Trending…

Finally! Something to call "weather" in this spot on planet Earth! Temperatures are going down and the breeze is chilling down. It is such weather that make me forget juuuust a bit about traveling and sit around enjoying my cup of green tea or coffee (and if there is rain, that would be better). We had some rains last week and, as usual, some areas had faced hard times despite the occasional rainfall in this spot of the planet. This said, I need to attend to the window in my room before another catastrophe happens like last year when rain water seeped through some cracks made a lake inside my room! Ugh... if I can just control my mood swings…

The Trend

Canister for shooting Argentum.

Well, my activity with the camera is minimum for the time being but I managed to test some aspects. The bulk of my work was posted 2 weeks ago as I was trying the "rim lighting" methods. Moreover, I'm trying further modifications on the canister which I use to cover up the subject to be photographed. So far, it seems that canisters with "slits" are better suited for the task of shooting non-flat subjects like I did with Argentum before already.

The canister in which I've shot Argentum is relatively small in diameter, so probably I need to make another one with a larger diameter (when need arises). Just recently, I've made another canister with round holes instead of slits (using usual drill bits). My current simple experimenting with this canister did not yield good results, and this is probably related to the shape of the holes. Thus, I can say with some confidence that slits or flat openings are better suited for the task of "rimming" (well, I coined that, don't know if there is any real term for this kind of photography!).

Beside working on Argentum with somewhat an innovated canister, I've worked on a little project on the side as well with a theme of security. I called the series Keyz. To make the series, I've shot individual keys, and to make sure that I get some realistic look, I've shot 4 different keys (in fact 5 originally but had to cancel one), as this will provide different serration (engraved side) for each key, and then combined the keys in Photoshop in the shape of a cross and then in a square formation. Originally, there were two versions in B&W; A cross and a square. However, later I got a spark of an idea that I would make them also in golden color, culminating with 4 images in total. Surprisingly, they were accepted quickly on Canstockphoto and Dreamstime! It seems that the security theme never dies out in time and always in demand! Hmm, that makes up for so much cliché I presume. As much as I want to study the trends and work along with it for the stock, as much as I feel empty and thoughtless when it comes to shooting a specific trend theme or subject (and not shooting models makes it worse I think). Again, mood swings and flying ideas like sparks of fire takeover the process of my mental attitude!

Another composite was made by shooting the metallic surface of a bowl (the other half of Argentum). This time, I'm using the slit-canister again like in Argentum, but the difference here is that the bowl is concave and I was trying to shoot from upper slits to let the light somewhat shine into the bowl. I could have turned the bowl over but I really wanted to see how things turn out with a concave object like this. The result was so-so but the final result, Complexionem, was reached by extensive editing in Photoshop. Without going into the details, I had to in fact "patch" up the image and replicate it and then try to hide the seam lines as much as possible and finally convert the image into an outline (or a sketch if you will). As the title signifies above, this is just the original one, and several ones were made into various colors and they are already available on, again, Dreamstime and Mostphotos. Those uploaded to Mostphotos, though, are larger in size (original size) as those in Dreamstime were minimized a bit to fit into the rules of the website for maximum size allowed. The colors range from Ruby Red to Argentinian Blue, going through Roman Silver and, my favorite, Gold. Hope those arbitrary and somewhat random art make up for a good pattern and texture and gain some stance to be sold!

Rolling Back

In my effort to focus closely and more on the stocks that I have neglected a bit when I was a member in the photography group, I'm trying not to re-check and re-edit some of these photos, and eventually re-discover some old neglected shots or go around some of these images which I deemed unsuitable before. This is normal, since what was suitable for the activities of the group (the expos and contests) is seldom of the stock variety.

Shining Xewkija
Exclusive to Dreamstime

I'm putting more focus on my photos from Malta, as I'm planning to put some of them exclusive to Dreamstime, under the category of travel and tourism. However, not all can be submitted, such as Planeta Lacuna, which I've re-discovered, so to say. This panorama was done inside Dar ta' Żeppi in Qala (Gozo) near the pool. I've done this panorama in flat (normal, equirectangular) format, as well as in Mercator format vertically, but to my surprise, I realized that I didn't make a planet out of this panorama (probably for some difficulties with the nadir point). Anyhow, I prepared a smaller version and sent it to the owner of the B&B and uploaded one to my Flickr. I can't submit this to the stocks because it requires a property release. Most probably I would be uploading to Mostphotos. As I'm uploading some exclusive images from Malta to Dreamstime, I'm trying to make Mostphotos as my base for panoramas, specially those surreal ones, since it does not strict the image size as most stock agencies do (I've uploaded some which exceed 100MB in size even!). On the other hand, photos from Ireland can be spread, probably, across various stocks. Unfortunately, some stock agencies, like Canstockphoto, removed their "exclusive" options. That makes Dreamstime, for me, the only target for exclusive images when I need to upload them (as I feel right however!). Let's just hope that my campaigns on Twitter to get more exposure will pay off soon... or later at least!

