Hello everyone. I'm posting this earlier than usual because, well, most probably I don't have much to post by next Thursday. Anyway, this is just a short little post to let you know (if you follow these useless posts) that I'm planning to take few weeks off from blogging; or rather have to.
My mental status had been quite in upheaval lately and my mind is quite shattered and unable to focus, adding to that, few strikes from disease (allergies, cold and fever) had been visiting and thus I'm almost unable to think of anything to do with my camera or come up with new ideas for new posts for this blog. Maybe I'm suffering from a burn-out? Not sure really. So, I thought of posting this earlier just as a little announcement for a little break and brake in my activities (as if I was busy with them anyway!), in the hope that I might have some good material in some weeks time.
Meanwhile, I was able to put down some emotions into a poem; Something which I didn't do for ages now. It was one of these severe mood swings that got me started putting words randomly and then trying to iron the whole thing. I guess mood swings aren't all bad after all, probably. The poem can be found here, but I will post it here anyway:
Black Is The Rose
Black is the rose and rosy are the tears,
a trophy to those dreams running away.
Black is the rose and bright in its flares,
left to the mind's hurdles and the heart's sway.
Lovely, and none yet had it be seen,
settled on its nettles, awaiting the dream.
But the dream passed and nowhere to be seen,
yet the Sweet lies, with hopes, of some gleam.
Gentle is my Rosy, savior of my throb,
by my cheek, always, embracing these drops.
Burdened with loads, but with me it shall sob,
drop by drop, and that passion never stops.
Black is my rose, but who dares to care?
Black is the rose, and black is my affair.
Some lines might not exactly rhyme, but I wouldn't waste much time here really. Ironically though, after writing this, I've remembered one shot that I've made back in 2013, and re-processed it again just to fit the theme of the poem. Usually, I get inspired by photos to do poems, or sometimes I would take photos or get inspired with ideas from poems of others (or simply quotes). This is the first time for me to process and image specifically to fit a poem.
Black Is The Rose
So, this is the end of this post, and I hope I would be back soon, at least in 2 weeks time; Hopefully with some health back in my body. I still need to think also about some topic to put on my Arabic blog as well. Anyway, seems that blog, too, will be on hold for months rather than weeks as well. See you later…
Well, I was supposed to wait for 2 weeks to post this but I thought maybe I should do it now and have some rest from blogging for several weeks. So, this post would be a quick one, talking about Kika's photo-challenge for the last week; Week 12. The theme for the last week was "Reflection". I've mentioned that already in my previous post, and I say it once more here. I think I do need some vacation from blogging for some time (even though I know the content I'm sharing here is not a big deal nor it is large in size). I'm not sure how many weeks I will be resting (and trying to come out with more ideas for photos) but I would say it might be 3 weeks to 4. Meanwhile, I'm guessing I'll be back to work during that time and things shall get busy back again for sure. Unless the higher-ups decide something against returning back to work because of the Delta-Variant and its wide-spread nowadays. I don't want to sound bad here but I do wish for this decision, of going back to work, to be postponed for a while.
Kika XII
Well, hope you like the new color for the subtitles here! I think I will use it from now on. As I've mentioned before (as well), the last 3 weeks of Kika's photo-challenge were busy times for me. But the lucky part, the themes that Kika picked for her challenges were, sort of, always related to something I did before. And the theme for week 12 was "Reflections" and, of course, I've worked loads and loads with reflections before!
Reflecting
Thus, I've picked an image that I've shot back in 2019 (and surely posted about it here) which revolves around reflecting on the inside and, well, watching myself in the mirror. I'm sort of used to adjust a bit in every old picture I post for Kika's photo-challenges, but at this level and for this last one, I didn't do much editing really except of some selective sharpening and maybe added a bit of contrast. It is an old shot (from 2019) so I might just talk about the technical aspect again, in case the reader is interested in it. Reflecting is actually made by merging 2 photos; One regular one for myself and my reflection on the mirror, and another one with ND filter placed on the lens and making long exposure for one minute or so for me shaking my head. To manage the shooting here, I've used wireless tethering. So, the whole image is real but it is just a merge of TWO real photos, and the Photoshop part did not exceed the layer masks (to merge) and converting to B&W along with the rest of the usual enhancements done.
