Alexander 6, V89.

It's here! Woho! My visa to visit Ireland was issued, in like 2 weeks! I remember it took more than one month last year. I remember as well that last year, when the visa was issued for me, it was issued for a certain number of days that matched exactly the time period of my stay, but now, I've been given 3 months in advance, from September 12th until December 11th. I don't remember such a thing happened that way last year!

I'm passing through a time of quietness if I should say, camera-wise. I've finished the panoramas that I was working on for some time before and after getting my VR head, so, I decided to go on shooting randomly outside and I picked the cat in the house as my target. This time, no HDR shoot or anything, but simply me, myself, and the camera and the flash head which I didn't use in a long time!
I can't say they are great as I couldn't really master the lighting conditions yet nor I can say I did master the flash adjustments and probing, however, I'm not planning to give out these to any stock site, since I know they are full of such pictures!

Some images for his highness, Tiger.

I like specifically his "snowy" look and his hair that's not too short nor long. He's a loner as well. The shots here were all done in tungsten white-balance by mistake, but luckily all was in RAW format so I've adjusted this error later and the picture turned as you can see here after being filled with a blue hue. Still, the real atmosphere was actually at the end of the day and before the final sunset with relatively enough light, but with a flash striking the object (without using the diffuser in the flash head itself) made the light concentrated on the object and turned the atmosphere into almost a night time.

After finishing from this I got inside and took some shots for my niece inside the house, and all were blue as well, but those I didn't work with so far. Hopefully doing to do this today.

On the list also there is one task I'm planning to do. I'm going to try my luck with the images refused from Canstockphoto website, and put them in Bigstockphoto. I didn't put anything there for a long time now and actually I'm not so optimistic that they would be accepted, but I won't lose anything (except of some time duh). For some time, Bigstockphoto website was my favorite location for panoramas, as it accepts apparently single files larger than 15MB, as far as I remember. Of course, I've completely dropped Fotolia from my list here...

I've been reading, or flipping should I say, through Harald Woeste's book about panoramic photography and trying to take mental notes as much as possible about the work flow and the tools used, and specially those related to the final product output. Would be nice if you can handle the panorama on a large print-out instead of staring at it on the monitor all the time! I have a weakness when it comes to the press and the printed media, as I'm completely lost in the technicality and the requirements of such field.

 

I've been notified now that the monopod had been shipped already to my US mailbox. I wished for a combined shipment with the books but unfortunately, seems I have to go and pick my stuff from the DHL twice! Anyway, it is good enough to try it out now, although I was not in a hurry originally, but now I am!

finally, the proof-reading of Alexander 6 is going smoothly and it is about to finish. I've reached like #2257 so far, and won't be days until I reach #3000, the end. Reading is so easy, but writing it down and typing it was a really tideous job. Maybe after finishing this, I would have some time to look upon designing a website for Ayvarith in a more serious manner! Hope so.

__________

2113. then with a smooth voice the Guardian asked
2114. "continue O hero, any more questions?"
2115. but the hero felt embarrassed and said to her
2116. "yes, one more question from me is left,
2117. where to go now? and what I am doing in this land?"
2118. Aramramátáníth said: your destiny is not in my hand,
2119. but to the Hermit, I believe, you must go from here,
2120. my wind shall carry you there easily, O hero,
2121. and under your command it shall move,
2122. the Hermit has all the answers you need,
2123. this is what I am ordered to do for now
2124. then Alexander agreed and decided to move
2125. and he greeted Kaliván and hugged each other
2126. despite the small size of the small creature
2127. but he carried him by the palm of his hand
2128. then Alexander desired to let his Cadid with Kaliván
2129. to help him with the lands of the valley and the trees
2130. but the Cadid refused to go except with his master
2131. and the wind started to gather under the feet of Alexander
2132. and slowly in the air he was raised with his Cadid
2133. then Aramramátáníth announced the beginning
2134. and the invisible wind moved Alexander and his Cadid
2135. to the east they were going now where the Hermit is
2136. where the hopes of Alexander lied for an end

Alexander 6, V29.

One heck of a morning. Thousand trials to get into my internet account here in my work place, and MSN keeps knocking me off from the network I'm already upset for the results I got after stitching my Guest Room panorama which was not, the least to say, good. Adding to this fuss, a device in my work place went into inhibit state during the weekend and thanks to my colleague who did not foretell this, since he is the one who took care of it for some time now.

