Go Mall…

Ramadhan is in and the usual sleeping problems are back as well. I can't wait to start my vacation starting from the 10^th day.  That's when the summer course would start around my workplace and things would get ugly as usual. I really don't understand how the mentalities around here work and what's their idea about "planning" but apparently they need a major brain surgery to fix that, and I'm almost hopeless about that too.

Thanks to Borderlinx and DHL, now the shipment that I was hoping to get before Ramadhan is definitely to be here after Ramadhan and who knows, I might not be able to get it even. Up till the time of typing this, no sign of my shipment which I'm supposed to get back into my Borderlinx box to be delivered in some other way other than DHL. Because of the dispute between the two, probably thousands of customers ran into havoc. I have to say, though, that prior to this order I was really thinking of shifting my interests into other stores around the globe rather than confine myself into US stores, for camera gear specifically. Anyway, I had to do this bit of shopping after some incident and a lengthy story; No need to bring it on here. However, let's see some of these delayed "joys."

Source: Amazon

I'm starting off here with 2 books, and the first one of them is not related to photography. Something related to two sectors I like: Archaeology and Linguistics. I'm not sure what will I find in this book (I didn't check the sample pages thoroughly), but despite my eagerness, I might have to put it aside for a while after its arrival because I do have some books on my stack of reading list, which were purchased 2 years ago from the Arabic Book Fair! *sigh* They are just some thick books…

Source: Amazon

The second one in this order is an interesting book (of course, otherwise I wouldn't order it, right?). It's about infrared portraiture, even though I'm not that interested in portraiture in the first place. However, since I'm inclined to the weird and strange or whatever is surreal in the world of photography, the topic of infrared portraiture seems plausible and I did it often (in the form of selfies, and a bit within my Scopa project which I've stopped). I'm guessing that the bulk of this book would be focusing on film, but we'll see when it comes (again, I didn't check the sample pages thoroughly).

Source:Amazon

The third item in the list was something that got me by surprise in fact. A set of 4 infrared filters (each with different threshold), just for $29.99? Too good to be true! I'm still not sure how to feel about this in fact; I do have a feeling that it is a low quality, but yet I'm willing to try them out when I get them. One of these filters is supposedly at a threshold of 920nm! Previously, I thought that my Kodak infrared gel filter has a threshold of 1000nm, but I was completely wrong (in fact 1000nm is the maximum a camera sensor can "see"). It is rather around 850nm, or what is usually dubbed as Wratten 87B. This threshold is suitable for what they call X-Ray Infrared (not a real x-ray but just a mocking term). Thus, I just can't imagine that I'm getting a 920nm threshold of a filter! How would the photos taken with this be like? Might be time to indulge my 20mm Voigtländer lens in some panorama work, in the future.
These are the main items which were ordered and which, unfortunately, cannot have them any time soon because of the postal problems. My hopes now are set to wish for the shipment not to be lost, as I didn't get any notifications till typing these words about the items being returned back to my box to be shipped to me by other means. Fingers crossed.

Working Re-Working

Meanwhile, as my plans are put to hold (at least till I start my vacation during Ramadhan) I spend my time checking my old photos and trying to come up with new solutions, specifically to those which I've forgotten or neglected for one reason or another. My main aid in this inspection is the LAB technique which I've been applying a lot lately (despite the troublesome aftermath to be cleared out later on). I have to say that I was surprised by some images like if they are new to me when cropped and edited all over again. I think that proves that the status of our mentality in time does affect our "vision" or how we see things and the world around us.

مدائن (towns)

One of these photos is [مدائن] (towns/cities); A photo I've shot back in 2013 when I first got my ever first infrared filter and I didn't know much about the technical aspects for this filter or this art in general. The dark and gloomy atmosphere was apparent at the moment I've fixed the colors (the typical blue tint was not quite visible after fixing the white balance). It really inspired me to write some poetry in Arabic but I didn't complete this task because of my, well, disturbed mind already.
I've intentionally sharpened a portion of the photo and keeping the rest soft to attract more attention and focus. With my calibrated monitor, the image should look dark with reasonable details (I edit while focusing on the histogram). However, as I noticed, on other devices the blacks can look brighter and even further noise artifacts would appear more prevalent (specifically at the bottom portions where rocks lie). This is why it's important to work with a calibrated monitor; Without any calibration, and with such levels of blacks, this photo would definitely be erratically printed! I can already see how it shows on my tablet and I'm not much impressed.