Finale
Well, since this is my last post before my "little" vacation, probably I shouldn't talk much about other photos other than the final one in the series of Kika's photo-challenges, and after all, this is the reason that I wanted to post this earlier than I anticipated (which is supposed to be a week later from now). It does sound weird for me though to make a full post like this just for one image, but well, I guess necessity has its own measures after all. My head is now scrambled big time for many things that are not adding up together. Specially on the work-ground. As I've stated in the introduction above, we are not sure when are we going back to work; Is it August 1st or July 25th. I do wish this would be even postponed a little further. I've submitted my papers to get a "special needs" status but so far, no news is coming back to me concerning this matter since the end of May when I did submit the requirements online. This is taking longer than I thought and it frustrates me further. Not sure what the next step would be, but I might anticipate a medical retirement if possible. I can't help but think of how ugly things might turn into back at work with me being alone there and being quite novice when it comes to managerial dealings, or even scientific ones since I didn't do a "real" scientific work in a long time. I'm really having dreams about a stress-less life; A life where I wouldn't have to worry about getting social for work matters, nor worry about getting early for work matters, and not getting a heart attack every time I see a WhatsApp message in the work group. But a bigger dream is cooking in my head and I'm not sure if it is the dream that I really want but after the chaos I've been facing at home lately, I really dream of having my own place, which would require a lot of money. A lot…
On a side note, I've worked already with some extra panoramas; I mean old ones but in a new processing and looks. However, seems not many of them are worthy for uploading to the stocks yet. I have to re-check some of them and see if I can do more to enhance the quality, and also I need some time to visit more panoramas from the past to re-process. For this reason, and others that I've stated before, I'm hoping that this break from blogging would help me sort things out and create more, and hold the camera back again to create something worthy. See ya after a while…
I'll be busy this week and for 4 days from now with my "daily life" and the Expo with my group. Probably I will have some chance to post a coverage from this event later even though I don't feel like moving a lot around the Expo like before. I will see if I can do something about the stage and the performances there.
As for now, I will give you some rest from my own non-sense and blabbering for a week or so! Till then!
Some "Ayvaric" thoughts has been around, trying to change or edit the literature that I've been inventing for some time now. This time, it occurred to me that usually in English, the word "between" is used usually in combination of two objects, while "among" is for objects more than two. Thinking about it, there is the same thing almost in Arabic and Hebrew (I guess), but it's not a number-related. There is "bayn" [بين] and "ma bayna" [ما بين], but I'm not sure of their exact classical use. To me, I seem to say them fluently according to the speech but without knowing the grammatical reasons for this! In Ayvarith, there is a similar situation even though I've made up some explanations for this without really noticing them myself: (bayun) and (mabyun); clearly close to the Arabic version, but as far as I remember the Hebrew and Aramaic versions are not far from this either. I'm thinking of upgrading the meaning to make (bayun) used for two objects while (mabyun) for further numbers above two. Just a thought.
I've renewed my account on Writing.com for another year. Doing that sort of gave me the pinch to keep up with my other projects. A very bad habit of mine: starting things and never finish them up. I'm looking forward for more tiresome days specially during the summer and the heat here, with the expected renewal of my duties into field trips. Field trips, games, photos, daydreaming, a conlang and poetry (specially poetry. I didn't write in some long time now with all the gush in emotions in my mind). My life truly is a mess that went out of control. Trying hard to keep up and organize my time and even exercise to enhance my physical vitality to cope with my own requirements and my own projects, but even that require time, and to screw things completely, sometimes I'm ready to screw up the world and sleep. Just sleep, like I always wanted (but that never really happened).
I think I do need a vacation from my camera. I don't know why I feel the need to take pictures so often. It's becoming like an addiction, and every addiction is simply bad, be it drugs, drinks or even a hobby like photography. But what you know, once I'm dropping down the camera I'm going to head to that Ayvarith project and web page that I didn't work on for some months now.