Meanwhile, I'm still working on the Guest Room panorama. In the weekend, I've started to stitch the panorama after adding control points myself in PTGui and trying to render the optimization in good results. For people who don't know, control points are the points of matching features between 2 images, by the computer analyzes the features in each image and try to blend them together in some way.
After I got the O.K., let's say, from the optimization process, I started the stitching process and this time, for my arrogant nature, I've set the scale to the maximum dimension possible for this panorama... 25,000 pixels by 12,500 pixels. The stitching, literally, took over 32 hours approximately! The result of this was an image in OpenEXR format, sizing around 830MB, which could not be opened by Photoshop or Photomatix at all. Anyway, I didn't delete the file and kept it like that, and worked then on a smaller panorama which was rendered and stitched in one hour or so. The results then were never to my satisfaction. Too many broken lines that I can't clone out or fix by Photoshop. In my desperate situation, I started to generate a template from stitching a reduced series of images (of the same panorama) that were in JPG format. I wanted to perfect the stitch for this one only, and then apply the template on the larger form, the HDR series. Alas, it didn't work as well and still the panorama had many broken lines.

The Guest Room, or as I called, the Golden Room because of the tone-mapping effect by Photomatix.

Maybe the broken lines aren't apparent in the small version, but in the larger one they are. I don't mind the broken lines in the flooring and tiles, but there are hard broken lines that MUST be fixed and fit properly in the decoration of the roof, the glass door, and the edges of the rugs. I'm thinking seriously of running the shoot again, but this time with my camera in landscape position. I think is what is causing the whole thing; the camera was in portrait position. The funny thing though, I've forgot to remove my slippers during the shoot and hence, as I announced, iti s the most important aspect of my image! I named it kuchi kuchi!

Kuchi Kuchi

Why this name, don't ask me. It just occured to me like that. The next time I shoot I really should enter this room with bare feet. I sought help from Photoshop to at least stitch the JPG files, and it was like a hoax. The program froze and hence, "end task" was the solution. I'm not willing to try again now.

For a spark of a moment now, I remembered that I still have images taken from Ireland and not processed yet. I should take a go on them now, specially with the lack of objects that I feel like taking pictures of.

Been thinking today of the writing work that overburdens my back for some time now. I didn't write any poem for some time now and this is too much really. I feel I want to write something and there are words crossing my mind but I just can't make a string and rhyme out of them. I renewed my account in www.writing.com today and eventually, I purchased a lower level account, since I'm more like a casual visitor now and not like what I've been before one year.
I've been thinking as well to post my Alexander's story there along with the transliteration texts, but they do need a spell check up of course, for both sides, the English and the Ayvarith text. Of course the Ayvarith text is the latinized text and not the original Ayvarith text! The only available original Ayvarith text is actually handwritten on A4 papers, and I might consider scanning one or two of these papers and post it here. They are full of scribbles and marks and correction marks..etc. They are a real mess.
For the time being, and until I finish the transliteration of Alexander 6 story, I decided already that my new homepage (in Fortunecity) shall not be including Flash contents, if possible. Too bad I won't be able to make sounds work in an easy way like in Flash, but well, it will keep me some time for myself later on. The thing I have to think about for the time being is the façade itself. I'm so awkward when it comes to programming languages and those HTML stuff, but I'll try like I did before and made the Flash webpage in GeoCities before.

I received one joke this morning. One of my pictures was sold on Fotolia. I really forgot I have an account there even. The purchase was somehow big; an image of the palm, in XXL size. Along with that, they sent me some email asking me to check my personal data and see for some tax information in their website. I looked a bit and, I got really sick of all that text. I'm looking at it in some other time. Even if I was not living in US or even a US citizen, they say I have to deal with it. They are withholding 28% of the payment, as I saw in their website under my sales report. A tax taken from someone with 5 dollars in his account... voila!

