Mercator…

Back to normal (and moderate) life again now after the Expo has finished. It's time now to shuffle my cards again and try to do some stuff that I've been postponing for a while. However, this is not the end of the story with Expos, as we are planning to get enrolled again in another Expo hopefully in March. I do have my own plans for this "show" with the group, but of course I have to discuss matters with them.

Failure No. 1

For some time I had this idea of doing some "portrait" shot with infrared. Yes, portrait. Not my cuppa tea I know, but this time it is combined with infrared, which means long exposure. I've seen some artist which use property for creating a soft touch for portraits, and I thought of experimenting with that as well, even though I don't remember if they did use infrared filters or just a regular long exposure. Anyway, since I have no model to bear with me, I had to do it all on my own.
I made up a simple setting for experimenting with this concept and I made sure that I can rest my head somewhere so it won't move much, but only little shakes (normal body movement). The idea was a table with stack of books (just an addition) and resting my chin on the table (while sitting on the ground). Focusing and directing the camera wasn't a problem, but the problem was majorly the VERY long exposure with ISO100. It required about 65 minutes! I wasn't sure I could rest my head that long! Thus, I tried to use ISO400 instead for a total exposure of about 16 minutes. Boy, did I not sleep while waiting for the exposure to finish!
Unfortunately for me, the final image was pretty much noisy and almost impossible to clean, as well as not being soft much. For this trial, I used the B+W 092 infrared circular filter with my Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens. However, I've began to understand IR filters further and one factor that this circular filter does not yield more interesting results is the fact that its cut-off wavelength point (the point after which waves are allowed to pass) is somewhere around 650nm. On the other hand, the KODAK IR gel filter which I use with my Canon EF 15mm fisheye lens usually, has a cut-off point of something around 900nm. This means that the circular filter from B+W does allow more amount of "visible" light to pass and hence the results aren't interesting as much as those results obtained by the gel filter from KODAK, which filters off more visible light. Of course, in the case of the gel filter, the exposure will be even longer!
The next step now is to try regular long exposures with the help of ND filters only, and probably using IR filters later, but with the help of some extra light source to light the scene (my face) further and help on shortening the exposure as well as "producing" more IR in the scene; I heard tungsten bulbs do produce a fair amount of IR.

Twisted and Vertical

My work is continuing with panoramas taken from Ireland, and this time adding to it some of the old panoramas from other places as well since the occasion of the Annual Book Fair last week. My attitude was a mixture of presenting panoramas and single shots when any process of sorting is scheduled by the group as I don't want to confine myself to a specific category. However, it turned out that panoramas from my side can play the "winning" card in many aspects - and for this reason I've developed some ideas for the next group's activity but they need to be discussed first. Anyway, this is not the matter to discuss here for now!

Talamh na Neamh
(Heaven's ground)

I've been working on doing more vertical panoramas lately, as I've figured that it was the lesser projection in my collection of panoramas, probably because of the lack of straight or longitudinal features in many of the scenes that I usually shoot for panoramas. Anyway, I thought maybe I should try to discover the possibilities in variety of places even those with no distinctive straight features (roads, corridors, ..etc).
However, one of the major problems in such projection is the quite stretched sides of such vertical panoramas which require a crop most of the time because they bear no distinctive or legible features. This is somewhat a minus point for this projection because the cropping limit can be hard to find, and the vertical panorama can be way too thin. But seems there is a promising solution to this in the atmosphere. Mercator.

Táim Suas ag Dul
(I'm going up)

Dhá-Taoibh
(double surface)

It never occurred to me to use Mercator projection, needless to say in a vertical format! I have to say here things came in as a coincidence. The Mercator projection is usually looked up as, simply, an elongated form of the cylindrical projection. However, when it comes to vertical panoramas, the difference is clear. With Mercator, the vertical panorama appears wide in the middle area (like a bulge outwards) and this gives for nicer views and more details. Cylindrical on the other hand, renders this area small and far. Probably vertical panoramas like Talamh na Neamh and Táim Suas ag Dul are more elongated (they are vertical panoramas from regular spherical flat panoramas), and the geometry of the place did help here as well in achieving quite the view without such a bulge. However, panoramas like Dhá-Taoibh had not many interesting features in the regular spherical panorama in vertical format. Mercator was more interesting here, despite the problem in the middle area of the panorama because of the distribution of the grass in the scene, which is a problem already in the spherical vertical panorama; because it renders the place unbalanced in this dimension. With this notice, I'm adding one more creative brush to my palette for the future rendering of more panoramas, and probably solve problems with some panoramas!