Sometimes digging out for old photos comes up with a bunch of ideas, creating anaglyphs is one of them, but what interests me more is the surreal chances, and that comes typically from trying to achieve the "mutli-exposure" look with some of my continuous/burst photos.

Surreale Tänzer

Doing those multi-exposures AFTER the shoot and even without a preparation beforehand makes it a difficult task somehow as to achieve the proper look which is typically assumed for multi-exposure images. Anyway, in Surreale Tänzer, I tried my best to merge a set of photos shot back in 2013 in more of a normal way (as I did once), keeping the colors as original as possible while showing a hint of movement. However, this didn't happen with Blending options. Thus, I tried another method, which was the focus stack blending in Photoshop. I tried this method before with some old images, and it did produce the same color spectrum as in Surreale Tänzer. There was some surplus of course which needed to be cropped out. I think I need to focus on this trend and look deeper into my old files, specially those from 2011 and 2012, which for me, were the very active years with my Canon EOS 7D.

Disturbed

Not only multi-exposure is part of my interests, but also some of those blurred images which, previously, proved useless somehow! As in Disturbed. I really don't know why I neglected this image from 2013, but the motion blur because of the wind during this relatively long exposure (13s) got my attention. I have to say that some of the images I've gone through this far did incite me to add some blur to them; Motion blur that is and not lens blur. Yet, I'm not sure it did look realistic for some of those images so I just ignored the idea for the time being. With Disturbed, the RAW was processed as any infrared shot would be processed (when the shot was taken I didn't know any of such processes). Generally speaking, I like it and it does give a sense of mystery to me but I'm not sure about the colors. Sometimes, I do wish I made it into B&W (which I might do after a while).

Finale

It is just the first week of Ramadhan and I'm really, really, wishing for my vacation to come by next week. I thought it would pass quickly but I was wrong. Chores, and bad time management and bad sleeping (more than before), all that combined made me wish if I just signed the whole month of Ramadhan as a leave! 
I'm living a somewhat strange transition, between hope and despair. Looking forward to life, and yet despising it. I'm not sure what is going on inside my head, but one thing for sure: I'm tired. Mentally, that is. I think lot of values need to be checked up and re-evaluated.

Ours,
till the end of time,
and beyond that.

Secret Spot...

QTVR ahead. Give some time to load and be sure you install QuickTime to view it

My vacation is over, and I'm already dying to start a new one. The summer is hovering over making it harder to breath even at some point. Fasting is putting my down a bit; it's the month of Rajab and like the previous 3 years, I usually start fasting in this month, and if I can, I would add the next month, Sha`ban, to it. Then comes Ramadhan. However tiresome I might get, Ramadhan will always get me down further even though the working hours are shortened.
Anyway, today I'm going to talk a bit about a special place that I planned to shoot in for a year or more even but never had the chance till few weeks back.

Secret Spot

This is not completely a secret spot, but I like to call it so because it is somehow deep and isolate. It is a piece of land from the beach isolated from the rest of the urban features around it with an artificial cliff of rocks. In high tide time, the water level gets really high that it is almost impossible to stand there and work for a long time (even though I did that already in fact!).

Das Licht Der Dunkelheims
The secret spot is not far from this location fair straight and down.

As stated in the image caption, that location isn't far from there. First of all, I paid a visit to the place with my regular intentions to study the location and see what I can do with it. This simple visit paid well with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens!

Washing Shore
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, HDR, ISO100.

My single shot there back that night, Washing Shore, seemed to get the attention of the viewers. I planned it in such a way to make a curvy line leading the viewer from the bottom right corner to the top portion of the image in a curve. Two bad parts here though:

• The building on the left, which seems to weaken the image for me.
• The noise and processing later on.