__________
673. Alexander looked amazed at the dead man
674. he was breathing hardly because of the dust and exhaustion
675. he raised his head and gazed around him slowly
676. and in front of him there was a shade of a man from afar
677. the stranger man had a bow in his hands and covered his face
678. and with some steps he was walking to Alexander over some cracks
679. Alexander became ready for another combat
680. but the man of the nomadic costume showed his face
681. and under the dim light of the moon Alexander gazed
682. and with a loud voice he did shout: Utéfah!
683. thus Utéfah smiled and shook the hand of the hero
684. but the hero remained silent and did not know a thing
685. Utéfah then wanted to calm the hero down from his amazement
686. and started his speech: did he hurt you with his poisoned dagger?
687. the hero replied with some stuttering: yes... no... he did not!
688. then Utéfah said in a calming voice: it is over do not worry,
689. this man was Shalmún the son of Yáhúv the son of Inaf,
690. his father was a murderer and his grandfather was a thief,
691. he inherited the manners of his ancestors and went after you,
692. for he heard what you and Ázilis, the blessed, said together,
693. and he thought you are after some treasure in the desert,
694. thus I followed him when I did not find him among the men,
695. verily he was a man of treachery,
696. verily he was a man of no manners.

Alexander 6, V5.

Been some days without putting some words here. Well, the natural thing with the holidays. I'm heading back to work by tomorrow after 3 days of holidays (neglecting the weekend, which makes it up to 5 days of holidays).
In this holiday I had some time to make up my own home-made light tent and softbox for my flash, and big thanks for my brother who has soft hands with the tools! I bought some tiny desk lights and fixed some energy-saving light bulbs to use as side lights for my light-tend.

 

My light box or light tent

 

My softbox for my flash head

One tiny problem happened after fixing the sides of the box, and that was the fact that the glue started to eat into the white surface. It is a problem but I don't think it would affect the snapping too much, since the object is going to be inside the box with lights out of the box. The main purpose of these wings on the sides (as I read in the main scheme) is that they serve as "reflectors." You can find the main scheme in this blog.
I didn't try the flash head so much, but I had some trials with the light tent a bit, trying out with my censer again. The first problem was to fix the box on a suitable surface on a suitable height. The table I used before for snapping the censer (and the turtle before) was not a suitable one because of its small surface area and hence, I wouldn't be able to put the desk lamps around (I would need other small tables to do this!). Anyway, after moving here and there, I fixed it over my suitcase (which still contains some stuff I got from Ireland and some books!). I've fixed the desk lamps around it but one problem occured then, and it was obvious in the pictures taken after, but I had no solution to that really. I could have fixed something below the box just to elevate it a little from one side, but the wax was already molten and I didn't want to shake the censer anymore fearing that something would drop down on the inside of the box. I kept it that way and made the censer body as straight as possible, with the molten wax being tilted to one side.
I took many shots in different modes (and sometimes in different WB) but the chain of pictures that I worked with most was a series of 9 pictures taken with constant aperture (f32) and changing shutter speed (time), making up a sequence of 9 exposures.

 

Photoshop composite and tone-mapping of 9 exposures

The good thing here is that the lighting was somehow good and controllable with 3 desk lamps fixed in positions surrounding the light-tent itself, but despite the fact that I used a narrow aperture (f32) as I usually do, to make sparkles of light reflected of the subject, here it did not show up. I'm guessing that I'm supposed to put a light source hitting forward to the censer instead of putting one to the top of the box. Yet, I had some fun merging different exposures.

  

3 exposures, tungsten white balance, merged and tone-mapped with photomatix .

The above image was taken in tungsten white balance, anyway it is not a big deal now with the white balance (in analog photography it was a big deal already, but with digital photography you can change that easily when you shoot in RAW). I called it "Frozen Censer." Despite the fact that I know clearly most of the stock sites won't like such images that got plenty of effects in them, but I put this one in Bigstockphoto.com.

Bigstockphoto had been kind enough to accept lately one or two of my images. Unlike Fotolia, who always refuse images either as "quality problems" or "aesthetic problem," Bigstockphoto does mention the problem exactly for you, and if you can, you would be able to fix the problem (when possible) and submit it again. Of course if there is no potential marketing for the picture itself that's another story. At least, they do mention something for you and don't leave you in the dark like Fotolia does. Lately, all the problems that I've encountered when my files are refused from Fotolia are under the "aesthetic" category, which makes me ask myself how this is fixed?

