Kika VIII…

Here we go again! I was busy typing my post for my Arabic blog so I didn't have the time to post here. Typing an Arabic blog is not quite as easy because I type it outside the blog website (on LibreOffice's Writer) and post it there because I do have more control over specific formatting issues there. Also, putting images there and typing captions, and sometimes getting stuck in translating into Arabic some English terminologies; All that really require patience and some time. Now, I'm back to the usual (hopefully), so let's get back to Kika and her photo-challenges!
Just before I go on with the post, I'm not sure I did announce this already or not, but just in case I didn't here you go: In case you'd like to check the bubbles set of images which I've created lately, it has been uploaded to Canstockphoto. You can visit my profile by clicking the signature at the end of this post.

Kika VIII

Well, I remember at this level with Kika's photo-challenges, things at home started to get busier and busier on many fronts. So, from this challenge and on, I would say not many new stuff had been created really, since I was in a race with time.
So, the theme for Week 8 was "Multiply." A theme which I can relate a LOT to since I used to work with stroboscopic flash as well as collage and stitching images manually (object panorama sort of thing).

Schizophrenia

The one image that popped in my mind when the theme was announced was Schizophrenia, for apparent reasons! Shot this in 2018 and posted it many times (and enrolled it in some contests as well). Ironically, I didn't upload it to the stocks! I think I need to do that soon (to Mostphotos). As I've mentioned already and for many times, I was quite busy but as soon as I got the chance to work on something, I went on with it, regardless of my vision about it and my assumptions about its success or failure…

تَفَضَّلْ، كُلّي آذانٌ صاغِيَة
(go ahead, I'm all ears)

The funny thing about I'm All Ears above, is that when I did it was aiming to the idea of "multiply" which was Kika's theme for week8, but then realized that it works well as a theme for Retinitis Pigmentosa! However, it was done in March, whereas February is the month named as Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month.
The thing about this shot is, I just did it. Without thinking, without preparations, without any much thought except for the core of the idea itself; Something I usually lack (and it hinders me big time but I can't help it!). I picked my camera and my Sigma 12-24mm lens outside (with a tripod of course) and sat there in front of the table and shot 3 to 4 images, then went back to my room and started to work on the collage - Just like that!
Even though my initial aim when the theme started was to use stroboscopic flash because it was the best candidate for "multiplication", I was actually out of ideas for stroboscopic flashes. Anyway, the idea of having ears instead of eyes sounded funny to me (can't remember if I was inspired by something) and it does include the idea of multiplication here!
Since my Sigma 12-24mm lens does not have much of a shallow depth of field to form a bokeh or that sort of thing, I had to do things manually in Photoshop. In addition to that, I worked on emphasizing the sharpness, contrast, and saturation of the body to stand out more against the foreground and the background. You can already tell the haste of the work by the unshaven face I guess!

Bougasso

It was a nice weather time back in March. Of course, it is spring season (even before the official start of it) but typically this is not the case here. Thanks to COVID-19, temperatures had gone down a bit. Temperatures here on May would already be reaching 45-50 degrees on occasions (and even before May), but this year (and probably the year before) temperatures are just reaching 40s.
Anyway, away with the weather forecast introduction already. My point here was to give an introduction as to why or how I was shooting photos for the bougainvillea trees or bushes in our yard still, in March. In fact, at the moment of typing this in May, they are still there though lost a big portion of its magenta blooms, some magenta still remains anyway.

Cracking Bougainvillea

For a moment there I really wanted to go crazy, just like in the old days (not that I'm sane nowadays anyway but I mean with my processing attitude). Thus, I've tried to do a collage of slides taken for one of the bougainvillea bushes, shooting these slides in HDR (i.e. bracketed then combined for HDR). From there, I went crazy with my toning. However, I've realized the crazy part was not there yet!
As I was working in Photoshop to align the images, as usual, I would try to see the automated process done by Photoshop (it does some good work sometimes!). So, after aligning, I tried the blending and to my surprise, I got something that I've totally unexpected, as you can see above in Cracking Bougainvillea. It's not something that I would upload to the stocks for sure, but it is beneficial for my brain I guess to get out of the norm and do crazy stuff; Stuff that people "usually" maybe hate and do not consider as photography. Maybe as a reminder that I'm an artist after all and photography is an art. 

