Mustajdee…

Somewhat a relief from a toothache! Something I was planning to do within the first week of the new year and for that occasion I was planning (and did indeed proceed with) for a one-week leave off work, but now that I've fixed the tooth (hopefully permanently) I guess it is a chance to invest that one-week leave in something else; Well, beside sleeping of course!

Genies

I've talked in my last post about a new panorama which was done in, if I can call it so, semi-infrared environment. The panorama was done completely in the dark with only candles as the light source and with a modified Canon EOS 7D for infrared photography BUT without any infrared filter; Hence, because of the candles and the absence of infrared filter, I might as well call it a "semi-infrared" process.

جِنْ (Djinn) - Original

Anyway, I've stated also that I'm in the process of creating new projections and styles out of it, as I usually do with my panoramas. Let's call these derivations Genies. Working with these genies was no fun as with other panoramas because of the amount of stitching errors that I had to put up with; Meaning, I would need to fix these stitching errors with every production for one of these "Genies". Some of them I did notice and fixed (to the best I can) in the original, but it seems changing the projection styles do exaggerate some curvature and lines that some stitching errors get amplified visually; They are there, but I didn't notice them until I've changed the projection and the perspective.
Generally speaking, my choices were limited in doing some artistic work here mainly because of depicting myself in the panorama in 3 positions, and also having these 3 poses on almost one side of the room and not balanced across the room. I had my vision back then when I was shooting this panorama and of course my thought was all focused on the overall flat, equirectangular (spherical), look. Things change though when you try to make other projection styles. There are some specific points to care for as to the presence and absence of some objects in the scene or the curvature of some lines that might not help the overall look of the image and sometimes even checking for exhaustive or unsolvable situations with the nadir (and the zenith) points. For this reason, I had to give up many ideas here and almost satisfied myself with the 3 main styles: Planet, Tunnel, and Vertical. And just in case you are wondering what's with all these Arabic names, well, I've been naming some of my latest images in Arabic and I'm starting to like it; It's my native tongue after all, right?

Genie #1: Tunnel
Typically, I would go with the planet (or little planet) projection first thing when I do panoramas, but I kept that for later simply because I didn't like it much; Nothing out of the ordinary about it. However, I was reluctant to do the tunnel projection (which is the opposite or reverse of the planet projection).

اسْتِحْضارْ (Conjuring)

The tunnel projection of this panorama, namely استحضار - Conjuring, causes my "base" to be extremely large (ahem, larger than it already is), so I was reluctant about displaying such a distortion. However, the shape of the carpet and its ornament, making some sort of framing around the scene made this projection seductive (specially that I wouldn't have to deal with fixing the nadir point here). Moreover, there was some nice surprise for me there when I started tone-mapping this panorama from HDR (using Photomatix). As you can see here, the ornaments of the carpet got glowing and shining and I'm not sure why is that; It happened only here in this projection of this panorama!

Genie #2: Planet
So, things did not stop at just the tunnel, but also the planet (or little planet) projection which was least favorable for me since it does not have that dramatic look that a tunnel projection gives out. At this level, I've tried to tone-map the HDR panorama using Photoshop instead of Photomatix, which did not even give me any dramatic look either but it was fair I'd say. It almost kept the original look of the HDR panorama at 0EV level. I'm thinking that it is probably attributed to the asymmetry in the scene that such projection for this panorama did not yield pretty much of an interest. At least the nadir point was relatively easy to fix!

حُضورْ - Arrival

Genie #3: Vertical
This one was the least favorite one actually. No symmetry and no organization, just the fact that it is a vertical panorama (using Mercator projection). To do this projection, I had to actually exaggerate the width of the panorama and then crop it out in post-process. I had to tilt and rotate the panorama to make sure that none of my copies gets cropped in the stitching process. Tone-mapped using Photomatix, again, but I keep looking at it and just say "meh." Here, again, I had to work on the nadir point and patch it up.

