Xiŋwiñzaji!

A somehow idle week with iterative sleeping problems. Not sure though if the sleeping problems are related to my back and legs muscles pain, or are they related to my busy mind. Because of this, my activities were minimal and I didn't even head to work for some days (also because some painting job in my office). Yet, I was working on some ideas while in the meantime uploading more photos to some new stock sites which, unfortunately, seems not doing any good.

Glossa

I didn't work much on Geltani conlang this week and I doubt I would do much as well because of all these time-consuming "problems". However, I've done some trials to solve one problem that was buzzing my mind for a while, which is the ambiguous formation of words from Arabic into Geltani in which the short vowels are different but the main consonants are the same. Just to give out an example:

laħam [لَحَم]: (he) welded

laħm [لحْم]: meat

luħim [لُحِم]: welded (passive)

In Arabic, there are many examples of this kind. In one of my previous posts I gave out a similar example with the root [M-L-K], which is related to ownership and ruling.

However, since I've been making trials with verbs for some time right now and decided to derive verbs from nouns (mainly because nouns would vary significantly in their consonants), which solves the problem partially, I've decided now to derive nouns of professions and titles in a similar manner as I decided to do with verbs. Thus, The word for king would be derived from the noun kingdom. Just to show:

Kingdom

King

Kingdom: Xiŋwiñz'

King: Xiŋwiñzaji

"X" as "CH" in Loch,  "ŋ" as "ng" in English, "ñ" as a nasalized vowel, and " ' " as a schwa.

Of course this transliteration and vocal system is still not finished but let's call it a demo. I'm not sure if I'm happy with the "-ji" suffix because it sounds too Japanese and I'm trying to put something on the same line but would better sound differently. However, I'm not going to put much thought on this issue for the time being, as if I didn't find another suitable substitute then I'm going to accept it as it is. Notice that I've added a vowel "a" before "-ji" to merge it into the word, this is because "Z" has a schwa and not into a syllable itself. 

I've made up a special character for this characteristic syllable (or maybe I should call it the profession syllable), but a critical question come to my mind amid all of these fuss: what about the Queen?

In Geltani, unlike in Ayvarith, I've tried to strip the gender bases in formulating the words, but as time progresses, I find myself creating words for He and She or words for His and Her. It seems to me that however I try to step away from this issue it just pulls me back in and there is no escape but to create a special grammatical entity based on genders. This said, I might be inventing a special character for the profession in a feminine form (like in Queen), and probably the suffix would be simply "-jin". This is just the beginning but I'm willing to think it through and see if there is something around this problem. Another problem that is already prevalent somehow is the fact that with such method of deriving from nouns, the writing and pronunciation processes might be longer than normal. 

I might be the first to invent nounal verbs instead of verbal nouns? And then, what about adjectives? For the time being, I'm taking adjectives as they are, i.e. transform them directly from Arabic (in masculine form) without referring back to any idea about derivation from verbs or nouns. Might be a bit illogical in the context of the process, but hey, it's a language after all!

Smokes

I've been planning to take some pictures of smokes for a while since the time I've seen this lovely censer among Mom's possessions. It wasn't until last week though that I've finally began to do some experiments with this subject, and I've hardly done it.

Censer I
Tamron 70-300mm @124mm,
f/13, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

There is a funny story about these images but I'm going to tell that in the next section of this post. When I decided to work with this censer, I've taken around 30 minutes or maybe more just trying to adjust (and search) for everything. It was late at night in the weekend which is the perfect time to work peacefully with no kids at home. In the beginning I had to take several test shots using only my 580EXII speedlite with a correcting gel (to balance the flash color temperature with the tungsten light in the room) affixed with a reflector and a panel for turning the reflector into a softbox - nice stuff from Expoimaging Rogue lighting kit.
I kept some white boards at hand and it proved very critical for some minute details, as I've used it to pour some light on the dark areas (and the dark areas would change with any slight change in the speedlite's orientation). 

