Ultra-Success…

Some good news for this week though short, as I was coping with sleeplessness and the wrecking sleeping pattern. I've been trying my best to do some chores that I've planned for myself, though I had to skip shooting the Monodrama event this year (and other members in the group had to cancel as well later on). Summer is coming, so I better plan some indoors activity for the time being.

Childhood Memories

Last week, on Tuesday specifically, a new exhibition was inaugurated for the work of Mohammed Sheikh Al-Faresi; An artist who used to present a TV show in 1980s about arts, and which I was quite fond of. Visiting this exhibition was important for me, even though I didn't pay much attention to artwork in other fields other than photography, as it was part of my childhood memories.

My favorite artwork in the exhibiition

His artwork is essentially based on Arabic calligraphy, entwined with other elements, majorly geometrical shapes. Some of these paintings did have 3D feel to it. I've found myself attracted to the black theme in general, and red comes next. Probably, typically, Arabic calligraphy is done with these 2 colors mostly.  However, in his artwork here, the calligraphy is a merge of random letters with no concrete words or sentence.

In my journey here, and allow me to call it a Journey Into My Childhood Memories,  I tried to document paintings that captured my attention the most, and in fact all the artwork here was appealing, but I was looking for something that was special to me. I also tried to capture some paintings from different angles in hope that I would combine them to make 3D images later on. I did also take a general video clip from the whole set of paintings in the exhibition.
My companion in this journey was the relatively-new Voigtländer 20mm lens, which has no auto-focus function. That was problematic a bit for my work specially when shooting video with my Canon EOS 7D. Never shot a video with a manual lens before, well not that long that is. However, the quality might be off a bit because of a slight out-of-focus render; I tried my best to focus on a single point manually and then walk as I take a video and keep my distance almost constant. Up till the moment of writing this passage, I'm still not finished with processing these shots, for reasons that I will explain below. My schedule was fully booked with tasks, meetings, naps, and testing.

A journey through the exhibition.

Ultra

After testing my Voigtländer 20mm f/3.5 lens for doing a simple panorama last week, it was time to do a "real" panorama processing. Even though I was deprived of sleep that day, but I decided to head out after work while the sun was still high up and planned in a haste to do a panorama using this lens, my converted camera, and my UV-pass filter. The first location that occurred to me was the coast line; a spot which I've done a nocturnal panorama before (and eventually later on, got published in a luxurious coffee table book).

UV Columnae

Namely, this would be my first ultraviolet panorama ever! Despite some problems, things went smoothly, but it gave me some idea about what to expect and what to watch for next time I work with ultraviolet filter. Being in a haste, you can see that the panorama was not perfectly centered. Yet, I'm still trying out some other projections and style; just trying to digging for time. Anyway, some notes about this process are:

1. The stitch was fair, despite the broken lines. Those broken lines or stitching errors, however, were not related to parallax-error, but rather to the fact that shadows were moving at that time of the day (the shooting process took some time), and some control points were not possible to generate between some slides. That caused broken and bent lines which were hard to adjust and would require more working time to fix properly.
2. Focusing: Voigtländer lens has no marker for infrared focusing, there typically no lens (as far as I know) has a marker for UV focusing. This is important since we are shooting at beams out of the visible range of the spectrum, in which lenses are usually made and calibrated. I used here the hyperfocus principle as if I was shooting regular light (at f/11) and the sharpness seems fair. However, I have to read more about focusing in UV photography.
3. As it was a test, I used Av mode to set the exposure automatically (while I fix the aperture). I worked without LiveView (because it would stop the metering mechanism), while setting my metering to Evaluative; I thought this would be the most proper for the situation we have here where light and shade are intermixed. However, that imposed great discrepancies in the exposure value between slides (and HDR technique is out of question). This suggests that next time a deliberate in-camera metering for various areas and averaging the exposure manually while using the manual mode is more like it, to avoid these averaging problems. 
4. In digital processing the RAW files before stitching, I've used the Infrared profile already installed in my ACR to adjust the white balance for these Ultraviolet shots (pointing to green foliage and copying the change to all slides). However, I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it or there is some concrete and systematic way to set the white balance. Again, have to read further!
5. This said, Voigtländer's usage for panorama making will be limited to this case; using UV filter. Yet, I need to test my Kodak gel filter with the converted camera to get a feel of how things would look like.

