Set Back…

Been weeks now and my health still on a swing. Though better than 2 weeks ago when fever struck me, but the remnant cough is taking its toll on my lungs already. I've been thinking seriously of checking back with the doctors to see if I should take Seretide; a steroidal inhaling powder that I used to take 2 years ago when my lung was apparently damaged or something because of some renovation in the house when apparently so much particles got stuffed inside my lungs. The case is different here since it is a remnant of some fever (apparently for the weather change), so I'm kind of reluctant to ask for Seretide for the time being. All I've been doing for it is having a herbal cough syrup which helps a bit, and sometimes having a spray of Ventoline; though it is not a case of asthma.

Rolling

DR-655

Been a while now since I got my new filter, the DR-655 hot mirror from Kenko, which is supposed to block IR for good in combination with my B+W 403 ultraviolet filter. Ironically though, I couldn't do a real test for the filter yet, as I'm aiming for capturing faces and flowers. Around 3 weeks passed already now and I still can't do a real shoot, except for a quick check-up. I did make a video indeed just to compare between Tiffen's hot mirror and DR-655, but of course it's not a photography project with depth.

First: B+W UV pass filter alone.
Second: B+W UV pass filter + Tiffen IR Cut.
Third: B+W UV pass filter+ DR-655 IR Cut.

As I don't have a good UV source for indoors work with the filter, I'm forced to try and work under the sun; And here comes the irony: For 3 weeks, I couldn't work outside with the camera, either because of the timing, the weather (haze and dust), or because of my health issues. However, I've realized the point that DR-655 is indeed a good hot mirror since the exposure time doubles or even triples in comparison to Tiffen's hot mirror. This typically would call for a higher ISO as well, that's why I'm planning ahead to work indoors with UV sources, such as blacklights, or maybe we do have some hope with regular CFL lamps. I thought seriously of bringing my camera to work and try to do something with this filter as there is a nice garden around my workplace and could be a good target, but first we have the weather that does not come in terms with my aims, and then we have the hassle and the fuss around this place (I don't want to be walking around with my gear while everyone is looking). 

Thus, for the most part, my work involves mainly some edits for ignored images from the past, or re-makes for old images (specifically with the LAB technique edit), and for some of those, the results were astonishing indeed. One part the sets it back though is the hard bleeding (too much saturation that could not be put down, or could be but with lengthy work), and/or the noise level that raises significantly. 

Generally speaking, I find myself picking at those dark exposures (most of them were part of bracketed series to merge into HDR) and that explains, partially, the rising noise level when the exposure is adjusted in RAW editing and then in LAB technique. However, since I do not have any plans to print any of those and only for online displaying in small sizes, I didn't bother much on reducing these noise levels. But I have to say, though, that the idea of printing some of those newly/re-made photos does fascinate me.

Polladhearg

As I said earlier, my work with the camera now is minimal as I'm trying to do something about the newly-acquired filter, yet I did manage to take a "test" shot. This shot, Polladhearg, was actually a test shot during my work indoors with the DR-655; Taken before placing the filter on the lens. It is a macro shot using 50mm lens with a 35mm extension tube. The shot with the DR-655 filter turned into a fail since the image, which took 40 minutes to complete, was severely blurred and shaken. Not to go empty-handed, I decided to work on the regular test shots. Funny thing is that I didn't notice all those pollen dots on the petals when I was working behind the camera, but only when I was processing the image. No wonder my allergies are stuck to me still…

When I Was A Boy

It's been a while since I've written (typed) some poem, and lately there had been an urge besides some signs that I find along the way of my every-day that points to a fact that I must be a writer of some sort. Not sure how real or true these signs are/were, yet I did have this urge for some time and in on many occasion I've just dispersed the ideas for writing something, mainly because of my confused mind. Not long ago, I've written a little piece which I've called "The Ghost" and it was inspired mainly by one of my artwork with my photos in fact. This time, however, it is completely off my head. I've downloaded Verse Perfect again after abandoning it for a long time, in hope to help me with my writing. It is a good tool with many aids, yet I think it is better to sometimes "innovate" if I should call it so. The great thing about Verse Perfect is that it does provide a syllable count (or metric, whatever it is called), which somehow helps me on balancing the lines. I really didn't use such features a lot before, and maybe used another feature more; The rhyme code. Verse Perfect is actually implemented with a number of rhyming courses to help with the writing process.
Anyway, off with Verse Perfect, I've tried to write something completely out of the order here, in terms of rhyme or syllable counts. I called it When I was a boy, as it goes about my own reflections about my life and how complicated it got on as time passed by. Somehow melancholic, but I guess nothing new when it comes to my own writings:

Off by the lavender fields,
oh no mind for any needs,
And my winds set to sailing,
no time given to ailing,
Back in the day,
When I was a boy.