Censer X
Tamron 70-300mm @124mm,
f/18, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

The next hard part was to fix my other speedlite, 430EXII, to light smoke that comes out of the censer. I've used a spotlight setting (with honeycomb grids) to direct the light and make it spread as less as possible to other parts of the censer - but this specific detail was changed several times to see which setting was the best. Burning incense sticks was not successful enough, thus I had to resort to a more robust solution: burning tissues (Kleenex). With burning tissues, I had more smoke and could test my 430EXII and see if it is really working with the smoke. I put two gels on 430EXII just for fun and see the results. However, the result was like a mix of the two colors; naturally!

Censer XV
Tamron 70-300mm @300mm,
f/14, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

After taking some shots for the whole body of the censer, I've decided to go deeper and get a closer look (since I'm using Tamron 70-300mm already and no need to move the tripod). The final result for the whole experiment was something close to100 shots, but after filtration and picking those special ones, with specific move in the smoke, a total of 21 images are left out. There was some editing in Photoshop as well to enhance the saturation and to darken the background completely, as the background I've used was not completely dark and it did reflect some light (probably from the room's spotlight rather than the speedlites), beside some unexpected additions to the scene that I didn't notice during the shooting session! I wanted to increase the shutter speed beyond 250^-1sec, which requires using High-Speed settings, to kill the ambient light completely (and darken the background even more) but unfortunately because of using the wireless function to control the speedlites I was not able to achieve this. This can be done with a cable or cord only (and some specific wireless controller or radio transfer probably). Such situations make me more eager to get a long soft cable rather than the helix-like cord that I have already (which hardly extends for more than 2 meters, i.e. around 6.6 ft). I made a mistake here though for not creating a sweep as a backdrop and I've simply placed a black board behind the censer, but checking the limits of the space itself, I think creating a sweep was also out of hand.

Jokes in Stocks

I've stated in my previous post that I'm looking forward to upload some of my images into other stock sites and try to increase the exposure. However, I'm quite aware of the fact that I'm not a commercial photographer and I don't deal much with tabletop photography, so far. Thus, my mission in this regard is not an easy one. Stock sites are not like fine art dealers nor like beauty lovers; they want something practical for usage in designs and ads. Nevertheless, some of their methods and ways in sorting out images are still funny to mention. I've realized that I've created a login in some of these websites long time ago and it was just a re-discovery from my side. Probably I know now why I didn't like the idea of uploading to them in the first place.
Dreamstime: In the beginning, they rejected most of my images and accepted only 2 (out of 10 or 20?). Now, I'm back again uploading to them. I've started to upload almost with the beginning of this week (including the 21 images of the censer) and so far, till the time of writing this blog post, no updates about the rejection status. Yes. I'm not that optimistic about accepting these files.

Depositphotos: This website has really good humor. My account was actually a buyer's account and I had to contact them to switch the login to a contributor. To be able to upload you need to fill in the tax form, and then upload 5 images as an examination to be able to upload to the website. All of my five images were rejected BUT hey! my tax form completion was done successfully! You can't imagine how happy I am. One more happy news here is that I can't put images for examination again till the passage of 10 days from the first examination.

123RF: All what I can say here is, stay away from this website. If Depositphotos rejected 5 photos from the examination sample, this website rejected 30 out of 33 images I've submitted, including ALL of the 21 images of the censer. You see, I'm not expecting all of the images of the censer specifically to be good - after all, the reason I've made several shots is to make different shapes of the smoke and also different zoom levels. For example, Canstockphotos did already rejected 11 and accepted 10 out of 21. When I checked closely, I've realized that reviewers on Canstockphotos did accept mainly images of the censer as a whole and rejected images of the censer in close-up. Here with 123RF, the whole set was rejected under the reason of "Poor lighting/Composition". OK, I understand the fact that I'm not a good photographer, but what kind of composition you are expecting for an isolate object in a tabletop photography? Or what kind of light you are expecting when I state in the file description Golden Censer lit partially? If they stated the reason as "Not marketable" I would quite understand that, but poor lighting and/or composition? That just doesn't add up. From some info bits in their website, I think the website is based in Dubai, and that thing specifically made me more optimistic about submitting to them but now, the whole game rules have changed.