This said, I still need to test my converted camera in panoramas without even using any filter. Images taken that way would also cast some unexpected tints to the scene. Dropping HDR into the formula, and everything will be complicated. Yet, for the time being, I do not think of using HDR techniques when using filters on lenses. It's a dream to be delayed until time permits for slow motion again!

Finale

These were the two major event this week, and the rest was spent processing and trying to find time to sleep. There is a plan to go to Dubai by May with the group to attend a specific exhibition. Thus, I might not post much here until I get back home. Meanwhile, I'm busy organizing whatever I can with the group, and I'm thinking of doing some documentation to the situation there. I have to say that I'm pushing myself to do this, as my budget is under pressure in the current time.
I'm trying hard here to invest my weekend in working with my camera but seems I can't do this anymore. I have a strong urge to leave this house, but still unable to do so without proper means, and capabilities. The only thing that makes me calm down is playing games and playing music as loud as possible. Hard times are passing, and my self identity is at stake. Not sure how I'm going to snooze my worries or panic attacks, but it is apparent that I need some long rest. Yet, no vision for a possible vacation in the air this year…

Success…

Phew! It's over! What an exhaustive 10-days time! I barely had time to do anything else; work, home for lunch and then out again to the expo, then back again home for a little work with some photos (if any power was left) and hitting the sack so hard with exhaustion. I think it did make some toll on my health too. Anyway, the expo which accompanies Kuwait's 40^th Arabic Book fair is now over, with brilliant success, and what is left now is some reflection and thought, as well as analyzing some events.
It was a gamble in fact. I didn't know how the public would perceive a display of 3D images in a photography expo, but my bet was on the fact that it is a new and a weird idea which people are not used to in here. The fame was obvious when I saw some people advancing directly towards our group's booth and heading directly to the 3D display. However, I did have to follow every visitor possible (not in the first opening hours in the morning though), just to check their reaction, and also provide any help needed.
Among the audience there were many types: The analytical, the ignorant, the surprised... etc. It was fun noting these types down. Probably the most mysterious type was the one which looks thoroughly through the 3D glasses, for some time, put them down calmly then, and walks away without a single facial expression to note any feelings! Some other types surprised me as well, like some of them who said they don't see any difference at all when they look with and without glasses; Not quite sure what's the problem here but noting how other people perceived it, it seems such people did have a perception problem. The most annoying type was the one which puts the glasses for a second and puts it back; apparently not interested in the first place but probably the hand has a brain of its own to move! The majority of the annoying audience was composed of kids, kids, and kids! Even though I kept tracking my glasses, still some of them just disappeared into thin air! Adding to kids, some irresponsible adults.

Images displayed in the expo.

Now, the mess is over with, it is time to re-think and re-schedule my life as much as possible. I have many ideas I'm trying to apply and test... and some will cost me some precious pennies. I do have as well some scattered ideas for making some photographs, but let's hope I get the opportunity and time to work on them seriously! Aside, there lies a long abandoned project: The Geltani conlang. I was supposed to make a web version for the conlang, and there are still some screws that need to be tightened, specially in the transliteration notation.

On the other hand, there are a number of plans and tasks to do, like making test prints, and thinking of new ways to make prints for upcoming exhibitions. Presenting prints in some unusual way can be one of the points to keep us afloat in the world of art and photography altogether. It is a matter of presenting something new to the public. However, there are some other ideas on the waiting list, like the concept of the 4D image. I'm not sure how to apply this yet but it surely needs some practical work and trials and errors to examine how good this idea could be. I did give it out a try in few months back from now, but the subject needs more testing to come out with a concrete conclusion! 

ن (Nún)

In the meantime, I'm keeping myself a bit busy with some cultural activities, like visiting the theater as much as I can since it is Kuwait's 16^th festival, and working with panoramas acquired from the Den Gallery during the Arabic Book fair back in November. I'm still trying to extract more projections and styles from these 5 panoramas as it can be seen in ن. There are plenty of possibilities, yet I cannot simply form just any projection and stitch it without a specific goal or aim in mind - something I'm learning to master from visiting such galleries and going to the theaters to understand how to read emotions and in between the lines. In The world of artists, do what artists do!

