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...

Geometria...

Here we go, another week, with not much of activity, but at least I'm trying to grease the engine slowly. In the meantime, I do have something for mathematics and geometry still going on in my mind so far since the time when Mom was in the hospital, and that made me think of some weird stuff - simple, but weird I'd say. I'll come to that later on. Also, the group sent me (or maybe I should say put me in front of the cannon) for an interview on TV regarding aluminum prints. Ironically, I have nothing to do with this, except that I was "supervising" the printing process for the expo back in March. It went well (and short) but I have problem getting and viewing the video from the TV channel's youtube channel, mainly because they used a copyrighted topics and issues in their show which made the episode unwatchable in Kuwait! Thank you guys!

As for Mom, her health is progressing, specially that she started to head to the kitchen often and THAT is a very good sign in general, yet, personally and for my own state of mind, I won't feel comfortable until the number of dialysis processes that should be done per week is reduced. At the current time, we have to pick her to the dialysis center (luckily near my working place) 3 times a week, and each session takes around 4 hours. As far as I know (and some by logic), doing dialysis on the long run can cause more hibernating to the kidneys (because dialysis is doing what the kidneys should do) and that would weaken the body even more, beside weakening the immune system naturally. Two things that I don't wish Mom to be acquainted with.

Grease:

Source: B&H

It's been a month or a bit more since I've got the Ubertronix Strike Finder Elite for triggering the camera (or flash as it seems), but unfortunately I'm still unable to work out any ideas to work with it. Sure, water drops and splashes seem to be an obvious target but they are cliches by now. I was trying to find something new or some creative venture within these two topics (water drops and splashes). Since I couldn't think of any, I've tried at least to do some testing for the device.
The Ubertronix seem to work fine except for few awkward delicacies!

• The wires of the sensors (for sound and motion) are short, but probably can be lengthened by some means.
• The device contains no controls for the sensitivity of detection (specially when it comes to sound detection).
• The port used for connection to the camera also bears "Flash" on it, but in the instructions manual there is no explanations involving triggering flashes instead of cameras. Could that be with the help of the PC port in the flash itself?
• Motion and Laser detection seem a bit unpredictable. 
• The sensors for sound and motion with their short cord are also hard to be placed. Probably duct tape is due in some situations. They are in a bulky rectangular box shape and because of the sturdy cord it can be hard to make them stay flat on a table for example or make them still on their sides.

These might be some awkward points, otherwise, the device works in a wonderful way. I think even the Laser detector can be used as a motion detector but I'm not sure of that yet and I need to do more experimentation.

Rising Eye
Canon EF 50mm + 12mm & 35mm tubes, f/11, 400^-1sec, ISO100.

On the other hand, I was trying to catch some eyes with the help of extension tubes but my trials with other people were in vain, so I've tried to do it on my own eye. Of course it is not like a piece of art (specially with all these reflections of flashes on the iris). I've been fascinated with the lines formed on the iris and I thought maybe the best way to do this is to use extension tubes. Using speedlites, on the other hand, was problematic but it was a must; otherwise no light is available in such narrow corner! Doing the whole thing on my own eye is a really hard task, specially with using an external portable monitor to judge the focus and the composition. After many shots, I've decided to pick Rising Eye to work on its RAW and filter it a bit more. I like this version mainly because the iris is situated in the corner (and I cropped a little from the top right corner to emphasize this fact) and it breaks the monotonous look of the iris being in the middle of the frame (and I did take shots that way as well). I've never imagined myself going so deep with the macro field, but it might be time to plan for some rails for fine adjustments?

Geometria:

With my sudden amusement with geometry and mathematics (not something new in fact), I've been playing around with circles and rectangles, along with squares of course. Needless to say I had some crush on Schläfli and his symbols.
From that perspective, I've been thinking of ways to organize my composition or the way I see things in my pictures. I'm quite a believer in what Bruce Barnbaum mentioned in his book The Art of Photography about the myth of the law of thirds; something that I would beheaded for if I talk about in here inside the photographic community in Kuwait! Bruce, however, had his own points and logic indeed. Anyway, for me, I do tend to think of the law of thirds and the golden spiral as means to merely organize the objects in the scene but not a critical tool to get the attention of the viewer. I'm aided with this point by the common belief among photographers that Rules are made to be broken in general!
Stemming from this point of view, I've been working around to base some order based on geometrical means rather than visual means opposed to the theory of the thirds and the spirals.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds
Green: Diagonal-Circles

My first trial was to draw quarter circles from the corners of a 3:2 rectangle; with 3:2 being the usual ratio for imaging sensors (at least for the APS-C cropped sensors?), and the radius of these circles is half the length of the diagonal. Thus, the quarter circles would meet at the center point of the rectangle, and by drawing the diagonals of the rectangle we can specify the points of intersection between these circles and the diagonals (green on the image above). Now, would these points make an interesting composition? This, I wouldn't know without trials. However, I do imagine it is a good starting point for circular (specially overlapping circles; e.g. in a rose) subjects. But the intersection points seem a bit far away from the center which makes me skeptic about its use in general, but again nothing can be talked of without trials.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds.
Green: Diagonal-Circles.
Yellow: Central Circle.

