Loud and Silent...

It was a week highlighted with anger and relief in the same time. Something weird, but well, not so weird when I look back at all my problems with the future engineers I've met in my college days. But anyway, after being shown on TV twice in a week almost, maybe some awkward people that I've dealt with this week would reconsider when they deal with me personally, or with the group in general.

Earlier this week, and during the Cultural Festival in Kuwait University, the group received some phone calls about a request to prepare for an expo. In the beginning I didn't realize what is it about or where. Later though, I've realized it would be in the faculty of engineering (i.e. college of engineering). It is a place, allow me to say, I despise.
I can make out a novel about this event and all the bad surprises I've met, but I'm going to follow up with some points to make writing this a bit easier:

• Failing to describe the location of the expo perfectly. In the beginning, it was a corridor, then suddenly they told me it's a hall, and then back to reality; it was a corridor. A corridor outdoors is a bad location and I would have said NO, but we were entwined that we had to do it anyway.
• The group's organizer invited one of those so-called organizers for this event to check our gallery in the cultural festival in Kuwait University for a whole three days of the festival and he didn't come to check if the photos are appropriate. He didn't bother himself to come and check. Amazingly he had the guts to lie even and to tell me that he made a contact with our organizer before 2 weeks!
• We were surprised to discover that the event would be just 4 hours and for one day only! Information about the time span was not exposed to the group's organizer as it seems, because he was surprised as I was!
• For such a small event in such small time span, I was so much bugged with phone calls and rush from their side (typical attitude for engineering students).
• Preparation time was changing from afternoon to night and back to afternoon time, and then finally I got a flood of phone calls to come and prepare (and urged to fulfill a promise and agreement as if my word for it was not enough).
• On preparation at night, a friend and I headed to the location and worked (with a bad tape) to fix the images, but before that the so-called organizer swept through the images on the ground as cheap prints. 
• He was begging for pictures of cityscape. Seems he thought that making such photos and printing them is as simple as building a house out of LEGOs. What surprises me is the childish tone used to beg. As we say in Kuwait: A beggar, and putting on conditions!
• I was aware that tapes used to hang the photos are not good enough, thus next morning I came as early as possible with a staple gun to work out on the photos and fix them on the stand by stapling the corner without puncturing the mat board itself. Also, I brought 2 of my framed panoramas with small stands, just to show good will and that we are still want to achieve something good in this event (since he was begging for urban imagery). Anyway, later in the day I had to look for someone to move the stands outside and when this was to be done, they almost crushed my Grand Mosque framed panorama and the stapled photos fell down like leaves in autumn.
• Despite my warnings the night before about the power of the wind in such a passage, yet the future-engineers claimed there is nothing to be afraid of since there are buildings and trees to lessen the power of the wind. The result? Prints flying over my head and on the ground while stands falling down with the slightest blow of wind. One them almost fell down on my head even!

The mess inside the show room after fixing the prints in the morning before moving them out.

 After all of this mess and even more, I got mad and I phoned our leader and he gave me the green card to withdraw and leave them without a photography section. When I left the place (heading home to keep the prints there away from the sun), I felt some RELIEF to end it that way after all the humiliation and the lousy work and arrangements.

After such events, I've started already to plan for some kind of a show in my own work place, the faculty of science - the faculty of engineering's neighbor. The primary negotiations seem promising and I went into the public relations office with one idea and I went out with two ideas or more. A new challenge now arose after the little meeting: creating art from environmental topics and concepts in a form of photography. Hopefully, we will be discussing the matter with the group and see what can be done.

Silent Night:

It was such a quiet (and long) night. Woke up around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday's night, and it was such a long sleep (from 4 p.m.) which I thought it would be simply, a nap. Apparently, my body was so exhausted. As it stroke 3:00 a.m. Friday, the blood was pumping urging to go out in such a night. Tranquil as it may seem, and filled with eerie atmosphere as well.

Himmelsweg
Rokinon 8mm, f/22,
121 sec, ISO 100.