Reaching Out

So, after doing Cracking Bougainvillea, I didn't find myself satisfied enough. Mainly here because the shots I've taken there were kind of random in various directions. So, I went back to shoot it again, and this time I've worked on moving the camera vertically only. Worth noting that both shooting were done with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens.
Again, with Reaching Out, I tried to get out of the ordinary and do some art and I did a "trick" here which I didn't do in a long time (I think I've done it back when I had CS3 or CS4 of Photoshop!). Ironically, I've done it also to a picture of bougainvillea, but back then it was a full tree (we had quite a suitable space for planting then). Again, like I've stated in the previous post when I was working with the pastel-like look, it seems that it would have been far better to work with such effect when the shadow was minimal or non-existent altogether, since it is making the isolation process quite troublesome; As well as the looks.

Moon's Delight

Orangina

Beside these 2 shots there were some minor shots for some flowers but I thought it would be just unnecessary to talk about them in detail, since they are simple macro shots with the usual editing process, but I'll just post them here to keep up with the "time-line," since I'm recollecting my photo-shooting memories from months ago!

Finale

It seems that I've been going through some dormant phase lately, as bed seems to be my best friend. Or maybe it is a trial to escape reality. Ramadhan is over now and I'm trying to get back to normal life schedules as before. My work with the camera is low as well and things just feel empty. Or maybe it is me who is empty. I just don't know.
Things seems to be on the way to be back to normal here after more than a year of closure and being off work. To be honest, I kind of used to this life of not going to work every morning, despite the hectic habits and sleeping times which I need to put on check. I feel that I'm still not ready to go back to work whenever they would call me to it. As things go in that direction, I'm also working on getting proper reports for my eyes condition, and who knows, I might as well file for medical retirement. Moving to a new location further away from home, as well as being sort of alone in that workplace which is supposed to be about science (but not much science in it) makes my anxiety ascend further. I just don't know where life is throwing me into, but all I can do is lay my trust in God…

Unconventional II

With the sudden surge of such a busy schedule and load of work, I don't know if I'm going to post this in time, but here I am trying. I'll to make it short as much as possible. Well, kind of. I want to continue a bit about my last blog post and the "unconventional" trend and then move to something that I thought I'd leave for now but curiosity got the best out of me and I think, just think, that I've made a breakthrough!

Unconventional II

After posting my previous post here with the "unconventional" representations of photos, my appetite for collages, or let's say, "unconventional" art was ignited a bit. The field of work, of course, was the yard again where most of my inspirations are drawn. I also prefer to work during the daytime to have a faster shutter speed; The night view of the yard is also awesome but at such time I'm usually lazy and tired. Also, at some point, as I'll go through some images, there would be a need for speedlites (and all are packed and in need to be installed!).

3 Suns 1 Wall

Benro MP-96
My monopod

My first trial was with the wall in the yard (facade) which I think I've posted a panorama of at some time previously in this blog. I'm just so happy that the swimming pool had been removed so I could move easily here! Anyway, to make things systematic as much as possible, I've used here my monopod with 3 tiny legs and at a low level, and of course, with a fisheye lens on camera (my beloved Rokinon 8mm). The shoot went on for HDR, and HDR did I tone-map, and tone-mapped images did I blend together to make 3 Suns 1 Wall. I had to save the main file as PSB since it did exceed 2GB in size.
The shooting ran relatively smooth, but I had to squat a lot to minimize my shadow in the scene and also to drag the monopod on the ground slowly (taking the lines between the tiles as a guide and a measure). The plan was not to make a panorama-like image but a collage. However, I've found myself drifting in that direction for no reason (yes, really), and blending the images that way did help with eliminating my shadows. The image above still has errors because shooting in such a lens do distort the perspective a lot, and it's hard to make ends meet. Anyway, it was a lengthy work and such a worthwhile experiment despite the "stitching" or blending errors. 

إِرْثُ آدَم (Adam's heritage)

However, the real trial was not for that wall, but for the side wall which extends along a narrow corridor leading to the side door into the house and another one into the kitchen. This long wall is the most greenish and it's longer, and it was my target in the first place before shooting the other wall with the window. The narrow place made it hard to move (with delicate movements) to stabilize the camera's direction as much as possible. All in all, squatting and dragging the monopod across the tiled floor in a straight line as much as possible for the two session provided a good exercise (and pain for days!). I remember working for about 2 days or so placing the shots; I tried to do my best to seek balance between systematic and chaotic placement for the shots in their positions together, or if I want to rephrase that, to make the collage random yet reflecting a full wide image. Also, with tone-mapping the HDR slides, I've tried to make the images look sunny, warm, tropical somehow; All that in purpose.
To add somewhat a 3D sense also, I've picked some specific shots and moved them the stack and used the layer effects options to drop shadows. That way some slides are supposed to appear "floating". 

