Kika VII…

This is somewhat a sad post. As I'm typing these words, our canary (which I've posted about in the previous post) had died after some weird illness or condition. It's a perplexing feeling really; Part of me is sad and part of me is happy. I'm sad because he is dead, and happy because he finally left the damn cage which I wanted to take him off from but couldn't; Because no one cared, and no one liked the idea. I didn't give him a name (and I don't even know if it is a male indeed), but all I can say is, RIP Canary, I'll miss you…

 On a side note, I've also been under some allergy attack, which is gone by now but a slight cough remains. The cough, though, leaves such an awful taste sometimes; Something metallic or like breathing through some plastic pipe! I just hope I won't be needing Seretide for this. I think I had just about enough for 2 weeks of time of my life!

Little Announcement

Just before proceeding with the main post, I wanted to state that I've finally uploaded ALL the batches of images that were on the queue! And now, it is time for me to work with some NEW images that I've shot recently and prepare some of them to be uploaded the stocks. 

The new uploaded batches

 

Typically, and as usual, the selfies were uploaded to Mostphotos exclusively. The rest are spread across Canstockphoto, Dreamstime and 123RF. However, at the moment of typing this, 123RF uploads are still under review (typical) while the rest had been accepted in the same day (with few rejects). Not only that, but also one of the images (1^st in 4^th row) had been sold already via Dreamstime! I remember in the old days when Dreamstime's reviewing process used to take a considerable time but things had been faster now and even more promising!
There is still one image that I didn't upload and it is ought to be exclusively on Dreamstime and that is Killing Evil (1^st in 2^nd row) which is actually a PNG with a transparent background, and thus considered a vector. I've uploaded it several times but it is not getting through and I need to check back on that later. 

Kika VII

So, we arrive at Kika's photo-challenge for Week 7, which had somewhat a weird title for it, and in fact it was not possible to put it all in a single hashtag. The challenge was about combining unexpected items or objects. I have to admit I got my head spinning around and I didn't know what to shoot here, thus I referred back to my arsenal of shots and started playing around. I didn't want to skip a single challenge at this point!

Red Escape II

The shot was taken back in March 2020, where I was working with some random ideas of mixing feathers and water, so I thought it is the right mix for this photo challenge. I've shot many in this series of feathers and water, using both high-speed and stroboscopic flash (Red Escape is apparently shot with stroboscopic flash). The problem (kind of) was that, that I did post this photo back then when I've created it. So, just to make things a bit different I've decided to make a little edit and change the jar color to blue, which I thinks adds even more contrast better than the original (where the water was reddish). All these shots in the series are uploaded to my various stock accounts (you can check one of them by clicking the frame at the end of this post).
Things though did not stop at this photo for this challenge, just yet.

Through H-Alpha

Funny thing is that before the announcement of this photo-challenge by Kika, I did some photo-shoot in the yard at home as I was experimenting with some concepts, as well as trying to practice some editing techniques (those related to creating pastel-like images). Along the way and since I was carrying my two cameras (regular and modified) with some filters, I've shot Through H-Alpha using my H-Alpha filter holding it in front of my (beloved) Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens; By hand of course! I think this raises this image of combining unexpected items (a filter and a fisheye lens!) but also combines 2 scenes into one; A normal one and a filtered one. It did require a considerable work with layer masks and levels to correct the colors outside the circle and enhancing those within the circle as an infrared shot should be, somehow. The shot was, of course, taken with my modified camera, thus even the area outside the filter was tinted because of the infrared coming from the sun. The image originally was all shades of red!

Pastel-ization

As I've mentioned already (in this post and probably previous ones), I'm trying to work on some new technique in editing, but so far, I didn't practice much of it. Most probably I would need to work on old shots from my arsenal instead of working on new ones. However, here are some shots that were relatively new in fact and shot specifically for this edit.

عَـطْـفْ (Bending)

The work here is actually inspired by a Portuguese lady artist and photographer which I, unfortunately, can't recall her name; I've seen an article (interview) with her in one of those Google suggested pages on my phone. Anyway, looking at her images and reading swiftly through the interview, I kind of managed to take the main points of such a style:

1. Saturated colors.
2. Somewhat happy colors.
3. Bright colors.

Thus, I was working on these key features. Of course, the heavy work relies on editing rather than in-camera work. However, I guess not all subjects are suitable for this type of style. Nevertheless, one wouldn't know unless one tries!