My target that night was the usual gazebo on the seaside - around 10 minutes driving (with traffic lights) from home. This is when the road is quiet of course.
One thing that was absent from my own chain of thought back then: the light pillars. I was heading there in hope of doing long exposures because this is something I was planning to do for a long time now, but the pillars screwed my plans for real! What to do now?
My only solution to this situation was to use the Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, as it allows me to approach the subject up real close. So, I've simply went to the gazebo and stood between it and the light pillars. The problem? I can't use any filters. Thus, I had to work out my exposure depending on the readings taken from the gazebo and from there I would decided on the total exposure time (with very small apertures). Another problem that proved to be prevalent later is the distortion which was hard to fix with a suitable outlook to the whole scene - at the end I had to leave images like Himmelsweg and the others without much distortion fixation.

Geistersnacht
Rokinon 8mm, f/22(?), ISO 100
HDR

Working in the almost complete darkness (while stray cats were chewing on my backpack!), I settled and started to do many exposures with different settings and positions. To my surprise at home though, I've realized that I've created almost an HDR out of long exposures! First, however, I had to work with one exposure which resulted in Himmelsweg.  While working on Himmelsweg and trying to fix the exposure and the WB, I've noticed that with Tungsten WB the body of the gazebo would turn green (because it was slightly yellow from the light pillars). Furthermore, when I've merged 5 exposures (90, 120, 130, 663 seconds) to make the HDR image, and then tone-mapped it, the greenish glow of the gazebo was really pronounced. The funny thing is, I'm not sure that all exposures were done at f/22! I remember changing from f/16 to f/22, but... when? This lens is completely manual and nothing is recorded in the EXIF!
Tone-mapping Geistersnacht was followed with some Photoshop work to add a glow or haze and to add contrast and dodge and burn. The original HDR file, however, was saved before tone-mapping to correct for the yellow tint of the gazebo and to try to retain its gray look.

Träumesnacht
Rokinon 8mm, f/22 (?), ISO 100
HDR

There is one old trick to counteract the effect of a color cast by using a Photo Filter adjustment layer. However, you can also use the Color Balance adjustment layer to fix color casts but this might not be so flexible and not so direct, besides that it won't work in HDR (32bit) mode! I was trying to fix the greenish-yellow cast of the gazebo and yield more naturally gray. However, there is another problem waiting for me when using Photo Filter adjustment layer.
The method of using Photo Filter to balance some cast depends majorly on reversing the sign of the a and b in the Lab panel; meaning: if a is minus we change to plus and vice versa, and the same for channel b (and channel L is untouched). However, in 32bit mode, i.e. when working in HDR environment in Photoshop, the Lab is not present, but only the RGB panels (with floating numbers) and HSL panels.
At this moment, I was stuck a bit but some idea about the color of circles made my life easier and I was able to counteract the effect of yellow.

Circle of Colors

As you can see, from the circle of colors, there is an opposite color for each side (or each color). This circle of colors is the concept for the Hue command in today's programs and image editing software base, and that means supposedly that I can cancel each two colors together and neutralize them by adding them together. This is exactly what I used here: click with the eyedropper on the gazebo (under Photo Filter), and change the Hue by adding +180 or subtracting -180; this way you are moving to the opposite side of the circle! It was as I expected, and the result was as in Träumesnacht, where the gazebo was neutralized and the sky was tinted blue because of the neutralization process (and we have a layer mask to control the areas of the effect, but I didn't use it here).

The Hue Fix

This is a fast guide, which inspired me in fact to write a new tutorial as soon as possible for the group to enhance their photo-processing. I will try to explain here with few screen shots, and of course you can click each image to view the full resolution.

The original section from the HDR slide with green overcast.

With Photo Filter adjustment layer, we can choose a type of filter from the menu, or we can click the other option for optional color. We click the second option and a palette is open and now with the eyedropper I click somewhere on the green portion of the image (or any other areas I want to balance). Notice the Hue value is 106^o. Make sure before using the eyedropper that the Layer Mask of the adjustment layer is NOT selected.