 Because of the temperature, the noise was unavoidable with this HDR image done completely with long exposures (ranging from 8 minutes down to 30 seconds). The final result was some complicated smoothed and sharpened details all over the place, with some banding in the sky (after using Hue/Saturation adjustment layers and Selective Color adjustment layers). I'm still not sure how suitable this would be for printing but I won't be sacrificing money for the time being just for experimentation! 

The most terrifying aspect here was, not surprisingly though, the white balance. I admit; it was my mistake to not use the white balance disk to fix the white balance properly before shooting. I had to relay on many layer masks to adjust the colors in one place rather the others and so on which made it a lengthy work and process.

Seeing how things turned around for this single shot, I've decided to head the week after with somewhat an adventure mood. It's not easy for me to be in that mood, I tell ya! But first things first; I had to check the low tide timing and I was lucky to get it accordingly for the weekend after midnight. The hardest step though was to get down through this rocky slope, which might be an easy task for a sportsman, but not for me, specially in the darkness. Retinitis Pigmentosa hits severely in the darkness.

Mare Lunare

The work began when my feet hit the ground. It wasn't easy as I didn't carry my LED lights and only my bulky flashlight. Also, setting up the tripod and the bulky VR-head on such soft sand was troublesome and did consume a considerable time. I've found out also that the VR-head needed some tightening in some positions as some screws were getting lose! Pretty dangerous working conditions if you ask me - imagine losing one of those small screws in such soft sand!

The Hanging Cliff
(Hour Glass)

The work was done completely using the Bulb mode, and took around two hours. Yes, and all of that was done without having a book to read during these long exposures; which ranged from 2 to 4 minutes. Believe me if I say, going around the tripod in such soft sand is not an easy task, and needless to say that walking around must be done carefully so that the level of the tripod doesn't change while shooting the panorama.

Things went smoothly, but very lengthy (and at some point, pretty boring I have to say!). The rewards were as you can see in Mare Lunare and The Hanging Cliff (Hour Glass), and more to come in few. In somewhat a strange turn of events, the Nadir point wasn't that easy to merge into the panorama but that was fixed in a hurry with some cloning. In fact I had to do some cloning in each panorama projection I've made so far.

Processing-wise, there was a lot to do; really a lot to do. This is because every single RAW file (total 41) in this panorama was checked for the histogram to ensure it's alright histogram-wise at least and no cut in highlights or shadows. All the files were converted to TIFF and the stitching process started from there. The final result in each projection needed also lot of work in Photoshop because the colors needed to be emphasized; the pure output was simply dull with not much strong contrast. Probably you've already noticed the green water surface in the panoramas. To do this, I had to use some layer masks and plenty of delicate work in selecting the water surface only. This is because without any change in the color of the water, one would deem it all as one with the sky. The water itself looked faintly green and hardly noticeable, thus the color cast was increased using Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Skyscope

Probably my favorite projection of all, is the tunnel view projection; Skyscope. The texture of the sand acted naturally as a guideline somewhat to the center of the image. Here, specifically, I didn't change the water color cast to make it merge with the sky a bit and form semi-circle. I think adding a third color to this combination of yellow and blue (and bit of magenta is already in the clouds) would make things diverse in a bad way.I've tried, as well, to create a slight twirl in the outside rim of the image to make a feeling of something sucking into the depth of the image (and to do this you have to work in 8bit format rather than 16bit), but the process got complicated and I decided not to waste more time with this.

Planeta Litus

The planet projection of this panorama wasn't much dynamic like its cousin Skyscope, except for some faint clouds lines which somehow acted as field lines around some planet. In case you were wondering about the long white line in all of the panoramas above, this is just a light trail and flare from the lamp posts as it seems. 

Schwimmend am Höll

The last projection in the series is a wide-view projection, Schwimmend am Höll, which appeared to me as a floating island in a surreal view with a sky that seemed like burning in flames. Originally, I've stitched this panorama in a large format (11,000 pixels wide) in order to be cropped later into a suitable size. However, after looking at it for few minutes, it did appear to me as if the sides were essential despite the featureless space there. I think without such space, the look won't be that of a floating island balancing itself on a tip of a hill... am I exaggerating here? Ah well.

Ironically, all of these panoramas were refused from some stock website for "too much processing" - probably these people never heard of something called panoramas ever, and processing is the core of panoramas. Anyway, at the end of my work, the sun was starting to cut out through the horizon and the atmosphere began splashing with violet hues, and I didn't want to miss that chance...