Those days Oh who remembers,
warming nights of those winters,
The wee heart that I had carried,
no thoughtful run ever rallied,
Such were my days,
When I was a boy.

Alas! my sails stopped rising,
under that moon uprising,
Had I not seek a clear mind,
but stabbed a stab in the hind.
Bye to those days,
When I was a boy.

Where are they and where is me,
beliefs stand as a lone tree,
Singing to the stars above,
the joy but for me thereof.
Gone are the days,
When I was a boy.

And when my days are over,
and the grains be my cover,
Someone, please, itch on my stone,
"Here lie the head and the bone,
of glorious days,
When I was a boy.

Writing this, I really wished to make it longer, but the words' generation just stopped, and to tell the truth: I even started writing the last verse first, then made my way up and down. The verses here are not connected in rhyme, but each one of them is made of (a,a,b,b,c,d), obviously with same d, or same ending line in each verse. I tried my best to keep the syllable count constant for each verse as 7,7,7,7, 4, 5. In fact, this count was mainly established when I wrote the last verse and somewhat I felt obliged to keep up that count for all other verses. Maybe it is the perfectionism in my blood still kicking. Just as a trial how does it go, I've enrolled this piece into a contest on Writing.com and it got some nice views, and even an honorary mention as well. Well, seems a good come back, if I can call it so. I think I should write more at this point since my urge for photography is kind of holding the brakes right now.

Finale

Linguistics
by Al-Husain Boum, PhD.

As my work with the camera is almost on hold for the time being, my mental processing is still pretty much active; Pretty much that it gets annoying in bed time specifically. Meanwhile, I'm trying to finish some of the books already, with one interesting linguistics book which a friend gave it to me (but I returned it to him after finishing it) for the lack of time for reading, as he said. The book is by the Moroccan author and PhD holder Al-Husain Boum [د. الحسين بوم]. My friend in fact got the book back in last November from the annual Arabic Book Fair from a Moroccan bookshop/store participating in the fair. The book delves so deep into simple matters (in the Arabic sentence structure) that things do not appear simple now when I see a simple Arabic sentence! Hope that makes sense. However, the most interesting part of the book is even at the end, when a comparison is made between some Indo-European languages (Latin, Greek, French, Farsi, and even Sanskrit) and Arabic concerning the concept of syntax and sentence building; Specifically speaking, the Nominal Sentence [الجملة الاسمية] as we call it in Arabic; that is sentences built upon connecting nouns without the verb (to be)! I didn't realize how complicated the matter is until I've read this book. In fact, with this text, I've got more insight on how and why Irish is the way it is as I'm learning it, and somewhat the real meaning of Copula, which is a widely used concept in Irish. I've been looking around for any way to contact Mr. Boum and send him something about Irish and check for his opinion about it. Unfortunately, no luck.
Finishing this book now, I'm trying to dedicate the same time and effort to other books which have been collecting dust here and there (at work and at home). I need to finish those ASAP, and most importantly, to find a way to store them as well. 
My life seems to be in a stalemate, with spikes of hope coming in and out of it. I wish if I can just leave everything behind me and fly away. I'm so tired and I'm thinking seriously of having a short vacation, for a week maybe, off work just to sleep properly and get some routine off my back. Yet, I tend to think about the coming Ramadhan, and how I might need every single day in my leaves' balance. Even my relaxation has to go through a complicated process of thoughts and math to check everything that fits in place. I can't help it even though I know it's not a healthy trait to try to fit everything in place and calculate for everything and every step. Sleep, at the moment, had become a frequent wish more than traveling is.

Sewing…

Things are going in a fast pace here. Expo, international contest, and work; it's all having a toll on everything in my life, even photography and specially my health. There had been days now that I've simply stayed home just for some extra hours of sleep away from work and the photography club I'm involved in. On the other hand, I'm trying to quantify my work pace with my photos (from both, Oman and Malta) in the rhythm of two images per day; at least for the time being. One would be a single shot and the other one should be a stitched panorama in some projection not done before (all flat versions are stitched already).

