Stop!

Another week without much activities with photography, but I've finally got my new notebook for conlangs. I've started pinning notes about basic elements of Geltani for the time being. Along with Geltani, there is a syllabary that I had to develop to write foreign names to Geltani. You can imagine this as being a Japanese writing Katakana along with Kanji. Will discuss that later.

I do have my own plans and pace for my own photography venue. With Mom's schedules taking 3 days from my week for dialysis and also because of my fasting right now for the month of Rajab (which I hope it would continue till the month of Sha'ban and then into Ramadhan), I barely find the power and the time to work with my camera outside or even think of something. Under these circumstances I've decided to abandon the Redbull project. Despite the fact that I've already prepared a plan to take 5 images telling a simple story for a A Day in Kuwait, yet the deadline is on May 20^th and I barely did something. However, there were other reasons that made me neglect this project:

• The deadline is too close as stated above and I don't have enough time with my current responsibilities.
• Some of my plans might require permissions and I'm absolutely in no mood to have a conflict with authorities or any hardships concerning that kind of activities outdoors.
• The conditions of Redbull were not so clear and frankly, I don't feel safe to submit my work to them.
• I had enough from time pressure and contests.

However, just for the fun of it (and who knows I might do these ideas later) I did sketch a plan for the process with 5 images and each image telling some phase in a typical day in Kuwait:

1. Morning: Sunrise; the beginning of a new day in Kuwait. This idea is already reflected in one of the panoramas I've done back in 2011.

   

   Towers of The Rising Sun

2. Traffic Jam: This is the phase of going to work. My plan was to shoot some traffic jam from a pedestrian bridge over some road, but having the problems I had in the past, I think my chances that this would pass safely is like 50% of even less. In periods of traffic jams cops are usually spread over the place and a person with a camera is not a favorable spotting.
3. Busy at Wok: For this phase, I was planning to shoot some office with a busy look (scattered papers, scattered furniture...etc). In fact, thinking about it right now, I might as well use one of my own panoramas which I've done in my own office in my work place including myself in the shoot!

   

   Busy at Work!

4. Evening: This is the period of family and friends visiting and the typical Diwaniyyah I'd say. For this idea, I was planning to do silhouettes by the help of my speedlites and some colored gels to light the background blue (reflecting evening time) while people laughing in the foreground. Might do this later even after abandoning the whole idea of the contest.
5. Night: This particular time I would have used it to reflect the safe atmosphere that we live in despite all of our problems. Initially my idea was to take a shoot of someone sleeping with the Towers of Kuwait in the background, but if this is done in the public, God knows what hurdles I have to put up with, specially with unnecessary people in the scene. I'm not a people's person and not so social, beside that, I might need a special permit to do such a thing in the public. The only alternative here is to do it with props in some studio or a room; yet, that won't have a great impact on the viewer I believe.

It was quite a brainstorming session for me to get out with some of these ideas, but I can't say I'm completely satisfied. Moreover, in the current time, I'm trying to prepare a dinner party if I should say, as a gratitude for friends in the photography group and out of the group as I've promised before - Just a tiny gift for Mom being out of the hospital. It should be on a Saturday, but apparently it won't the coming Saturday as there is no time for any kind of preparations right now.
Meanwhile, I'm looking further for other agencies of stock photos to submit my images to. I've long abandoned Fotolia and Bigstockphotos, while things are going smoothly with Canstockphotos and Mostphotos. One of the targets had been 123RF and Featurepics, but still looking for more outlets. I'm not that optimistic about Dreamstime, but I might try it again just for a change. Here and there, who knows what might come next from such websites.

Geltani Glossa:
As I've mentioned above, I've been working lately with Geltani further more and recording notes and trying to establish some basic elements of the conlang. Plurals, numerals, and many other things are all on papers right now, and when it's all over, I would need to do those digitally somehow but for sure without any fonts. It might be scanning all the way (and I'm having hard time with the scanner already!).

Scan of my notes with some scribbles of Geltani.

There are still though some basic stuff not settled down, like the sound of some driving letters (sorry folks, can't explain this all over again, it's in other posts already!). Some innovations and some regular rhyming must be added to the list to finish this task, I believe. On the scan on the left you can see some of the basic grammatical cases that I've been trying to settle down with. They had been changed from time to time and I think it is now the time to finish it one and for all. The plural is achieved by repeating the last syllable in the word, and drawing a special character for plurals. I'm not quite happy with repeating the last syllable method but this is the best I could think of for the time being. Would there be a change? Maybe!
One thing to be dealing with as well is creating a suitable transliteration system for pronunciation.

Primary Geltani Syllabary

On the other hand, I've sketched a primary syllabary for writing foreign names into Geltani. I say primary because these shapes are still under consideration. The system is like a mix of syllabary and abugida. I didn't want to put on more loads of vowels, thus I've pinned only 3 types of vowels and whenever the vowel is to be long, a marker is added on the syllable, while if the syllable is to be still (i.e. without a vowel) then it is done as in abugida systems; a marker is added below the syllable (as you can see in the scan). If there is a vowel in between (e.g. as "A" in way) then it is approximated to the closest vowel(s).
To make some twist in the whole conlang of Geltani, I've decided to make it sound like Chinese, yet with more sounds and consonants that aren't originally in real Chinese, mainly of Semetic origins like ħ [Arabic: ح], and there is some thought about adding the sound of Ayn [Arabic: ع] as well, but not now.

The complete picture of the grammar and the order sentence is still fuzzy in my brain but for some reason I'm not sure of, I do like the order of the sentence used in Sumerian and Akkadian (notice that those are REAL languages!), which is SOV (subject-object-verb). But I have to see further into this matter after the basics of the writing system are settled.
I've avoided, so far, working on several other conlangs (like Betenic and Bulughman) just to concentrate my efforts. Multi-tasking won't work here I guess, specially with such time schedule in such a mess.


Finale:
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. This is what they say. It seems for the time being that I would conduct more experiments in the field of tabletop photography and product photography. Even though I've never considered it before because of the equipments that I must have with me most of the time to take most of such shots, but it seems the only solution available in my case; to try to innovate something and avoid being outdoors too much unnecessarily - in locations that bring problems. On the other hand, who knows, I might as well make a good idea and impression with such field to open up the fields for some financial gains in the future. However, I don't tend to be over optimistic in such matters. I just need to think of what to do next.
Some of my plans for the near future include shooting a censer, a silhouette (as mentioned above), objects dipped in water with some special effect and maybe custom bokeh effect. This is some of the ideas that I've been noting down in my photography note. Would there be someone interesting and interested in what I think, what I do, and share? That, gonna take such a long time as it seems... if any.