I'm back now with my own research about myself, my brain, my skills, and how everything works together. Most of such research is done at work actually not back home, because simply back home I don't have time now to sleep, and if I did, I'm going to screw up the day and just do nothing at all (probably only play those games I want to). With this said, I'm back to some of those free tests online (yep, another addiction), and along with that a belief of some thread of ADHD in my (neurological) blood. While reading The Playful Brain, I'm paying more attention to my simple actions and notifications and trying to analyze them under the light of what I've understood lately. I've noticed what is said to be an "easy puzzle" can take me a longer time to solve more than what is supposed to be a "hard puzzle" of the same type or rank. Also, I've been fluctuating my attention from one object to another (looking at a book to pick it up, and an agenda lies in the way between me and the book, thus I remembered something suddenly for that agenda and picked it up totally forgetting what I wanted to do with the book). Looking at some videos on Youtube about ADHD cases makes me feel superior though. It's not like that with me and yes, I don't think I do have ADHD at all now, but why do I lose my focus that easily? Why I keep flipping channels in my mind? Is it the damned Maladaptive Daydreaming again? I know that I've not been the hard fighter lately against this habit, mainly because I'm exhausted and in fatigue.
Decision is made now. A break from the camera for some time.
I should add to that a break from chocolate and coffee as well. Speaking of my mental status as well, in fact, I don't care much anymore about what people think of it now, but I like to explore my mind little bit further. I'm doing some EIQ (Emotional IQ) tests but I don't count on such results as the questions tend to be highly relative to the culture I guess, but anyway, my score was low. Not surprised though. I'm a loner after all.
On the other hand, I'm back to my senseless sketches as the attacks of boredom do visit me at work from time to time and makes me unable to read the book at hand...
The Devil's Automobile
The idea was to create a head with some brain popping out of it, but with such epileptic art form, expect the unexpected.
Sensory Man
This sketch was done horizontally (90 degrees to the left or CCW), and my mind didn't make sense of it as usual except later when I changed the angle of view and rotated it 90 clock-wise to realize it looks like a man's face.
Now back to my camera before I leave it alone for some time. I did my experiment now for catching a flowing water with the help of ND filters, and hence I couldn't use my Tamron, but instead I've used my old Canon 55-200mm, because I do have an adapter ring for the diameter of this lens (Ø52mm). The result was not exactly what I wanted, specially when it comes to the angle of view, but it was some trial that I hope I've learned something from...
Aqua Viridis (Green Water)
The whole problem is about doing the right exposure under the green flood light. One of the techniques that I've came up with is to use the (M)anual mode completely to achieve this. The (M)anual mode gives you the ability to change the shutter speed and the aperture (f-number) as desired and with a half-press to the shutter button the camera would give out an estimation of the light level in EVs. Everything was fine, except of 2 points that I was puzzled with:
Where to focus? to the furthest edge or to the nearer one? Here, I tried to focus in between (I focused without the water flow in the beginning thus it was an approximation).
What aperture size should I use? I used maximum f-number (narrowest aperture size) but probably I should have applied the principle of Hyperfocal distance? Though I think this concept is mainly used in landscape photography and not in close-up photography.
The main important thing is that I've fixed the shutter speed. Few seconds were enough to make the water flow in a blurry way like a dream effect (in fact it looks like milk to me!). After setting the shutter speed to 3 seconds, and the aperture to f/29, I did simple half-press, checked the EV and then put on some filters corresponding to the mount of EV I want to reduce. The EV reading without putting the filters on was close to +3, thus I've fixed three ND filters: ND2, ND4, ND8. They correspond to a reduction of -1, -2, and -3 EVs respectively, and thus totaling -6 EV putting the scale down from +3 to -3 (3+(-6)=-3, simple calculus). However, even though the picture was fine to some extent, I had to edit the RAW file as well and adjust some sliders and finally, with the help of adjustment layers in Photoshop, I've removed the green color from the background and kept the water and the mug in green only. I'm not satisfied with the sharpness of the water flow itself.
And still dwelling in the bathroom trying to catch up a panorama for this narrow place. I think it's around 2x2 meters (~ 6.6x6.6 ft). It is indeed a challenge to do a panorama in such space. The only panorama, probably, that I did in such a narrow place (and without the VR-head back then) was for the inside of the little tower back in Aughnanure castle in 2009...
The inside of the little tower in Aughnanure castle field, Co. Galway, Ireland.
But, this panorama, taken without the VR-head and definitely a narrower place than my bathroom, but after all I minimized it to 360 panorama (horizontal line only). The hardships of the bathroom were different, specially that I wanted to take the panorama from a level higher than my head, and this time I used my new tripod and not my monopod.