Sewing Matters

As the big day of The Book annual is approaching, comes with it the pressure to introduce some kind of new photography and new imagery within the group (or club) to be presented in the photography expo coming along the event. Many professional photographers and clubs are invited to participate in this event, and hence, the job is a tough one; to stand tall among the crowds.

Maltese Abstract (3D)

From my part, I've introduced the idea of printing 3D anaglyph images and the deal was to push the whole group to do this activity, but alas, at the end it was only me who kept on working on this project. Hence, there was a great change of plans.

Maltese Delight (3D)

In the beginning, some of my images and panoramas were sorted out for this expo, but then seeing the lack of 3D images presented, the plans had changed and I won't be presenting these images. But instead, I will present two 3D images. Having done 3D panoramas in Oman was a bonus here; the two images selected for this task were from Sultan Qabus Grand Mosque: a panorama, and a single shot with my Rokinon fisheye lens. No need to display them here for the time being as I will leave that for the expo later on. However, these two were among a dozen or more of 3D images I've been rendering from Malta and Oman (and Malta specifically). From a list of 17 images which I deemed "meaningful," six were chosen, and those were filtered down to two for the expo display. The last filtration actually took place after a test print in A3 size on semi-glossy paper - not a good quality actually and the contrast increased significantly (a critical factor in 3D images), but it did the job to make a quick comparison and decision. Despite the increase in contrast, the images did show little or no ghosting at all.

3D Prints

As for the time being, all these images which were supposed to be printed for this coming expo, would be probably moved to the stack for Al-Thani international photography contest (organized by Trierenberg Circuit, organizers of Austria's international contest, which I've forgot to state before that they published another panorama in their luxurious edition). The contest has only 2 major themes: General, and Travel. One of the items here that I wish for it to be printed is the Sultan's Eye [عين السلطان], which I have plan for it to be printed and framed in a circular form instead of the conventional rectangular shape. It would be something non-ordinary, here at least.

عين السلطان (Sultan's Eye)

Anyway, if I get the chance to, I would present this for Al-Thani contest as well. The decision is left at the end for the judges who sort out the group's stack of images. The art I do, or specifically the kind of photography I do, is not understood by many and when professional photographers are invited to judge for the group members, my panoramas are deleted quite often and for various reasons; but mainly all stem from the fact that they don't understand what is going on or the nature of this image (and mainly thinking it is a graphic design which is automatically out in contests of photography). I'm not mad or upset about it, but in some ironic way it does show the mentality of photographers, specifically those old professionals and how they look at it. In any way, what really upsets me is when all options are exhausted and I would not be left with an accepted image to submit for the contest, or when such judging takes place so late, a day or two before the deadline day of the contest.

Finale

Despite coughing is being down a bit for the time being and I've stopped taking a nebulizer for my "asthma" (and I'm not sure it is a real asthma really), yet my health is still dwindling up and down. Suddenly sneezing with a seizure, or waking up late at night with a harsh dry cough. In all situation, my lack of sleep is greater than before. As of late, I would be awake for about 19 hours in exchange of 4 hours of sleep only, on a course of several days. Can't wait for this weekend to come and have some long sleep (and play some spooky games too!). I just hope all that would disappear with the arrival of the real winter whose rain showers appear last week with heavy rains and harsh wind (yet humid weather!). I'm keeping hopes that this winter will carry out more activities for me despite this shaky health. It is my favorite season in the year, specially when it comes to photography…

Barra (Outside) - 3D
Despite the strong 3D effect, this image didn't pass the sorting process.
Taken inside my room back in Qala, Malta, when it was raining outside.

3D Hunting II...

Been a slow week somehow. The week began with heavy headaches, starting from Friday. It was not a pleasant beginning for my last weekend at all. It was one of the rare times that I would sleep for 12 hours (not in a row though); from Thursday afternoon, until Friday's morning. Woke up then with a pain in the shoulder and neck (and the back of course), but the most annoying thing was, the headache. This headache reached its "climax" whenever I do some activity that would cause my blood pressure to raise up; my head would feel like blown out and I almost wanted to scream from the pain.
I waited for 2 days, because I thought it is what usually is; the regular pains of long sleep. Unfortunately, the headache did not calm down. The only way to calm it down was to have some pain-killers. I decided then to check with a doctor in case it is something serious. However, with some blood analysis that I just got its results on Wednesday, it turns out that there is nothing serious. I did such analysis back in November or December and this enabled me to make some comparison between the two. My cholesterol level is lower (but still bitty bit high) than the previous time and also my salts level. The doctor didn't add much to the general recommendations; sports, diet, and being away from salts as much as possible. My headache now is gone and I don't get it whenever I do some activity, but I have to keep an eye on my body now. I think I have to change my bed or do something about it.

