Feathers…

Many things are going around lately and kept away from the blog for a week, beside preparing for a post in my other Arabic Blog too. I was going to cancel a post for this week too after a little incident and spraining my right foot, but things seem better now. Anyway, I will try to be quick here (and every time I say this I end up with a long post!).

Eanáir

I've stated before in previous post that there was a stack of projects on my desk (well, virtual desk that is) and I was going through them slowly. One of these projects is related to the month of January (which is Eanáir in Irish) with the group re-establishing this activity: A project for every month. This month's theme was Black and White with no specific limits to the subject to be involved. I previously had some ideas and after stating this theme, I thought I might merge the two together, specially after the lack of materials!

Entwine Series

I had some ideas already as I said, and I was looking already for white feathers, and then changed my mind to black feathers, but well, I couldn't find any. I was looking for the feathers for another project under a workshop entitled Art of Seeing which finished back in December! However, with the arrival of this project for January, I started to merge the two.
Since I couldn't find either black or white, and only colored ones (red, green and yellow), I thought it would be fitting now to shoot in B&W and mimic the black and white feathers! As thoughts were racing through, I made some abstract experimenting with macro shots as seen in Entwine Series above. I've made several shots and filtered them down to 3 only, and then asked for a vote from the group members to see which composition is, to them, feels better. Most of them picked #2 (the middle one), and this is the one which was submitted. I'm keeping the others for various projects as well; I like them still!

I went on working on some ideas and nothing worked out, but I had to move quickly from one to the other for the lack of time I was suffering with! A substitute idea was to throw some feathers on my Omani dagger and capture the moment in high-speed. Unfortunately, didn't turn as I wanted it to be for many factors, like space available and lenses, but I've sorted the shots into final 7, and again, asked the group to vote for one.

Aftermath Series

The vote picked #2 here too. I was hoping to record the motion of the feathers, but working alone didn't make things easier for me even with a 10-second timer. Anyway, I had to satisfy myself with these results after changing from the course of the main idea: A feather penetrating a knife; as I couldn't apply this idea in any possible way I could think of. My goal was impressionistic endeavor of how gentleness could come over sharpness and savagery. Thus, throwing feathers on a dagger merely has a potential for something or some idea. In fact, it was done completely randomly with no specific philosophical idea in mind! Anyway, image #2 was submitted as well.
I got special drilling bits later on, to drill a hole in a knife to apply the idea I was seeking in the first place, but it's too late now with my lack of time and I would, and should, be applying that some time later. However, for the irony, I loved the patterns and luster for those drilling bits, and decided to include it with my submission.

Golden Strips
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/32, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

I took many shots at different angles, and had many problems with the flash systems (which I really find a solution for!). I was using 430EXII Speedlite here mainly, reflecting it off a reflector (silver car shade in fact). To my surprise, this speedlite specifically has no inlet for external power source, and thus I had to work solely on batteries, and in time, the power of the flash diminishes: The 1/1 power with full batteries is not as much as 1/1 power when batteries are low. I even made several shots in hope to make a focus stack (f/32 was not enough to include the whole depth of field!) but sorting through the files later on, I realized I didn't do the stacking right; it still needs a rail to do it correctly which was not at hand back then. Anyway, I'm satisfied with Golden strips, which was converted to B&W and tinted with golden hue (#ffd700). Originally, the bits got a slight yellowish tint but reflecting the flash turns them more into silver tint. This is the only shot which was not purely B&W shot but a tinted shot in my submission.

Art of Seeing

This was the title of a workshop that was over with in December and yet we had to work on a submission specific to this workshop. It took me a while to look for the feather as I've said above, and decided to apply cubism as I was urging to apply this concept in my future shots. I think I got just the chance here. Even though I'm not pretty convinced that what I did does enroll itself under the topic of "Art of Seeing," but I got the green light from the leader of the group to keep on going with this. Yet, it has to be judged and critiqued.