اسْتِرْفاع - Levitation

Other than these 3 trials with projections with this specific panorama, I've tried to create a wide-view panorama (planet projection with a pitch change to 90 degrees up or down), along with other trials with some other projections, but the trials were not so good actually, lacking organization or symmetry and some point of interest. I think it is probably the flat (equirectangular) format which is the best suited for this panorama because this is how I originally envisioned it as I worked with it. The tunnel version is good as well but its point of interest is the framing and that strange glow in that frame, all made by the carpet, but deep inside that frame, the focus is so-so I'd say.
There could be a chance that I would try to stitch this panorama again but without the additives (the 2 copies of me on the bed and the sofa) and see how things would go. But I need some time to do that, as I'm already struggling with some ideas that I've already packed in my head, yet can't do much about them for the time being! Also, I need to examine this panorama further to see if it is worthy to be converted into a VR.

Beg Your Pardon?

In the realm of ideas, there had been one idea specifically that I wanted to do so much. The problem, as usual, nnot having a proper model and so I have to do it all on my own, which causes a lot of shattering in focus in fact. So, the final image you'll see here did not bring me satisfaction much but at least I worked on it. I'm afraid to be stamped with perfectionism though.
The idea of this image did actually come from an old poem I've composed, titled The Beggar of Nothingville. It was not hard to visualize the final image, sort of, but the hardships come with doing the required physical job (specially moving the gear around to a proper location). I guess I'm getting pretty old here.

المُسْتَجْدي (The Beggar)

Depending on the brightness of your display, some details in the black would show, and might not. As my monitor is calibrated and I work as per the histogram I can assure you that tiny bits of details only should show on the lower part of the image. Of course, المستجدي - The Beggar is not a single shot, but a composite. As I said,  Ididn't have many to help. Also, the place I was shooting in was barely one meter wide and it would be hard for 2 people to be there at the same time!
You may ask, what brought me to such a place? Like, aren't there any other places? Well, since I'm confined to home, I looked for a place that would give a texture for the background; Most of the walls inside the house are blank (and worth noting that I was planning for B&W image from the very beginning), so colors of the walls won't change much, but texture would. Beside that, and since I'm working alone and not bearing the hassles of stands and reflectors, I did need a small space just enough to give a slight bounced light off the walls. I have to say though that this one didn't work quite well because the wall is matte, but it added a tiny bit of reflected light though.

The space of the shoot. The speedlite was placed behind the bars on the upper-left corner. Total width is definitely less than 1.5m.

Voigtländer 20mm Color Skopar

I was planning to shoot with my trusty Voigtländer 20mm lens but then I changed my mind to my seldomly-used-but-awesome lens: Sigma 12-24mm. I thought, if the space is small, it would be better to have some flexibility here in the focal length, which happened indeed as I thought; I did zoom a bit more than 20mm on this lens. If I was to use the Voigtländer 20mm, then I would have to move the tripod instead; Not an optimal choice in such small space.
One more "element of design" here was to tilt the camera downward a bit. Since the topic is about a beggar, supposedly a low-class individual, then it is typical to look downward at such people; I mean, it is something done somewhat subconsciously.

Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM

It took me several shots to get the pose right and working quickly there (fun fact: kept a candy in my mouth under my upper lip to change my features a bit). Too bad I'm not a make-up artist to create more dramatic expressions with make-up, but well, I tried my best. After taking that shot, I've made several shots for my hand pose under the same conditions, as much as possible. I was going to flip the hand gesture horizontally but the lighting conditions here forced me to accept it as it is and just satisfy myself with positioning the gesture correctly and working on cloning out the traces of the fishing line that attached the heart to my hand (which was cut out from black paper by the way and taped to a fishing line and to my hand). One thing I was not sure of though is, whether I was right in adding that bit of halo around the heart to bring attention to it amid the dark tones of the image. Probably, if I am to upload this photo to some contest later on, I would remove this halo and keep it dark as it looks more "natural" despite the editing.

Close up comparison for the heart with and without halo. Might not be quite visible in close-up (click to enlarge) but it would be clear when viewing the whole image. If you focus enough, you can see the halo around the heart in the first image (left) and its absence in the second (right).