We add 180 to the Hue value: 106+180 = 286. We simply put this value down in the Hue space. The result is a magenta color. Simply click OK then. The effect is still not so obvious.

Back to the original Photo Filter dialog box after clicking OK. Here, we increase the Density to 100% to prevail the effect more. Notice how the steps turned balanced and almost with no tint. Remember all this work is done under HDR mode without tone-mapping.

 After the last exposure, I've decided to move in a hurry and get back to my car as the rain started to drop down slowly. Once I've reached the car it started to hammer down faster and faster! Silent night, and a rainy one. Perfect, but with only one thing missing; someone...

Silent Morning:

After finishing with the Silent Night above, I was already excited to have another go the night after, that is Friday/Saturday night. Unfortunately for me, my afternoon nap didn't go well and I've ended up sleeping on and off at late night.

Über die Steinen
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @18mm,
f/14, 60sec, ISO 100.

However, I pulled myself together by early morning time and tried to reach my favorite spot on the beach (near McDonald's) before the sunrise, but the traffic lights delayed me enough to brighten the sky. Well, I'm there already and didn't want to miss a thing. There were some heavy clouds above my head, and some are scattered in the horizon and I thought it is a good chance to start with some long exposure using NDs. The problem here is, to include more details and foreground, I have to use the 18-55mm EF-S which I hate the most - the sharpness of such lens is not reliable and needless to talk about the shaky situation when using a polarizer or NDs on this lens of the shaky focusing-ring.
After some trials and fixing 7 stops of ND on the lens, and after some planning and framing steps, I think I've came to the proper image (which is not on Explored section of Flickr!), Über die Steinen. Originally the image was a full 3:2 frame, and uploaded to some websites that way, but then decided to make it a square to remove an excessive unused space on the right. Of course, at such morning time my favorite WB setting would be the Fluorescent WB, but it didn't make up much difference since the image was harshly tinted with magenta because of the excessive use of ND filters (3+3+1). Even though I've used the White Balance Shift control in the camera itself to bias the White Balance to the green side (opposing the magenta) but It made out a little experimentation in the RAW editor to fix the white balance and retain the colors back. Apparently, controlling the bias has no effect on the NDs tint. GUYS, ALWAYS SHOOT IN RAW!

Ciudad en Rojo
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @35mm, f/8, 3.2sec, ISO 100.

As the time proceeded, the sun kept going on above the horizon, and I thought "why not try some IR?" After all, I'm trying to increase the exposure time to record the movement of the clouds and the IR filter is a good light stopper, but of a special kind!
After some time fluctuating between landscape and portrait orientations, I've settled with a landscape orientation. The IR and the polarizer were fixed on top of each other, a move that I've done before to add more stops (but gives me hard time unscrewing the filters apart later on). I was surprised though; the exposure took only 3.2 seconds at ISO 100! Then I've realized that I'm shooting a bit facing the sun, and the shutter speed would be have been as fast as 8000^-1sec probably if the filters were not used!
On the technical side now, when I started to process Ciudad en Rojo I was going with the typical IR workflow that I've developed for myself. However, since I've realized that Canon's DPP is far better than Photoshop for fixing the white balance of such images, it was natural to start the workflow with this software. The results were not so convincing, so, I switched back to Photoshop and started to edit the RAW file from there. After a glance into the image, and cropping little bit, I did really like the redness of the atmosphere (with a somehow annoying sun). Thus, all what was done is merely a reduction in the Red saturation, and the rest was a regular work of enhancements: dodge and burn, contrast and noise cleaning with the addition of sharpness.
What I really liked about Ciudad de Rojo is the reflections on the sea surface that I didn't notice clearly on location! I'm not sure if it got clearer because of the polarizer and/or the IR filter (a polarizer is more of a candidate of course), but it was a shot of luck indeed (and would have been better with a longer exposure to soften the water surface). While processing the image I had to burn a bit to emphasize the reflections and to my surprise as well, the reflections showed a longer extension downward more than I thought!