Welcome to Den!

QTVR

Speaking of a documentation of such gallery naturally brings about the topic of QTVRs. In fact, We had some lengthy discussions about the properties of QTVRs and how the gallery would make use of these. There are methods and ways to introduce QTVRs but they do require some quite a knowledge in coding or building webpages (like using Java and Flash) which I'm not acquainted with. In this blog, I do usually use QTVR (.mov) files and embed them to be viewed in this page. Learning such methods for website building with QTVRs can be quite useful, but it might be a headache trigger as well - and after all, I'm just a photographer. Anyway, I've decided to make one QTVR out of one of these 5 panoramas (and two of them are not complete panoramas in fact).

However, it seems it is about time to learn these new website techniques, but I'm not ready for it yet, as my schedule is getting tighter for the time being even after the end of the exhibition. In fact, I was waiting for the exhibition to be over with just to do other activities on hold. 

These activities within the Den Gallery were done voluntarily, as I've discovered that an old friend's brother and their relatives are involved in this prestigious gallery. Now, I'm hoping that my surreal projection styles would be inspirational to them as artists as well!

Ring of Arts

Finale

Now, I've talked a bit about what's in my list of activities, specially those related to photography, but I still have more. Well, excluding the daily routine and the bills, as well as cleaning my room! 

I'm already enrolled now in a special 3-day workshop discussing High-Speed photography and using the HSS mode in the Speedlites. In the plans as well, searching for classes for KSL (Kuwaiti Sign Language) and if ASL (American Sign Language) if possible. I really loved to learn this language in a long time now and I had some trials, but with time gaps in between trials, everything is forgotten easily! Maybe it is time to get something concrete like I did before with the German classes about 9 or 8 years ago!

I'm not sure how necessary is this; I mean going into activities like that. However, it is probably an unconscious trial from my side to escape my reality? Trying to find myself a name? I don't know. One thing for sure though: my tired body will take the toll for sure; but I'm hoping it will be like the case with muscles: The More weight you take, the bigger the muscles grow! 

I was wishing to display my panoramas from the my first commissioned work in Bait Al-Othman museum, which got me a tiny stream of extra income, but unfortunately, I cannot do much right now until they publish the images on their own. They didn't buy the right of these images (which should cost more of course!). Now I'm thinking of how to expand the circle of customers, and probably my work in Den Gallery would be a spark in that road.

Golden Times

On-Going…

Not much to be said right now, as the long awaited expo started this Wednesday and it will last for 10 days. My schedule would be busy in the afternoons as I will be heading to the expo everyday, as much as I can, even though the health have been shaky a bit lately.
For this expo (which accompanies the annual book fair) I've made 3D prints (i.e. images) in a gamble with how people would perceive this. So far so good, despite the problem with the lighting and the sunlight coming in daytime. Such images have somewhat greater sensitivity to the light level falling upon them which might alter or change the red and cyan level, which in return initiates a "ghosting" effect, where the eyes cannot merge the two images into one (using the glasses of course). I have also to keep track of the 3D glasses and keep them on check.

The guys in front of my 3D image print, which is a panorama from,
Sultan Qabus Grand Mosque. It comes as a surprise that my two 3D images
are from Oman, and displayed in this time which coincides with Oman's
national day!
Follow the group's Instagram's account for more updates and news:
@bpf_kwt_group

The Minister's visit to our booth in the opening ceremony.

Despite this pressure, I did minor processing for some shots from Malta, and probably will display them in a later time. For now, my mind is running around for new ideas, to photograph and also to print. I'm thinking as well of doing more experiments in the field of 3D anaglyphs. I'm just hoping no more mishaps to come down my way as it is the situation with this passing week, as well as better health to be coming down my way… I hope.

Triq tas Sema (BW/3D)
Road of Heaven
طريق السماء

Rokinonian...