During this work of re-discovering my previous images (since I didn't travel in like 3 years now!), I'm also focusing on possibilities that I didn't pay attention to before, for making out some nice or acceptable 3D anaglyphs, as the Maltese home above. I did already upload some of these 3D anaglyphs to my stock on Dreamstime and Mostphotos (and few on 123RF), but it's a No-No to Canstockphoto. However, the anaglyph above is not to be uploaded, again, because it lacks the property release. Many of these anaglyphs, like the Maltese home above, were not planned to be merged into a 3D anaglyph, thus some of them can be a struggle to be working with and fit. Nevertheless, it pays off well!

Finale

I think I've posted in the previous post that I was working on writing a new poem. I was suffering from a blockade and words didn't come easily, even though feelings were there; Hovering. Finally, I did produce a piece, which I've called Rejected:

Rejected

Season, as per season, changing along,
then to number one goes the frozen heart.
A circle since the birth and never gone wrong,
carrying on the pain, like a form of art.
Encircling circle.
A daily Hurdle.
Then to the beginning, all had to start.

A last standing in the field of all time,
withered by the struggles, the ups and downs.
Innocent to be is the only crime,
A confused blind and poor, crowded by the sounds.
Innocent thug.
Urging a hug.
Dead, yet keeping the shoot on battling grounds.

Rosy, were the dreams dreamt on the summit,
but no rainbow shone nor the rain did fall.
Waiting for fate's mercy like a puppet,
and even beliefs dismissed the sacred call.
Fateful doom.
A weeping bloom.
And the rosy dreams are born to be small.

Rejected, this is all the offers to be,
what in the power that could have been done?
Then after, Death would be the only sea,
to swim in, calmly, away from the sun.
Dead, silently.
Joyful quietly.
Only then, the life of Life will be won.

One of the first problems that I've faced to link my thoughts together was what rhyme scheme to use. After all, I've decided (or rather felt) to use (ABABCCB) with a stable syllable-count for every verse as (10,10,10,10,4,4,10). Doing a bit of research, I've found that such rhyming scheme was already in use and probably called The Swinburne, but with more restrictions on the length of the lines and rhymes. So, maybe I can call my work here as Free Swinburne? Anyway, another question was raised in my mind here, as I read my own work after submission and posting: Where do I go with all of this? What is the chronological connection or logical connection between the verses? In a self-critique attitude, I think Rejected lacks such connection and it might as well be just a dumpster for my thoughts. The next question then arises: How am I supposed to organize my feelings and upon which basis? Trivial as it sounds, I'm sure there is some way to do this and if done correctly, the poems would be more concrete and strong, I believe.
Away from poetry now, I'm trying to take life on my own pace. My body is apparently growing old with some bones and muscles not functioning as they used to be, but well, we all grow old. Let's just hope this won't stop me from doing what I love to do. I'm growing accustomed to be living the life of an estranged person; No connection to anything, and almost no emotions. Where to does this lead me? I don't know, but one thing for sure: I'm tired. 

Tessella…

Happy (belated) new year. I really needed this holiday. Spent it mostly sleeping (on and off though) and almost doing nothing except of some trials. I was supposed to work with my camera for some project assigned to me, but I couldn't help it. I needed to sleep as much as I can.
On my list there were games, more games, and tessellations. Anyway, I didn't want to play all the games at once, so I kept some for the coming weekend!

Tessella

I've been following with the steps of Escher so far and trying to get as much as I can of inspiration out of his works. That, again, lead me to delve a bit into mathematics and geometry. After reading and even watching videos about tessellations, I've realized that I can easy do it with shapes (specifically random ones), but my case here is special: I'm working panoramas which I need to make seamless and flowing with fluency. For this, the typical methods for creating tessellations do not exactly work here.

