Athdhéan…

As promised some 2 or 3 posts ago, I wanted to talk a "bit" about re-making some old panoramas (specially that I'm not shooting any panoramas lately, even before COVID season!). I almost abandoned the idea and thought it is somewhat useless, but I proved my own self wrong in fact. In this post I'll explain the story a bit further.

Remake

As a starter, the reason that I'm visiting some of my old panoramas to remake them is that I want to change the processing. Most of my panoramas are done in HDR and then tone-mapped (typically), except for few "special" panoramas which were done using long exposures.
Anyway, as I'm learning new editing techniques (in RAW), specifically those considering dark exposures to add more drama to the scene (instead of making a normal bright exposure), I've decided to try and stitch some panoramas using the dark exposures, or reducing the exposure if needed. All was to be saved as TIFF 16bit mostly (to keep as much as data as possible in each image), and then a trial to stitch was set.

Inchagoillic

The beginnings were not quite "easy," starting with Inchagoillic which is a panorama shot inside Inchagoill church on Inchagoill island back in 2014. I picked this panorama specifically because I didn't really like the version that I've made out of it using HDR technique and it was hard to fix the looks:

The older version

There is a problem also with the perspective apparently. Anyway, my focus was on the colors and the general looks. The process was not easy because of some change in exposure (brightness/darkness) of the images specially of the top row images. This row specifically mostly comes dark in most panoramas (that is the set of the same image order in the sequence of HDR shooting, which happens to be the 2nd image here from each set).

The preview of the initial stitch in PTGui. Notice the dark arch and the dark splotches on the tree and elsewhere, all concentrated on the topmost part of the image.

I've tried some solutions here, but eventually, none did work out properly:

• Make a stitch of the first images in the set of bracketed HDR shots, editing them to be darker, for the general mood that I wanted to achieve here.
• Make a merge between the original set of 2nd images, and picking the top row from the set of 1st images.

Both of these solutions didn't work out well for one reason or another, and generally speaking the exposure was not uniform or smooth in some way. My last resort to this problem, then, was to cut out a portion of the blending for the top row of images (i.e. reduce their contribution to the whole image).

The borders of the blended portion of each image in the panorama as seen in PTGui. Notice how the dark splotches in the top row (14-25) are mainly accumulated in the lower part of the images. By reducing the "blending priority" of these images, the lower portion gets omitted and would not contribute to the overall looks.

Despite this "fix" for these dark spots, the solution itself was really dependent on the panorama here and the nature of the scene. Also, the final stitch was not free of more work with dodge and burn to enhance some areas, specially whatever remained of those dark spots. Going through some of the old panoramas trying to figure out a number of these solutions made it clear that it is not the solution I was looking for and in fact it became lengthier than working with a HDR panorama itself. On various occasions though, it was possible to cut the panorama short (crop from the sides or top and bottom, etc) to make a somewhat good looking panorama, like Gnomes Asleep.

Gnomes Asleep

Gnomes Asleep was a panorama that I've shot back in 2012 for the Victorian B&B but I've never stitched it before because of the troublesome contrast when it was shot. The gap in exposure values exceeded 2EV and even though I've shot it for HDR stitching, it turned out that the highlights were out of the range still. Adding to that, I didn't quite like the perspective and the angle of the shoot. Anyway, there was a final shooting trial which made its way and was "proper" in terms of exposure and perspective. This forgotten panorama did have a chance though through editing the RAW files and stitching them (after converting to TIFF 16bit) but the problem remained with those dark areas and splotches. To solve it, I've simply cut out the panorama short.
Those who are familiar with PTGui probably do know already that there are options and controllers to adjust the exposure of the panorama and fix few issues related to that, and I did indeed give it a try. However, the results were catastrophic and nothing really worked. I do believe now though that these options are there for HDR panoramas specifically. It would have been a good option if I can just stitch the RAW files and save the outcome as some sort of DNG, where I can edit this stitched panorama like I do with any RAW file and hence do the effects and the split-toning required for the looks I want, but this is unfortunately unavailable and the RAW files MUST be edited and prepared for the stitch. This fact, forces me to convert RAW files into TIFFs and stitch from there.