Good Morning Kuwait (VIII)
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8(?), HDR, ISO100.

The exposures ranged from 2 minutes and down for one stop each time till 1 second. This was somehow essential because of the city lights and balancing the atmosphere with these lights is somehow impossible with a single exposure. The final image had strong artifacts caused by chromatic aberrations (one thing that I really hate about Rokinon 8mm in such situations) - but after a tedious work in Photoshop I did somehow reduce the effect of these colored lines at the edges of the buildings.

QTVR

With this hard work that lasted for two hours, it would be a shame not to do a QTVR for this place, specially that the nadir point was relatively easy to fix.

If you look to the top above (zenith point), you will notice some strange mark in the sky, and the truth I'm not sure what is this either. However, as I didn't really use a zenith slide in the panorama (even though I did take it), probably this mark is the result of cloning the gap in the original flat spherical panorama, which is Mare Lunare. The gap was so small to even think of adding the zenith slide to the whole panorama (and cause a mess to the whole set!).

Delays

I keep telling myself that I will be facing my projects soon but I'm not sure how much soon is soon in my own timing. There is Geltani, and IPA check up for Arabic (which is pretty important for me). In the meantime, the nearest thing I could think of right now is at least to try and translate UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), which is usually used with most languages on Omniglot (both constructed and natural). With that, I would probably do a voice recording to see and examine closely how the (new) conlang of Geltani does sound; needless to say, it is a real test for the transliteration system (or codification so to say) that is to be used or transcribing this conlang as well. Time management is one major leak in my personal life, which is full of leaks already...

On the other hand I've been testing some sounds of Arabic and trying to figure out precisely where my tongue resides in some of them and how the air articulates in and out of my mouth. Well, been acting (more) as a maniac while doing this while driving or being alone in the office. Still I didn't catch the whole concept completely in fact. The major difficulty resides in two letters: [ض] and [ظ], which, sometimes, are both transliterated as "Z" from the fact that many "dialects" of Arabic today do so. The IPA version provided in Omniglot seems to be on the same trend and hence, it's not convincing for me as an Arabic speaker - Yes, I don't speak the standard Arabic in my everyday life, but it is the supposedly lingua franca between all Arabs, and yet, it is the formal and the prestigious form of Arabic for letters, communications, and the media. My other blog is in standard Arabic as well and I cannot ever imagine myself writing something to the public in one dialect of Arabic, and say this is Arabic.

Finale

One book is off my list now. The Extraordinary Everyday Photography by Brenda Tharp and Jed Manwaring is somehow just another version of another book I had before; The Contemplative Photography. It is in fact a mix between contemplative aspects and technical aspects about the camera and some tips and tricks to do some shots. Never the less, I did like reading it, and specially the last few chapters which are related to dusk and dawn, and night photography.

Source: Amazon

Source: Amazon

Source: Amazon

The book on the queue line is Optics and Optical Instruments, which looks from the few pages I've read so far - looks that it is a students' book; and this is good! Exactly what I was looking for. My previous reading about lenses and their design made me somehow in a status of stalemate; I couldn't comprehend much of what was there, specially the mathematics involved. It is an engineering book of the advanced type which requires some background. However, Optics and Optical Instruments might look old from the shape of the graphics in it (obviously handwritten) but so far so good with the body of text. But that doesn't mean consuming the context is going to be an easy task, specially without someone forcing me to "study" so to say.

Away from books, I've been carrying a load; a load of emotions and responsibilities. Probably more of the former than the latter. I'm taking it seriously in my mind now to spend a vacation, a real one, abroad. Ireland for a third time is in my mind as well. Not sure when exactly but the usual timing would be between September and October if I can. I have to settle things down first, and inform everyone about my plans so they would prepare to take care of Mom. My mind is fluctuating between a new location or visiting the first location I've been to back in 2009. I think the latter is my choice for now, because I have better equipments now, and I don't want to miss the beauty of Lough Corrib (Loch Coirib).

I'm starting to feel numb to almost everyone now. Asking myself, why should I care...

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...