Been carrying my tripod and camera wherever I go in hope of catching something; just anything. Life had become a bit dull, and with this daily traffic jam from work, the situation is a complete set of misery. I find it hard even to stay awake in the afternoons after coming back from work. I hate to nap at this time in regular week days but my fatigue wouldn't allow me to stay awake, and with my concerns about my blood pressure, I had to reduce my intake of caffeine for now. No redbull in early morning and no coffee at home or in the office, but I keep telling myself that this is just a temporal procedure. I already had a nap in the office twice this week!
Back to the camera. I've started to take my stuff with me almost anywhere I go, trying to find something to catch. I still have images to process from Ireland, but I don't come closer to them anymore. I think I'm exhausted for the time being and might get back later. For the time being I'm looking around the places I go to. In fact, it is indeed your eyes that see what is beautiful and make it, not the place itself. I experienced that when I paid a work-related visit to Anjafa Beach. It is somehow a quiet beach, quieter than the usual beach where I take my photos from, The Corniche or Salmiyah seaside. I intend to take some pictures from there, despite the location is somehow sensitive because of some villas around the place. Villas, for people I don't want to interrupt!
Nevertheless, I've been taking some pictures from the beach. The usual beach. After I left the clinic on Monday, having my blood taken for tests, I headed to Burger King on that beach to break the fast. I noticed some features that I did like to take some pictures of, although the sun elevation in the sky is not quite what I desire, and the weather is not cold any more like it was in those "lovely" winter mornings before...

Beach Shed

Despite the harsh sun here, I've used Fluorescent WB here to reduce (somehow) the sun's flare. Amazingly, it kind of gave out (with HDR tone-mapping of course) some sense of a night scene. I took several shots for this scene from different angles but I guess this one was the most appealing, and also after doing that, I remembered that I need some items into my 3D collection, so I went for it as well. This time I didn't use the fisheye lens, as I wanted to concentrate on the structure of the so-called "shed" here. It is the main subject that interested me in the first place for such 3D play-around. Fisheye also proves problematic for some structures as will be shown later...

 Beach Shed (3D)

It was one of my interests really to make 3D images (anaglyph) with fisheye lenses, and even I'm thinking of expanding this ambition to do it with panoramas, but it's early to talk about that for some reasons. I believe in case of a fisheye 3D image, the aim must be a a landscape or a wide area in the first place and not one specific structure (and I believe this is natural and obvious because of the nature of a fisheye lens). Now, what happens sometimes is that the structure itself, doesn't help at all to be a good 3D under a fisheye lens. This makes me a bit picky with when to use a fisheye lens. In the following example, it's my work place in 3D trial, but the problems occur with the pillars. The nature of the fisheye lens, to bend the scene on the edges, makes the difference between the left and right portions (i.e. the left and right images) at extreme on the edges while minimum in the center (that is if we were focusing on the center like I did here)...

 Work Place (3D)

Maybe the only thing, in my eyes, that did really pop-up as a 3D object was the bushes or trees behind the cars (that silver one on the left is mine by the way :) ). There is a lot of "ghosting" in this image specially at the edges (like the top of the pillars or the top of the building on the right side). Ghosting here is not like ghosting in HDR processing. In HDR, usually, we say "ghosting" about some phenomena that causes some blurring in the final HDR slide when combined from original bracketed images because of some moving object in the scene which the software that combines these bracketed images, in order to minimize the differences between the images before merging into HDR, tries to eliminate and replace the pixels, and the end result is some blur or a light shadow of some object. In 3D images, Ghosting means the fact that the red and blue (or Cyan or Green) portions in the image itself are so wide that the eye of the viewer can't combine them anymore to form one image in the spot. Ghosting in 3D images is somehow normal and like there is no really perfect 3D image (to some extent) but there are limits I believe to really settle down with such defections. Sometimes the ghosting effect can overwhelm the whole image making it meaningless! I have to admit though, my HDR tone-mapping for this image might have been a bit "over done".

Anyway I kept using my fisheye lens in the location that day (Wednesday) and focused on one of the trees. At this point I think I'm sort of made a mental point for myself on how to use a fisheye lens to do a 3D image...