In The Grace Of The Cormac

All these limitations made it clear to me that there is no easy way out, and I've really started to lose heart with it. It wasn't all bad though. In panoramas like In The Grace Of The Cormac, for example, I've stitched the panorama twice: One time as a normal stitch, and another time with exposure adjustments or optimization done inside PTGui. I've noticed that with optimization, some areas are better in exposure than the normal stitch (which was either too bright or too dark). In Photoshop (of course!) the two versions were merged and enhanced with layer masks combining the best of the two as much as possible. It was flattering indeed to see this panorama being marked as "Inspirational" on YouPic as well!

Fothrach Órga
(golden ruins)

Still, despite the progress a bit with In The Grace Of The Cormac, it was inevitable to do the lengthy hard work: Editing all photos of the panorama in RAW, each to its own, to fix the exposure, because I was not lucky all the time. Apparently, the whole thing was more time consuming than working with HDR panoramas, but it is worthy to try if it was about adding drama to the panoramas that I've done in the past (specially that they usually look bright and shiny with HDR, and getting them dark a bit sounded a bit romantic at times!). For this reason, I've developed a routine to make things as steady as possible (but it is not really):

1. Pick a focal image (focus of interest) and do all the editing needed on it. Typically this would be the first image in the set, but it can be another image in the set at times.
2. Synchronize all these edits for all images.
3. Now, go over all these images and check how bright or dark it would be in comparison to the edited image in the beginning. At this level, I try to not touch anything except for the exposure slider, and if that didn't work then I would adjust the tones with the parametric curve section. 
4. Usually a sub-set (e.g. the images of the top row) would have the same problem, so I synchronize them all to the adjustments (in exposure) done to the first one in the sub-set. 

As it can be seen, it is such a lengthy work. However, the goal of adjusting the exposure is to be close in brightness and not absolutely pin down the exposure between the slides. PTGui still do some good work (though limited) when it comes to equalizing the exposure among the slides of the panorama, but apparently fails when the gap in brightness is great. So, it is enough to just get them close, visually.

Ceann Scríbe
(destination)

With all that hard work, it was still inevitable to do various versions of the same panorama but with changing the exposure or optimization in PTGui, just in case it was needed. Usually, one version (the regular or normal stitch) would be enough but there were times when I've used 2 versions of the panorama and even 3 versions merged together, as is the case with Ceann Scríbe, where I've used the topmost portion of the bright version, and the ground for the normal version, and then used the darker version just to enhance the sun flare as it was too bright in the other two versions. It sound like HDR but it's not; In HDR, the images are combined in a special format and technically it's like "painting with light in the image" but in this work we are getting a bit picky about what pixels do we need and not. However, many panoramas remake so far were done using only one version or the regular stitch version from the RAW (after editing them) without any need for the other versions, but I keep stitching them just in case.

Don Eaglais
(to the church)

Along with these new stitches or remakes, comes a change in perspective. Many of these panoramas that I've been doing (and will keep on for some time) had been altered in terms of composition or changing the center of attention (which was typically placed at the center of the panorama). Panoramas like In The Grace of The Cormac above, was done keeping the human element (the lady photographer at the center) which was originally removed when I stitched this back in 2010, and the point of interest was shifted left or right as is the case with Don Eaglais (and even adding a touch to the sun there to make up for the dramatic look), or as is the case with Ceann Scríbe where another point of interest is placed at the center (and I think it is even better). I would have posted the old and new versions of each panorama for comparison but it would make the post even longer than it is already.

Finale

So, this was my story with the remakes of panoramas, old and new; Well, all are old in fact. The work is still going on with more panoramas and I've been quite amazed by the results. They are kind of astonishing more than the original HDRs that I've created in the past. This said, however, that does not mean I will not be shooting HDR panoramas the next time I'm on it. Better play it safe and do the routine and then think of other choices, like the thing I'm doing here already.

الأَنْدَلُسِيْ (The Andalusian)

As for the reasons behind all of that tedious work, the answer lies in the looks and inspiration. Generally speaking, we have to admit that many of our inspirations as photographers do come in the processing phase rather than at the shooting phase. Not to say that there is no inspiration at all during the shoot or prior to the shoot even, but processing sometimes yields results that we didn't imagine at times or simply did not think it was possible. Viewing things in the viewfinder or on the LCD at the back of the camera is not the same as viewing an image, on a monitor, using a wide color space such as ProPhoto (just an example). The colors are simply beyond the simple rendering of the LCD and the human eye even at times.
For such reasons, I've decided to cross the mile and try to do the lengthy work with the RAW files instead of the HDR as it was done before. I might be able to produce the looks using the HDR indeed using many adjustment layers and many layer masks, but the knot that needs to be tied here lies in the fact that I'm not sure what I'm expecting and what is that I'm really seeking out of the looks. There are some panoramas that have changed completely in looks, not only by colors, but also in composition. I've even created 2 separate versions for some of these panoramas and published them both, and I might try a trend with "bright" panoramas whenever it is possible to do so.