Free Fall...

Struggling struggles and fighting fights, all of that to keep coming out with new ideas for photography and other aspects of conlangs, amid the increasing responsibilities concerning the house. Well, I guess I'm glad I'm not married at such moments.
At least in this week, I got to test the trigger partially, and under the light of the new book I'm reading (and almost finished) I've got more insight about my mistakes. More to come below.

Source: Amazon

As I've mentioned in my previous post, I've ordered 3 books, and they are here already. Instead of reading 2 at a time as I usually do, I decided to concentrate better on one book at a time. The first one to pick was the Tabletop Photography book by rockynook. I would classify the book as general (because under tabletop photography, you can enroll product photography or food photography... etc) but it has some nice tips about the lighting and how to do some stuff with emphasis on low costs. It is really an encouraging book despite the lack of some technical data when dealing with the light but, anyway, I think the depth of such topics is out of the scope of this book. I've already almost finished the book!
While reading the fore mentioned book, I was working on my own experiment which is also my first real trial for the new trigger since I got it back in March. I've pointed some of the lacking points in my previous post and some of them (if not all) were very true. From my side, I had my own problem too with my own tools already (other than the trigger that is) and also, I didn't learn quite enough about such type of photography.

The setting I've worked with in my experiment. Sorry about the bad quality but this is what you get when you ask a non-photographer to take a photo with his iPhone. I think my brother never heard of the word "focus" before!

As you can see from the blurry image above, my brother never heard of the word "focus" before as it seems. My setting was simple (and the trigger is placed on camera) while I needed a long cord to connect the sound sensor to the trigger. The sensor was placed on the surface of the black sweep (if you can notice, it is a small tiny black box on the left side of the sweep, which is your right side). Luckily, I had such cord long time ago when I used to record some music for a friend!
I've used my both speedlites here on both sides but I think this is a wrong step. I will explain further below in form of points for easy reading. My target was to freeze the falling moment of some marbles.

Free Fall
Canon EF 50mm, f/7.1, 2500^-1sec, ISO100.

Many trials went on to check for position and light levels as well as the depth and the shutter speed required to freeze the moment. Believe it or not, a 800^-1sec shutter speed was not enough to completely freeze the moment, and some marbles kept on showing motion blur. Yes, I'm a physicist (or so my B.Sc. announces) but I don't have the time to count for the falling acceleration and velocity and check it out with my camera's shutter speed; besides, I really hated mechanical physics! However, let's move on to the points:

• I've used some marbles randomly here and with different sizes. The problem with Free Fall above is that two big marbles dominate the scene in the foreground and this is a bit distracting. It is a trial and error job after all but it might be better to use only one large marble or leave them all at the same size, I think.
• The positioning of the speedlites on two sides (but pointing in different directions) was a mistake I believe. Under the light of my new reading, I think the best method to conceive the feeling of glass in the air is to have a reflector on one side and reflecting the light off it. I think a narrow strip of some white board would do. I think this way would also help me on concentrating the power of the light in one direction to get an intensified effect from both speedlites under the operation of High-Speed mode, which reduces the brightness severely. This is way much better than scattering the power of the two speedlites in different directions.
• The prop or sweep I've used was not completely black, or let's say it reflects bright tones when light strikes it. Besides that, simple cleaning from dust particles was not enough for clearing the view. Anyway, I do recognize the importance of capturing a glimpse of the ground to emphasize the sense of falling, but this ground such as the one in Free Fall is not a favorite.
• With trials, it was evident that there is a time gap between capturing the sound and then sending the signal and triggering the camera - this is natural of course, but with time and trials, it seemed the time gap between these processes is getting bigger (bigger in terms of micro or milliseconds).
• Maybe it is not very clear in this situation, but probably I should start using a black board over my lens when I shoot up close to avoid any reflections from the camera onto the glass.
• The low level of the settings in general is not helpful and I think they better be up a bit. 

These were some of the points that crossed my mind so far and bearing them in my mind, I might work it out again some time later. I'm just glad that I've tried the trigger at least and I'm ready to write a review about it on B&H website. This is like a duty for me. In the mean time I have to think of something to do about the increasing number of tools and how to organize my room!

Linguae Artificiales:

In the course of developing some thoughts about the future of some of these conlangs I've created, I've decided to keep a regular notebook. Probably, a notebook for every conlang I'm trying to work on from now on. I've had this idea since I've been looking at my scattered leaflets on my desk at work with all scribbles for Geltani and figured it is really easy to lose track of ideas made before! For example, I'm still not sure of the possessive articles that I've made already nor I'm sure about the grammatical cases! I have to organize my stuff.
On the other hand I was thinking if it is possible to work on 3 conlangs altogether? Seems huge step but who knows! Geltani, Bulughman and Betenic; and probably Caqobian as well - an artificial language spoken hypothetically by Alexander, and the plan is to make it go along with Greek somehow. Ideas, ideas, ideas. This is all what I can promise of. If only I can get my brain to organize itself as well...

Geometria...

Here we go, another week, with not much of activity, but at least I'm trying to grease the engine slowly. In the meantime, I do have something for mathematics and geometry still going on in my mind so far since the time when Mom was in the hospital, and that made me think of some weird stuff - simple, but weird I'd say. I'll come to that later on. Also, the group sent me (or maybe I should say put me in front of the cannon) for an interview on TV regarding aluminum prints. Ironically, I have nothing to do with this, except that I was "supervising" the printing process for the expo back in March. It went well (and short) but I have problem getting and viewing the video from the TV channel's youtube channel, mainly because they used a copyrighted topics and issues in their show which made the episode unwatchable in Kuwait! Thank you guys!

As for Mom, her health is progressing, specially that she started to head to the kitchen often and THAT is a very good sign in general, yet, personally and for my own state of mind, I won't feel comfortable until the number of dialysis processes that should be done per week is reduced. At the current time, we have to pick her to the dialysis center (luckily near my working place) 3 times a week, and each session takes around 4 hours. As far as I know (and some by logic), doing dialysis on the long run can cause more hibernating to the kidneys (because dialysis is doing what the kidneys should do) and that would weaken the body even more, beside weakening the immune system naturally. Two things that I don't wish Mom to be acquainted with.