Anyway, back to the censer again, I made a go also with Exposure Fusion. Although I'm not so fond of this method but sometimes, it does some beauty to the images. I can't really tell what is the algorithm and the method used here, but your exposures are not combined to make one HDR image and then tone-mapped, but it sounds more like direct tone-mapping without passing the HDR phase.

 

Fusion of 9 exposures.

And finally, I tried out the fusion of several white balances extracted from a single image (the original was taken in tungsten WB);

 

Several WBs fused together.

Generally, the contrast is good despite the fact that I did not put a light source directly hitting into the body of the censer from the front. The flame inside has a sharp contrast and appears somehow "flamboyant" from the middle of the censer and the purple hue is dark, but can be shown with some saturation a bit. All the images anyway were not put directly but there was always some manipulation in Photoshop for increasing the contrast slightly or increasing the saturation and changing the hue little bit.

The thing that was missing from this, the sparkle that used to show up when I used the flash in a completely dark room. I have some experiment in my mind currently, and I shall get back to the censer again, I suppose!

Today, we have the 5th verse of Alexander VI; The last part of Alexander's story. The work with my transliteration has stopped as well during the holiday, but tomorrow is the working day, and I think I shall get back with my routine as usual (despite some pressing work in the labs).

__________
97. then Alexander asked about the secret
98. and the old man explained in few words
99. "secret of the lights after the lights in the Beginning"
100. thus, Alexander felt the burden of destiny
101. crushing down his shoulders from Heaven
102. and then he said with a shaking jaw
103. "how am I supposed to know the road,
104. if I never heard of your ancestors before?
105. and how I am supposed to reveal the secret
106. if I do not know what you are talking about?
107. help me O good old man in my task
108. may God help you to succeed in the good ways"
109. Náwi established his words with the praise of God
110. and said to Alexander: O young man, did God forget you before?
111. or did He give you a false promise before?
112. No! Thus you shall walk by His grace and mercy
113. like He made you a sun and moons to guide you
114. through the deserts He will never forget you
115. stay with us for three days and be prepared
116. then go on to your journey with your destiny
117. the prophecies there were made will not lie
118. go and fear nothing O Vuqurnún
119. thus Alexander decided to stay for three days
120. while the hermits prepared him for his journey

Alexander 2, V4.

Some enhancement with the mood, but I had to receive some bad news from the press with my model for the brochure that I made for work. I have to make the fonts smaller and blacken them out just to fit their machines. Anyway, this is supposed to be some "easy" task to do... if only I would find the original PSD file of this brochure.
I couldn't believe my eyes when Fotolia rejected my 2 images of the dome, claiming that they have aesthetic problems. I just can't understand what those people are asking for? Anyway, Canstockphoto accepted the 2 photos and that's fair enough. I'm waiting for a reply from Bigstockphotos as well. They surprised me indeed when they accepted 2 of 3 from my shots from the parking lot in Soog Sharg!

Rejected

Accepted

 Accepted

After accepting these 2 images, I revived my hopes in them. And I used to think that they are worse than Fotolia in their conditions! Pah! It would be somehow a disappointment if they rejected the dome photos... and since no luck is my friend, then they would reject them eventually!

Back to the images from Ireland now, and as I finished the folder of 1-10-2009, I'm checking the special subfolders that I usually keep for panoramas taken on that specific day, and they were a lot. I'm hesitated on wether should I spend more time fixing the errors in these images or just do the easy stuff and move on and come back later one day to these! Apparently, the noise problem that I just noticed a month ago and picked my camera for sensor cleaning for it was apparent in the photos taken back then, but for some reason I didn't notice them at all. But with the new panorama that I've made, I've noticed how much spots were there...

The previous image was cleaned from spots and noise with cloning stamp in HDR state before the tone-mapping. Also, I added layers of hue and saturation adjustments to make the colors more bluish and fanciful with some greenish hue for the trees. Honestly, the image looked perfect to my eyes just like that without tone-mapping. However, I made the tone-mapping with Photomatix and not in Photoshop, because in such abundant details and wide image, I tend to make lot of mistakes with the manual job. I was surprised though with the amount of noise that appeared after the tone-mapping that neither NeatImage nor NoiseNinja did any good in removing it! For this reason, I kept this image for myself. It looks better in small size, but in actual size, it is horrible. Thus, I did not submit it to Canstockphoto (and that's why I didn't put any watermarks on it). If you want to use it, please go ahead, just give the credits, please.