Bougainvillian Curve

One of the key points in "shooting" the images, as the Portuguese photographer stated, is shooting when the sun is high up (noon time). However, I did shoot when the sun was just rising on the yard at home, and I think I do now understand why did she mention this point specifically; Shadows and dark tones are not good candidates for such a technique! Not only shadows in fact but darker tones in general so it is better to avoid them as much as possible I guess. As can be seen above in Bending and Bougainvillian Curve, the dark black pots of the bougainvilleas are hard to render in such technique and they feel much like being obtrusive. Just to aid the image a bit here I've added a tone or two to the black or the shadows in these images. It's clear  now why the midday sun is the best for such a technique of "editing".
As I've stated, I didn't work with this editing technique much still and maybe I did some photo here and there (one of them was posted for Kika's photo-challenge). I've been swept away with other photo-shooting and, as usual, domestic issues. Hopefully I will attend to this technique further in the future and try to have a grasp on it.

Finale

I consider myself lucky to finish this blog post actually. With all the tired body and the stack of "work" to do (not related to my actual job nor to photography) and I managed to finish this blog post - but I had to start earlier than usual! Ah well…
I'm having an idea of starting a blog post in Arabic for my Arabic blog, which I didn't post in for a long time now. The post would be about my experience in shooting bubbles, which I will post here in time, as I'm trying to go chronologically here in this blog with all the images that I've taken in the past few weeks. The bubbles shoot was a big deal and I've come out with loads of images (some of them even uploaded to stocks already). However, the bulk of them are not yet prepared to be uploaded. I'll keep that talk for another time.
I've been also taken by astrology lately; An old passion and interest that got re-kindled for a while now (even before COVID time) and I've been reading texts here and there and watching videos about topics and all that. But this is a bad habit actually and I know, because there are priorities I need to tend to. This also brings to my mind the passion for Conlangs which I didn't attend to, and specially after the lock-down of my other Instagram account, @Ayvarith. Funny how this blog was first started to talk about the Conlang of Ayvarith but then changed to other topics completely. Despite being taken over by photography, Ayvarith still has a place in my heart, and it might get re-kindled after some time, along with other Conlangs and Conscripts. Who knows?
On a domestic level, my isolation is getting tighter and tighter and I barely leave my room for few minutes (mainly to make me coffee). The mental disconnect is getting quite hard to fix in this house and nothing seems to make sense to me, neither I make sense to anyone else. On a mental level, ghosts from the past keep visit me unexpectedly with the thoughts "Why did it happen that way?" or "How did it happen that way?". Quite useless thoughts and there is nothing I can do about them, but the stress that loads on my mind because of the house keeps recalling these memories. How I wish I could just afford my own place and stay alone… At least if such memories come, they would visit without a stress…

Kika VI…

Busy weeks, and Ramadan is already in. It seems that I do have to start typing my blogs very early just when one post is published! My busy schedule, by the way, includes helping and studying for my brother's sake as well as trying to nap intermittently to do these chores. I, too, have a new load of images that I really need to process further and make ready to be uploaded to the stocks. All that while there is a list of images to be uploaded to the stocks already! I wonder if 24 hours a day are still enough.
I've uploaded previously 10 panoramas and made them exclusive to Mostphotos, and I do have plans to add to them. However, because of this hectic life I'm leading right now, this won't be any time soon I guess. I've been trying to promote these panoramas by sharing them over, but seems this method is not working well. Or maybe people are just not interested in such things anymore. Ah well…
I've been struck with an allergic attack out of nowhere this week and my health is kind of up and down (again) but seems things are getting better, though slowly. I just hope it doesn't relapse to something worse!

Kika VI

As the Retinitis Pigmentosa project is over with, I'm going to jump right into Kika's photo-challenge this time and then continue with other shots that I've done before or after or during the running of these photo-challenges (which are over by last week by the way). So, the theme of the 6^th week's challenge was Growth.

 

The Two (re-make)

In the beginning I was quite blank about this idea and tried to brainstorm and come about with some unusual ideas. I did in fact come with some sort of idea but the execution failed. For this reason, I thought maybe I should just re-work some old image resembling something about Growth and I did find this image indeed; The Two. A shot I've taken around my workplace back in 2019. I've posted this shot on Instagram long time ago and in order not to be repeating myself, I've decided to edit it in a different way, pushing more on the artistic side rather than the "proper" photography side. Thus, I didn't care much about removing that brick on the right side and the photo was edited in a trial to mimic the pastel colors style. I've tried this editing style in a number of photos but honestly I didn't go deep with such experiments. I think I still need to do more about it.

Anyway, after posting the photo on Instagram, I found out that I still have time - I was too busy with other things that I've doubted I could do my idea in time, specially that is an idea that requires a lot of Photoshop work (or magic, if you will!).