An Castán Dorcha
(the dark chestnut)

An Castán Geal
(the bright chestnut)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, this is my "little" story with the remakes of many panoramas, and many to come further, hopefully. By doing all this, I've been actually giving myself a dose of confidence even at some level here, specially with the success of stitching the nadir point in The Andalusian. It was one of these rare panoramas were I would usually take a nadir shot and try to stitch (with few procedures on-location and in PTGui); A practice that I didn't perform much really but this seems promising and for some reason, seems a bit easier to be done when stitching from regular files like TIFFs, instead of HDRs. 

On another plane, I think I've been getting back my appetite to work with the camera further, rather slowly, specially with the weather change here (we already had the first rains of... winter?). I had my first stroll outside, which hopefully won't be the only one, and I might blog about that the next time!

Unconventional…

Was going to let go of this post and let it go off for another week, but here I am, trying to finish it to the best I can just before Thursday. Let's hope this works out well!
I was going to post about two main topics. One is related to re-creating (old) panoramas from adjusted RAW files (if you don't know me by now, I usually shoot for HDR when it comes to panoramas), and two is presenting some ideas about representing images. However, the first topic did not go smoothly (for now) but I will post about it later hopefully. I'll dedicate this post mainly for the second topic, which I thought of calling "Unconventional," because it is all about weird or not-so-common dimensions when representing photos. 

Unconventional

As I've said above, it is just a bunch of ideas that raced through my mind lately. However, it is not the first time. I'm just taking one step further in this topic of representing photos in some unconventional ways.
The idea, in simple terms, is to get rid of the conventional ways of representing photos in "orthogonal" axes, namely rectangular or square frames. Instead, how would it be if photos are represented freely? Essentially, this is not new, since in classical times many photos (specially portraits) were cut to fit a circular or an oval framing; A trend that seems to have had disappeared in current times, specially with the digital era. My thoughts, however, roam about and around both realms: The digital, and the print.

عين السلطان (The Sultan's Eye)

Killing Evil

The idea of breaking the dimensions is not new to me as I've done that already with my panorama in Oman from inside the Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat back in 2015, The Sultan's Eye. This image is a panorama rendered in little planet format and that formed beautiful concentric circles which inspired me then to cut out the edges and make it as a perfect circle as a whole. To keep the image as a circle, I had to save it as PNG which, along with GIF, is a format the saves transparency in the image and can be dealt with through the web. On the web though, people might not realize that the image is "circular" because, simply, the frame is still rectangular in shape; A user would only figure this out if they downloaded the image or changed the background color in the viewing environment, which is something seldomly done. I really wanted to print this panorama on aluminum and present it to the Omani embassy here but I've always racked up this desire on the shelf for more important matters then (and now). The workers in the aluminum workshop told me already that the image can be indeed made into a circle using a water-powered special gun to cut out the edges into a perfect circle as in the image.
Another method which was used in the past and nowadays is to shoot the subject across various images, as can be seen in Killing Evil, which was part of a project back in 2017 when I was with the group then. In the past though it was realistically through shooting several shots (mainly polaroids) and exhibit them in that manner, attached together or glued in some way to form the full shape of the subject. Probably I can call this a "broken panorama" of some sort. Anyway, this is what I did in Killing Evil but rather digitally than physically (and it was never intended to be printed). It can be of course, but I never did. Here in Killing Evil, the background was painted black already for the purpose of displaying the image digitally, otherwise it could have remained transparent as well (and saved as PNG).