Finale

A year is ending here, and there is a plan to spend the first week of it just to my own. In hope that would recharge me up for the upcoming upheavals. News are up and down about the year. Speculations, predictions, and seriously all get on my nerves right now. Moreover, I'm having some hard time about my workplace and its future. If I want to leave, where would I be heading? Many questions play around with my mind and I'm trying my best to keep calm, and watch carefully as things unfold. Things are changing and it sounds as if I don't belong to this world anymore.
Anyway, I better invest a bit of my time in my camera this winter. I should try and push myself out like the old days. Maybe I can do that in my upcoming short leave. No specific ideas but I might raise my ambition a bit to the level of a nocturnal panorama.
Anyway, time is ticking on and on, and a year will be over soon and probably not much would change in my life as usual, but let's hope we all will be gliding smoothly through it. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it (I'm typing this in Christmas time actually).

Djinn…

Officially winter! We already got some rains here and I'm trying to enjoy as much as I can out of it because I know in some months from now, it will be so damn dry and "cooking".
Anyway, I didn't post anything here for about 2 weeks (or 3? I didn't count!) for some... legitimate reasons I'd say: A new panorama!

Djinn

Just before I get into the story, I'd like to explain the word Djinn to those who don't know it or never heard of it. Djinn (Arabic: جِن) according to the Islamic literature and belief, are creatures created even before the creation of Adam and Eve and they inhabit and dwell Earth and even space. They are created of fire and unseen by humans (except to few, saying that from experience). So, in some sense they are equivalent to what the Westerners would call Demons. Also, they can be either good or bad, they have different faiths and beliefs, as well as living in tribes and social classes of their own, just like humans.
So, I hope this introduction fascinated you a bit to read on, as I think the technical stuff coming along this post might be a bit boring! Since I didn't touch my panorama gear for quite some time now (mainly because I didn't travel nor I'm part of any group that does activities here and there). Thus, I had to look for alternatives; Ideas, mainly to be done in my periphery: Car, home, work... etc. It took the idea some time to "cook" in my head and I was kind of slow and sluggish in preparing my gear (typical), and the target was one of the rooms in my house where typically guests use, in case we get to have any sleeping over.
Now, the keywords for the work or the general idea revolves around: Magic, black, dark aspect or darkness, and maybe a touch of some horror and fear? Since I don't have models (as usual) I had to think about it thoroughly because the task is not easy here as the idea started to take shape in my head. I will be shooting myself, in various locations within the room, while it is dark and definitely needs a somewhat longer exposure (not good for stable poses!). Anyway, things (unwillingly) went on two trials and for this reason I didn't post last week, because the plan was to have this material ready by then but, unfortunately, the first trial failed drastically and I had to re-do the whole work in a different manner and a different setting.

جِنْ (Djinn)
Click to enlarge

Voigtländer Color Skopar 20mm f/3.5

Lumicon H-Alpha (Night Sky) filter.

Try #1: The first try was done  with my modified Canon EOS 7D and Voigtländer 20mm lens, fitted with the Night Sky filter (i.e. H-alpha filter) which is, partially, an infrared filter actually, allowing a band of Reds. I've tested this filter against my B+W 092 Infrared (threshold: 650nm~690nm) filter and compared the results (in-camera, using Custom WB). Comparing the blue tones specifically, I've decided to go with the Night Sky filter instead, this is beside providing a tiny bit of shorter exposure time. Working with 20mm instead of my usual Canon EF 15mm fisheye lens meant, of course, shooting more slides or angles, and that means forgetting about doing any HDR work here because the load would be simply RIDICULOUS. Now, using 20mm introduced another problem here is the need to change the usual orientation while shooting. So, instead of starting at 0^o for the tilt, I've actually used -15^o instead. This is just to include the whole stool with my body in the separate shots that I would need to do later to merge with the panorama while stitching (having myself in two shots to be stitched together is next to impossible; It must be one shot including my whole body). Another problem is the misalignment of many slides, and the empty spaces that added to the chaos (the computer was unable to connect these slides nor I was able to do so manually because of the featureless spaces). After 2 weeks, or so, of working on stitching this panorama, I've realized that this thing is beyond repair and I must re-do the whole thing, and probably drop out some of my requirements for this panorama, like using an infrared filter, and just shoot in the usual manner.

Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye

Try #2: So, after the failed attempt, I've switched back to my 15mm lens and this time I thought of some trick to compensate for these empty spaces; I've simply stuck some electric tape on various sections of the wall just to aid the computer later on to stitch these images - and just to show you my luck, the idea did work really but the tape was some bad quality and almost fell down, so I had to work fast! Anyway, testing the White Balance before the shoot, I've realized that this is almost equivalent to infrared shooting with my modified Canon EOS 7D, because the room is dark and the major light source is to be from the candles (which issue infrared of course). I banged my head at that moment; How come I didn't think of this before instead of all the hassle with my first trial?! Of course there should be remnants of the visible spectrum but that was not a problem specially after calibrating the white balance in-camera. The scene already turned to be an infrared-like. With this, it was like shooting a normal panorama and I had the power to do bracketing for HDR merging and tone-mapping, which I did. *sigh* Just like the old days!

Process: Processing the images was typical: Load the files, run Photomatix to merge the brackets, and then start with the stitch. It was essential here to calibrate the white balace in-camera before the shoot, otherwise the HDR merging and adjusting the colors would have turned to be a "wedding party of wild elephants" - Sorry, the best I could find to express my thoughts here.
However, while merging the bracketed images to create HDR slides as usual, I've made a mistake which I didn't discover until I tried to stitch the panorama for the first time. The mistake was enabling the Remove Ghosting with Detection level set to High. I'm not sure what I was thinking but in a nutshell, the computer created a movement where there were none in fact, and that PRODUCED ghosting! So, the situation was like the old advice of turning off the image stabilization on your lens when your camera is actually stable on a tripod because that would trick the lens and creates a movement. This is exactly what happened, but digitally this time. So, I had to re-merge the bracketed image in Photomatix again and this time putting the detection level on Normal. I've activated this option in the first place just "in case," specially that we have candles here and there might be moving shadows that would make the stitching harder a bit.
That was concerning the merging process but there was still a side work that had to be done and that is preparing those slides of me (specially those involving my reflection in the mirror) but no need to go on with this - it was just a simple masking process. But all had to be done in HDR mode of course with HDR slides.

Effects of using High detection level for ghosting removal on Photomatix.
Click to enlarge

One slide with tape cuts.
Click to enlarge

Stitching: As for the stitching process, it was typical to try to stitch the HDR slides first right away, but as usual, it failed. I remember in old times, this didn't happen much. Anyway, what can I say here; The image was indeed dark and I've intended for it to be so. Thus, I followed the typical procedure of tone-mapping the HDR slides using Photomatix again, and trying to get the best details from each slide. Of course the process is automated; I just pick the darkest slide possible to work with and save the settings then apply that to all. From these tone-mapped images I would create a model, and base the stitching of the HDR slides on this model. Lot of details here, but anyway the thing was not out of troubles, as usual. The tape trick did work to some extent but still needed some help or let's say a "push" from my side so I had to add some manual control points to match between the slides. Actually this problem happens all the time with or without sharp details between the slides for various reasons. All these tapes on the wall would be cloned out of course when the panorama is stitched completely. The final stitched panorama still had some stitching errors which I couldn't fix before stitching so working on that in Photoshop was inevitable. The thing is that I have to do these fixes every single time I create a new projection out of the same panorama; So, it will be such a slow process after all.

Finale

Well, this was the "short" story of this panorama, and I'm still having some more ideas at the back of my head, cooking and waiting to be served when I get the power and time. Beside that though, I'm still working on other projections of this same panorama here. I didn't want to put all the eggs in one basket so I might post about these in 2 weeks time from now; If they are ready though.
Now, it is time to think about some other panorama to do, beside the other ideas at the back of my head of course. The past few weeks were kind of hard, mentally. I was literally waiting for weekends just to sleep as much as I can (and even skipping my socializing with the family around some games like I used to every weekend). I'm trying to re-discover myself here, in some ways, but seems the process is taking longer than I participated. There is a talk about change in the horizon, things going to be better, the hardships years are over... yet I don't really see any of that in the horizon from my side. The travel that I've participated for 4 or 5 years now is still an idea that I could not make a reality. Would it be soon? We'll see. I'm planning for a little vacation by the first week of the new year, but I'm still not sure if I would be able to because I need to make sure that I won't be needed in my workplace. Boy, I'm going to sleep for real, and who knows, I might head out to shoot at night like I used to in the past years…

Alexander 6, V14.