I'm trying my best to sharpen the image in the HDR state before tone-mapping, as I read and learned from Mr Christian Bloch's book about HDR imaging, but this option seems not so very useful to do, at least for my images. When I sharp and watch the sharpening artifacts show up (by checking the higher EVs of the image in HDR state), I do reduce the amount of sharpening and the radius and they become so low that, eventually, you see no sharpening effect in front of you at all! Thus, why use it? I guess doing the sharpening after the tone-mapping is better in my case. Sharpening too much without taking care of the artifacts and the color noise at the edges in HDR state, would make tone-mapping later on a bad experiment with weird spots of colors showing every where.

My work with transliteration today would be limited to one verse only I guess. I've discovered some confusion in my present tense make-up (the last syllable of the 4-letters verb). For example, "to leave" is (ğaţbaš), now to make the present for 1st person - I leave - it would be (ağaţbiš), but then some verbs I wrote like (ağaţbaš) and that made me some confusion in the matter. It is a serious mistake that makes me think of all the previous writings and transliterations that I did before. I might have to check them seriously and see any corrections that appeal. I hate this when it happens. Moreover, it might make me record some stuff again, which I thought I've finished already.

For the time being, I'm going to check what I transliterated already from Alexander VI story, and hope no mistakes would show up in the future. At least in grammar that is.

For today, we have Alexander 2, verse 4.

__________

The tidings of the ill omen travelled like lightning
the king killed the messenger for no right or wrong
Thus, Alexander raised his eyes up to the sky and prayed
with tears on the cheeks for the poor man he sent
"O Lord, what to do, I obeyed and listened
but the devilish ones accepted nothing but evil
By Your might I come and go, live and die
guide me through this and do not let me go astray"
Then the voice came down to Alexander
and only he could hear it in his ears from above
"O Alexander, by My power you shall succeed,
and with the light of Mishdárá you shall go on
We know what happens, and happened and what will
go and victory is yours, this is a test for you and your men"
Thus, Alexander got down from the mare and bowed down
to the Almighty, the Giver of life, the Giver of might
Then to his soldiers he looked and organized
and spread the twelve generals across his eyes
Chinchán, Ishkán, Chírán, Érán to his right
Dómí, Tólímí, Kahrímí, Gehámí to his left
Then Shakrashom, Dartalom, Keríhom come
along with Galgolom, they were in his front
While the bugles of war screamed so high
for the blood scattering and for men's valour

Rage...

It was one of the worst days that I had to live. Not really the worst, but let's say "one" of the worst. A meeting that was full of useless talk generally from one guy, and that took over my time to do other things, like writing this blog! (Which I deem more important than attending a meeting).

The usual activity when it comes to a meeting for me...

The thing that made me rage in fact is when I had my complete confidence and dependance on someone, to give me a phone call to get me out of the meeting, yet he never did after all the guarantees he made to me. Although I'm trying to find a suitable excuse for him, but I can't neglect the fact that I was screwed because of this.


Amid this, I didn't take new photos, but working already on some of those I took around our center's building. I discovered that some of them could be better with fixing the position of the camera a bit to make the picture somehow balanced. But since  I woke up one hour late from my usual time, I was not able to do much and not in mood to take much with me, so I didn't bring my camera for today.








These two photos are for a ramp that leads into my work place. Since it is a useless ramp and thanks to the administerative people for their silly paper work, I decided to make it useful for once at least with a photo. You might ask yourself, how such a photo is useful, well the answer would be "I don't know". In fact such photos are used mainly for patterns and backgrounds, and also to add some effects on other photos (or facial photos). People who used to read tutorials somehow about some photoshop effects would know some of such effects with layer blending tricks.
The photo above was composed by joining 6 images by Exposure Fusion, divided into 2 groups of 3; One group with tungsten WB in 3 bracketed exposures, and the same for the other group which was under Shade WB. The original image was darker so then I worked on some "narrowing" for the Levels (of highlights and shadows) in each of the RGB channels, and thus producing the other lighter and brighter image. But I tend to like the darker one more. I'm not an optimist that such image might be accepted by stock sites (specially a site like fotolia who can barely accept me as a human being...), but I shall give it a try.