Finale

I'm here. Sweeping through life like a pinball game right now from side to side wondering what I really want. I'm planning to increase my activity within the group, thinking that it might give my life a further meaning with all the collapsible dreams that I've been watching fall down so far. I've been told once that things would look and turn for the better after 30; I wonder where from did they get this?.
In the meantime I'm giving work and home my back (almost) and all what I'm going to do is just work on my own projects, my own photos, and on my reputation as a panorama-maker. Say, what do they call a person who makes panoramas? Panoramer?
I leave you know with this musical which I fell in love with. Gentle as it may be, violent on my heart it is. Simply the work of a band of geniuses: The Chieftains...

PolaPeel...

OK. This one is done in a hurry. I barely had something to post this week, and I'm still trying to adjust my time after the end of Ramadhan. I was going to cancel the post for this week just as a... gift to my own self, for my coming birthday on the 17^th, but then there was this tiny project that I hated to delay more than it is delayed already.
Furthermore, my appetite for photography was on hold because of some migraines and sleeping disorders, as usual. However, I was lucky to work in a hurry and somehow thoughtlessly on some project that I was planning to do some time ago: Polaroid Peel.

PolaPeel

Back in March this year, I was invited to attend the rewards ceremony of HIPA (Hamdan International Photography Award) in Dubai; an event that took place a week before Mom's sickness. There, they distributed a package containing a polaroid camera for the ceremony attendants. I have to say I'm so excited to have such a camera out of the ordinary digital cameras line, and I'm hoping to get the chance to use it one day for some nice shooting. Unlike the digital stuff, with such cameras as it is with film cameras, it is a one click business.
Anyway, I've decided to work with this polaroid camera to do a peeling effect. Most of the time I was trying almost regular objects with cylindrical or semi-cylindrical shapes and I thought now it's the time to try out some real irregular shapes with sharp edges.
In the beginning I wanted to check the potential of PTGui to do the job despite my doubts about it. A prime stitch confirmed my doubts and such objects won't get along with the slit-crop method that I usually use in PTGui.
After this failure, I thought it's about time to get back to the classic methods of manual blending of layers to make up for such a peel. In the beginning it was frustrating as how to align and how to start, but things just went on (with errors of course). The job took around 2 days, and the work took around 48 layers stacked together. The original working PSB file (Large Document Format) sized more than 5GB! I've decided here not to include the back portion of the camera body because then I would have a problem with the lens at the front - I want this to be in the middle of the image and adding the backside would disturb the balance.

Polapeel

There are many issues that are still going through my mind about this simple project and probably I should put them in specific points:

• In such instances, it is even better to use the flash on top like I used to do before. It would shorten the exposure time significantly, and lessen the troubles with the shadows below subject.
• I'm not sure about the specific technique to blend. Technically, I was actually aligning different features on both sides and blending manually (using layer masks). Would there be a specific form of approach for this?
• Would I need indeed a shot every 5^o? Or it would be enough to take a shot every 30^o or even 45^o for the object? Probably it also depends on the type of the object I'm trying to peel? Surely, if it works for 45^o the work load would be significantly lower, but I don't know if it would work. Only experiments would do.

These were the main points that I've been thinking of, and I'm sure there are more on the list in the future as I go on doing such stuff!
However, these experiments seem hazardous a bit because I'm straying away from the typical photography venue and concentrating on something typically called special effects and not a real style or school of photography. Yet, I think it is my desire to create the unusual that is always driving me to such experiments, including panoramic photography.

Finale

The engine is still greasing, or trying to be so, even after the end of Ramadhan. If I was tired during Ramadhan for waking up early and picking Mom to the dialysis center, it's doing to be a doubling of efforts when the jam starts with schools return and students' come-back to my work place. Yet, the routine and the schedule with Mom's duties do not change. Ever.
I've been reading more into Turkish and discovering more about its grammar, which is somehow inspiring for my Geltani project, but I won't apply everything I read blindly. I admit, in the past 2 weeks, Geltani was of the least concern to me as I was chasing after my camera, and Mom's health. All what I need is some time organizing, and some physical health. In hope that Geltani would be in front of my eyes again and soon, probably, get published. Now, with no new books to read in my free time at work, I hope I can dedicate this time for Geltani.
My readings into the Turkish language lead me, by virtue, to be listening to a lot of Turkish music (and I do like such oriental music long before I try to understand the language). In musıc, though, there are always those strings that should not be touched that mangle in the heart. Isn't it a wonder, how something makes you so sad, yet you keep listening to it all over again?