Another thought then occurred to me is to draw a central circle within the 3:2 rectangle in such a way that the center of this circle is shared with the rectangle, bearing in mind that the radius should not exceed the height of the rectangle (the y-axis length). Then, drawing quarter circles from the corners like before. This one diagram is unusual for me because it shows here more than the usual 4 intersections; in fact we have 8 intersections. However, four of these intersections don't seem to be practical (the two central intersections up and down) because they touch the edge of the frame itself. Probably, after removing the 4 central intersection points, we are left with the other four that are close to the diagonals and work more in harmony with the law of thirds and the golden spirals (yet far away from the diagonals-circles intersections). I guess placing a subject in these points won't make much difference visually since it is close to the other perspectives. However, those points close to the edge of the frame which I've omitted in the beginning might make a difference if they are to be included in the rules of the composition. Notice here that I'm talking about placing a subject in ONE and only ONE of these intersection points, whether it may be law of thirds, golden spirals or any other perspective I've been mentioning so far; but what if some of these perspectives, specially this last one (Central Circle method) would work as a whole, meaning that intersection points are to be used all together to organize subject(s) in the scene and not one subject only? You think this would be visually interesting? Again, only trials would prove if it's appropriate or not.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds.
Green: Diagonal-Circles.
Yellow: Central Circle.
Grey: Diagonal-Central Circle.

By the end of my thoughts chain I was almost going to forget about the result of intersecting of the diagonals with the central circle. Not strangely, these grey points are in harmony with other perspectives like the thirds and the spirals, as well as the central circle intersecting points. In fact, I think the four perspectives or divisions: thirds, spirals, central circle and diagonal-central-circle do all make clusters for one position at a time around the center of the frame, and if we have one big subject within the frame it would be covering these four points in one corner at one time probably. This leaves two main questions of how affective these perspectives are when it comes to the Diagonal-Circles perspective (Greens) and the central intersections of the Central Circle (those closer to the edge). Well, as for the central circle perspective, we might, as I've mentioned before, work with the 8 points altogether (or 4 of them at a time) to place a certain subject. The greens, however, might have been tried before from my side without noticing like I did with one of the shots for some roses and petals.

Die Sanfte Ringe

Probably Die Sanfte Ringe reflects in a way how the Diagonal-Circles perspective would work - but I have to say here that this shot was taken long time before thinking about these different geometrical plays within the 3:2 frame. Yet, it does coincide somehow as a subconscious drive I presume! Notice that the Rising Eye mentioned before does somehow imply the Diagonal-Circles perspective and again it is as if it is a subconscious drive within my mind to do it that way, specially when it comes to circular subjects or rings and loops. There is a difference though between the Rising Eye and Die Sanfte Ringe in that the former is indeed a 3:2 rectangle, while the latter is a square. Not sure yet how to think about the visual impact in between these two but one step at a time - I think there is a plenty of time to think about these crazy geometrical means. As for now, I need to work a bit more on more serious stuff!

Libros!

I've exhausted all my arsenal of books by now (and only one or two short stories are left). I've been working on my queue of Arabic books that I've purchased some months ago from the books fair back in November. Back then, I did purchase some stories just to rest my mind little bit from the technical aspects that I usually wander on. Now my eagerness is back to the technical side and I've decided to purchase 3 new books from Amazon. As usual, I've decided to take up 2 books about photography and 1 about science (specifically archaeology).

Source: Amazon

One of the books that I'm eager to read is Lens Design Fundamentals by Rudolf Kingslake. The book is cheap and in fact I was going to order another one which costs around US$150, but judging from the contents, I believe the latter is way too advanced for me for the time being (it appears to be too academic in style). Thus, I changed my mind and picked this one since it's cheaper as well as it is aimed for beginners. I'm not sure where does this lead me but I've always wished to gain more insight about the make of lenses and where the power lies in the design after all.

Source: Amazon

 The second book deals with Tabletop Photography, by Cyrill Harnischmacher with some twist about using speedlites. From what I reckon about its table of contents, it is dedicated for people who don't like to work in studio environment, and eager to use some tricks with their speedlites. Not sure how much I will gain from such a book, but I'm pretty sure that I won't be disappointed as it is the case with most of rockynook publishing.

Source: Amazon

The last book is something attracted me mainly because of some formulae inside! The Handbook For Classical Research, by David H. Schaps, seems to be a general overlook about humanitarian sciences and how mathematics merge into them for purposes of studies. I was looking for a pure archaeological book with pure scientific prospect, but unfortunately most of the books I've found were novel-like and don't deal much with the scientific and mathematical side. This book, however, bears much about studies and how to do them and how to analyze data in such fields like anthropology and archaeology, in different sub-fields. This is, at least, what I've regained from reading the table of contents and some few pages in between the covers. I don't think I would be disappointed here though - anything that has some numbers in its language can be quite interesting in the current time!
The only problem that remains now is how to manage my time between these 3 books. I think I'd read the rockynook issue first, because they can be over with quickly, usually!

Conlang:

In the meantime, I'm not forgetting my beloved conlang(s) in such frustrating times, but actually I'm not putting ideas onto papers or notes - but simply everything is going on in a mental note. I need to enhance my memory about some basics about the Bulughman conlang as well as Betenic.
There had been an idea of a funny or a comic version of English as a conlang. I thought about it long time ago and proposed it to Simon Ager, the author of Omniglot.com, but as he said, the priority is for conlang with conscripts (i.e. artificial and new scripts) while my version was simply using modified Latin alphabet. From that point I've been thinking of inventing a new conscript indeed. Priorities for now, however, is for the Geltani project that seems endless. Sometimes, I do think I need a wife not to love or share dreams together, but simply to organize my time. Might be a plausible idea, but I don't think I would call it a marriage, can I?

العين التي رعتني
The Eye That Cared For Me