Such a weird week. Not so weird if I can compare it to my luck with things anyway. By the beginning of this week almost, I've spent some time roaming over places of car dealers to find a brand new car and this time I would prefer it to be an elevated car to give me a better view of the road (and help me carry things around in the future). Ironically, that same day, the garage phoned me to tell me that my (beloved) Seat is finished with and I can take it now. All in all, it's going to cost me a hole in my pocket. Even though I like driving my small car, but I have to give it away in any way possible because of the problems with the spare parts that are hard to find for this car!
Anyhow, I'm starting some sort of a program to try and go out and do some night photography every weekend if possible. Night photography in winter is synonymous to long exposures of course but that doesn't mean it would be a single exposure of course.

Guten Mitternacht

After the initial trial last week for some night photography on the dock of Soog Sharg, I've pushed myself (despite my tired body) to go again and do some shots after some planning for some angles, and luckily, there were clouds this time!

Sessiz
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/5.6, ISO100.

In the beginning I've placed the camera with my Rokinon fisheye lens in some corner and pointed it toward the sea in order to capture some curvy image. The exposure was long (around 4 minutes), but it was too long that the lines of the clouds movement were so blurred and almost featureless. Add to that, some fishermen were moving here and there in front of the light source which made things worse. Still considering working around these problems though.
Next, however, I've placed the camera almost in the middle of the roofed end of the dock and pointed it west toward the sky and a portion of the city. After some tests with ISO12800 to check my location and measure the required exposure later with ISO100, I've realized that capturing a single exposure with all the details is impossible in this area. It would be either a blown out city and light wooden beams, or black beams and suitable city lights. Thus, I've decided to go with a little adventure in a sequence of long exposures, starting from 4 minutes exposures and then going down 1 stop each time until reaching 3 seconds: 4m, 2m, 1m, 30s, 15s, 7s, and 3s. A total of 7 exposures that were later combined together into HDR to produce Sessiz.  I was afraid that the movement of the clouds here would vanish so I made sure that when merging into HDR with Photomatix, I've turned the option of Ghost Removal off. The White Balance here was set to Fluorescent but I did make some tests before merging just to check the general appearance of the sky, because usually in such situation I would prefer the Tungsten WB, yet in this instance like in Sessiz I've decided to have a soft appearance and Fluorescent WB helped very well. Adding to that some processing that had to be done to fix and reduce some issues like the saturation of the Reds tones and increasing the tones of the Greens.

The name Sessiz means "Silent" or "Without sound" in Turkish. This name is a reflection of my feelings at that moment (but I don't know why I picked Turkish specifically, probably just for the sound of it!). Despite the harsh wind blowing and the coldness, and the fishermen around, that moment specifically was majestic. Silent, and quiet, giving me a tranquil (and a chilling) feeling deep inside. Exactly why I like winter and night photography combined.

Solitude
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/5.6, ISO100.

Then after Sessiz I thought of creating a symmetrical shot of some sort by pointing (and moving the camera) to face the bridge or the dock itself with all the light sources on it. This time though, there was no escape shooting the fishermen, and again with multiple exposures. Like in the previous trial, 7 exposures were taken by some problems with the white point and the flare of the lights that made me merge only 3 exposures instead of all of the seven. Here though I consider myself lucky somehow because one fisherman was closer to me and the rest were far away and that somehow gave out a reflection and a sense of Solitude, from the rest of the fishermen and from the city itself with all its colors and light. Maybe a still image would have served me better for the meaning of this shot but of course I couldn't ask the man to stop still to do 7 exposures! Anyway, probably one can argue that the movement of this fisherman specifically adds some dynamic element to the image instead of being static.

Sessiz (B&W)

I couldn't resist the urge to convert some of those night images into Black and White because, typically, night images into Black and White add to the element of mystery; either for the unknown, or for fear of something. Converting Sessiz to Black and White also helped me with some noise and hot pixels (random red dots) in the scene, and some noise in the shadows because of merging into HDR; such stuff are a normal occurrence in both, HDR slides and night shots. The results of that night really pushed my enthusiasm forward for more activity and, hopefully, more complicated shots in terms of composition at least, if not technique. But maybe in the near future I have to change my location and do long exposures elsewhere if possible.