With a tripod, the base was stable, but the tripod's head itself was shaky a bit making a small tilt for the VR-head on top of it.
The narrow space of the bathroom made the lower angles, where the tripod's legs show usually, a serious issue.
Tried shooting with flood lights and not my usual bathroom lights, but the ceiling's plugging point was narrow and the flood light could not be fixed there. In order to solve this problem I had to think of some way to lengthen or extend the plugging point further. Luckily, I got some converting heads (for light bulbs) in the family shop near by and connected two of them to extend the plugging point. I had to work on smoothing the edges a bit because they didn't fit in the first place so I had to widen one converter and narrow the other. I have to say I was working for more than one hour taking the panorama and afraid of this bulb to be falling down on my head at any moment!
The usual problems with the stitch in PTGui, but this time accompanied with a glitch from Photomatix when merging all in HDR format. Seems that the new Photomatix has a glitch in batch processing bracketed images. Usually I see such errors and broken lines when different images are merged by mistake, but this time I double checked my images' sequences and there was no mistake. Simply, this one particular slide which showed a strong error had to be done again alone separately. Only then, the HDR slide for that angle appeared perfect.
The flood light with extension made of converting heads (or plugs). The arrow points to where drilling was used (with a special head to soften the area and not drill through it)
The right side of this HDR (tone-mapped here) slide became partially white with broken lines even though the bracketed sequence is correct! It wasn't the only slide, but it was the worst...
The whole point of using flood lights here and not the regular light bulbs that were already there is that I wanted to avoid the WB (White Balance) problems that I had before in my first experiment in this bathroom. If you read my post last week you'll find an explanation of the problem and how it was hard, somehow, to choose a particular WB with such lights. Here, after fixing the flood lights, I've simply shot the panorama with Daylight WB.
As for the glitch in Photomatix, I thought it might be because I was setting the options for reducing the "ghosting" artifacts to "high" while the camera didn't shake so much and there were no moving objects to eliminate, thus I processed the package again in a batch process but turning of the "ghosting" correction off. Yet, the weird artifacts kept on coming.
It is always hard to set control points for the make of a HDR panorama, probably because of the exposure data embedded in such files that makes PTGui unable to set the control points properly. However, I've tried the old trick which seems to be working fine for now (but that didn't spare me the troubles): tone-map the HDR slides under certain settings, then stitch them and save the file as a model. Then, open the HDR panorama file and apply that model. That way, all the control points that were applied perfectly for the tone-mapped images will be applied to the HDR panorama in the same systematic way (providing the control points are perfectly situated in the tone-mapped model). I've stitched the HDR panorama then without even optimizing. All the errors that occurred while trying to align the HDR images disappeared simply depending on the tone-mapped counterpart. Why not simply tone-map and then stitch? Here you go:
HDR panorama will have exposure information rather than a tone-mapped version (even in 16-bit TIFF). This option gives you more control over the light effects.
There are occasions when you think it is better to manually edited the HDR file for some reason (changing hue before tone-mapping, changing exposure of certain areas only before tone-mapping, ...etc).
If you are thinking of making a QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality) file, it is important to match the exposure of the left and right sides of your panorama, otherwise in the QTVR file you will notice a strange straight line while rotating your QTVR. This option, to match the two sides in exposure, is available when you tone-map in Photomatix (and other programs), while stitching already tone-mapped images won't give you such an option and you might have to find other ways to solve the problem.
PTGui got an option to fix the exposures for the whole HDR panorama before stitching. Useful sometimes to make an average of all the slides' exposures.
After stitching the HDR panorama, there was a heavy load of work with Photoshop to clone out lot of the undesired objects to make the panorama normal as much as possible. Parts of the VR-head did appear so much in this panorama specifically, and it is hard to simply remove by cropping; I have to clone out instead. I think it is time to re-consider the way I work with vertical angles, as it seems a 45 degrees up and down is causing me problems! Beside these parts, some weird artifacts in red appeared as well, and still I can't explain what are these as there is simply no reason for them to occur!
Lavatrinum
My bathroom, and still you can see some red artifacts in a larger view. I had to cut out the roof because the green light was subjected to "poster" effect, or banding artifacts.
