Back on Track...

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...

Arithmetical Endeavor

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.

log₂(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

Brain Squeezing...

I think squeezing my brain trying to find out some words to pin down was sort of successful. I had to surf the net a bit trying to find new ideas and new ways to break the writer's block, and maybe the most and easiest solution was: take a walk. Of course my main course of walking is during my working time, and now with the semester being over, the campus is almost empty and the weather is nice and helps a lot on taking a mind journey. My first trial was finalized and called it: My Golden Days. Another trial took place then after the next day and I could hardly squeeze my brain for the past 2 days trying to find the words, but then I remembered, a poem or a lyrical piece isn't supposed to be "necessarily" long. It is just how you feel, and hence I finalized a short piece called Send Me An Angel. The rhyme in this latter one might not be a strong pattern (abacc), and it does sound weird even to me, but surfing the net a bit I've found that such patterns do exist but mostly in old folk songs. I do imagine though if this is to be a song of some sort or played somehow, it's going to be a slow music tone.
I do understand now how writing is so difficult I guess, specially when you have all the feelings but not enough words in your mind to put them down, or the ability to shape your expressions. I would be able to write single sentences but to stitch them all together in some sense and rhyme, this is even harder than stitching a panorama!
I also got some positive feedback on my previous piece, The Beggar of Nothingville from one of the judges in one contest. I'm not so optimistic though that I would win even though I got 5 out of 5 stars for this, but the important thing for me is to expose it to as much as possible, hence I posted it again in one of the contests after checking the regulations of it.

On the other hand, started to upload the Ayvarith transliteration of Alexander's story into WDC website. Along with that process, I'm trying to unify the notations of writing which I changed by the last chapter (chapter six) of Alexander's story. The process is giving me a headache as well, naturally, because there were lot of typos as well. Some words I'm trying to check again and they are not in the dictionary! Well, I must have been trapped in my own trap; going around some words by using parallel expressions. If you are wondering what that means, think of it that way: instead of saying "I went downstairs," and in your conlang, you didn't make up a word for "downstairs," you might as well say "I went below by the stairs." Long, I know. But this is the way I used to go around some words. The process of evading some words is essential as I think though. It helps on creating a trend of the conlang as it is a language by itself, a stand-alone, not mimicking the grammar and the order or the ideology of other languages. Somehow, in the process of creating a conlang, you must always check that your mind is isolated and not completely dependent on some base. In my case, I do need the base; somewhere to begin with the conlang for sure! That's why I make up words and take up some aspects of Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic.
I'm thinking as well about adding some sound files. This is to explain some of the pronunciations of the sounds to help on reading the transliteration texts. I might as well add a reading for the story itself in Ayvarith. I did some before, but I think I've lost the files, and now I have to work all over again (with some corrections added this time). I think WDC allows for some audio files to be added somehow. I will have to check and see. Meanwhile, I'm working on the website slowly, but seems Fortunecity, where I keep some files now, has a problem with the FTP upload. I remember in GeoCities, the FTP option was allowed for paying members, but in Fortunecity, it says it's for free hosting members as well. Unfortunately, I tried the FTP and it's not working well. Error in password always though I checked it over and over again. The new design I've made is simple but yet contains lot of GIF images because of slicing the main image in the facade, and I will have to upload every single GIF image (after creating a folder inside) if I don't use the FTP client.