Failed attempt with Kylemore Abbey panorama (2014).

A perfect tessellation is one that contain no gaps, supposedly, unlike the example above. I've spent some time strolling through many mathematics and videos trying to find some ground to start from, and somehow something appeared to me and I've finally made my first successful tessellation.

Tessellamore

If you go through Tessellamore (click to enlarge), you would find that sides and edges are flowing with each other as one image complete the other making one continuous pattern. This is one composition found, and I'm still experimenting with more composition or shapes for panorama slices to make other patterns, if possible! If nothing works, I might use the same method to merge other panoramas done before, specifically those from Oman and Malta.
Beside tessellation, there is also the matter of Impossible Objects and 4D Cubes or Hypercubes (a.k.a. Tesseracts). They are somewhat on the side for the time being as I look deeper into the matter of panorama tessellations, but nevertheless, I encounter them now and then (almost in the same manner and shapes). However, there was one impossible object which I intentionally worked out.

Impossible in Progress

The cube is made of slices from a panorama for the inside of Jabreen fort and castle (Bahla, Oman). There are some ideas to apply more tricks of that sort later on, specially forming a stack of cubes or sliding cube faces through each other. All that should be on hold for now!

Finale

So much had been going on specifically just before the year's end, and it is going on still. Winter is not as quiet as I hoped for it to be, but well, at least I'm not melting in Summer's stinking weather. But my urge for naps and sleep is growing by day.
My schedule is pressed in time right now. Workshops, meetings, discussions, and more work with my camera supposedly. What bothers me the most is the little daily stuff that just blacken my heart and sweep me away from really working on my own ideas and projects. Going to work everyday can be considered one of those. I'll just keep wishing for some quiet times in the coming weeks, and pamper myself with some classics…

Mentis Abstractivus...

Partially busy week. And I mean busy by sense of being busy at work itself. I'm conducting an experiment with my director (boss) in the field of gamma rays detection. Despite the simplicity of the experiment, but it takes so much time (around one hour and a half in good conditions). The first phase, for now, is supposed to take around 9 days, and I've done 5 already so far. Beside other things to do, I barely have some time to keep on reading. However, I'm almost finished with these books.

Fasting for more than two weeks now leaves my time restricted. I can't resist the afternoon's nap until the time to break the fast, and doing some work-out in hope to increase the vitality of my body, all of that leaves no time for some of my projects. Yes, my Ayvarith recording is still on hold as I don't know what are the problems I'm facing. I think I do have some mic-phobia too!
In a desperate move, however, I've been taking my camera with me to work for some days, and also tried to do some work with my sound trigger (that I've tried only once). Found myself, or should I say my brain, works more into the shapes. I really don't know if this is the effect of reading after George Barr or simply it is what you can find in modern architecture, but simply this is the catch of my eyes. I have to say I'm sort of glad for some of the catch.
One of those catches, again, got affective if I can say simply by cropping some portions of it. I said before that one of the illusions to make is to crop some areas that send the message of spatial recognition to the mind

Geometrical Play I

Geometrical Play II

Yes. The two images are similar with one little difference; one of them is turned upside down. Maybe you could tell right away which is which, but I can't judge myself because I'm the photographer and I already know which is which and it is imprinted in my mind now. However, one or two people did already miss it up and guessed wrong! I feel happy for the confusion here!

Geometrical Play (original scene)

As you can see here, I've just cropped the ground. I think that point is what translates the image to the viewer and missing it up would confuse the viewer. Anyway, this is my aim in the beginning! Creating some illusion, but I'm not sure how affective it is as I said before, because I'm the photographer here. My only testimonial is taken from two viewers only. To add a bit to the confusion, I've numbered the turned upside version with "I" and the correct one as "II". Minds sometimes adhere to the order of mathematics and take for granted that "I" must be the original, I guess?

On the other hand as well, one of the abstracts that caught my eyes is the shadows play; specifically by noon time. The beauty of such shadows is simply, lines. Maybe there are no curves, but there are lines in a zigzag shape. I have to say though, it was not so easy to catch these lines from a proper angle, adding to that, without a tripod.