And one of my biggest mistakes, again, is using a large f-number (narrow aperture) causing a lot of sparkles caused by the lights. If I remember correctly, it was f/20. After this panorama, I think I will get back to the sweet old Photomatix instead of the new one because there are many issues now that I've noticed that are caused for no specific reasons. Such glitches didn't appear in the old Photomatix (version 3). The only problem with the old Photomatix was the weird squares that appear on the viewing window (I think related to the insufficient memory as my PC runs for long times). So just to be systematic:
The new Photomatic (version 4), has a problem in tone-mapping window. As you work according to what you see while you tone-map, once you hit the "Process" button, the final image would come different to what you have seen in the tone-mapping window.
The new Photomatix has a problem with batch processing RAW files. As it turned out, some HDR slides were merged with strange white bands or broken lines (like what happens when two different or so much shaky images are merged), while when these specific slides done as a single process, this problem doesn't occur. Talk about time-consuming!
Related to the problem mentioned in the beginning, some weird artifacts, in form of colors or shapes, appear after tone-mapping (e.g. in my example above, red areas appeared and had to be cloned out, and banding of some colors making gradual change appear as blocks of pixels).
I don't think, however, I'm going to do it all over again with the old Photomatix, but I learned my lesson I'd say. I have to check further with my VR-head and the best way to deal with low angles to avoid including the body of the VR-head itself into my panorama. It's not completely evadable, but at least the effect can be reduced somehow.
Finally, my order(s) had been processed and I'm waiting for their arrivals. I'm doing it slowly so that I'd have more time reading The Playful Brain. Three photography books, one teleconverter, and a sound trigger. Did I say I need a break from my camera? hmmm......
It had been a long time since I've been busy like this. Busy with work I mean and not with my own business. After finishing the translation of Alexander's story VI, I'm thinking of taking a bit of a break for the time being. A break from Ayvarith, but not from other things that is.
I brought my usual book about HDR to read today and also the manual of my new baby dedicated-flash to read for today, but I got so busy with the motor in one of the labs that I didn't do such readings in the early morning but later in day. I think I will snap a further picture for this machine that I'm preparing my samples with. It's called "Freeze Dryer". Ever wondered how come there is a milk powder? Well, this machine can do it. It sucks all the air in a space enclosed by some plastic or glass container, and freezes this space. Depending on the sample's weight this process can take some several days. The larger the sample is, the more time you'll need. But there is always a regular check for the oil level in the motor, which is critical for the work. There is one motor that is dead and I'm working on fixing it, if possible, so I don't want to go on with another damaged motor and hence, no work to be done with those fishy samples.
And I just discovered that when someone interrupts or interfers with what you were doing oiginally, is something fishy indeed.
Keeping my work with the pictures I took in Ireland, specially around Aughnanure Caslte, I've come to test some theory with composing HDR. This time, I wanted to apply one of the things that I've learned from the book I'm reading already, and that isharpening before tone-mapping. In fact, I never thought of mangling with the images in HDR (or 32-bit) format because in Photoshop, lot of options are turned off and you can't do much, and hence, I've never thought of doing something other than tonemapping my images and fixing the lights in some areas, and for this reason alone I seldom use Photoshop now for HDR purposes. But now, I've learned that I can do sharpening to the original HDR image and enhance the image before tone-mapping. Sharpening the image usually pops out some artifacts or noise in the image but with HDR, we have an open space of values assigned to each pixel in the image and hence, we can sharpen the image and not affecting the data. This is the theory. However, in my trial I wasn't successful (and maybe misunderstood some concept or Mr Christian Bloch does not want to give me all his secrets!), and I produced lot of artifacts that I need to remove. Anyway, for my image, I decided to sharpen the normal way after tone-mapping in Photomatix, and I will give another trial later on with a new image. Maybe my image was not so good after all... specially with the chromatic aberration on the edges (I'm supposed to clean those in the original RAW files before I merge to HDR, anyway too much headache for me now!).
I have one Panoramic HDR that is making a headache for me, and so, I think I will to do the whole process with Photoshop this time instead of Photomatix, since Photomatix has a problem with memory usage. I know, my PC is not a competant but well, I could handle the file only in Photoshop so far.
This day seems different since I was busy with my hands mostly and not writing as usual. And tomorrow I think I will be alone in the work place! Yeppieeeee...