Grease:

Source: B&H

It's been a month or a bit more since I've got the Ubertronix Strike Finder Elite for triggering the camera (or flash as it seems), but unfortunately I'm still unable to work out any ideas to work with it. Sure, water drops and splashes seem to be an obvious target but they are cliches by now. I was trying to find something new or some creative venture within these two topics (water drops and splashes). Since I couldn't think of any, I've tried at least to do some testing for the device.
The Ubertronix seem to work fine except for few awkward delicacies!

• The wires of the sensors (for sound and motion) are short, but probably can be lengthened by some means.
• The device contains no controls for the sensitivity of detection (specially when it comes to sound detection).
• The port used for connection to the camera also bears "Flash" on it, but in the instructions manual there is no explanations involving triggering flashes instead of cameras. Could that be with the help of the PC port in the flash itself?
• Motion and Laser detection seem a bit unpredictable. 
• The sensors for sound and motion with their short cord are also hard to be placed. Probably duct tape is due in some situations. They are in a bulky rectangular box shape and because of the sturdy cord it can be hard to make them stay flat on a table for example or make them still on their sides.

These might be some awkward points, otherwise, the device works in a wonderful way. I think even the Laser detector can be used as a motion detector but I'm not sure of that yet and I need to do more experimentation.

Rising Eye
Canon EF 50mm + 12mm & 35mm tubes, f/11, 400^-1sec, ISO100.

On the other hand, I was trying to catch some eyes with the help of extension tubes but my trials with other people were in vain, so I've tried to do it on my own eye. Of course it is not like a piece of art (specially with all these reflections of flashes on the iris). I've been fascinated with the lines formed on the iris and I thought maybe the best way to do this is to use extension tubes. Using speedlites, on the other hand, was problematic but it was a must; otherwise no light is available in such narrow corner! Doing the whole thing on my own eye is a really hard task, specially with using an external portable monitor to judge the focus and the composition. After many shots, I've decided to pick Rising Eye to work on its RAW and filter it a bit more. I like this version mainly because the iris is situated in the corner (and I cropped a little from the top right corner to emphasize this fact) and it breaks the monotonous look of the iris being in the middle of the frame (and I did take shots that way as well). I've never imagined myself going so deep with the macro field, but it might be time to plan for some rails for fine adjustments?

Geometria:

With my sudden amusement with geometry and mathematics (not something new in fact), I've been playing around with circles and rectangles, along with squares of course. Needless to say I had some crush on Schläfli and his symbols.
From that perspective, I've been thinking of ways to organize my composition or the way I see things in my pictures. I'm quite a believer in what Bruce Barnbaum mentioned in his book The Art of Photography about the myth of the law of thirds; something that I would beheaded for if I talk about in here inside the photographic community in Kuwait! Bruce, however, had his own points and logic indeed. Anyway, for me, I do tend to think of the law of thirds and the golden spiral as means to merely organize the objects in the scene but not a critical tool to get the attention of the viewer. I'm aided with this point by the common belief among photographers that Rules are made to be broken in general!
Stemming from this point of view, I've been working around to base some order based on geometrical means rather than visual means opposed to the theory of the thirds and the spirals.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds
Green: Diagonal-Circles

My first trial was to draw quarter circles from the corners of a 3:2 rectangle; with 3:2 being the usual ratio for imaging sensors (at least for the APS-C cropped sensors?), and the radius of these circles is half the length of the diagonal. Thus, the quarter circles would meet at the center point of the rectangle, and by drawing the diagonals of the rectangle we can specify the points of intersection between these circles and the diagonals (green on the image above). Now, would these points make an interesting composition? This, I wouldn't know without trials. However, I do imagine it is a good starting point for circular (specially overlapping circles; e.g. in a rose) subjects. But the intersection points seem a bit far away from the center which makes me skeptic about its use in general, but again nothing can be talked of without trials.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds.
Green: Diagonal-Circles.
Yellow: Central Circle.

Another thought then occurred to me is to draw a central circle within the 3:2 rectangle in such a way that the center of this circle is shared with the rectangle, bearing in mind that the radius should not exceed the height of the rectangle (the y-axis length). Then, drawing quarter circles from the corners like before. This one diagram is unusual for me because it shows here more than the usual 4 intersections; in fact we have 8 intersections. However, four of these intersections don't seem to be practical (the two central intersections up and down) because they touch the edge of the frame itself. Probably, after removing the 4 central intersection points, we are left with the other four that are close to the diagonals and work more in harmony with the law of thirds and the golden spirals (yet far away from the diagonals-circles intersections). I guess placing a subject in these points won't make much difference visually since it is close to the other perspectives. However, those points close to the edge of the frame which I've omitted in the beginning might make a difference if they are to be included in the rules of the composition. Notice here that I'm talking about placing a subject in ONE and only ONE of these intersection points, whether it may be law of thirds, golden spirals or any other perspective I've been mentioning so far; but what if some of these perspectives, specially this last one (Central Circle method) would work as a whole, meaning that intersection points are to be used all together to organize subject(s) in the scene and not one subject only? You think this would be visually interesting? Again, only trials would prove if it's appropriate or not.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds.
Green: Diagonal-Circles.
Yellow: Central Circle.
Grey: Diagonal-Central Circle.

By the end of my thoughts chain I was almost going to forget about the result of intersecting of the diagonals with the central circle. Not strangely, these grey points are in harmony with other perspectives like the thirds and the spirals, as well as the central circle intersecting points. In fact, I think the four perspectives or divisions: thirds, spirals, central circle and diagonal-central-circle do all make clusters for one position at a time around the center of the frame, and if we have one big subject within the frame it would be covering these four points in one corner at one time probably. This leaves two main questions of how affective these perspectives are when it comes to the Diagonal-Circles perspective (Greens) and the central intersections of the Central Circle (those closer to the edge). Well, as for the central circle perspective, we might, as I've mentioned before, work with the 8 points altogether (or 4 of them at a time) to place a certain subject. The greens, however, might have been tried before from my side without noticing like I did with one of the shots for some roses and petals.