Linear Shadows

The shadows here are taken with low angle (I had to go downstairs some steps and lower my back). After all, there is some cropping of course and a tilt. The tilt is aimed at making 2 horizontal lines in the middle of the image. Well, maybe I needed to do some skewing here. The image above is prepared from a single RAW. One of the things that I've had hard time with, is the White Balance (WB). This is not the first time anyway. Shooting in the sun is always problematic even if the camera is not directed to the sun's direction, as the WB can make the decision hard to make. I feel the image being dull because of the tiling's color, and making them blue (cold temperature) would interfere a bit with the shadows, so I decided to leave it at that point.
On another occasion though, I thought working with HDR would help me on making a better decision, but I was wrong, again. The problem gets even more complicated when tone-mapping the HDR and adjusting the color temperature from there.

Shadow Tilings (HDR)

Not only the WB was hard to make out here, but cropping was so as well, and the borders of the tilings were more pronounced in this angle. The cropping was a must here and not optional, as the space was narrow, and using a fisheye lens (or even my 18-55mm) would include portions of the stairs and the building. The zigzag lines also, somehow, corrupted the symmetry that I was working for. Maybe it is something to re-visit at another time.

My journey was still going on with my work place. Sometimes you just have to look and "think" instead of just looking. I work in this place 5 days a week, for more than 5 years now, and guess what? There are features that I've just "thought" about and decided to check what I can do with.

Looping Loop

The structure above is hung or welded above the ground, between the pillars and the wall (you could see the edges in the previous images). Merged with HDR, tried to add drama with colors by putting down the saturation for the highlights and putting up the saturation for the shadows (which are settled mainly in Reds). Pushing the Black level a bit to help with it but I think I didn't like it much. Crops existed here too and some perspective corrections as well. If it was in my ability to shoot this again, I would zoom in more and go up to its level and shoot, but I don't have this capability right now, as the structure is around 3 meters above the ground. Anyway, I do prefer the black and white version (and some people already liked it that way).

Looping Loop (BW)

Moving now to my second trial with my sound trigger. I have to say it wasn't successful as I wanted. The main failure here is that I couldn't make the flash shoot for one time only. Adjusting the sensitivity of the sound trigger didn't help either. The experiment was done with playing cards deck, but after all I got some shots that I did submit to some stock sites already.

To Gamble

No. I don't gamble. It's just a title here! The movement blur you see is caused by the several flash shots as the sound of the cards when they are shuffled keeps on triggering the circuit, and in a shutter speed of 15 seconds, lot of pictures taken in this trial were blown out. It was indeed a gamble in the dark, and guess I've lost it. I have to think of some way to limit the number of fires from the flash. There is, however, another idea for this sound trigger that still in the process of cooking yet in my mind.

Last night was a sleepless night. Literally. I really don't know how I'm typing this right now (Thursday) as I didn't sleep a bit all night and came to work (and worked in the lab for hours and then coming here to post something!). Anyway, despite the frustration, there was hope. A hope in an image I've totally forgot about (again!).

Visitors

The weird combination of factors in this image makes it special to me and to my surprise, just when I pulled down the Exposure slider in the RAW editor, all the details of the sky and the clouds started to appear and the scene turned silhouette. The sun was rising and the sky was blue, but yet, it looks more like a black and white. Not completely, but what I mean is, the saturation is low in the sky. The high ISO level of 12800 made me desperate about this image in the beginning. In the beginning means like, when I took it in the first time back in October 2010. With lowering the Exposure (and increasing the Recovery factor in the RAW editor) seems that the noise level (specially the chromatic noise) got reduced significantly. That does not mean completely vanish, not even by cleaning plugins like NeatImage, for example, but the good news here, it is a silhouette. You have no details in the subject's shape to worry about! so, you can go a bit of extreme with your cleaning tools!
The image reflects my mood indeed, without me planning it. All what I was doing back then was chasing some ravens or crows in the sky. Suddenly it touches your mood once you play with it for the sake of playing with it! This teaches me to always visit what I was desperate of before. Who knows what you can get out of these images that you might think they are useless snapshots. But the main factor here is, what's your mood is about?
Some friends commented already on it saying it looks like something from Hitchcock shows, and later reflecting on it, it does remind me of The Lost Crown and Jonathan Boakes! I think I will print this one and see how it is. I'm sure some websites did reject it already for the noise level still. Oh well...

It's weekend. Finally. Guess what? My friend is inviting me for dinner for some occasion he had. Well, the bad news is... I wish I didn't eat the whole week!!!