FeaturePics: This is one agency that I do have some hopes for. They did reject some of my images and they did accept some others. One thing I don't understand here is the fact that I have to have 10 accepted images to be able to upload via FTP; my favorite method. So far, I didn't upload my censer images set onto this agency because I do prefer FTP for such large quantity of files. One thing I don't like here is the change in my images titles but to be fair, they did explain that already in their uploading tips, as they see poetic titles are not a good way for marketing and makes it hard for search engines to find the image, i.e. such titles would lessen the exposure to the public. They got a point somehow, even though I think in search engines routines it is usually the keywords that play the key role and not the title.

I'm still looking further but I can't get into any stock website I see. Canstockphotos and Mostphotos seem to be my dominant admirers for the time being.

Finale

There remains some experiments to be done yet but I didn't have the time this week, mainly because I need a model, and my model is, usually, my brother. Even though I did some tests and the results were fine so far, but I do need a good background.
I've notified the group about my inability to enroll in Redbull's contest and they expressed their disappointment. What's significant in their response is their reply: our participation is weak and we will disappoint them. When I asked about who was the initiator for such offer, turned out that the group was and Redbull's team didn't come to the group to ask for participation. I've blamed them (gently) for not checking on the preparations and the readiness of the group's members before involving the name of the group in such contest - specially that my own circumstances with my mother are well known and it is natural that I wouldn't have the full capabilities and time. Their response in fact, to some extent, did prove my point that they did have some heavy dependence on my shoulders which I didn't meet.
For the time being, it seems all I can do is concentrate more on tabletop photography and try to find new subjects to photograph with a twist. Probably this will have some marketable value as well. And they say don't carry the globe's load on your shoulders - how that is even possible?

Stop!

Another week without much activities with photography, but I've finally got my new notebook for conlangs. I've started pinning notes about basic elements of Geltani for the time being. Along with Geltani, there is a syllabary that I had to develop to write foreign names to Geltani. You can imagine this as being a Japanese writing Katakana along with Kanji. Will discuss that later.

I do have my own plans and pace for my own photography venue. With Mom's schedules taking 3 days from my week for dialysis and also because of my fasting right now for the month of Rajab (which I hope it would continue till the month of Sha'ban and then into Ramadhan), I barely find the power and the time to work with my camera outside or even think of something. Under these circumstances I've decided to abandon the Redbull project. Despite the fact that I've already prepared a plan to take 5 images telling a simple story for a A Day in Kuwait, yet the deadline is on May 20^th and I barely did something. However, there were other reasons that made me neglect this project:

• The deadline is too close as stated above and I don't have enough time with my current responsibilities.
• Some of my plans might require permissions and I'm absolutely in no mood to have a conflict with authorities or any hardships concerning that kind of activities outdoors.
• The conditions of Redbull were not so clear and frankly, I don't feel safe to submit my work to them.
• I had enough from time pressure and contests.

However, just for the fun of it (and who knows I might do these ideas later) I did sketch a plan for the process with 5 images and each image telling some phase in a typical day in Kuwait:

1. Morning: Sunrise; the beginning of a new day in Kuwait. This idea is already reflected in one of the panoramas I've done back in 2011.

   

   Towers of The Rising Sun

2. Traffic Jam: This is the phase of going to work. My plan was to shoot some traffic jam from a pedestrian bridge over some road, but having the problems I had in the past, I think my chances that this would pass safely is like 50% of even less. In periods of traffic jams cops are usually spread over the place and a person with a camera is not a favorable spotting.
3. Busy at Wok: For this phase, I was planning to shoot some office with a busy look (scattered papers, scattered furniture...etc). In fact, thinking about it right now, I might as well use one of my own panoramas which I've done in my own office in my work place including myself in the shoot!

   

   Busy at Work!

4. Evening: This is the period of family and friends visiting and the typical Diwaniyyah I'd say. For this idea, I was planning to do silhouettes by the help of my speedlites and some colored gels to light the background blue (reflecting evening time) while people laughing in the foreground. Might do this later even after abandoning the whole idea of the contest.
5. Night: This particular time I would have used it to reflect the safe atmosphere that we live in despite all of our problems. Initially my idea was to take a shoot of someone sleeping with the Towers of Kuwait in the background, but if this is done in the public, God knows what hurdles I have to put up with, specially with unnecessary people in the scene. I'm not a people's person and not so social, beside that, I might need a special permit to do such a thing in the public. The only alternative here is to do it with props in some studio or a room; yet, that won't have a great impact on the viewer I believe.