Because of the screwed mood yesterday, I don't feel like translating anything for "today," but instead I went out from work roaming the roads doing some chores. I needed to change the air little bit and not face much people in this place where I work. I went on for making new glasses and found out that in a year almost, my sight had been degraded from -1.00 to -2.00 for the right eye, and from -1.25 to -2.25, for the left. One more year and I hope it won't be down even to -5. The guy in the glasses shop also advised me NOT to do the laser surgery for my eyes, for now at least, because it is risky and yet I don't need it, not till my sight gets down to -6!

I think I will be busy for some time "at work!" to fix some text and design the brochure that will introduce the center (i.e. my work place).

Laħúf...

It is a day that was almost beginning with a disaster. Woke up and hour later than my usual time and had to things in a hurry and didn't even go to pick up something to eat as usual. I type these words now and worrying now what is the status of the streets outside since it is the time of the GCC and streets are said to be closed from 11:30 to 1:30. The traffic jam needs more time to clear out even after removing the blocks from the streets.

It is a tiresome day in general and I couldn't translate more than 2 verses, despite my dedication to do more. I spent more time working with my camera around my work place trying to snap some labs and devices, and that stretched a muscle a bit. I'm drowsy and I just can't think how am I going to get back home with these eyes half closed.

New emails arrived from Fotolia with the usual and the UNpredicted results, all my new photos submitted were declined. I think I need a camera that works with water or something to make images as clear as they would like to. I discovered that I'm not the only one who got this problem but maybe even more professional photographers are facing the same barricade. How do they sell? I just don't know...

With this hunger, I'm going to fight to stay conscious until getting out of here. There is a lot of work to do with photos waiting for me, thus all my plans for cleaning the room seem to vanish today!

The word for today is "Laħúf" [Ankh: laxwf] which means "bark" as in "tree bark". The word is made solely and completely random and not related to previous made up words. If there is any resemblance to any word in Ayvarith, then I believe it would be a mere concidence! Although the word is random but the real base is the Arabic word "لحاء" which means "tree bark". The gender is masculine.

Fatal Error...

After a shaky weekend I start this week with a day that started with some trials for accidents. I'm waiting for next Thursday with great hope, because it is an off-day. Last week I was able to translate only one verse of Alexander's story, and today I felt - a bit - the urge to translate 3 verses to compensate for my usual rate of 2 verses a day.

I discovered another killing mistake with the numbering system for the lines. The numbers jumped 6 lines ahead, from 1383 to 1389 just like that, which made that specific verse shorter! I don't know what kind of "twist" shall I use as an excuse for this yet, but I'm intending to keep the numbers as they are. Any change or shift or corrections to the order of numbers, shall twist the whole thing for me specially when it comes to the order of words used and lines.

The numb state is still hovering around with me being not able to write anything. Nothing at all. All what I'm concerned about is photography for the time being and waiting for my salary now to clear some debts on my credit card. After that I'm going to order some new photography books. November had almost gone now without me being able to visit Miskan island on the north of Failaka island, because of working conditions here. I need just one "man" to help me out with my plans on this. In the mean time, I shall work on more photo processing, and playing more games that are waiting on the queue!

I spent some time this morning also to submit some of the images that I've uploaded to Fotolia and Canstockphoto websites, and of course the reply of Fotolia was amazingly fast with rejection as usual. Anyway, nothing to be surprised for. I've been uploading these images for some time during the weekend mainly, but not in mood to write down the keywords and the titles for them, thus the perfect time for such activities is, the work time in the office where I am awake and doing nothing!

In the mean time as well, I do think of some plans to visit some of the old deserted (haunted maybe aswell) houses and take pictures of them, in "special" times... yes... special. Yet, I don't know any of such houses near by or so, so I have to ask around and maybe as my brother for some help. Thank you, not going to do it alone!

A Father?

It is Tuesday, and of course yesterday was a Monday, and you might know by now how much I like Mondays, NOT.