Die Sanfte Ringe

Probably Die Sanfte Ringe reflects in a way how the Diagonal-Circles perspective would work - but I have to say here that this shot was taken long time before thinking about these different geometrical plays within the 3:2 frame. Yet, it does coincide somehow as a subconscious drive I presume! Notice that the Rising Eye mentioned before does somehow imply the Diagonal-Circles perspective and again it is as if it is a subconscious drive within my mind to do it that way, specially when it comes to circular subjects or rings and loops. There is a difference though between the Rising Eye and Die Sanfte Ringe in that the former is indeed a 3:2 rectangle, while the latter is a square. Not sure yet how to think about the visual impact in between these two but one step at a time - I think there is a plenty of time to think about these crazy geometrical means. As for now, I need to work a bit more on more serious stuff!

Libros!

I've exhausted all my arsenal of books by now (and only one or two short stories are left). I've been working on my queue of Arabic books that I've purchased some months ago from the books fair back in November. Back then, I did purchase some stories just to rest my mind little bit from the technical aspects that I usually wander on. Now my eagerness is back to the technical side and I've decided to purchase 3 new books from Amazon. As usual, I've decided to take up 2 books about photography and 1 about science (specifically archaeology).

Source: Amazon

One of the books that I'm eager to read is Lens Design Fundamentals by Rudolf Kingslake. The book is cheap and in fact I was going to order another one which costs around US$150, but judging from the contents, I believe the latter is way too advanced for me for the time being (it appears to be too academic in style). Thus, I changed my mind and picked this one since it's cheaper as well as it is aimed for beginners. I'm not sure where does this lead me but I've always wished to gain more insight about the make of lenses and where the power lies in the design after all.

Source: Amazon

 The second book deals with Tabletop Photography, by Cyrill Harnischmacher with some twist about using speedlites. From what I reckon about its table of contents, it is dedicated for people who don't like to work in studio environment, and eager to use some tricks with their speedlites. Not sure how much I will gain from such a book, but I'm pretty sure that I won't be disappointed as it is the case with most of rockynook publishing.

Source: Amazon

The last book is something attracted me mainly because of some formulae inside! The Handbook For Classical Research, by David H. Schaps, seems to be a general overlook about humanitarian sciences and how mathematics merge into them for purposes of studies. I was looking for a pure archaeological book with pure scientific prospect, but unfortunately most of the books I've found were novel-like and don't deal much with the scientific and mathematical side. This book, however, bears much about studies and how to do them and how to analyze data in such fields like anthropology and archaeology, in different sub-fields. This is, at least, what I've regained from reading the table of contents and some few pages in between the covers. I don't think I would be disappointed here though - anything that has some numbers in its language can be quite interesting in the current time!
The only problem that remains now is how to manage my time between these 3 books. I think I'd read the rockynook issue first, because they can be over with quickly, usually!

Conlang:

In the meantime, I'm not forgetting my beloved conlang(s) in such frustrating times, but actually I'm not putting ideas onto papers or notes - but simply everything is going on in a mental note. I need to enhance my memory about some basics about the Bulughman conlang as well as Betenic.
There had been an idea of a funny or a comic version of English as a conlang. I thought about it long time ago and proposed it to Simon Ager, the author of Omniglot.com, but as he said, the priority is for conlang with conscripts (i.e. artificial and new scripts) while my version was simply using modified Latin alphabet. From that point I've been thinking of inventing a new conscript indeed. Priorities for now, however, is for the Geltani project that seems endless. Sometimes, I do think I need a wife not to love or share dreams together, but simply to organize my time. Might be a plausible idea, but I don't think I would call it a marriage, can I?

العين التي رعتني
The Eye That Cared For Me

Dubai Back and Fro...

Well, been to Dubai for 3 days this week and I couldn't have much time to take some photos or work on some pictures. I received and invitation (as I've mentioned in previous post) from HIPA to attend to the ceremony of awards giving.
The stay was fine and Dubai is a nice place to stay (I couldn't imagine there was no traffic jam!), but unfortunately way too expensive for my budget. In just 3 days I've spent what I would've spent in Ireland for 5 days or more!
Despite the beautiful atmosphere it was hard for me to take any pictures from there, and the sum was a total of 3 images only and 2 of them were, well, fine.

Dornige Schönheit
Canon EF 50mm + 20mm tube, f/22, 160^-1sec, ISO100.

I went strolling outside of the hotel after breakfast on the 18^th, first without any camera just to check my surroundings, but then I went back to my room and got my stuff and went out again to catch some weird looking plant (but then I've realized it is abundant in UAE). Weird for me at least as I'm no botanist! In here, I've used an extension tube (20mm I think) and took several shots with and without flash, but I think after all Dornige Schönheit was the most stable of all. I did took shots from above but I needed a larger zoom to hide my other hand which was holding the stem. Lately, I've been using the extension tubes a lot with my 50mm lens as I see it a nice and fast substitute for the heavy 100mm macro lens and would give a single hand the power to control the camera body properly more.

Columns and Columns
Tamron 70-300mm @300mm, f/8, 500^-1sec, ISO100.

I've walked and wandered further away and took some shots (mainly of abstract nature) but lot of them didn't turn well, and finally reached a construction site where I've noticed some raising columns under construction - probably the only thing that really caught my attention.
That night there was the ceremony which I went to Dubai for, the HIPA awards ceremony. Nicely done and I got the chance to see such amazing photos indeed. I'm checking with HIPA to see if the ceremony will be published on youtube.

I do realize that lot of people are surprised for the fact that I didn't take much pictures and I didn't go out a lot in Dubai - but this is back to the simple fact that I don't really consider it a vacation (or completely a vacation let's say). I would spend a vacation in a calmer place like the countryside or a sea village probably, but not in a big city. Also, I'm not a shopping person and I didn't go there for shopping in the first place, and photography-wise, the urban scape is not greatly inspirational for my mind. However, it is a nice city with nice people and there were lot of things to think about by observing my surroundings - Culture, attitude, and arts. Dubai is a big city but not within the same reputation line as other big cities like New York or London. This would seem hard to explain but probably easy to observe in Dubai itself!
Anyway, after a fast roll over Dubai events, I'm back to my previous regular work with my own humble photos the week before.

Flora Mood:

Well, they say it is spring already but years of living here as a native, I sort of realized that Kuwait has no spring. It's simply: Winter, Summer. It's an On-Off case, so to say. However, some blooms and flowers had sprung already and I didn't want to miss the chance. I think after my last workshop with my teacher about geometrical plays in floral arrangements, it seems that I'm (or my mind is) more aware of floral arts and the inside arrangements of floral lines.