Sonne nach Dunkelheit
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @21mm,
f/8, ISO 100, HDR.

Then there was a trial just before leaving (because the rain started to drop down) and it was still with IR filter. This time, the work was bracketed initially to see which exposure RAW would be best to work with (I'm still not used to judging the exposure of IR images on LCD or even histogram). Lately, however, I've realized that I could do with some HDR after fixing the white balance in DPP and convert the files to 16bit TIFF files. Mixing the original RAWs with such hard red tint is not really a good idea for tone-mapping later. However, after fixing the WB in DPP, there were some blue tints within a majorly black and white image (or slightly sepia tinted black and white) and all the resulting TIFFs were merged into one HDR file which was tone-mapped.
The first thing to do then in the processing sequence was to swap the Red and Blue channels (and hence all the blue streaks were turned reddish or yellowish).

 As for now, my queue of books is a bit hovering and my reading pace is slowed down. Getting busy with the group does leave me exhausted most of the time at night time and I can hardly open my eyes and continue reading anything. On the other hand, I have to keep being busy a bit even at home to get further news about contests (international ones specifically). Being busy seems to be an amendment for some issues in my life; as Thomas Edison once said "as a cure for worries, work is better than beer"...
Now, it is time to look for those damn TV tapes!

Geistesblitz!

Why would I even think of doing some exercises while I do have a week such as this in my life. Headaches, exhaustion, frustrations, and arguments ending with fights. I think I'm starting a phase of my life when I just have to toss aside every person leeching on my back for nothing in return, not even some moral support. I do understand such a process would hinder me with loneliness, but what's the difference? Wasn't I so most of my life?
Anyway, moving forward with events from this week. Not much photography in this week because of the hectic pace of events and organizational work that I got myself involved in - beside, trying to work more seriously with my new conlang, Geltani. 

Geltani:
Making some time now to work more on the Geltani project. Mainly this time is during my day work time. So far, with the Geltani conlang, there are three main challenges:

1. Since Geltani is logographic, it is not so clear to me whether should I restrict each single word to be represented in one or two logograms (or even more). There are words that would be too long to be fit into one, but also there are long words that, according to the strokes structure, that can be fit into one logo. On what basis, if I should not restrict this process, should I confine the word into one or two logos? More trial and error probably is the only solution I've got so far.
2. Since Geltani is heavily based on Arabic (language and script) there must be some ambiguity specially when it comes to some verbs and nouns that in Arabic are similar in letters but different in vowels (remember that Arabic, as a script, is an Abjadic system). For the time being, I'm investigating the idea of deriving verbs from the nouns rather than depending solely on the written letters or the roots in Arabic. Only practical work would prove this to me and so far so good!
3. The main vocalic representations for the strokes and the combination for the duos. The chart for this system is still not complete and I didn't check it lately because of my activities with the group that make me busy most of the time after working time.

Scribbles as I try to organize
my thoughts for Geltani

Aside from all of these main three, there is of course the construction of the grammar and the sentence order (which seems, to me, it would be VOS- or VSO-like), and a syllabary system to write foreign names into Geltani. Let's not forget a numerical system as well! I've created a system for pluralizing nouns, but I'm not quite sure of its effectiveness; thus I need to check more on this aspect.
Now, would Geltani be an advanced language like Ayvarith? In other words, would I be able to put on some effort to create more features for Geltani like I did for Ayvrith? I'm not so sure of that, but I see a future of inventiveness in the process, as for sure I won't depict exact Arabic words for lot of concepts (e.g. geometrical shapes that depend on number of lines). Specially that the dictionary would be completely pictorial and would need a lot of effort in scanning images (from handwritten samples) with specific arrangements and a significant space if I want to create a website for it, while in the meantime, I'm struggling for restoring and creating a website for Ayvarith - a project that stopped long ago in favor for poetry and photography.