 

صَدَقَة (Alms)

 

The idea came about from a Hadith (reported speech from prophet Mohammed, PUH) which goes like: Never did the money of a servant gone less by alms-giving. Meaning that when someone gives charity, his or her money grows back and do not get lesser.
The execution was a bit clumsy in terms of the hand movement (I don't have flexible muscles). I've used a table covered in black cloth and made the gestures behind the far edge. The lighting though was a bit problematic and I had to struggle with it to get some proper angle. I was too lazy to use more than one and in fact the idea would NOT require more than one. Whenever you think of "drama" always think of "one light". This is my tip for you! The position of the lighting was quite critical to avoid lighting the wall behind me as much as possible. I would be able to merge the photos in Photoshop after all but it is just wise I guess to reduce the workload and the problems as much as possible in the shooting phase. The rest of the tale is, of course, a Photoshop tale; Merging various shots together (and discarding unneeded ones) and playing the game of layer masks, and adding a touch of lighting effects. Luckily all of this was done and posted on Instagram before the announcement of the next photo-challenge by Kika! (which occurred typically on Thursdays on her Youtube channel). I consider myself lucky for finishing this little project in such a short time, with all the mess that life keeps throwing at me! The question remains now as whether I should upload it to the stocks or not, specially that it is such a large image file. Anyway, I better put that on hold as there are other batches of photos that needs to be uploaded first.

 

Gesture
One of the shots that I've liked in my first attempt with this little project.

 

Rolling Back

After indulging so much in these photo-challenges as well as with RP project, it does sound a bit hard for me to roll back to where I stopped with my random camera working! Among the little announcements that I've used to post for a while, it seems that the latest post of some real camera work was done back in November 2020 or so when I used to stroll around morning times and snap some images around my area. So, What I'm going to do here is to roll back to February 2021.

 

Meditative Behind Bars

 

Typical for such a lockdown (or without it honestly), I often look around to look for something to shoot and back in the day I've picked our poor bird (which I think is a canary). I say poor because, well, I really hate to see birds behind cages but I'm forced to let it be so since I don't own it; Yet, I'm trying to take care of it as much as possible since no one in this house would. I don't actually think anyone here thinks of animals like the way I do.

A Concept of Freedom

The shoot was done using Sigma 70-300mm lens, and my old 7D camera (i.e. the normal one not the modified one). It can be noticed though that I've focused on the pinkish theme here to add some softness and gentleness to the harsh reality of being behind bars (and no, it has nothing to do with feminism nor the feminine side of the bird). There is, supposedly, a trick that would hide the bars but I think I would need special preparations and another lens. I've picked this lens specifically to be able to stay away from the cage and shoot, and the minimum aperture here is f/4.5 (goes to f/5 when zooming). All in all, it was a good practice for motion handheld shooting with AI Servo drive!

Canary (3D)

One of the benefits of shooting a bit further away from the cage (even though the bird does not have much freedom here) is to keep the bird moving and follow him in a close-up. I think it would be such a good practice for people who are into wild-life photography at some stage, but for me it does not exceed the limit of enjoying and practicing the camera and the hold. Since I was shooting in a continuous (burst) mode, there was a great build-up of images with chances for creating 3D anaglyph images as in Canary (3D) where the movement of the camera OR the bird was subtle, but the difference is capable of creating a parallax difference and hence a 3D illusion; This is mainly because of zooming in. In addition to that, some artistic rendition can be made later on (with a tick of inspiration when that comes) as in Desperado.

Desperado

I guess you can see how much I feel sorry for the bird. In fact I've tried to let it go but I've discovered that he was not able to fly and feared it would be devoured by some cat out there, thus we got it back to the cage. In Desperado, the collage was made of images shot continuously for the bird as it was trying to clean itself or something. There was a load of images to check out as well as a load of them to be deleted for the apparent shake. So, again, I consider myself lucky here to have these successive 4 in order.

Finale

Well, Ramadhan is here and I'm absolutely grateful to the fact that I don't have to go to work. Even though, I do have personal troubles and setbacks on the other side of the spectrum here, but well, trying to keep looking at the bright side of things.
I've got here load of things to do (beside typing these posts every other week), mainly helping my brother and attending to Mom a bit. In this mess also, I'm kind of swept by astrology, as I'm trying to learn few tips and bits from here and there. Well, mainly to understand myself really but I do dwell on other aspects from time to time as well.
I really wanted to talk a bit about my "bubbles" project in this post but I thought I should roll back and make things a bit chronological as this project is just recent and worked with in the past few weeks of April. So many images I've processed in this project that I'm going to need some time to prepare them for the stock (and let's hope they accept them as some works of abstracts). I've even made a video for a quick view for all of them. This said, there are a number of them that I've set aside to be processed later (not sure when) as they didn't quite get along the others. We'll see about that.
Days pass now, and my isolation increases by the day. An isolation that strikes in the mind and the heart before in body itself. And this has nothing to do with COVID and the lock-downs, though related in some way, but it is something bigger than that. I wouldn't mind if this isolation was somewhere out there, somewhere green, somewhere with fresh air and singing birds. But here? I just don't know how long I can stand this…

 

Dilemmas...