Aglow
Canon EF 50mm+ tube, f/16, 50^-1sec, ISO400.

These images were taken the week before I travel on two days, when I started packing my camera and taking it with me to work. This time, however, I decided not to take my tripod. In fact, a tripod can be a hassle in such situations specially for one heavy and cranky tripod like mine!

Quinquenia
Canon EF 50mm + tube, f/20, 60^-1sec, ISO400.

As you may notice from Aglow above, that even f/16 can have a shallow depth of field in such situations (with extension tubes in used). Lately, I've been using the tubes a lot (I've mentioned that already above) because it is fast and easy to get a close up and ALSO because I can use 50mm lens which has a maximum aperture of f/1.4. This is of course a very shallow depth of field and when you compare it to f/16 which still has a shallow depth, f/1.4 might not be that good as an option. However, adding this value to the range of stops available is pretty valuable and I wouldn't know when would I need it. Anyway, in both shots here, Aglow and Quinquenia (and also shots that would come later) I was forced to raise the ISO little bit and use the on-camera flash. Here comes another advantage for using extension tubes: the length of the 50mm lens with an extension tube (be it 12, 20 or 36mm) is shorter most of the time (I'm talking here about connecting only one tube) and it gives a good close-up abilities. This relatively shorter than 100mm macro lens length makes it feasible and possible to use the on-camera flash easily because if the lens is too long like the 100mm lens, then a shadow cast is most likely to occur. A cast from the lens itself that is. Of course, we are talking about on-the-go photography and not the precise and making-art photography in which a photographer would spend many minutes if not hours studying the situation and settling the tripod and picking the lens and then choosing the appropriate moment.

Green Ankh
Canon EF 50mm + 12mm tube,
f/22, 200^-1sec, ISO100.

The on-camera flash solved lot of problems, and mainly allowed me to use the manual mode on the camera to speed up the shutter speed as much as I like. I would say though, if I was to use my 580EX II speedlite here, I would need help or something to stabilize the plant's stem at least. In most of these situations, both of my hands were busy and the on-camera flash seemed the appropriate solution for such situation, even though a slight shadow might burst out as in Quinquenia or to a lesser degree as in Green Ankh. The on-camera flash as well helped to create that translucent look and glowing atmosphere in Aglow; but the talk about the ISO noise is something else of course.
Yes, the on-camera flash does eat out some of saturation of some colors specially if no gels are used as it is the case with Green Ankh where the plant's stem was faint in color and I had to reduce the highlights and boost the vibrancy of colors (not the saturation) to some degree. But such situations are easy to deal with in general.

Quadraspinasphere
Canon EF 50mm + 36mm tube, f/20, 20^-1sec, ISO400.

As I've said before, using the on-camera flash allowed me to work with manual mode but this is not always the case. Like in Quadraspinasphere, I was not so sure where to begin with my shutter speed so I've just turned the the dial to Av and let the camera choose the shutter speed for me (in combination with the flash). Here, I was lying on the ground after putting the car shade on the floor out of my work place (and thank God no one was there to watch me do it!), thus it was reasonable to concentrate on my approach to the plant in such a low level, rather than work or think about the shutter speed. I had to crop Quadraspinasphere to make it as a quarter of a sphere as I envisioned it, but one of the hardest points in taking this picture is the fact that I have to work in manual focus most of the time. A fact that had been persistent with using extension tubes, as the auto-focusing function seems to be baffled when it comes to extension tubes, probably!
One of the tricks that I usually do in such situations with manual focusing (and with such bad eye vision like mine), and with a shaky situation (like a plant in the wind or breeze or a shaky hand) is to do a scanning with continuous shutter speed clicks. Meaning: with relatively high shutter speed (20^-1sec seems fast enough but slower with flash turned on), I set the camera with continuous (or burst) mode/drive and check out a point where the sharp focus is most likely to occur (all within the viewfinder). After that, I get closer to the subject little bit (not much!) and press the shutter button and keep holding it while moving my head slowly to the back getting further away from the subject. This way, I get load of pictures of course, but at least my chances for getting a sharp image in between are more. It is a talk of probability and statistics if I should say. 

Thoughts:

There is a hard mix in thoughts right now, specially after this trip to Dubai, and regarding many aspects. In Dubai, it seemed to me that people talk about arts wherever you go, and galleries of art are displayed in public - it was like a public education concerning arts. How was this done? What elevated the level of consciousness of the people of Dubai, at least those I've been meeting on the way, about arts. Such level of thought that I didn't encounter so far in here. Needless to say, that such big city get a traffic jam only in the rush hours time (morning and evening), unlike us with 12 hours a day.
I remember back in the 1970s and 1980s Kuwait was something like that, and the simplest form of art appreciation would be seen in the National Day celebrations, when people and schools used to go out on the streets in an organized parades with props and stuff made memorizing and emphasizing the history and the identity of this country. Where did all that go? All these parades are now replaced by a bunch of sanitarium inmates going freely outside and splash each other with water and foam and traffic jams blocking the roads. Is this the identity we are commemorating?
It is clear and evident that the foreign policies and the openness of Dubai to the world made it a global center with an elevated level in most aspects of life - but do we really need to be open that much as much as to indulge in (mostly) western culture to be elevated in the level of consciousness? Logically and from the perspective of history, Arabs did conquer such place in time and now it is gone, hence, I think building over what was achieved and not merely adapting to the western way is possible; thus, creating a self-identity awareness. The thing is, where and how to start and what could spark people about such advantageous endeavor? One particular clue lies in the ruling family of the UAE and Dubai specifically. I was surprised that HIPA (which stands for Hamdan International Photography Award) was established by the crown prince of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Hamdan and he, himself, was a contributor. He is a young man, and I thought he was old, or not-so-old type of person. I realized at this point that the upper class and those under in a community like UAE's is really entwined to some extent and the leaders themselves push people in that direction and encourage the openness of thoughts and arts. He should be an example to be followed in the region, and the ME in general. This is what I believe.

