Fantaisíocht…

The Eid came and passed already, with typical wishes to see the holiday go longer already! Meanwhile, I enrolled in a 3-day workshop with some members of the group in portraiture & fantasy.
I've stated through this blog all the way that I'm not a portraiture person and not into this kind of art (mainly because it needs a good contact with people or models to achieve a good expressive portrait shot). Anyway, I've found it somewhat obligatory to get along with such workshop with the founder of our group, Mr Bahaadeen Al-Qazwini, to move my imagination a bit and break the dullness and idleness regarding the work with my camera. I didn't touch it for a real project since my work with solar shots for more than a month.

Short coverage from the last day of workshop

Probably the most fascinating thing about these workshops is the team work involved and exchange of ideas, specially when the number of participants is small. I took the chance opportunity here to try out some real infrared and UV photography on human subjects. As can be seen in the coverage above, we contacted a model for a number of hours in the last day of the workshop, but prior to that we did some "training" shooting on a friend and a fellow member in the group.

Anger Halfie
Click to enlarge

Training with a friend did ignite some ideas about poses and facial expressions but yet it was hard to think of something. Many did argue that shots like Anger Halfie are not really "fantasy" but it is mainly a regular shot helped out by the fact of using a filter on lens (UV-pass leaking IR) to make the image look different. Anyway, since I'm not into portraits, I did really like this shot, and the colors produced here are simply made by fixing the white balance in RAW file.

Skullptonite

However, I tried my best to get out of the ordinary even though the shots were taken with my converted camera and some kind of filter. In Skullptonite, I've imagined a jaw bone and a row of teeth, and thus I've rotated the image. I have to say that the pose itself did force me to think in that way already because the facial expression was not appealing to me and I cropped a lot already. I loved the tones in Skullptonite, so it was hard for me to even think of disposing it. Both shots, Anger Halfie and Skullptonite, were taken with UV-pass filter fitted on Voigtländer 20mm lens. 

I wasn't using a tripod in this training, and Voigtländer 20mm lens is manual (except for the controls for the aperture), hence just imagine the hard time I had focusing in a close-up using an opaque filter like B+W 403! Luckily for me, the studio strobes were strong enough to light the subject while using this filter with high f-number. Without such a high f-number, I doubt the subject would have been in focus like that without seeing anything in the LCD of the camera.

Player

When it was the last day, it was the day of the "real" work with a "real" model. Frankly, I didn't even think of anything specific prior to that day, but everything happened at the spur of the moment. I had some x-ray slides in my car for my chest so I decided to use that, and then I thought of some dice to do a Hi-Speed shot using Profoto studio strobes. 

Each participant had 30 minutes to apply his or her vision and ideas and I was last (mainly because I had to use Profoto's instead of Bowen's like the others). Initially, my shot and idea with the X-ray slide failed dramatically; using infrared here was a grave mistake! Generally speaking, The idea was to fit the X-ray slide into the black t-shirt of the model standing against a black background, and I thought that the infrared technique and filter would actually create a good contrast for a black and white shot at the end; but all my calculations proved wrong, when the black t-shirt turned white! After that I started working with the dice as it can be seen in Player. 

Player II

Initially, my idea was to blow the dice from below, but the founder found it much easier to drop the dice from the top. The founder and I had the same idea for a concept in mind and he pretty much liked it; it's about someone playing with others like puppets. The culprit behind the scenes. 

Many shots were taken and it was hard to rhyme. In Player, one flash didn't go off and that caused a dramatic low-key effect. I didn't count for this in mind but this is one of the "happy" malfunctioning stories! While processing, I was fluctuating between colored and B&W versions, but seems I like the two above in that manner. I made even a "soft" version, but probably Player wouldn't benefit much of that, since the sharp look required harsh skin somewhat as well (softening too much might turn a male subject into something girlish).

After many, many trials for trying to catch the dice in front of the model's face, I passed my 30 minutes limit already, and thus had to stop. Probably, however, that we might be doing this again after a while.

Finale

This has been my life for the past 2 weeks almost, and now waiting for the news come about the participation of my group in an event abroad. Meanwhile, my health is getting low back again with unstoppable cough, and seems I have to check it out with the doctors again. 

As I'm canceling my plans for any vacation this year, and with the bad economy and corrupt in this place, I'm trying hard to enjoy myself in this short holiday of 9 days; a holiday spent at a home like mine is not really considered anything but a torture, but to a lesser degree. At least I had the chance to sleep as much as I like in some days, beside not going to work to check-in for attendance.