It was quite a brainstorming session for me to get out with some of these ideas, but I can't say I'm completely satisfied. Moreover, in the current time, I'm trying to prepare a dinner party if I should say, as a gratitude for friends in the photography group and out of the group as I've promised before - Just a tiny gift for Mom being out of the hospital. It should be on a Saturday, but apparently it won't the coming Saturday as there is no time for any kind of preparations right now.
Meanwhile, I'm looking further for other agencies of stock photos to submit my images to. I've long abandoned Fotolia and Bigstockphotos, while things are going smoothly with Canstockphotos and Mostphotos. One of the targets had been 123RF and Featurepics, but still looking for more outlets. I'm not that optimistic about Dreamstime, but I might try it again just for a change. Here and there, who knows what might come next from such websites.

Geltani Glossa:
As I've mentioned above, I've been working lately with Geltani further more and recording notes and trying to establish some basic elements of the conlang. Plurals, numerals, and many other things are all on papers right now, and when it's all over, I would need to do those digitally somehow but for sure without any fonts. It might be scanning all the way (and I'm having hard time with the scanner already!).

Scan of my notes with some scribbles of Geltani.

There are still though some basic stuff not settled down, like the sound of some driving letters (sorry folks, can't explain this all over again, it's in other posts already!). Some innovations and some regular rhyming must be added to the list to finish this task, I believe. On the scan on the left you can see some of the basic grammatical cases that I've been trying to settle down with. They had been changed from time to time and I think it is now the time to finish it one and for all. The plural is achieved by repeating the last syllable in the word, and drawing a special character for plurals. I'm not quite happy with repeating the last syllable method but this is the best I could think of for the time being. Would there be a change? Maybe!
One thing to be dealing with as well is creating a suitable transliteration system for pronunciation.

Primary Geltani Syllabary

On the other hand, I've sketched a primary syllabary for writing foreign names into Geltani. I say primary because these shapes are still under consideration. The system is like a mix of syllabary and abugida. I didn't want to put on more loads of vowels, thus I've pinned only 3 types of vowels and whenever the vowel is to be long, a marker is added on the syllable, while if the syllable is to be still (i.e. without a vowel) then it is done as in abugida systems; a marker is added below the syllable (as you can see in the scan). If there is a vowel in between (e.g. as "A" in way) then it is approximated to the closest vowel(s).
To make some twist in the whole conlang of Geltani, I've decided to make it sound like Chinese, yet with more sounds and consonants that aren't originally in real Chinese, mainly of Semetic origins like ħ [Arabic: ح], and there is some thought about adding the sound of Ayn [Arabic: ع] as well, but not now.

The complete picture of the grammar and the order sentence is still fuzzy in my brain but for some reason I'm not sure of, I do like the order of the sentence used in Sumerian and Akkadian (notice that those are REAL languages!), which is SOV (subject-object-verb). But I have to see further into this matter after the basics of the writing system are settled.
I've avoided, so far, working on several other conlangs (like Betenic and Bulughman) just to concentrate my efforts. Multi-tasking won't work here I guess, specially with such time schedule in such a mess.


Finale:
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. This is what they say. It seems for the time being that I would conduct more experiments in the field of tabletop photography and product photography. Even though I've never considered it before because of the equipments that I must have with me most of the time to take most of such shots, but it seems the only solution available in my case; to try to innovate something and avoid being outdoors too much unnecessarily - in locations that bring problems. On the other hand, who knows, I might as well make a good idea and impression with such field to open up the fields for some financial gains in the future. However, I don't tend to be over optimistic in such matters. I just need to think of what to do next.
Some of my plans for the near future include shooting a censer, a silhouette (as mentioned above), objects dipped in water with some special effect and maybe custom bokeh effect. This is some of the ideas that I've been noting down in my photography note. Would there be someone interesting and interested in what I think, what I do, and share? That, gonna take such a long time as it seems... if any.