Writing this now, with a call from the main organizer in the group about another fair or expo that they want me to get involved in. I have to say frankly that I'm getting tired of this. At the time that I want to raise consciousness and arts appreciation in the group members and make them stronger in spirit facing the criticizing of their images, needless to say raise their technical skills, the management of the group on the other hand concentrate so much on the aspects concerning the group's reputation and pronouncing its name. I wonder now, how this can be done with members that don't even shoot in RAW format?!
I've been chitchatting with a friend on dinner last Friday and he made a note that he felt that the group and its responsibilities are pulling me down, and I'm pulling or carrying the heavy load of the group's well-being on my shoulders like Hercules. He suggested that if it didn't quite work well, I should quit.

I'm not memorizing all those beloved projects that I've established some time ago along with Ayvarith conlang, like the Bulughman and the Betenic for example. I need to continue and I need to spend more time with these projects that suddenly stopped in time. My Geltani project is also postponed and can barely touch it with all these responsibilities over my head. I have to say NO to many stuff just to sit down and complete some of these fantasies of my own. That might mean, for some time, saying "Goodbye" to my camera and have some rest from all the mess and confusion that I've got myself into with photography world - specifically here in Kuwait.

Mawahb 3

Finally it's over. What a stress and what a scramble and entangle of times and schedules it was. This year, however, I didn't have the mood to go around and take photos of various booths around the expo, even though there were some nice people and some nice talents. I was just too tired to do all of this now.
I did take photos after all from various locations around the expo just for trials and not as documenting. But because of the ongoing event I didn't have enough time to work on these photos once I've taken them - add to that, a panorama of the booth took over my little available time between my work and the expo.
The location of the expo this year was changed and I have to say it was a miserable location for parking places were shared between students, participants and visitors (and later I've been told that the expo location itself was on a parking lot making huge harassment for students there!).

We'll come to the panorama and the QTVR later in its own section, but for now I guess I'll just list some of the images that I've processed so far, and maybe a little story behind some of them!

The Sax
Tamron 70-300mm @209mm,
f/5, 200^-1sec, ISO1600

In the beginning there was the stage which I thought of snapping at for several times on several days (the expo was for 5 days). It is a good target because of the lights and the atmosphere - a real test for the camera and the lenses, but a bad atmosphere for my ears!
The situation was good for all sort of light tricks but it needs concentration and a good lens, and apparently Tamron 70-300mm is not that good but it did some nice job. I say it's not that good, but I'm not saying it's bad! The lowest f-stop could be achieved is f/4.5 and it increases to f/5 with increasing focal length. Moreover, the zooming ring can get jammed a bit and hard to move (this can be good and bad in the same time). Probably the cold weather and air at night does affect this lens but I'm not sure of that. With lowest f-stop being f/5 in zooming situation, it was essential to raise the ISO severely in lot of shots taken with this lens, as is the case with The Sax, which was done with a fast metering for the highlight areas on the stage and stopping down the shutter speed (make it faster) to make a slight touch of light on the bodies. Notice how the shutter speed is barely 200^-1sec while focal length is 209mm, and all at ISO1600.

Happy Drummer
Canon EF 10mm macro, f/2.8, 250^-1sec, ISO800

Just to give an impression how it is to work with such f-stop as f/5 in the darkness, it is enough to look at the other image taken with Canon EF 100mm macro lens at f/2.8 (smallest for this lens). At ISO800 it was barely light enough to catch the drummer's happy moment. Probably the red lights made it worse for the noise-cleaning process. The ISO value was cut to one half.

The Lonely Sax
Tamron 70-300mm @176mm, f/5,
60^-1sec, ISO1600.

Cropping images is a prevalent feature in such images taken from the stage and I think it is a must. It's hard to control such a chaos on the stage but you have to keep your eyes open for specific expressions and/or specific light patterns on the performers' bodies and faces. I wasn't a fan of such type of photography but I think it did change my mood a bit by trying something out of my comfort zone (with architecture and landscape). Amazingly, as well, images like The Lonely Sax did give me some sad feelings and touch, most probably because of the light and red lights and the dark atmosphere, while on the stage, the musical play was a happy Latin tune.

Old laptop and monitors users careful here as the colors might appear smudged and/or banded.

Now, this picture really sparked some thoughts in my head about the possibilities I do have out there, spiritually and mentally that is. What are the possibilities of changing the emotions of the scene intentionally? Is it really easy to change a happy scene into a sad one? Or maybe it is easy to change a sad scene into a happy one? Of course the light plays a major role here in the formation of the feelings surrounding the image, but I'm pretty sure it is not the only factor. I'm already aware of color-to-B&W conversion and its power in conveying emotions through an image, specially those that are intended to invoke mystery or melancholy. Yet, I feel there is a general formula for all this turmoil. Probably my scientific-based mind is largely getting involved here; where it doesn't belong?

The Player of The Sun
Tamron 70-300mm @176mm, f/5, 400^-1sec, ISO1600.

Doing silhouettes is another possibility for objects on the stage with so many lights rolling around, but behold, it's not that easy as well - since stage lights were circling around. I think The Player of The Sun was just a hit of luck for me when all lights on my side went off at the moment and only those on the far side kept on - a must for silhouettes. There had been other silhouettes other than this but I think the one above is the best of them all. The spot light on the far end did help the look I guess to make it something outdoors-like rather than indoors-like and on stage.

Stephanie McGeehee
Canon EF 50mm, f/1.4, 80^-1sec, ISO800.

Our booth was visited frequently and sometimes by some celebrities. One of the major characters to me, however, was Stephanie McGeehee. Stephanie is the owner of METALfusion - a shop for printing on aluminum and one of our major sponsors for this expo. The shop itself can be a target for a panorama and I've thought seriously about sending an email to her suggesting the idea with reduced prices in exchange of a self-advertising by adding my own logo and website to the panorama. Not sure how it would turn out, but I didn't advertise for myself seriously since I decided to start a website of my own back in 2012.

Planeta Columnium

 She was amazed with my panorama Planeta Columnium and was wondering why did I crop it. When I've told her that we have our own critics in the group who decide what to put on the expo and contests and what to crop or not she replied that that this panorama is better be symmetrical as it is intended to and the crop did really take a lot out of the panorama.
Maybe you did notice the shutter speed and the ISO just to make a sense of the lighting conditions there! Yet, the images I've taken of her were mostly out of focus - the darn f/1.4 is so shallow that a slight move can take the whole scene out of focus!

Happy Birthday!