I'm working currently, as I'm typing this, on some vectors (or something like it in fact) by doing art by hand and scanning. It will be taking me a while to complete the task. Probably one thing I'm regretting in this holiday is my inability to dedicate some of my time to work with Geltani (and other conlangs I've set some plans to before). But as the degree of boredom and mentally-low status increase, I find myself eager more to play games non-stop, and I'm hoping that working with some art projects like the one I'm doing right now would take my mind off of some of my troubles…

Ex-Fantasies...

I just can't believe it's Thursday (or becoming Thursday). It was a slow week, and to make it worse, it feels that I couldn't do much within it, except for one thing that is not very brilliant from my side: Daydreaming. Fantasies are chasing me back and that urge to scribble and doodle all the time is hovering in my mind. I keep an eye over my camera with sorrow not knowing what to do about it. I need to move on. On the other hand, there is that recording I'm supposed to do for my Ayvarith project and the story of Alexander, but everything just hit the Pause button and like if I lost the remote to let it go on again. 

I. Fantasy Strikes Again:
Fantasies are attacking, back again. Maybe they popped up in the form of Ayvarith, a project that I'm trying hard to keep up with, but now they are back, chasing me back and urging me to get out something out of my head; Something that was kept in this head since high school in fact.
When the story of Alexander was created and many places or nations were mentioned; like the Bulughman and Zimuran, a writing system was devised then even though I didn't proceed much deeper into these systems, other than creating the script. The nation of Geltan that I've mentioned in Alexander's story, however, and which was one of the first nations that Alexander encountered, was left without a mention to a script related to them. After I finished writing the English version of Alexander's story, it was then I thought that I might break the spell by doing a "pictographic" system this time instead of Abjadic or Alphabetic systems. However, this pictographic system will be based on "radicals" and these radicals are based in their origins on Arabic. The whole system is somehow complicated, and all was formulated in high school. I was fascinated with Chinese back then.

Some of my doodles in the new script

This system was not concrete back then and I've left it untouched for a long time. Now, however, I need to push myself to do more about it and finalize something that I've left for more than 12 years. The main task for now, to me, is to transform the regular straight lines into a curve form and deviate the script from the general Hanzi or Kanji look, and along with that comes putting some basics. Exhaustive job for my brain, but this is not the bad part of the story, it is the fact that I can't stop thinking about it. I call it bad because, as much as I like it, it is a new project that I must dedicate some time to. I think this what happens when I stay away from my camera a bit and not doing panoramas as I used to do for some time. More about the camera work will come later.

The system as mentioned before, based on Arabic as well (just like Ayvarith, but without Hebrew and Aramaic) and the main "algorithm" to create words comes from assigning each Arabic letter to a Latin letter, which means some additions will be there since Arabic is composed of 28 letters while Latin (English) alphabet is made mainly of 26 letters. The radicals and their shapes were inspired also from Arabic letters, and there are Arabic features or letters that a radical was made for directly and a phonetic value that do not exist in the English alphabet was given. One of these features is the Hamza [ء] and its unique phonetic value is [chi], with "ch" as in "church". As you can see it is largely based on Arabic, because back then in high school, I didn't have the resources to get into Hebrew and Aramaic or other languages - all what I had in my pocket was Arabic and English.

Another example

The idea, for now, is to divide a word (after converting from Arabic to Latin) into syllables, and in each syllable there will be a leading part and the other is an effect on the leading part. Example:

Honey [عسل] = RLW

RL/W

Rung-wə

Only an Example

In this example above, the first syllable is [RL] and [W] is singular and it inherits a schwa (little short vowel almost unnoticed). In [RL] combination, "R" is the leading part, and "L" gives the effect of "ringing" with "-ung", and hence we end up with [rung]. Saying this, it means that for every radical or letter there should be two values given to it. A hard task I should say and the whole thing is not well-cooked yet. I need to formulate a big table with all the letters and make combinations of syllables. Finally, the whole system is supposedly to be memorized (like in any language) like people learning or speaking Chinese or Japanese would remember Hanzi and Kanji.
The idea is threatening. I never thought something from that era of high school, when it was the time that I've developed my interest in codes, ciphers and secret writings, never thought such ideas left behind more than 12 years ago, or in fact more than 15 years, would come back to this mind. It is a burden to my mind and I can't neglect it and it will be a burden over the time that I'm already screwing it up being unable to manage it properly to work on the various aspects of my life.

II. Camera Work:

Last weekend I've been to the beach around dawn time trying to capture that special light quality of that time. This time though, I didn't head to the vicinity of McDonald's on the seaside, but to a place near my home, and I wanted this place mainly to reach it as fast as possible before the sunrise begins. The place near McDonald's here would take me lot of traffic lights to pass and hence more delay to reach the place, while this location near by BK restaurant can be reached with almost no traffic lights in between (one only and doesn't make your day harder).