Surreal Tree (3D)

I made this one here in Black and White to avoid the noise coming out from the shades of green and blue, and in fact, they say Black and White images make the best anaglyphs because there are no color confusions that might disturb the view. This sample in fact (with a previous one) made me almost sure that to use a fisheye lens for making a 3D image, your focus should be on the edges (left and right in case of landscape orientation or top and bottom in case of portrait orientation). This will leave of course the rest of the image and specially the opposite side of the focus point highly venerable for ghosting effects, but nevertheless, these ghosting are far away (relatively) from your focus point and maybe won't catch a glimpse at all!

3D Infinitum

Focusing on the lower center rock

Seems so much notes to keep in mind right now. However, with working a lot around this matter, it will eventually become like a second nature. More work needed here.

Now, to the matter of panorama in 3D. This is something I've been thinking about for some time but I didn't settle down with an opinion of my own and I just don't know how to achieve something like that! The main problem here is that when doing a proper panorama you actually use VR-heads to rotate the camera around the no-parallax point of the lens+camera combination (to avoid stitching errors resulting from parallax errors of course). Now, isn't 3D processing is generally made by overlapping 2 images with a tiny parallax error in between them? Because this is how our eyes work in the first place! 

Exercise: extend your arm in front of your face with your thumb up. Now, look with one eye for a moment, then close this eye and open the other. How does it feel? Isn't the background, sort of, moving? This is exactly the parallax error that happens in the camera and prevents the PC from stitching!

If I take a panorama in the old way before getting my VR-head, i.e. using a tripod alone, that means stitching errors and a bad stitch (and I already get bad points of stitching even when using VR-heads!), while the parallax error is somehow the main factor for achieving some good 3D image at some point (concentrating on a point and letting the other differ in portions of red and blue). The process here is quite complicated and maybe can be achieved only with using 2 cameras altogether at once and not only one, and these two cameras should be leveled horizontally in a perfect manner while pointing in opposite directions with difference in few degrees. For the time being, the only cheap solution I have in my mind is to overlap 2 layers of the same panorama and shifting one of them a little bit to the left or right and do the process of combining into a 3D. OR, as an option, is to lengthen the process of taking a panorama a bit and take the whole scene in one spot and then do it again after shifting the tripod itself few inches or centimeters (or whatever units).

I'm, myself, still not sure on how to exactly take two images for 3D processing (handheld): should I shift the camera itself to the left or right a bit, or should I rotate the camera some few degrees. Logically, seems rotating is the good solution, and again, this solution won't work with panorama processing because you are in fact rotating your camera already! Unless... you re-take the whole panorama not by shifting the tripod this time, but by starting from a different angle, few degrees away from the first starting point. So many ideas that I need to test!

I've took the chance to take some pictures for the moon, or what they called the "super moon" as it is the closest distance for the moon to Earth in the past 18 years! So they say, anyway. However, my main goal was actually some time-lapse movie for the moon moving along. Anyway, I did take the chance to do some bracketing for HDR slides and I think I did learn a lesson or two from this experiment...

The shoot was done by Tamron 70-300mm with its full zoom at 300mm. The short time lapse was done on the roof of my house with some breeze, and as it is well-known, with great zooming a little shake in the tripod is noticeable, and hence some images were a bit shaky but with minimizing the size of the frame they are barely visible. The shoot almost took around 30 to 45 minutes with a shot every 5 seconds, and the little clip was combined with 10 fps. Now, for the HDR trial. HDR here proved to be hard to be tone-mapped because of the noise level that occurs in the black areas around the moon. The idea I had in my mind was that to show more details of the moon's surface, then HDR is a normal choice, but I think it didn't really matter in this situation...

Normal (WB: fluorescent)

Tone-mapped HDR (with some artifacts)

I used the fluorescent White Balance here to reduce some of the white bright areas in this glowing moon and to help on pronouncing more of its details a bit. Lot of people like the normal version more than the HDR version and I don't blame them for that. I myself don't like the HDR moon very much, but yet, I do feel the need of more power in my zoom, and for this reason I'm thinking of getting one of those "focal length extenders" (probably one made by Vivitar) to extend the zooming power behind the current limits.

Right now I've began recording videos while driving (2 days now) in the early morning. Just trying to catch a nice moment or so, and that makes me stabilize the tripod in the car most of the time and remove it only when really need it. This thing now kind of keep scattering my tools, in the car and at home! Oh well... isn't it worthy?