Trying to push myself to be busy somehow, even though I do have some games waiting on the queue line. On Sunday, and right after I got back from work with no appetite for lunch, I decided to drive out again in my Seat Altea 2006 and do some washing for the car, and then I headed to my work place again just to park the car there and do some panorama from the inside. I spent like 20 minutes trying to settle down with the tripod inside the car. It was a so damn hard process. In the beginning I tried the monopod in fact, but it didn't work at all because of the extremely horizontal 3 legs it had at the bottom. Finally, with some stretching, a tripod was fitted in somehow and I started to work and moving from one door to another in order to move the VR-head in all directions. I made the panorama without a zenith or a nadir, because generally I don't have an aim for a QTVR. It was just a trial. It took me already one hour or around that to take the panorama with car turned off but lights on inside the car. Made me worried after all this time about the battery; it could have been dead by that time. After finishing the work with the panorama, I've noticed that the tripod's situation is a good one to even shoot a video inside the car! I thought of turning on the video and going around driving till I get back home, just as a trial as I never ever had any experience not interest in videography. However, it is interesting and I'm going back to read the manual for my Canon EOS 7D and learn more about the basic functions. I recorded a bit more than one minute successfully until I got out of the parking place and out of campus, then the tripod's leg got loose and the camera fell down to one side. No great harm, but I was upset of this betrayal!
Back home, the stitching process was sort of smooth, but not completely out of errors and broken lines. Before taking this panorama I tried to pull the camera back a bit instead of the "center" position which is the default setting, and probably, the broken lines, are caused by this pull-back. So far, two versions are stitched: flat spherical and a tunnel (ant view) one. Lot of work was needed with the clone tool to correct the mistakes and other things!

Seat Altea, 2006.

I think, however, that the ant-view (or tunnel) view is not that good, thus I will stop my trials with that and be satisfied with what I have here, so far! I think I could try this again with another car. The question is, would my plans for getting busy most of the time would work on braking down my daydreaming process a bit? Frankly, I'm not so optimistic about it. Maybe a mental process is more useful to brake those ideas, like thinking of a line to write in a new poem. This is what I'm trying to do recently but no hope. It's like I'm keeping my mind busy for nothing, and soon, I will escape to another world.

Maybe some people who read this now would say I'm exaggerating about the daydreams. Well, let's think about it a little: 10 minutes in the bathroom just to wash my face sometimes (and sometimes forgetting what I wanted to do there even), driving completely unaware of the movements around you, the inability to focus or concentrate on the long run, specially when reading something (greatly affected me during high school and college), and sometimes even talking or making a gesture with no sense. Now, if you think the things I'm mentioning previously are serious enough, then, I'm not exaggerating my fears from daydreaming.

However, trying to put some effort with my pictures from Ireland. I feel that I've almost done everything I can with those pictures. I do need to work on the camera more somehow. Anyway, after the "likeness" of my Tunnel Effect for the playground from Bayan park, seems that I will be visiting the old panoramas from Ireland and try to stitch them in that projection and see if there is any interesting results. Also, I will work on them in Adobe 1998 color space, as some of these panoramas were done before in Pro Photo (my beloved) space. The first of those to be visited was the Ardeaglais Cormaic (Cormac's Cathedral on Cashel Rock):

Ardeaglais Cormaic (Tunneling)

Usually, when doing a full spherical panorama, I do consider stitching the panorama in 2 projections: the flat spherical, and the little planet. The little planet projection was, I thought, more suitable for panoramas taken outdoors where you can engulf the main structures with the sky that you would be taking in the panorama itself, but I was wrong. The little planet projection proved to give interesting results when done for indoors panoramas as well. Now, this consideration for the LP projection, encouraged me to add one more projection to the list of "must be done," that is, the Tunneling (or Ant View as I called it before) projection. The tunneling projection (also a term coined by me. I don't know if there is a specific name for this) is simply the reverse of the LP; in LP you look from above to the scene, in Tunneling you look from ground level (or from below let's say). Compare? Would be fun!

Find your way around

I will post this now, in hope of doing something interesting with my camera in the coming days. I'm studying (or let's say general reading from the web) more of lights and other camera aspects, as well as looking for some opportunities to upload the BIG QTVR files (50MB+ in size), and show them to other people. I leave you now with a Scottish tune that I liked so much and been listening to all week! (you don't have to understand a thing just enjoy the music!).

The Ardeaglais...