By the last day of the expo I was surprised to know that it was my teacher's birthday! Out of sudden the Birthday chants started and everyone was gathering around the cake singing and wishing. I didn't have time to react here but I just grabbed my camera and started to shoot in Manual mode. Naturally, lot of these shots was out of focus mainly because of the crowds in front of me who interfered with the focusing points and the camera focused on them instead!

Glowing Bahaa!
Canon EF 50mm, f/1.4, 640^-1sec, ISO400.

Magic and Magician
Canon EF 50mm, f/1.4,
1000^-1sec, ISO400.

Just to note, these images were processed accordingly with my calibrated monitor of my PC, hence the luminance level (and so the visual impact on the viewer) can be different that what I intended!

In a fast rhythm, I've started to do some metering in a hurry and change the shutter speed accordingly. I was trying to work as fast as possible before the fireworks go off. I didn't even pay attention to the ISO (which proved to be hard to clean later)!
In Glowing Bahaa I had to emphasize the luminance on the face manually and then work out more with dodge and burn. I have to say here that this image look better in small size rather than large size, yet I'm not sure how the print would go on with this one. On the other hand, Magic and Magician was completely done by luck. As I've mentioned above, objects interfering with the focusing points dragged my focus sometimes away from Bahaa himself and this is exactly the situation here; except that I got a lucky effect. Notice that in this event the lights were on and it wasn't dark in the expo! Well, probably someone turned off the lights of the booth itself but generally speaking, the light conditions were normal. It is all a play of the shutter speed (and no flash).

Booth and Panorama with QTVR

The panorama for our booth was taken around the third day of the expo and to do it I had to leave my work place earlier and head to the expo location. Despite the fact that the campus was stuffed with cars, but I've been told that in such time visitors to the booth are almost none - and it was so! I needed the least disturbance I could have to complete this work.

BPF Booth - Mawahb 3
Version 1

What I didn't get from disturbing people in this panorama I got it from other sources. As I got into the location the AC was turned on and the roof of the big tent started to wave; giving me a clear warning of a hardship to come. This would be exactly the same situation when I've shoot a panorama in the main court of Ikaros hotel on Failaka island last year.

It took me some time to settle down with my tools and to check to what elevation level I should raise my tripod and the VR-head. The main issue here was the reflections from the TV and the rest of the aluminum prints. As for the TV it was turned on so I can relax a bit about it - not much reflections going to come from that direction. As for the prints, I've decided to lower my stuff and myself down to avoid direct reflection (angle of incidence equals angle of reflection).

After settling with the level it was time to decide on my exposure. With my simple light meter I've taken (incident) readings from various angle and distances from the camera and the values varied between 4^2/3EV and 5EV; and of course I've put my favorite f-stop to work in such situation: f/8. The result was an exposure of 2 seconds and working with brackets of -/+2 made the exposure as: 2 seconds (0EV), 0.5 second (-2EV), 8 seconds (+2EV).

You might be asking why it is called Version 1. Well, the problems that rose when doing this panorama made me stitch for 3 times! Yes,  t h r e e. Maybe I should sort this out in form of points:

• In the beginning, the HDR stitch was hard to be done because (it seems) the slides were too dark to establish control points in between them. I had to tone-map all the slides, and align them then save the panorama as a model to stitch the original HDR panorama.
• When tone-mapping the original HDR panorama after the stitch, the usual weird color spots appeared and it was hard to fix this time. This time, however, instead of getting the usual blue spots, they were accompanies by highly saturated red patches on the wooden surfaces around the booth, and some harsh blue reflections out of the aluminum prints.
• After looking at this problem with the original HDR, I decide to stitch the model that I've made out before from the tone-mapped slides - and this was Version 1. Since I've tone-mapped them on the basis of showing details to the stitcher to create control points, the effect is surreal somehow and I thought other group members won't like it, hence I thought of creating a normal one.
• To create the normal panorama I had to convert the RAW files of the 0EV exposure (i.e. 2 seconds exposure) to TIFF files (since my old PTGui doesn't read EOS 7D RAW files) and start from there with the stitching process (which was relatively easy). 

BPF Booth - Mawahb 3
Version 2

Of course in all cases there were the broken lines that I had to deal with by cloning out. I have to say I was lazy here to work with Blending Priority in PTGui to cover up for such broken lines, but it seems that the shake in the roof of the tent which was caused by turning on the AC could have probably affected other slides and caused broken lines elsewhere. Usually in such situations I would check if I can emphasize the Blending Priority of the middle band of the panorama (i.e. the first row of images in the panorama) so these slides would overlap the upper and/or lower portions of the panorama to cover up for such broken lines.

Despite the easiness of cloning for the ground here (because it's all unique in texture and almost unique in light level), but I've decided to use my logo as a nadir point. Later, however, group members asked to have the group's logo as well as this QTVR and panorama could be used officially. Hence, I had to work around this situation by combining both logos and put them as nadir point. Generally, two QTVRs were made for both versions of the panorama.

  Version 1


Version 2


However, in Version 2, the seam line could not be matched while it came naturally as is in Version 1. Also, the TV in Version 2 was a bit off and I didn't fix that, while in Version 1 I did some work to darken the TV a bit. All of that seems to make Version 1 better and superior to Version 2 when it comes to QTVRs, while it's vice versa in the case of flat panoramas.
This said, there is much more to be done with these panoramas, but I need to process some files and some work to be done first before having fun with projections in panoramas!

Going Crazy

From time to time, I do like to get some venting out from the conventional photography and aesthetics topics and just do what my fingers exert. Literally, going crazy with a style that is not my usual style. During Mawahb 3 expo I think I've found my typical target - Cars.

Cars are a typical target for HDR madness. I say madness here meaning the abnormal tone-mapping and the grunge style (which is mistakenly named HDR). 

Going Crazy 1

Going Crazy 2

Maybe I've taken a lot of HDR shots (i.e. bracketed exposures) but I've chosen to work with 3 of them only so far. Probably more to come later. The sole purpose for working in such mode (and mood) is a sort of a stress release, if I can call it so.

Amazingly though, even though I don't like cars and I've picked them specifically for this task (to work as crazy as possible!) - there are still people who do like such colors and hues and shades. This proves my point about the rationality of style and photography. I'd rather sell an art piece to someone than having a critic trying to adjust my style with the assumption of making my skills and work better in the future. I don't mean to be materialistic here, but rather I like to be realistic. The main point here is, do your best and there will be always people who like your work - and there will be always people who hate your work (critics are included on both sides).