I was so drowsy and absent-minded yesterday that I didn't feel like writing anything in this blog, but I had some strength to work on my translation for Alexander stories, and did 2 verses already, as usual. As I go further, I get more grip on the language itself and sometimes I discover some of the grammatical mistakes that I did here and there (originally) and sometimes I discover some mistakes with word making and such. There are some words that need to be changed specially that, as I go further, I developed some kind of a sense for the conlang and I wouldn't like to go systematic anymore. I think it would be true for other conlangs developers? Maybe.

And with the tiresome body and eyes I didn't stop doodling. I go on senselessly and unconsciously rubbing the tip of my pen against the paper piece, as I always do in boring meetings and classes.

The previous sketch was actually done upside down in the beginning. Then suddenly I found out that when I turn it around, it would be something like a crown and a head, and so I continued that way.

Finally, I managed to make a somehow reduced image (with the help of other softwares other than photoshop) for the shot that made me pain since I got back from Ireland: The Window (An Fhuinneog).

The image here is somehow elongated because it was merged in cylindrical algorithm. I made another one in spherical, which was a bit more normal to the eye, but unfortunately the lower part was scrambled for some reason. The main sots (66 of them) were reduced by 70% to make the formation easier, but after all I had some problems with memory, as always. Some part of the completed image later on was not there and the area was transparent. I fixed that with a little trick of using the symmetry along the vertical axis. Without boring details, it just involved using the "auto-blend" option in photoshop for two layers.

The image now is in 8-bit JPG format, and yet, it is 30MB which forces me to reduce the size a bit. I'm sure after all, it will be refused by Fotolia anyway.

Despite the shuttered sleeping time, yet I managed to sleep for 3 hours before I come to work. In these 3 hours, I had a weird dream. So many events, yet all what I remember now is, me, carrying a little baby girl and running in some place jumping trying to reach some where. She had weird round black eyes, and yellowish golden hair. I was thinking in the dream, that this is my daughter...

Back to Work...

My first day at work. Nothing has changed. Blabbering, clumsiness, and yet, stupid administerative people.
I spent the previous days playing one game or two and working on lot of photographs (specially those that were made into panoramic views). Not all of them turned out great and as usual, fotolia refuses all. I'm planning to order some stuff from outside and I need indeed some cash for it, even though it will be over the visa of course.
I didn't post much here, specially the photos, but hopefully I will make an email later for a group of photos and I shall spread the email all over.

In case you want to receive the email later on, please, leave me a note here or send me an email (the same ID of this blog @ gmail), and I shall work on it.

A little example of what I'm working with;


Now, I need some time to grease my mind and my nerves to cope with the daily stress as usual. Also, I have to push myself to write poems and to complete what I began with that story and also with the translation of my story, Alexander. The stress seems to be coming from my private work rather than from work for the first glance, but in Kuwait, everything brings a stress I believe. I also plan to look further than stock sites to sell my photos, but I just need a start point to begin with...

Mr Magoo.

I was lucky today that I slept one more hour before the regular timing that I've been into for one week or two now. Still though I'm drowsy but not as much to knock me down on the couch I guess. Thus, I decided to pick up my translation stuff with me today and work on a verse (or a two if possible).

I sent some emails containing the latest images I've taken and processed, as I am getting ready as well to make a back-up of the existing files now which are close to 4GB. In the meantime, I started as well to do some HDR experiments back again on some of the old photos that I've taken since I learnt some new methods now and some new aspects for doing this. As a result I got a new shape for the previously done image:

And, I'm willing to add more hopefully, as I was working yesterday with what I called previously as "The Twisted Tower." Unfortunately, I need model release (signed authorization) to submit such image to stock sites. Despite the fact that such image was taken in a panoramic shot and the real size is supposed to be somehow more than 2 meters long, but I had to reduce the size to the regular 2600px height (regular for some stock sites) to suppress somewhat the level of grain noise (and worked later with Neat Image noise reduction capabilities).

Cat food, cat food, cat food... it is exhausting my budget a bit, and now with 3 new kitten born in the house, I don't know if what I have already is enough. They are a good subject for photography, but I couldn't get much of a nice picture yesterday. The new kitten, unlike the ones before, get scared easily and go on hiding whenever they see me out.
When I got back to my work place with my purchase, you know who was following me with his eyes! Don't you know? Yep, Mr Magoo.

Seems submitting photos to fotolia is really a waste of time...