Somehow, an active day. Yet, in the middle I felt so tired that I can barely open my eyes and still, till this very moment of writing this.
I've placed an order just few minutes ago new tools, and this time the order was expensive indeed. But what to do? I really need these stuff. For someone with a budget like mine, yes they are expensive I believe. The placed order almost was going to hit the limit of $1000.00. No problems with visa anyway. Hopefully I shall be able to zero this down in two or three months with careful payments.
The order placed contains ONLY 2 items. One item was the Canon Fisheye EF 15mm f/2.8 Autofocus Lens;

This lens however, has a fixed focal length. I don't know how does it feel to have such a tool really. I'm kind of used to zoom in and out but this one here has a fixed focal length. According to a friend of mine who is more of an expert than I do, he said that such lenses with fixed focal lengths are better in quality and in stability. Well, the lens does not have an IS system, otherwise the price would be even more than it is already.

The other tool is actually a set or a kit for cleaning the sensor. It is made of brushes only and no liquids included as I read in the description. Maybe I can get some liquid later on after the purchase of these brushes, or maybe these brushes are enough to clean the sensor already? At least to the level of dust particles. I hope it goes well with that, because there is no way I'm leaving my camera for 5 days in the workshop.

Visible Dust SD-800 

In the mean time, I've made no further snapping around with my camera. I'm spending my time playing a game or doing a work-related work. It is supposed to be a simple work, but you might know already how things go with Microsoft Office stuff. It's worse than studying physics, trust me.

I'm thinking of starting a "hobby" or a project let's say that I had in mind long time ago; Photographing haunted or deserted houses. 

It is funny though how the concept of "Ghosts" is quite different between the west and the orient. Mainly you see in western culture, the "ghost" is to mean something, some apparition, with the shape of someone (who is usually dead). This is of course not the case in all occasions, like the poltergeists (noisy spirits, الأشباح الضاجة) for example. In the oriental cultures, I've rarely encountered "ghosts" with the meaning of shaping someone dead. Most of the literature go by talking about paranormal events and paranormal creatures. The main talk in Middle East, is about demons or the Djinns, who are part of the faith as well. Just an explanation for none-M.Easterns, Djinns are believed to be creatures just like human beings, but no one can see them unless by practicing some specific spiritual "sports" as they call it. There had been some events that happened to me personally related to that topic, like seeing some smoke going here and there for no occasion or fire and some other stuff and stories that had been told by others. Anyway the main point is, Ghosts in the west, are not exactly the Ghosts that are meant to be in the eastern world.

It's Thursday and time for TGIT...

__________
313. as Kadmún ran to the shepherds with rage
314. Alexander put his leg and obstructed him
315. and Kadmún fell down on his face to the ground
316. while the shepherds wanted to take his soul out
317. but with a gesture from Alexander's hand they stopped
318. and then Alexander said: it is not an honorable act,
319. to kill a creature lying on the ground defenseless
320. get out of his way, unless he attacks you
321. if he made me dead, then he wins
322. if I got him dead, then I win
323. and if I was dead do not hurt him
324. if you believe in God, He shall take my revenge
325. and if you did not believe in God, it is my sorrow
326. and the hero finished his speech with the shepherds
327. while Kadmún praised his bravery in the field
328. and asked him to stand up again and fight back
329. thus, Alexander, stood up again and raised the sword
330. and the sounds of iron deafened the ears again
331. while the rains of the north started to pour
332. but the rain did not stop the might of the two
333. and the fight was between equal powers
334. until the time when Kadmún stroke the leg
335. and the hero seemed to fall on the ground
336. it was then, by a trick, the hero took the head