Going Crazy 3

I think what critics should do is to help photographers do a better job and not really criticize their work. Yes, there are technical issues that a critic might alert the photographer for, but trying to change the style and the sole purpose and chain of thoughts of a photographer? This is like self-projection and shadowing over the photographer's thoughts and philosophy in photography. This is exactly what happened with my Planeta Columnium panorama which was cropped just to please the critics. Many people were amazed to know that such panorama was cropped while the main idea of it was keeping symmetry. If my idea was to resemble a rising sun, I would have done it already, but simply, this is not what I was thinking of!

Finale

BPF Group

It was a stress time that flew away for now. I'm just hoping that we learn from this experience and from the many mistakes that happened in the preparations phase. Most importantly, I'm just hoping that group members look forward and be careful with the technical aspects of photography (like shooting in RAW format!). On the other hand, I just wish of critics to be more realistic in their expectations (and stop projecting their own style and fashion on their judgements). One of the critical information that I'd like to apply in the future how to tie the viewing distance with the print size (which in return has an impact on the resolution). Such information is available online and can easily be implied, but at the time of the preparations we barely thought about it!

Now, I'm trying to get back to my normal phase since my camera became cold because of the work with this expo and I'm trying to find new ideas yet and new exciting stuff to do with my camera. On the side as well, my thoughts are still going through my archive of Ayvarith and Geltani, while keeping some space of thought for other conlangs that I've created a script for but no concrete language still; like Betenic. Amazingly, I've discovered that some of the words that I've implemented already are already real words in Akkadian and Sumerian - some of them with the same meaning even! Example for this is shá which means "which" or "that" in Ayvarith (for masculine) and also in Akkadian; but in Akkadian it is probably not related to a gender.

I'm writing these words now as I've booked a ticket and a hotel in Dubai. I've always told people that I won't be going to there since it's a city; one big city. Not the atmosphere I want to spend a vacation in! However, the situation here is different not really a vacation by itself. But I've received an invitation to attend a ceremony by HIPA. I've, with some group members, enrolled in their photography contest back in December 2012, and totally forgot about it! However, I've received an email from the committee inviting me to attend the ceremony, and when I checked with other members of the group they stated that they didn't receive anything. I'm not sure what does that mean but maybe I can take some fresh air for one week (and go to Failaka?). I just hope things go smoothly in such big city.  For this reason, I'm not sure there will be a post by next week, but we'll see!

Mysterious...

My brain works in a mysterious way right now, but in my own language that means only in a spontaneous way. I have some ideas for some story beginnings, and the rest might come later I believe, but I'm hesitating. Should I start writing something now without doing anything in the translation process of this loooooong part of Alexander's story? And what about the sketch I'm supposed to do? Things are clashing in my mind and can't find an answer. On the other hand, I'm kind of convinced that I should start on something... otherwise the thread of ideas might cut off and I won't find something to write. At least I'll pen some stuff down. One of the ideas is to write something about my dear friend, who works with a bunch of stupids (don't worry, it's something regular in Kuwait).

My ear is, as it seems, doing better with the pain, but my hearing capabilities are lessened. Maybe I need some ear cleaning again (I did one 2 years ago) but after all this inflammation is gone. There is some pain that kicks for a second and then disappears but everything sounds OK for 2 days now. Last Thursday, everything was OK with it, until I had a shower afternoon and it started to kick out an unbelievable pain! And today, surely I have to take some shower, otherwise I'm gona be sooooo stinky!!

Working conditions are quiet and the regular fight with sales persons and invoices shall begin soon I believe after the delivery of some devices. I hate that but anyway, this is the good part of being not in a high place or position! Because your signatures typically means nothing! Well, I have to report the conditions with my director anyway and this is something manageable from my side at least.

Checking after my tail, I guess I have to note down some words in Bulughman and Zimuran, and also Betenic (the freshly made conlang). Zimuran might be less active, but I think I should add some words to the list of Bulughman and Betenic. When I talk about this I just remember the sad story of GeoCities closing down and having to do a huge work again in some other place! I think I can avoid this problem by buying a domain from Yahoo! but this is not so suitable for a humble page like mine with a simple design and not really intended for a commercial work at all! Man, all my brain thinks of right now is ........... VACATION. And I mean a vacation away from everything! Just me, my camera and nature.

No response yet from the Irish embassy in Riyadh... this is the first time for me to send a passport outside... so this kinda makes me awry.

Betenic...

Finally, Betenic is online: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/betenic.php

I removed a wisdom tooth which I guess is the final one to remove, since I removed most of them when I was 17. The pain is gone but I have to cope with the blood still.

My mind is still scattered. I didn't write much in the past few days, plus, removing my tooth actually made me prone to stick to bed, thus I did not go to work today. My mood is just to sit and listen to Irish music. Still preparing for my trip in October though. There had been some ideas to shift it earlier to September but I guess I will make it on October. It is hard to change all the stuff that I did already.

I need to refresh my poetic memory and write something new. I get visions of some words but I can't make a full picture of it. I got lot of things to do tomorrow thus I don't think I would be able to write or think of something to write tomorrow. But in general, my life is peaceful for the current time, if I should say!

Writing...

Things are going slowly since the last time I made an entry to this blog. Although I made a scan for the Betenic alphabet but I didn't pick up the forms that I would need and settle it down. Writing and writing and writing, this is what I'm doing at the current time as I'm trying to elevate my writing skills to a higher level via involving in www.writing.com.

This is the new born kitty in our yard. Been feeding them for some time now. S/He was so weak and almost lying on the ground without moving much, but things are getting better.
In work, I'm sick of some things but for the time being I got somehow numb... I do not feel a thing. Like, what the heck... why should I work? What am I doing here? After some thought into it, I did discover that my existance isn't really necessary there... all what I need is the money from there. Needless to say the annoying blabbering you always get.
I wrote a new poem and called it Mother Hugs Daughter. The words for this poem were revealed to me when I was looking at a picture of a friend, from US, hugging her daughter. Sometimes, simple things just let you get into a wave of emotions... for no real obvious reason but because it is what it is.
Let's hope I will be able to push things forward as soon as possible. I hate to leave things unfinished, otherwise I'm going to forget everything about it, and forever.