 

The Floating Inchagoill

Both The Sultan's Eye and Killing Evil were some artwork from the past, but the idea progressed further as I was working (again) in recent years with this panorama from inside the historical Inchagoill church which I've shot back in 2014. What happened here, after stitching this old panorama anew, is that I wanted to minimize the distortion in trees because they were closer to the top of the image. Thus, I made the main subject smaller and smaller towards the center to reduce this distortion and that resulted, of course, in a vast blue area from the sky. Things followed after the stitch and when I looked at this image, I thought to myself, why would I make this image rectangular or squared? I've tilted the "planet" here on purpose, to reduce the distractions in the trees further as much as possible. So, instead of cropping the surplus area of blue and make the image as a "square", I thought why not cut it along the general orientation of the planet as a whole, and keep the transparency. If, for any reason, this image is to be printed, I would definitely display it as it is; Tilted like that. 

Unconventional Green Delight

As I progressed further, trying to experiment and explore my options more, I've started cropping some images to see how would they look like, as the one above, Unconventional Green Delight, which I've purposefully shot tilted. In this image, I've used squares to crop the main body in the image (the central stem) along with the branching ears. Anyway, when I compare this method with the cropping of The Floating Inchagoill, I do realize that the squares here do not get along with the main subject which is composed of lines mainly. It looks rigid. Probably if I did spread the shoot for this plant on several frames and then combine them together as was the case with Killing Evil - probably things could have looked better, as the broken lines in Killing Evil were done on purpose and by virtue of design these separate frames do act as if they are trying to grab the attention of the viewer to every detail of the full image spreading across the many frames. I might work again with this image and try to cut it with straight lines instead (it is hard to take several shots of it and combine them later).

Unconventional Planeta Cuvaitum (2011)

Unconventional Planeta Herba (2012)

Probably you've noticed the trend now with starting each image of those with Unconventional. Anyway, working further on exploring what can be done about this kind of images (or format of images), I've thought right away of checking some of these old planet panoramas that I've done in the past. In fact, they seem to be the most proper candidate for such non-orthogonal cuts by virtue of their original design, as planets; This is of course limited to these panoramas done outdoors because we can have some portion of the sky which is easier to cut (relatively, not always). However, the sun proves to be problematic in such compositions, and while it can be removed altogether from Unconventional Planeta Cuvaitum it is yet hard to do so with Unconventional Planeta Herba, because it mingles with elements on the planet itself. This said, though, I do like how the random branches of these bushes in Unconventional Planeta Herba look like as if they were floating in space with no blue sky. I wonder how would this thing look like if just by magic I was able to print it in 3D?

Thoughts:

Well, I'm not a tech guy by any means, but this is something that I've been reflecting about and wondering about the technical difficulties that do face such representations for photos, away from the orthodox methods that are common and know.
Now, images like The Sultan's Eye or The Floating Inchagoill can be quite easy to be printed and cut out, but it won't be the same for sure when it comes for images like Unconventional Planeta Herba which has a great amount of details in the brushes that need to be cut out. Probably a handwork with specialty cutting knives would do? Maybe. Though I can't imagine it done that way. If objects were done in 3D with 3D printers, I do foresee or maybe I can dream that such flat images of floating pixels and that had been cut off from its background in irregular shapes - that, might as well be done in some manner and methodology related to the technology of 3D printing. This really reminds me of those visual aids and prints that we used to do as kids for school, but those images were, well, paintings; Very simple paintings and made specifically to be cut out.

Now that was on the physical plane, but I'm not sure how easy it would be on the digital plane. Sure, images can be displayed on the web (like you see here in this post) using PNG format. However, there are two or three issues, at least for me:

1. The format itself. I think PNG is acceptable on most platforms right now but I don't think it is as common as JPG. Also, to what I know, it is not compressed. Thus, even though the image is saved with transparent pixels that are supposed to not carry any data of any color, these do take up a considerable size. Also, I'm not sure that the web in general is flexible with TIFF format, yet.
   
2. Displaying these photos, like in this blog, or anywhere else on the web really, still takes the rectangular dimension. I remember back in the 1980s and 1990s when printed newspapers were THE thing, they had back then some methods to incorporate images within the articles where the text seeps on the sides of such images, making the images appear as floating over the text. This can be done in editing phase in Photoshop (I did that for some ads and posters) but imagine this is done right away on the web by default. The transparent pixels that the image has are not yet truly transparent in my opinion because the image is still dealt with and considered as a rectangle and the text goes about that accordingly.
3. A minor issue: How would the viewer on the web feel or get the impression that image is floating or somewhat 3D, with transparent background? If the background is plain, typically black or white, and sometimes gray (well, most of the time that is), then a viewer probably get that impression about the image (maybe not so if the background is colored indeed). Or, maybe a shadow can be added to the image to give the impression that it is floating but, again, this shadow should not be added in Photoshop (using layer effects), but rather in the viewing environment (e.g. web browser). Technically, I don't know how this is possible, or whether it is possible at all.