Exposure

The exposure I mean here is not the typical photographic term, but exposure to the public. I've received an email last week stating that one or more of my pictures that I've submitted before for some contest (and didn't qualify to the finals) were all exhibited in a street art project organized by the contest's organizers themselves: Al Nowair Group.

Collage

I've visited the place in the weekend one morning so that not much people would be around. The exhibition was divided into two parts around the Marina Crescent mall. One part was made by the word "FOCUS" and the other one was made into the shape of the word Focus in Arabic, Rakkiz [ركّز]. This is the main title and goal of the group; to focus on the beautiful things in life. I roamed the place taking pictures of my own images (and unfortunately couldn't take a selfie) and probably I won't be exaggerating if I say that my images could be the most repeated ones in the whole exhibition, specially the shot I've named Eigen (but whose name I've changed to Unique upon submission to the contest).

Eigen

In the Collage as well, you can see that I've taken a general shot for the exhibition with my Rokinon fisheye lens and in fact I was planning to do a long exposure as the clouds were awesome, but unfortunately for me, the wind was blowing and placing the ND gels into the backside of the Rokinon was a risky task and I simply got frustrated and left the place! Probably it is time to look for another solution for this problem other than putting gels at the back of such lens.

This event made me think again about contest. It was a nice exposure somehow (even though my name was not mentioned on the images) even though I didn't qualify. If there would be contests in that manner probably I would join in because the end result isn't important after all!

Nadirography

Source: B&H

 Probably I should coin this term? I do like it in fact... Nadir-o-graphy. Taking pictures pointing downward. Now, after receiving my last shipment from B&H, I've tried to try out the new equipments, and specifically here the Pedco Ultra Clamp Assembly with 1/4"-20 Screw for such nadir shots. The situation is scary, I have to admit. Hanging your camera into some ceiling that is more than 2 meters (~6.6ft) above the ground is not something easy to do, or to look at even, but I've tried 2 successful shots so far.

At work, busy with no work...
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/11, 30^-1sec, ISO400.

The first trial was set in the office (all shots in fact were taken few hours before writing this blog!). I've brought my camera to work and just one hour before my working hours are over, I've decided to bring it and hang it with the Pedco clamp onto the A/C opening. The table surface here was GRACEFUL to carry my body weight without breaking! Also, it is much easier to move on top of it than moving on a ladder as I later did in my own room.

My room = My mind
PS. This IS my room. Nothing was deliberately changed.
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/11, 0.4sec, ISO400.

In my room I had to use a heavy ladder to reach the ceiling (and remove one of the CFL lights to put the clamp in its place). The good thing about Pedco here is that it has several joints and several degrees of freedom making mounting the camera and pointing and screwing the clamp at any body relatively an easier matter; quite the opposite to Delkin mount clamp which was so simple, and weakly built.
In both of the shots above I had to use the lightmeter, and also 3 bracketed shots were taken with 1-stop difference just to make sure that a proper exposure is achieved - but at the end no HDR was made, and only a RAW file was edited. Here also, I tried to make use of the hyperfocal distance concept but I'd say I'm still training myself on this and the real test would be using that concept at night photography with my Rokinon.

Finale

Before writing my finale for this week, I was about to post bits about the new light modifiers that I've purchased lately, but anyway, probably this post is long enough as it is. I think I will do more testing till next week's post.
Now, with my ERG examination been scheduled to January 23^rd, 2014, I think I have to forget about it little bit for now and try to do as much as possible with my camera and other projects. On hold as well, is the Geltani project, which I've sacrificed its time for the sake of the new books, and the camera.
Talking about emotions had been a hard task lately, even to myself alone. The mind is floating in an endless sea of thoughts and the only way to revive it is to have few moments of ecstasy with daydreaming and practical thinking. I try to amuse myself with mathematics from time to time, or simply thinking of those who already suffer from vision loss like my brother and how to help them (and try to push myself more into studying lenses in that direction). There are always moments when the heart jumps out for something special, but my intuition taught me to always keep a low profile when it comes to happiness. Such a pessimistic look, and to change it, I'm trying to swim against an oceanic tide. The least I could do probably is to try and surround myself with beauty in any form; after all, it is one of Leonardo's advices. But where is beauty.... ?

Natasha