Caeli et Terrae

When I reached the place I started to work directly, but I was disappointed in the beginning because I was hoping for some clouds in the sky, and later the next day I found out that clouds form nicely somehow in McDonald's location as if the sky is different on both locations. Anyway, I had to forget about some long exposures with blurred skies for the time being, but then I headed downward when I saw some rocks showing (as the sea level was a bit down but not a complete low tide), and there, I've tried to do some long exposure experiments, but the adventure just began when I had to go with all these clothes on me and trying to stand in between the rocks on a muddy ground.

Nuclear Morning

With many trials, using the 18-55mm lens and holding the pack of ND filters in my teeth and wearing the camera backpack on my back, I did some long exposures but not exceeding one minute, as 60 seconds do really sound such a long time with all the struggle with the tools in the middle; it is a time when I thought I must hire someone. However, the sun was going up and up and finally I shot a 30 seconds exposure for the scene, which turned out to be better than the other 60 seconds shots. Also, something weird happened (which happened before in fact) when the original image was actually purple or violet and I had to fix the WB. Probably because the WB was set to Fluorescent. This same effect happened when I made one-hour exposure to my wall clock.

Hurry Up!

The colors were then fixed when the RAW file was edited. It seems that when using ND filters, the white balance becomes more critical and it is better to pick up the right one. Even though it can be fixed later on using the RAW editor, but after what I saw with such strange shades of purple and violet, I would say the results are unpredictable, and I wouldn't count on my luck every time to fix the colors that way.
In Nuclear Morning (a.k.a Den Nukleära Morgonen), I did an exaggeration with the WB to turn the image into a warm scene instead of the cold one (even the real scene was cold too).
The real struggle on location was to put the ND filters in the slots and re-focusing again and again. In the beginning I used 5 stops (ND8+ND4) but then I added 3 more stops (ND8) and the total became 8 stops. Such situations make me wish if I can use the welding glass, which alone would provide for 11 stops at once. Re-focusing the lens was done manual each time I put a new ND slide, mainly because of the low light level which won't make the autofocus function properly. At the end, I had a minor accident when I dropped one of the ND filters, and I would need to clean it with special cleaners then.

Working with long exposures of course didn't hold me back from taking some HDR sequences, which turned out well. I tried to keep them normal as much as possible (i.e. no dramatic light) but there was a scene that sparked my imagination a bit while working it out in Photoshop.

Unbekannt (Unknown)

Right now and after this little adventure in this mayhem, I have the urge now to do some panorama in the open there somewhere in between the rocks, with such cold weather. Something to think about for some time, and in winter, it is certainly hazardous.
Away from that, and just for fun, a scene at home captured my eyes. After going around with my camera and tripod, I decided to go for a two-shot stitch, which also had its own errors! I wasn't using the VR-head of course...

Esperando El Amor
(waiting for love)

Dramatic effects while tone-mapping gave out some nice views, but that wasn't really my intent. I just wanted it some how dark and gloomy a bit. Manual tone-mapping was a fail from my side, as usual, so I got back to Photomatix as usual. However, many other adjustments were made later in Photoshop, specially the glamor haze in the highlights. A picture that comes in a time in which I need every quark of hope in my heart...

Back on Track...

One busy week. Ramadhan is over and I couldn't post on time on Thursday because of the feast (Eid) that, for me, is an occasion to sleep more and care less about the world around me. I neglected for a week now or two everything related to my "duties" toward Ayvarith recordings and just spent my days sleeping and eating, and of course looking for something to catch with my camera.
During family gatherings I worked with my camera a bit as the habit goes but well, this time not many good pictures. Plus most of them are private and I wouldn't be able to show. Now, I'm back to work with a severe insomnia forcing me to leave to work without even a nap for few minutes before going to work. Well, it just struck me for 2 days so far, and I hope I won't have this situation again. I do already suffer from insomnia and not enough sleeping as it is, but I don't go to work without sleeping at all like that!

During the last days of Ramadhan I was working heavily on "old" panoramas taken from Ireland back in 2010. I've figured out that I have more power with panoramas to create certain view points that I didn't imagine before. This was apparent specifically after working on my night panorama from the roof top some weeks ago...

Lonely Night

This thought made me go ahead and try various aspects for those panoramas I've done before, and thought my work with them is done so far. I was wrong anyway, there are things behind the little planet projection and the tunnel view, and even behind the flat and vertical looks and the QTVR rendering. The task, though, was not easy as I thought, since I've deleted most of the HDR slides after doing the primary panoramas with them, to save some space in my external hard disk (which sizes 320GB by the way!).