Version 1

Cubism in photography is mostly about shooting individual images for the same subject (with or without motion) and merging them together in some way, mostly resembling squares. This is at least what I've seen from examples online. As I shot my series for this project (as seen in Version 1), I tried to include the whole scene as much as possible; with a stack of feathers it's easy to lose track. It does resemble working with a panorama to some extent but my options to work outside Photoshop were limited here and I had to work in Photoshop itself. But first, I had to cut down the slides into squares. Then, fitting them manually and stacking them according to my vision alone.

Version 2

As I finished Version 1 manually, it occurred to me that Photoshop has some useful bundle of commands for panorama making that I could use. I'd love to discuss the results here but I have to conclude the final matter here with Version 2, which was composed using the Reposition option under Auto-Align Layers command. So far, I can say that these two, Version 1 and Version 2, are the ones that I like most. Merging these layers seamlessly doesn't look good at the end, and no need to mention how Photoshop consumes memory already, and with this number of large-size images, it was a hectic process. A question that still going on in my mind is: If any of these were accepted and must be prepared to be exhibited, am I going to print each slide alone and try to combine them physically as they appear in the image file? Or simply print the image as it is? Time would tell I guess.
The idea in the beginning was about killing peace, and that's why I wanted to use white feathers. Even though I always felt that the composition needed something extra. However, I've noticed that the grip of handle of the dagger is already white, so it is better to use black feathers to add contrast, and there came in the change in the original idea: Killing evil (instead of peace); and probably things has to be violent to reach the peace of mind at the end…

Finale

As it can be seen from this blog now, things are more drifting into photography rather than conlangs. Should I abandon my passion for conlangs just now? I'm not quite sure but I hate to think about it even. My life seems racing itself to nowhere. But I'll try to look into that matter later on. The only connection I do have with my beloved Ayvarith right now, is my instagram account (@ayvarith) which I post in weekly. I even managed to add new words to my lexicon.
From the events in this week, it seems I'm losing my grip on the handle slowly and the call for a vacation is even getting stronger. All incidents happening to me last Monday and my foot injury, all caused by a simple show of anger, and over a video game (yes, video game). I didn't play this type of games in a long time, probably since high school, but seems this anger is still roaming inside. I remember how it was when I used to get mad at such games back then and I didn't have this spark of anger for such stuff in a long time, and it's all back now. Makes me wonder if I'm really in need of anger management. But definitely, the thing that would sooth my ailments is, a travel.

Painterly…

Winter is getting colder, that sort of thing I would call good news! Meanwhile, I'm trying to get involved more into my thoughts and myself, and my experiments; as it seems the only thing I'm good at currently, with the lack of go-outs to snap some pictures, or even working indoors. I guess I can say I'm investing more time into my thoughts rather than my work with the camera. In hope these thoughts will deliver me somewhere.

Escherism

Well, I've been interested in the art of this man long time before I even adapt myself to photography. I've been reading about him recently to see if I can get any clue to get me further with my experiments with the camera, and I was somewhat happy to see that he got his biggest spark of inspiration from the tessellations of the Moorish architecture in Spain. The aspect of tessellations is something I'm considering, specially after some experiments with some of my panoramas.

Which way did they go?

Probably my first successful trial with this trend of surrealism (which I like to call Escherism) was with a panorama from Aughnanure Castle, specifically from inside the small tower; a panorama done in my 2014 visit. Since a panorama is a merge of several images, what about merging several panoramas? Does that it make it a hyperpanorama? Anyway, I had this idea for a long time and my aim was actually to expand on the edges of a regular spherical (equirectangular) panorama, because these edges (zenith and nadir specifically) are usually compressed and so distorted. Thus, my trial was to expand on these edges and fix this distortion to have a normal view WITH a equirectangular panorama of 360x180 view.