Here we go, and as expected. Ramadhan has arrived and the unneeded stress started along. There is never enough time to do anything. Majorly, the main problem is the after-work nap which takes from 2 to 3 hours and sometimes even for 4 hours, and that makes me awry at night and unable to sleep early as in regular days. People in Ramadhan do indeed make a time shift and sleep late (because working hours are also shifted as well) but for me, I always try to fix my sleeping time as in regular days and never stay late unnecessarily. Now, I need to do that more than ever because Mom's dialysis timing is not changed and I do have to pick her up to there in the same time as in regular days. Moreover, I have to make her something to eat before leaving home (while we used to grab something on the way in regular days). In Ramadhan, it is insulting (and illegal) to eat in public while the whole nation is fasting. Well, we do have a medical permit or reasoning, but still, no need for embarrassment.
I've been to the doctors to check up with my nose and see the reason for bleeding. He said that the capillaries are probably weak and I need to have more vitamin C in my diet and provided me with some method to stop the bleeding as well. Finally, he said if that didn't work, then I have to go back to cauterize, probably by laser (?). I think in this week alone, I've lost a quarter liter of blood just through my nose!

The Dilemma (1)

This week I've been working on an idea for a panorama (and barely did) which I've been cooking in my head for a while. However, unfortunately for me, I'm having technical issues and a sluggishness in my skills. The panorama was taken twice in two different days, and two different lighting conditions, and with two different techniques.
In the first trial, in order to fix the bracketing for the HDR merging later, I've used my light meter and measured the light (incident) from different angles to the camera. There was a considerable gap in the EV values. In the beginning, the expansion of the bracket was from -2EV to +2EV but apparently that some shots were somehow dark and the +2EV shots appeared as if they were taken at 0EV instead, thus I've started all over and made the expansion from +3EV to -3EV. However, the story was not over here.
In the current time and because the memory issues in my old PC, I've decided to work with my (new) laptop as I'm still preparing my new PC before plugging it online completely. Sincerely, I'm so lazy to do all of that and it's connected to my TV at the current time; Not a pleasant view and my room is a mess. However, in my laptop and after merging the RAW files into HDR slides and trying PTGui to stitch them out, it turned out that the slides were apparently dark and PTGui could not find control points at all!
This matter triggered me to do another trial and this time, instead of working in Manual mode and taking light measurements, I've decided to go back to the old methods (tried and true!); Working in Av mode and letting the camera decide for the shutter speed, and I had this occasion to increase the f-number from f/8 (as in the first trial) to f/16, to make sure than things are sharper.
The reason I've decided to do a second session is the assumption that the dynamic range was so wide that PTGui could not assemble some control points in between any two images. However, even in my second trial, Photomatix and PTGui followed with the same behavior: dark slides, and unstitchable panorama. After many trials to install and re-installing older versions of both programs, I've finally came about to some solution and finally the panorama was stitched.

Wooden Hall (trial stitch)

I've spent several days trying to figure out what was going wrong with my (usual) procedure and why things do not work out in the laptop as they do on PC. The panorama above, Wooden Hall is just a trial and not a final image to be submitted to stock sites because of the weird (and usual) blue spots, but I've decided to put it online anyway without any fixes and ask for help about this matter, if there is any available! I'll try to summarize my thoughts here in points:

1. Apparently, the main problem was in Photomatix and not the (new) PTGui. After installing several versions of both, it turned out that Photomatix v4.0.2 yielded clear HDR slides that are viewable easily in PTGui (any version), but the new version (v4.2.4) was problematic. I'm not sure why this is happening but there were already some issues when I moved from Photomatix v3.0 to v4.0, like the ability to tone-map without opening the HDR slide - a problem I used to encounter with large little planet panoramas, and my way around it was to set the values in v4.0, save the settings and use the side-cart file (the XMP file in which settings are saved) into v3.0 using the batch process facility. The thing is, because of the large file size, v4.0 used to give me a memory error and stops responding when I try to process the tone-mapping at once. Why don't I use v3.0 to tone-map already? Well, it turned out that v4.0 has a better on-monitor representation of the actual image after the tone-mapping is done. When tone-mapping in v3.0 (as far as I remember), opening the image in Photoshop later would yield a completely different image in terms of colors and shades and I would have to work around this with adjustment layers. The situation here is somehow similar in between v4.0.2 and v4.2.4. Advice: Don't always jump on newer versions of any particular software. It is good to try new stuff but always make sure you will be going smoothly with it. Keep older versions in store somewhere, as you might need them at any time!.
2. The new PTGui (v9.1.6, and I think v9.1.7 is out there) has lot of interpolation possibilities, more than I had in the old stuff in my old PC. Interpolation is the way that a program would interpret or "read" the pixels across the image. The three basic ones were Bilinear, Bicubic, and Nearest Neighbor. Each one of those of course got a specific usage (some of them are explained in Photoshop resizing facility), but in PTGui there are no descriptions about any of them. In the new version, however, the list is expanded further to include Lanczos and Spline (with each one of those got several types). Speak about new stuff to learn and burn the time with!
3. I've merged the RAW files several times and stitched the panorama several times (and thanks to my fast laptop, the stitching process takes merely 5 minutes for a 10,000x5,000 pixels panorama!) as I was trying to figure out the reason for these blue streaks across some regions in the panorama. My conclusion is (and I've done that before actually) it is more related to the color space, and it might be related as well to some gaps in the dynamic range of the HDR slides; I'm not sure yet. However, merging in different color spaces and stitching the panorama after, proved to me that the blue color spots (you can see them in the image above) were reduced significantly (in saturation let's say) when merging the HDR in a lesser color space as sRGB. Also, the streaks appear more or less around regions were there happens to be some stitching errors. Stitching errors cause such problem? Color space? Dynamic range? All of them? Not really sure, but it is surely annoying. I couldn't edit the panorama and fix it in this laptop mainly because of the size of the laptop and my sluggish movement with it and the display is small already. Thus, I've decided to upload it as it is and might try to fix it later when my new PC is ready.

My world is spinning right now and I have to finish up with this PC and try to hold to my camera again, and work with more panoramas even.

The Dilemma (2)

Well, this second dilemma is somehow to a lesser degree. It is just a dilemma about Geltani and some aspects about it. I've been working a bit with the sounds that are to be used in Geltani and I've figured out that it is almost impossible to avoid repeating some sounds. I've decided here that it is time to introduce some sounds that are unfamiliar to the far east in general, thus giving a touch to alienate the conlang from a typical Asian sense. With these new sounds, like the Arabic ħ [ح], I've decided to add some possibilities for creating dual-consonants and doubling (or stressing) some. Even with those creations, it is impossible as it seems, to provide a distinctive sound for each combination of leading and driving couplet. Would there be two words with similar sounds and different meanings?
In that sense, the scenario would be a mimic of reality of the far east languages, and specifically Chinese and Japanese, where is typical to find one character with several pronunciations and even meanings. However, I don't think Geltani would be close to that level of complexity of the real languages, but it has a comforting effect to think that having a repetitive scheme of sounds for different types of couplets is not really a bad thing, and it somehow mimics the real world to some extent. The characters (or logograms) would be definitely different if, at any chance, two words or more bear some resemblance in the sounds. The question now is, on what basis I should base the driving sounds?

Finale

David Schap's book is over with right now, and I'm trying to find something to replace it with from my arsenal of old books. As I've mentioned before, probably I would go through my old languages books.
Many ideas are racing through my mind right now, like having a leave for the rest of Ramadhan just to have my own timing and not to worry about work and waking up in the morning, but Mom's dialysis schedule holds me back from this idea, because the center is near my work place and eventually, the torture won't stop (but yes, I would have more time for myself).
Because of all this pressure, in the work-front and the home-front, all what I'm trying to do right now is to break all the cuffs and find a way out of obligations to work with my own projects and my camera. Feels like being married without a real partner, I guess.
Also, I'm trying to consider some way to integrate myself through the group back again, but without the work load that I used to get. Probably my membership would be changed from special to regular because of the low activity level I'm participating with. There is also a crazy idea cooking in my mind: to write a book in Arabic about the basics of photography. This idea arrived to me looking at the arsenal of the photography books that I have that are all in English, and many people here can't have the benefits of such books despite their love for photography because their lack of expertise in English. It is such a sorrowful thing that a language can stand a barrier in learning. Not sure this idea will go further but it is worth considering anyway!
I'm typing this post and watching TV in the hall, with some show about the Canary islands; It makes me dream of vacations and traveling again. I want to see the world again out there... if only I can find someone to take care of Mom as much as I do...