Been a day or two not being able to work properly on my photos because of some sickness. I shouldn't have eaten that fatty dish. I had a hard time breathing and had to take some laxatives just to get some relief to my stomach. Because of that, my plans for Failaka were delayed even more, and probably, I won't be able to go there now. I don't like to take off at 9:00 AM in the morning and get back by 4:00 PM or so, and this is how it is or even later than this time in the coming few days, until the end of October.
Been struck somehow with some mis-calculations that I've made previously for my vacation. Not that much of a difference but however, I'm losing one day here. Instead of going back to work by November 1st, I would have to be there on 31st of October. I'm still slow and need some grease to be in mood of my work place again, but looking on the bright side, I got some books that I can read. In fact, I must. It is the only time I can read freely in. The question remains then, when shall I work with my other projects? The Ayvarith webpage, and what about writing some new poems? Writing is now sort of an important part of my life and I don't want to neglect it out of sudden, even if there is no concrete inspiration leading to it.

Although I've been working partially on the panorama taken for the Lounge room, but I've stopped working on this one for some time and decided to move on to a different one completely, and in fact, one of the earliest panoramas taken when I visited Cashel; The Ardeaglais (Chapel) of Cashel Rock.

The main yard of the chapel.

Just a little explanation of the word Ardeaglais, which I use solely and specifically for this chapel. Ardeaglais is just the Gaelic for "Chapel" and it is made of mainly 2 words: ard (high, great) + eaglais (church). I learned this word when I visited Cashel Rock, and since then I've been calling this place Ardeaglais.

This panorama was taken with a wave of tourists roaming around the place. Fortunately, when combining the slides into HDR images, there is an option within Photomatix to compensate for movement in the background or foreground, and hence, lot of these movements were eliminated and only few artifacts remained, which were cleaned by simple cloning (beside the nadir of course). 

I believe the main beauty of the place is in the geometry, and that made me expand my view for such a location. I've always believed that the Little Planet projection (also called Stereo projection) is more suitable for outside panoramas rather than for panoramas taken in the inside. I did that though already for panoramas taken for the main hall at my home (and that was long time ago before I get my Manfrotto VR-head), and also once for one of our labs at work, but I can't really say I'm quite satisfied about those.

Little Planet projection for our main hall at home. The black hole is unfixed nadir point.

Gamma Spectrometry Lab in CRER, my work place.

But I have to say now, that the most amazing thing about such projection is to amaze people and keep them asking questions on how did I take such an angle. It was not until I made the Little Planet for Ardeaglais, that I've discovered that for a place with a unique geometry can produce such a beautiful pattern, pleasing for the eyes, that details are not even important anymore. At least to me I have to say.

Little Planet projection for the Ardeaglais.

Of course, beside every spherical (full) panoramas, there must be a QTVR to end my work with. The QTVR here is made on 3 versions of the original. One was done with a full size panorama (original size) which was 50MP in resolution. The file was around 23MB in size and good looking, but of course not practical when it comes to the web of course. The other 2 versions were 25% of the real size with around 2MB, and 12.5% which was around 300kb in size. Of course the latest was ideal for web purposes, which I'm putting here. I've been using lesser JPG quality to reduce the file size significantly.

I finished these over night, and literally speaking, the little planet panorama took more than 6 hours to be stitched. I noticed that Little Planet panoramas tend to take longer times than regular spherical-flat ones. I don't know what is my next stop now, but I think I will move on in order with respect to the dates of the shots. While working now and then, I think from time to time if there is a possibility to achieve some black and white images, but maybe I will use this option when I exhaust myself with colors. I didn't do much single images so far though, but that's fair enough, bearing in mind that I just got back from Ireland 6 days ago. I feel so damn dizzy right now that I'm just picturing my bed in front of me on the monitor!

On the other hand so far, I've been waiting for some delivery. I've ordered a colorimeter, which I can use to calibrate my monitor. I've read somewhere, or maybe just misread that, that I can upgrade this hardware piece into a spectrophotometer, or in other words, into something which I can use to make profiles for my own prints from my own printer. If this is true then I did get a good bargain here; Two actions into one purchase. Just waiting for the usual delay in DHL for now...