Surreal Jabreen

In the beginning, merging was hard to do, since PTGui nor Photoshop were useful in this kind of process. Thus, things had to be done manually. Since it would be a manual work, I had to program myself and my workflow, and in return I've generated a workflow in forming these panorama of various projections. So far, only the spherical (equirectangular) projection is adequate for such a process, but I'm trying to experiment more. I've done experiments already in the field of Mercator projection, which was a lengthy process and a hard task while the end result was quite a shock! But well, some people liked it after all (on instagram); seems surrealism got an audience far more than I thought it would.

Let's talk Dadaism.
Using Mercator projection. The whole scene rendered incomprehensible it seems.

On the list of projection styles is, of course, the planet projection and maybe the circular. Not expecting much out of those, since the distortion is high, but it might be a plausible surreal work. Doing a single surreal work like this would require stitching 7 to 25 panoramas! Thus, my work so far is on a small scale (not exceeding 2000 pixels wide under best conditions), and all are in JPEG format; nothing in HDR like I usually like to do with my regular panoramas. However, for some technical issues, I might have to stitch small HDR slides and tone-map all the set with the same settings before working on merging them in Photoshop.

Methodology

I'll explain here the method (or some of it) which I've used to generate the images above. As I've stated above, I needed from 7 up to 25 panoramas, but I believe 7 is quite enough. To organize my thoughts on the order of the images, I've assigned coordinated points to each panorama and literally name each to its position (using the Cartesian system, i.e. X and Y) in relation to the center (0,0) point, and typically this point is given to the zenith (i.e. the panorama is centered around the zenith point, with 90 as a pitch value). Of course this is just my reference point; any point of view of the panorama could be used as a (0,0) point.

Imaginary points for organizing and setting order to stitched
panorama of different pitches and yaws.

With assigning that point and forward, the yaw value defines the "X" value, while the pitch defines the "Y" value. Of course these values are in degrees, and I thought that the value of 45° is just suitable for the rotations in pitch direction (i.e. vertical or "Y" values). This means, each 45° is a single unit. For example: starting from the (0,0) view (and after stitching the panorama at this view point), raising the pitch to 45°, that means arriving at (0,1), while raising it for another 45°, or going directly from pitch "0" to "90°" right away, thus the point would be (0,2); while doing in the negative direction, like -45° means going down to (0,-1) and so on. Same concept is applied to the yaw value but with the yaw it is the "X" axis which changes: going 45° in yaw would be (1,0), while -45° in yaw is (-1,0).
It is important to track the process and always turn back to the (0,0) point after few changes in yaw or pitch. I've made many wrong stitches at the wrong angles. This is one reason that I prefer to assign the (0,0) or center point to the zenith view since it is easier to recognize. Also, I started saving the stitched panorama with names reflecting their positions on the grid accordingly. Working with few panoramas right now, it seems that not all points are really required; mostly 15 stitched panoramas would be needed, from (X:-2,0,2) and (Y:-2,-1,0,1,2) mostly. Working with other projections, however, would require more, like in Let's Talk Dadaism above, which was rendered with Mercator projection, yet the scene is not pretty clear because of the distortion. Some people liked it that way though!
I've stated before that I blend these panoramas manually, but in fact it's semi-manual process, where I have to place the slides manually and overlap them over each other at specific points, and then use Photoshop's Auto-Blend Layer... command with Panorama and Seamless options on. Thus, the blending process is sort of random but turns fine with panoramas being in spherical projection (since distortion is far less than in other styles).

Kubismus

Been awhile now for me being interested in some of the artistic movements of the past (and which still exist and followed I presume). One of these movements is Cubism without doubt. It is considered one of the cornerstones of arts in the 20^th century. I loved the idea and wanted to investigate how that is applicable (if it is) to photography. To my surprise, I've figured that one of the ideas I had in mind (but didn't achieve yet) was actually one form of cubism, namely shooting several shots of the same object at slightly different angles or distances and making a collage of them; some photographers did that already even back on film days! Well, maybe not new idea, but I was still going to try it when I get the time (and subject) to.