Ríocht na Ardeaglais
Kingdom of the Ardeaglais

Irish Home VI

These are jut two samples of the newly made views of the old panoramas. The effect mimics, to some extent, the fisheye lens effect on a full-frame camera. Maybe the view here is wider though, and stretches the horizon further. This stretch adds an illusion of space into the scene. Some people, for example, commented already about the second panorama (which if the side garden of Thornbrook House B&B) saying that it is such a large lawn to mow! Well, the garden was relatively small to other gardens I've encountered and not as large as the front yard for example (which mostly people didn't comment about its size in normal panoramas). Anyway, not all new-looking panoramas are supposedly to be stretched that way and to give a spacious look, because I think, after all, that it depends on the location and the scene.

To Salvation

This panorama for example, for St Dominic Abbey interior in the heart of Cashel town, does not necessarily give an indication of such a spacious land (mainly because the court here is narrow in fact), but the main concentration in mind here was on the geometrical shapes created by the pillars on the side wall, and the oval shape illusion of the ground, to make a mix of shapes. The sunlight, too, played a role, hence the name of the image "To Salvation," as if the sun rays are coming out of the gate at the far end.

Now, the previous panoramas were achieved with some twisting in parameters, starting from a little planet projection style. This is not the case all the way. A flat regular panorama can be used to create something out of the ordinary, other than the vertical panorama, like this panorama of Hore Abbey:

Curvae Hore

All what was really needed here after setting the regular panorama, is to pull the center down making a wave-like shape of the sky and the ground. Would be useful for future considerations if there is a valley-like feature to be introduced in a certain mood. All of the dramatic colors and effects were done of course after tone-mapping and with adjustment layers later on in Photoshop. This image was rejected from some stock sites for "jagged edges". I think they didn't accept the hard contrast between the two portions of the image. Isn't it supposed to be so?

But one of the surprises for me was when I've discovered that there is indeed one panorama that I didn't touch at all, all this time! Probably the reason that made me forget about this panorama a bit is the fact that it doesn't bear much of distinctive features (and that caused me also trouble stitching it). To go around such problems with stitching this panorama and just to make it worthwhile, the solution was to do a twist as well.

Crystall Ball Fantasy

The panorama was heavily edited in HDR mode first before tone-mapping, and in fact I was planning to remove the extras on the corners, but then I've realized that it does serve as some effect like a crystal ball (hence the name). On a large scale, the details are not to be praised in fact because of the black level I've added. Anyway, this angle was away from the stitching error point (which I just don't know what causes it). In panorama world, the more space you have in location, the more error-prone stitching you might have because of the inability of the software to find control points properly or mismatching control points because of similar features that do not belong to the same position.

I've decided to do some self-advertisement if I should say, by taking a photo for my own prints. Not prints that would qualify to high quality ones but they make a nice subject I guess. This tiny little experiment inspired me to "something" after all...

Prints

The problem with this shot is the fact that I was laying the prints flat on a white cardboard. The cardboard itself was flat on a table and to get a direct, on-plane shot was almost impossible. For this reason I had to do my best with after-shooting procedures to straighten things out a bit (and cut proportions of the table apparent in the image). The result was fine, but with somehow elongated or stretched shapes of the prints. I didn't want to hang the papers on the cardboard for various reasons, thus I had to satisfy myself with this, for now. This experience made me think of some tool to take vertical shots with ease, so I hit on B&H website again and I think I've found what I need...

Photek TRI-X-2500, literal arm extender
Source: B&H

Not only it will solve such a tiny problem but it might be a good solution for the eternal nadir problem for me, but the problem for nadir is the workflow on location itself. To use this to shoot the nadir I "must" use it at the end of my work with the panorama and I "must" elevate it to the same height of the camera on the VR-head, on the tripod itself, and most importantly of all, I have to unscrew and screw things which would take such a long time. Such a fuss and a mess for one shot? Well, seems it's really not paying. However, this item is on my list for next purchase that I might place at any time now.

I'm starting my photography class now (since Tuesday) and I will be having 2 hours class every Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, from 7 to 9 p.m.. It is a basic level, and I need it to go up on the stairs in a proper way. Who knows, maybe such class also will make some contacts for me to avoid troubles taking pictures outside in the future! It is so hilarious when I sit and think between myself and I, and find out that most of the architectural photography that I've done, is actually done outside for 90% of it. Time to get busy with life I presume. Oh how much I miss Ireland...