These are some thoughts about displaying and printing images with "unconventional" dimensions and transparent background. Not sure how practical these are (most probably not) but it would have been somewhat amazing to see images floating, beside displaying such images in exhibitions and art galleries, at a considerable size. I think it would deliver some 3D sensation to the viewer (better than those anaglyphs that I've printed for some exhibitions I'd say). 

Finale

So, these are some thoughts about what I've been working on and thinking of in the past weeks, and still. There was another matter considering re-working old panoramas using processed RAW files instead of the typical HDR approach that I usually follow with panoramas. However, this one needs a lengthy work and considerations must be taken. So far, all my trials had failed and the only way successful one was actually a combination various RAW files, but that's a story for another time. 

Old (HDR tone-mapping)

New (processed RAW)

The difference is clear. However I do it in HDR, I couldn't possibly get natural as the new one done with RAW files only. But, the catch is, the panorama done with the RAWs are a bit complicated for the time being. Something I will check further in the coming weeks hopefully.

As you read this, I hope life did not have its toll on your mood and spirit already. I'm not sure where I am heading with all of this, but I do wish that one day, I would open my eyes and it's all gone. Just, gone… see you.

 

Experimenting...

1. A quiet day relatively, with a visit from my colleague, who is officially in a leave. However, I was almost going to cancel this day from my schedule and sleep more, since I stayed awake late last night (technically, stayed awake until today's dawn) and had a sleep for 3 hours only and was almost going to be late from my usual going-out time. When I was just leaving I remembered that I was planning to take photos from inside in one of the buildings in the campus. It was so damn tiresome to just get back to my room to bring the camera and the tripod after reaching my car outside. I didn't even go to buy me something for breakfast the usual way. I just flew over to campus directly. After doing my fingerprinting thing in the same building, I got out the tripod and started to work. Some cleaning guys, who were the only inhabitants alive there, kept on staring at me... like an alien! Well, I kept my nerves down with that.

I had some difficulty as I wanted to take a photo of the dome with some depth (not depth of field but the dome with some of its surroundings), so I tried to lower down the tripod as much as possible to work with it. Of course because of that, I didn't know what I'm catching, because I wasn't able to look into the viewfinder and snap. As as I said in the previous post, it was a chance to check for HDR's capability in this case. HDRs aren't good in general with moving objects even if the movement was tiny... it can show clearly on the image after combining the layers. Anyway, after many trials, here and there and changing a bit of the position of the tripod, I think I got satisfied with the list of photos I have in the current time. The building is there to be snapped at any time!

Going then to my office, I ran the wizard's wand (which you know by now) and started to work on the photos and boy, did I not want to crash my laptop down. I think I do need a new one now with some 4GB of RAMs if possible. In fact, my work on this laptop was just to experiment a bit and not to add a final touch, as the real work will begin at home. On location however, I got the idea of trying a panoramic shot as well, but this time length-wise and not width-wise as it is usually taken. I did photomerge these photos with my laptop but the work was done so slow and yet it was cumbersome. I need to check back at home with more advanced tools with it. After working around a bit and converting to HDR, I loved to do just a tiny experiment and saved the image as it is in 32bits, as a TIFF. The size was 90.8MB. I laughed. I deleted the file. Ta Da! However, still, I got back to reality again and coverted the file to JPG and made a tiny fix in colors to get the final touch on one of the scenes:

The rest of the work will continue at home. Although I wanted to write down some lines in my story but unfortunately, I was swept away and I'm writing these words in a hurry before I leave the place. I have a game, and photos to work with allllll day...

2. Now, after getting back home, I feel a bit energetic to work with my new photos! That reminds me to recharge the cam's battery... I need to buy another battery and another CF memory card. It is just embarassing when you feel yourself into the shot really and then your camera just stops focusing correctly! I tried it! The charger sucks anyway. Couldn't fit it into the electrical exntesion in my work place so I had to wait til I get home. The first thing to do now is to work on the photomerge, as it is a hard task to me still, then I shall work on the HDRs a bit and play around. Guess won't have a spark of ideas to write down anything in my story today. Ah well. Pass.