Cubic Selfie

Up until finding the good subject and the time, I've decided to edit and retouch some photos for a trial into cubism. I guess my favorite target was my selfie from 2015 (an infrared shot with a regular camera). The process was simple: open the image, copy the image into another window (or file) and make it small, then copy specific details from the large image onto the small image, with some addition of some details later (like shadows). Some people stated that it looks 3D-ish, and this is an important remark, because sometimes, all you need is just add a shadow to your work and you are at the steps of a 3D image!
Generally speaking, cubism is supposed to be about "neglecting" the perspective and considerations for light and shadow and simply capturing the essence of the subject, thus adding a shadow here does not "go under" the umbrella of cubism I suppose! But maybe things are different when it comes to photography and the way that a camera work; hope that point would plead to forgive my shadow addition when editing this.

Cubic Corrib

Things evolved a bit later, specially after discovering a set of photos from my 2009 visit to Ireland (my first) where I've shot several photos at different zooming levels for the lake and the boat. Thus, I've started taking details from the other images and paste them onto the first photo (with least zoom level). In addition, I've started adding more effects to the squares (cubes) like bevel effect, trying to approach some good level of a cube-like shape. Significant details here were scarce somehow, thus I had to tear down the basic image further into few squares to fill empty spaces. To me, Cubic Corrib is still not as much interesting as Cubic Selfie despite the effects put into it.

Cubic Pjazza

It is natural of course to think of panoramas and the cubic art, but instead of following the usual steps with the other regular shots, I've sliced panoramas and fit them into a cube (while making front layers transparent). The Cubic Pjazza cube was just an experiment. The main problem is not being able to show the inside or the back of the cube and lowering the opacity (by 50%) of the front layers (mainly front, right, and top layers) seems not quite a plausible solution since much details are somewhat lost. The next step was, of course, a hypercube!

Kylemore Tesseract

Again, we have a problem of opacity and unclear details, but further more there is a significant problem of filling the space between the two cubes (which are supposed to be planes connecting the two cubes, hence raising the dimension level). In Kylemore Tesseract not all the space is filled, but only the vertical planes connecting the corners of the inner and outer cubes. To add, I'm not sure how (or rather with what) to connect these 2 cubes: what kind of slides I should use? This thing is still in experimenting phase, but I do really think of making the experiment physical somehow by printing or creating models out of these panoramas (in slides), and try to put them together.
A funny coincidence occurred as I was working with these hypercube experiments, which seems to me that I've created my first Impossible Object!

Optika

It occurred to me as I was assembling a cube made out a panorama shot in Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, Oman, in October last year. The bluish tint in Optika is generally caused by a shift in the color space but I kept it without fixing. Creating this by coincidence makes me consider photographic opportunities in the future. Not only that, but also considering other shapes and trends, like triangles and their properties, and, of course, circles as well.

Finale

It seems my brain is chasing its tail right now, specially with me dipping myself into math by the nose. Deep inside, the need for a vacation is increasing even further. All this indulgence in arts and math seems to be nothing but a trial to neglect myself and whatever tires my mind. In hope of creating something beautiful, though.
There are more ideas and even more sources of inspiration (from Sabah Fakhri as usual and even others - mainly Arabic songs and singers). I don't want to give excuses to myself, but having a quiet home and a good space to work in are now pretty much essential parts of having an easy flow of thoughts and work, yet, I'm lacking these two aspects which makes me reluctant and must think about every movement I do to move my camera gear here and there, beside the accessories. I guess I have to seriously start noting down any ideas that pass my mind, otherwise I will be at loss. Many of these ideas would require having a model as I can't (or rather it's advisable not to) be the model myself and the photographer in the same time. And of course, more props and accessories needed.
My next step in this life, so far, is to take each day as it is and suppressing, hard, my panic attacks and the fear for tomorrow. For in God I trust…

3+3=4…

I wasn't sure that I was going to type something in this blog for this week, but I'll try to pass this as fast as I can. Ramadhan is here already and my time is consumed greatly. By consumed, I don't necessarily mean "work" or anything else; but it could simply mean being tired and unable to do much.
After breaking the fast, I spend my time doing some usual chores and if I can get some time I would be working with my camera somewhat (if any idea was available). I'm observing this for the upcoming weekend, though I'm not optimistic about it with such family gatherings in weekends. I decided to fight sleeplessness and the upheaval in my sleeping pattern by reducing the amount of food I eat after breaking the fast, and I must take it at specific times. No fatty dishes, just dates and some bananas with milk (sour milk).