The Grand Mulukhiyyah

I do like how Adam's Heritage turned out. It was saved as PNG of course with transparent background (and it should appear as such here I suppose). Some places like Facebook would still fill the space with white and apparently the image, being PNG, converted to some sort of JPG when posted. Anyway, this was not the end of the story with collages and composite images, as there was something even "bigger". This is what I called The Grand Mulukhiyyah. Well, in case you didn't know, mulukhiyyah [ملوخية] is the Arabic name for Jute (or Mellow jute?).
The shooting of this "stack" was done using 50mm lens this time at f/2.8 and quite randomly (handheld). I was just holding the camera tight to my eye and following the main stem of the plant (from the bottom of the pot) and going along the branches and then back to the main stem and up a little and then along another branch and so on, until reaching the top.
Processing this set of images came on stages, with editing the RAW files (collectively, copying settings from a single image to all). Maybe some images in this set did not appear "correct" per se (e.g. the pot at the base because it's too dark) but nevertheless it was a surreal job to be done.
The next step was to minimize the over all size of the frames or images to something around 1000 pixels in width. However, I had to pull back and restart again when I realized that the final result would not produce a big body of an image. The size is kind of important for me here to have more control over the final result. Also, I've realized that manually placing the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle was NOT a good idea, so I've sought help from Photoshop's Align option, using Relocation method (using the Auto mode did produce distortions that I didn't like). Anyway, it was apparent that I do need to work with the original files with no resizing, so I'm back again to working with PSB files, with a range of sizes between 2-4GB! In order to make some "illusion" of depth or 3D, I've applied white frames on the slides and applied shadows to some (or all?) of them.

The Grand RGB Mulukhiyyah

This did not end here though as my juices were still flowing and I hated to end the adventures just at putting some photos (33 of them) together. I started to divide the stack into 3 groups, and assigning a color from the RGB palette to each group. I've called it The Grand RGB Mulukhiyyah - well, a name fitting the funky looks I guess; And there is more to come by the way. With this method of coloring the slides, it seems there was no need for white frames to visually separate the slides, so I've removed them. Also, the red tones were too saturated (working with ProPhoto color space mainly) so I did a little tweak of Hue/Saturation to the whole image. Looking at this image through the anaglyph glasses almost gave me a headache! Don't do it!
Again, things didn't stop here. I decided to do something I didn't do before "at all". And that is: Working in CMYK instead of RGB.

The Grand CMYK Mulukhiyyah

I don't have much experience with this system (if any) but I do know that it is the common system in use in presses for mass production. Besides, there were many options in Photoshop for such a system to convert to! I picked one which seemed to be the "default" in Photoshop, and I don't know what the heck does that mean or how it is different from the others (the one I picked says US, while there are others related to Europe and Japan). It was a complete dilemma to me. Anyway, I did it.
In this instance, and because CMYK, apparently, is composed of 4 rather than 3 channels, I've had to group the slides into 4 stacks instead of 3, and assign each stack a color from the set of CMYK. Thinking about it, I probably was able to do this within RGB system but it would be a lengthy process somewhat. My method for assigning colors to the whole stack or group is by controlling the channels of the group (via Group Properties) where I turn off all channels save but one.
Now, there is a minor setback and that is, images cannot be saved as PNG when in CMYK system, so a conversion back to RGB must be done. I won't go into details here but there are certain options must be activated to ensure that the looks of the image won't change when the image is converted.
Personally, I do like the CMYK rendering more than the RGB, and who knows, I might do more of such "art" in the future. It is just colorful and more vibrant as I see it more than RGB is. Also, I might try to discover other systems, if possible! But for the time being, I've been busy with many things (work, home, other photo ideas). So, I'm not sure when to try this idea out.

Finale

Well, it seems that the post had gone longer than I anticipated already so I will keep the other part, about panoramas, for a later time. Hopefully in 2 weeks time from now. There had been some images also that had been marked as "inspirational" on YouPic, but I think I will keep them in time (and one of them would be in the next post hopefully). I'm now 3 images short of completing my next set of 10 inspirational images. If that happens at any time now, I will be preparing a special post about these 10.

