed to be small as you see above. Those smudges are hard to notice in smaller sizes and with increasing the sharpness in the image these are reduced. Of course, it was done with the help of Mercator projection and some change in the viewing angle. At the end of the process, a glamor effect was added to enhance the "dreamy" look about it.

Doppelbrennpunkte
(double foci)

However, not only these panoramas from Ireland and NYC were of interest, but even older ones like those taken here, and specifically the gazebo-like structure in Salmiyah, Kuwait. This panorama specifically was involved in many activities, but particularly two activities made it a "top": Mawahb fair, and the luxurious coffee table book printed by Trierenberg circle (sponsors of Austria's International Photography contest). However, in these 2 activities, the same panorama had different projection styles. Now, I decide to go further and try what I've noticed lately with Mercator projection and made out Doppelbrennpunkte. It was hard to decide on what kind of angular view I want to achieve here, but the biggest problem was that this panorama was not perfectly centralized (apparently for the problems in location itself). I settled down with what I call "Extreme Mercator" and centralized the fountain and the the dome (but reversed it so that the dome is at bottom for added surreal effect). The problem here is apparent, with the left side being thicker than the right side with columns stretching out. A friend pointed out the following when he saw Doppenbrennpunkte: Is it possible to make the foci (or centers) of the image in the corners instead of making the panorama twirl around a central point? His question is quite reasonable, and I'm to try that in the coming few days. However, one must bear in mind that the architecture of the place is the one that decides what would be or can be done about the features in it.

Palinopsia

Back to Staten Island with another panorama. particularly one done in the porch of the Victorian (B&B). This panorama in particular was "dormant," meaning not much could have been done about it because of the design of the place itself and the scattering furniture. Anyway, I decided to try the "Extreme Mercator" approach and somehow found some satisfaction when I made Palinopsia. The image looks split in half because of the matched left and right horizontal line meeting at the center (through the roof of course). Anyway, this is not the point I'm putting this here.
The real point about it is, I was tone-mapping (working out the original HDR) this panorama and it did take me particularly long time to achieve the desired look. However, it needed further work in Photoshop to enhance contrast further more and eliminate some colors problems. My first goal was to achieve a status of "fear," "uncertainty," and/or "melancholy" (Palinopsia: visual hallucinations). For this reason I worked in a low-saturation environment and I've increased the portion of black and its shades in the image to give a dark impulse to the scene. This is somewhat a challenge to do because I was trying to achieve a "dark" atmosphere using a relatively happy scene (filled with bright colors in furniture and plants).
Now, to the core of the story. To my surprise, my sister commented on this image saying "the colors are happy" (i.e. the colors emit or radiate a good mood)! I'm not sure how did that come up, and whether it is her only or other people do share this opinion. Increasing blacks and reducing saturation is usually a fingerprint for a psychosomatic atmosphere. Did she concentrate on a specific color in particular and that affected all her feelings about the image? Was it the curves that did (unconsciously) affect her enjoyment about the image without noticing the general atmosphere I'm trying to achieve? Or, is it me that didn't notice the happy aspect of the image? It's quite a puzzle to me. I did tell her that I was trying to make the image "melancholic"; however, no response from her so far, and we didn't talk about it in real. I think some interesting information can be learned in this little experiment!

Finale

At the end, I'm here trying to take life on my own pace. Trying to calm down a bit, and kicking negativity out as much as possible (but it's even a harder job to do when you live in the core of it).
Meanwhile, I'm reading articles and lessons on the web for learning Irish, but of course they are not completely sufficient until they are put into practice but it is a beginning after all. I have to say that reading and teaching myself some Irish did in fact open up gates of knowledge and insight into languages in general, and my own dialect in particular, as we usually speak without thinking why do we say things the way they are but it does sound just right for us that way! Nothing like that happened with me since the creation of Ayvarith. One of the ways I'm using now to force myself into digging deeper into the language and learn more, is translating quotes from Arabic mainly into Irish; this procedure would normally force me to dig the dictionaries and read more to try to achieve the best translation possible.

I'm sure there are a number of mistakes there of course, so I'm just hoping someone would correct me whenever possible. Beside learning the languages I'm keeping myself busy with the images at home and books at work. This workplace must be changed at a certain point of my life for sure.
On the other hand, I've finally extracted something out of my mind to call it a "poem." I can't be a critique for my own works but at least I was able to write something in the whim of the moment, and I called it The Wind of Daisies. Maybe I should specify some special time for such mental processes and write something down. I need to get back to poetry a bit because it is a good vent, and I remember that pretty well from my early 20s. Meanwhile, there had been an interesting offer sent to me to spread some of my images for some commercial benefits. I'm going through it step by step and hopefully it can be a good starting point to the outer world. And I'm hoping this is better than submitting my photos to stock websites. One step at a time. Probably there will be a number of images that I would need to delete from stock websites soon. Hopefully by keeping myself busy, I'll forget a lot of my failures...