Meanwhile I was able to do some experimentation with some idea that I've been thinking about for a long time now and I'm finally on the move to do it. The idea is creating a so-called 4D image.
The problem here lies in the fact that I don't really have any imagination or any expectation for the outcome. I'm merely working by the concept and the theory of 4D space. That is, merging 3D shapes with each others would raise the dimension space further, to 4D.

4D Hexagon
an old experiment done by merging 2D hexagons with each other to form 3D Hexagon, then merging two 3D hexagons to form 4D hexagon, supposedly.

Probably this concept is best illustrated by the tesseract, or 4D-Cube. Anyhow, from this point and concept, comes the idea: what would happen if I could merge two 3D images? What I'm going to see, and what I'm expecting? Up till this moment, I don't really have any answer for this, and the main factor that keeps my mind busy is how to shoot, and how to merge?
As a principle, I've realized that I would need at least 4 shots. In the beginning I used my 100mm macro lens with a chess set, and using a shallow depth of field, but then I've realized that a shallow depth of field is not even a good thing to create a good anaglyph or 3D image. Thus, I've changed to 50mm and using f/8 (or around that). I've taken several lateral shots (sliding the camera to the side 1cm between each shot), and once again four other shots rolling the camera back to front. However, I ended up using the lateral shots alone. My idea was adding some depth somehow using back-to-front images, but it was puzzle that never worked out.

End Result

There were many trials and merging several layers by combining these 4 lateral shots. I won't go into details, but the major problem was how to merge or blend two 3D images? Not to say, upon which point (or focusing point) should I base the alignment of the two 3D images? I ended up using the front knight as you can see above, while blending the two layers by trial and error (ending with using the Darker blend).
For comparison, I've put the End Result above, which has a comparison between the regular 3D and the supposedly 4D, or the merge of two 3D. The two must be, supposedly, viewed using anaglyph glasses (red-cyan). I need some feed back on this, so if you can do this in the comments section I would appreciate it. I cannot rely on my own judgement alone on how this 4D looks or feels. As a beginning, it seems that the chess pieces were broadened and became thicker than the original, and as for the background it looks shaky. At some point in my experimentation before reaching this result, I've indeed made a version where the knight piece in the foreground was stable, while the other pieces looked shaky and blurred.

Finale

This is all I could put on for this week, and I'm not sure I will be posting for the rest of Ramadhan, but I would if I have any new ventures and experiments. Probably I should neglect photography a bit during this month and work more with my Geltani? Maybe.
Anyway, if you are reading this, and have the possibility to view the End Result above with red-cyan glasses, please leave your impressions in the comments. It would be a great help to understand how other people perceive this "trick"!
Time to manage my sleep now, again…

Webbology...

Another week now without any success with my camera. But hey! at least I've tried my best with it! Well, maybe I will explain a bit about it later. In the meantime, I'm still coping with my disturbed sleeping schedule which drives me to more naps in the office (yes, in the office). On the other hand, I had my own trials with Geltani a bit, but I'm wondering when it is the proper time to publish this work?

Emergency

The family had to face some hard time last Thursday when Mom is said to have low blood pressure and shortly went into coma, or she might just have slept as she said, during the dialysis process. The doctors wanted her to be transported to the hospital ASAP but she told them that her son (me) is waiting outside. Thus, I had to drive her myself to there amid some crazy traffic. They got her into the observation room for a while and it wasn't till my sister arrived that I could leave the place. Later on, my sister called and said that everything is alright and they wanted to check her in for 2 or 3 more days but Mom and my sister refused and they got back home that same day. Talk about exhaustion all day and not being able to think of something to do. In fact, I tried to sleep most of that day, while headache stroke me later at night. Wondering how to even enjoy my weekend amid this turbulence.
The load had increased even more, with Mom preferring me to drive her to the dialysis center in an early time instead of my (freak) sister who used to go out late into the traffic jam and drives Mom's nerves into a panic status. And of course, I'm the one who picks her later from the dialysis center 4 to 5 hours later. I do have a family that I can depend on as it seems. Then everyone is wondering: why do you like to do things alone?