I've been going through some busy times (though at home) lately and some upheaval combined with mood swings as usual. It is as if I'm hitting a new ebb every few days. On the darker brighter side (as ironic as it sounds), I was able to compose a poem after some long time of dormancy. No need to post the poem here, but in case one is interested in reading it, it can be found here. I've called it Lion's Heart. When I read it, again and again, I do somehow find it hard myself to follow my emotions through it, as if I cannot connect with my emotions with which it had been written. All I'm sure of is that it was written at a time of a severe mood swing that made me otherwise stunned and paralyzed except for writing this poem. Now, how many mood swings do I have to endure to write another poem? God only knows.

As a direction, I don't know where am I heading with my camera, or with my life as a whole anyway. Trying to take each day as it is and trying to think of a new project that I can bear with, with my camera. There is no lack of ideas in fact, but a lack of power and will from my side to just get moving. Probably I'm better just sitting behind a desk and do the ordinary office job? After all, this is how I did make some money to get what I have right now of gear (though it's pretty old right now compared to the new stuff coming to the market).
Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts... and all my mission is, every single day, is to fight back and stop them as much as I can…

Here We Go...

They are here finally. Signed, sealed and... framed. Soon to be delivered hopefully. It did cost me a fortune somehow but I have some hopes on selling those and gain some profit to cover up for my losses in February so far (specially after paying up the bills for electricity and water).

Signed, sealed, framed.

However, the experience here in taking this picture was something I wanted to do long time ago. Funny though that I had to fix my camera with the flash unit attached to it, by my spiderpod (or gorilla pod as some call it I think) and all is wrapped on a toy car. The flash was pointed upward to bounce of the ceiling even though the ceiling is not close so much, but the illumination was fair I'd say. For an experiment like this I didn't think of doing HDR out of the situation. Too bad I didn't think of taking a picture of the set!
The experience is new to me but the idea is old in fact. I always wanted to do such a panorama where the image can be kept flat instead of being wrapped, and that implies that I can't use the VR-head and rotate the camera on location, but I have to move the camera in a straight line as much as possible in order to keep the perspective, and the blend should be then some sort of a collage for all the images.

In Photoshop there is definitely a "collage" blend, but of course the Photoshop era was long gone. I had to sort things out with a baby called PTGui. However, using PTGui with complete manual control, means there are things to be done, unlike the totally automatic and relatively easy processing in Photoshop.

On another note, I've dug up some old photos that I didn't touch or process before. Or should I say panoramas that I didn't stitch before.
Because of my search for some material to add on the list and prepare a catalog for some prints-to-be, I've began sweeping through some of the old pictures and folders, and of course I had to stop by 2010's Ireland's collection. There, I've discovered one small panorama that I didn't touch and post before, but I've prepared the HDR slides already!

Once Upon A Gothic

Maybe one of the reasons that made me look away from this image is the fact that there are some people in the image and usually stock sites don't like images in that way (or let's say they ask you to put on a model release for each person in the image sometimes!). Anyway, things have changed as it seems. Looking back at this image and looking at my workflow now it is amazing how many things have changed about my considerations and techniques.
The HDR slides for this small panorama were taken on tripod without VR-head. Generally, a small panorama like this (4 slides) might not cause much of a headache in stitching. However, the bracketing for HDR was done in -3,0,+3 sequence, and THAT proved to be a problem. Back then, I thought such EV level is something good to include extremes of highlights and shades, but judging from my position now, I think -2,0,+2 is enough (and even this might cause some problems at certain atmospheres). I think now it is the time to use metering from the camera to decide on a proper range of EVs, specially before working with a full panorama.
In case you are wondering about the title, this is because I think the architectural style here is Gothic; elongated windows and sharp tops. They say the medieval architecture in Ireland was greatly influenced with this Gothic style and some argue as well that it was brought to the island from southern France in that specific era.

I'm in a rush now to do many things before the time of the expo comes; a catalog, and even a website. For this rush, my recordings for Alexander's story - 6th chapter, and also working on my Geltani project, all are on hold for the time being. All what I'm hoping for is to cover up for some of the expenditures I had to bear this month, by selling some of these prints for real. I've wiped out all my salary already and no way to save anything now...