Dine-In

Saturday, it was the time for the dinner invitation that I've set up for the group members and some friends.  I can't hide my surprise and disappointment here, for the 19 guests who were initially invited, only 7 showed up. Imagine booking a whole restaurant for that night, to find yourself with such small number of people. I did take some photos but they are less than 10 probably and I didn't even bother processing them.
The invitation of ladies into this was another comical matter. Despite the fact that we used to gather in meetings and occasional gatherings in specific events (like the last week before Ramadhan), yet they found it embarrassing to gather with the guys in a restaurant to have dinner, even though it was possible (and I did) to separate the seats to accommodate males and females separately. When she heard the story, the owner of the restaurant laughed and wondered about such a strange mentality.

Lingua Geltani

On the Geltani front I've decided to change the previous statement for occupations from (-ji) and (-jin) suffices to something a bit far away from Japanese. The masculine occupation title would be (-árí) wile the feminine would be (-ází). The Geltani character is the same still but for the feminine title it would be flipped upside down.

-árí

-ází

Been working some time as well on the possessive articles (my, our, ...etc), and they were a bit tricky for me actually and in the end I had to formulate special characters and wording with loose connection to the original pronouns. At this point, found myself changing the plural as well (which was a repetition of the last syllable). Possessive articles come at the end of the words just like in Arabic (and a bunch of other languages as well), but their characters are not related to the transformation from Arabic orthography as I've planned Geltani in general.

Click to Enlarge

As for the reformulation of the plural, it is generally looked up again because of the fact that some words would up with nasalization and it might be hard a bit to repeat a nasal sound at the end, thus I thought it might be better just to stick to the regular method: adding a fixed suffix, with special rule for words with nasalized ends:

• If the word ends with consonant (without counting the regular schwa) or if the word ends with a vowel, then the plural is -(a)no.
• If the word ends with a nasal, then the plural is -wo. 

And these were the basic rules that actually affected the make of possessive pronouns in the beginning. The character for plurals is not changed and it is the same for both cases, as it is supposed to be a logographic script and has nothing or let's say just a bit of connection to the spoken sounds. How ironic that I'm doing all of this without even fixing the final vocal values for syllables! I think this is a mistake, and probably a big one, but my work pace is slow and nothing to published so far. Thus, I have the freedom to change anything for the time being. All the news about Geltani come from this blog, I presume. On the other hand, I shall work a bit more on syllables for foreign words as I've stated before because some characters and their strokes seem to be not suitable or misleading (for me). Shall see about that later.

Laser Point

I've finally got me a laser pointer to do some experiments with the trigger. My initial happiness with the toy was not complete when I, out of curiosity, scrolled open the pointer to see what type of batteries it uses. BANG! Two out of three batteries jumped out of their place and got lost under the car's cushion. Took me some days to find a replacement in some watches stores (yes, I was that busy and that much tired).
I've looked up settings for laser triggers on the internet and they seem quite easy like what I had in my mind. However, doing the setup for my own simple idea, was not something simple at all!
I didn't take pictures for the setting I was trying to use, but generally my idea was to catch a flying sugar cube over a mug. Thus, the pointed (after some really hard work here) was fixed pointing to the trigger, with the laser line passing over the mug. The good news? The set did work indeed and the laser pointer with the trigger did indeed trigger the camera. Bad news? Here we go:

• I've used a paper clip to press the button of the pointer and keep the laser beam on at all times. Later, however, seems it is either the battery or maybe for the sake of safety, the beam became fainter and fainter, till finally switched off. To turn it on again I had to remove the clip and wait for some time and put it back again (and adjust the position of the pointer all over again to fall on the trigger's sensor). 
• All my trials didn't catch a flying cube. I've changed the height of the laser beam and made it higher but to no avail. Not sure if the problem was the high shutter speed (reached 8000^-1sec) or is it the delay in triggering. I have to add here that because of the long wire connecting the trigger to the camera, it probably does propose a significant delay in the process when the signal has to travel.
• The place was hot and I was sweating waterfalls!
• Lighting from the speedlites were just enough and I didn't want that type of lighting actually but this is the best I could do. It is such situation that makes me wish for a 3^rd speedlite.

On the other hand, I was still struggling with the make of a silhouette image for my brothers. Despite the fact the Redbull contest is over already, but I had the idea alive in my mind still. I was planning to take pictures of different poses and all in silhouettes. Yet, working with family members is always something I don't like because no one is really reliant. Well, I guess I have to forget about the idea and just do something else more (useful) for the time being. Probably make a silhouette profile of Mom? Just an idea.

Webbology

With me being like a grounded boy now and not having the ability to work much around my camera, beside of course the empty mind and the flying ideas out of this head because, as it seems, my brain has lost its field of gravity - because of all these matters, I've had the internet to look for solutions and inspirations as the only thing that might spark something in me.
I've found some plenty of websites with tips and so on, typical, but few of them did really help me through and just loved to share them here.

1. Creativity Games: This website will be used a lot in the near future. It has a random word generator and some other stuff related to words (and I think it expands further than just words, but I didn't go deeper). From time to time I would seek this website for some random words (8 to 12 words usually) and just stare them and try to make some connection between few words which, hopefully, later would be translated as an idea to photograph. There was some old website that I used long time to write poetry but unfortunately it's not available anymore and in that old website you would type some words and in some way by some algorithm the computer makes you connect words together. Anyway, this new website is completely automatic if I should say and the words are completely random. Beside the single word generator, many words can be produced at once (up to 8 words a time) and there are plenty of creativity games (duh! hence the website's name!) that ask you to force a connection between some words. Quite useful for writing processes I presume, or maybe for business as well.

Screen Shot (with the damn ads pixelized!)
Click to Enlarge

2. RANDOM.ORG: This website offers many random things. However, my interest was in random numbers. Why? These random numbers in combination with random words from the above mentioned website, makes me reduce the range of thoughts into some specific words only and from there I try to imagine some photographic project. For example, if I collected 12 random words from the website mentioned above, I would write them down in a specific pattern (let's say in 4 rows with 3 words in each), then ask RANDOM.ORG to give me random digits from 1 to 12. After collecting 3 random numbers (of course this is my choice, otherwise it's free!) I would go on the words from the list with these orders (the order can be vertically arranged or horizontally as well) and jot down these words and try to make up something out of them. I'm not expecting success in every session of course yet it is some way to start and to break the boredom around!

Screen Shot with the generator on the right side
Click to Enlarge

Brainstorming trial with the help of Random.org and CreativityGames.com
Click to Enlarge

3. LightingDiagrams: Generally, I was looking for something that would help me imagine the effect of lighting on location. Anyway, this website was cool enough to provide the ability to make a diagram (but without the effect of lighting on subjects). From there, after making the essential diagram, it can be exported then to some formats like JPG or PNG. Quite useful! And I was doing it all by myself in Photoshop!

Screen Shot
Click to Enlarge

Finale

Trying to break the routine around me and force myself into things I want and like to do, despite the limitations in my physical status. All of that is driving me to even lesser sleeping time and more exhaustion. It feels like if my world is falling apart and I, myself, am the only thing standing. Many people I had to stop thinking of depending on even. Partner and Love? That was forgotten long time ago and I guess no back to that anymore...
As for now, all what I'm going to do is rest a bit, and listen to some Greek Music, and keep dreaming of some vacation...