Geistesblitz:
Geistesblitz. Brainstorming. This is what I've been trying or thinking of doing lately and what a coincidence that all came to me at once with a project.
It began when the group management offered a workshop for coffee photography - a substitute for the monthly contest of December which showed a weak level of participation from the members of the group (and I was barely able to make one shot at least). In this workshop, we first had a meeting and a little discussion on how to work and consider the topic - and that, for me, resembled the seeds for brainstorming ideas but in a more studied and concrete manner. We discussed some aspects (smell, taste, energy... etc) of coffee together and then slowly developed some ideas and scenes from each aspect. That was the guide line and each photographer has to work out his or her own ideas.

A History of Coffee - 2
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @40mm,
f/5.0, 1000^-1sec, ISO 100.

For this purpose I've decided to get a separate note and keep it with me just in case I get more ideas for anything else to photograph and plan my photography as much as possible.
The first trial now doing the coffee photography (for a local coffee brand) was to be done under the slogan A History of Coffee, or We Introduce You to A History of Coffee. One element I've discovered in myself is that I find it easy to work with slogans rather than work in somehow an abstract manner recording words related to each other. A slogan gives the ignition start up to my imagination on what to implement. This said, it doesn't mean I should drop down the abstract, since from these a slogan comes usually!
When I first noted Cultural as one of the aspects of coffee, I noted down a linking word: History, and from this simple word, the slogan A History of Coffee came in. For this reason, I've printed out an image (taken out from Google) of an old map to use as a background. However, there were many problems:

• The printed map was on size A2 (and I was planning on A3, i.e. smaller), which proved to be small still for such settings. Probably A1 size (double A2) would be far better.
• I was planning on using my 50mm lens for its f/1.4 which gives me a greater control for depth. This was essential to drop the map in the background out of focus little bit. However, 50mm proved really hectic and hard to work with in such close distance - I had to change to 18-55mm and zoom in and out without moving the cumbersome tripod. The problem with this (old) lens is, I don't trust its sharpness nor its depth.
• I've made some idea about the positioning of the speedlites around the scene, but practically, my ideas were wrong and I came out baffled and trying out different positions for the main (key) light, while angling the top speedlite in different angles. With trial and error I've got finally 3 workable versions (to some extent). 
• Grouping the subject itself and making out the scene was and is and will be, one of the hardest points to conquer. My mind can't make a regular pattern out of randomness.
• The amount of coffee beams given to me were so little and I couldn't fill the scene with those and I've planned originally. Thus, I had to go around it.

History of Coffee - 1
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @31mm, f/4.5, 1000^-1sec, ISO 100.

Now after this scene, I've planned for another idea (at the time of typing this) under the aspect of Energy and/or Relaxation which will involve my brother if possible. The problem is, I can't see him during the day! The plan required a bit of Photoshop work (of the design type a bit) to make an impression of my brother flying in the air freely. Probably for this experiment, it is fine to use 18-55mm or any other tele-lens, since I plan to keep the background plain - thus, no need for a shallow depth and isolation of subject or foreground.

On a different note, I've discovered from some reading online, that the Digital Photo Professional software that comes up with Canon cameras is better suited for fixing the white balance of infrared images more than Photoshop is! I think, in the future, this means going around with a different workflow when planning for infrared photography. I'm investigating the possibilities of converting my old Canon 350D camera and enable it to capture more IR radiation, but I'm not quite optimistic of the possibilities of doing this here!

Strahlungen!
Last Friday, and out of despair from the conditions at home (as usual) I've decided to do a little venture with long exposure, and I do consider it a little adventure as well. You'll know why in a moment.

Strahlungsaufbau
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @27mm,
f/11, 30sec

Not far away from home (around 10 minutes walking) lies a new junction and a tunnel (with a bridge on top). I had planned to take some long exposure from that place long time ago but I didn't come to apply this idea till last week! I asked my brother to drop me near by and I'll take a walk into a spot on top of the tunnel over the bridge. The thing is, according to my previous experiences with cops, I was expecting some hassles of that kind, but gracefully, nothing happened.
Using a fisheye to have a wider view was out of question. Fitting the gel ND filters at the back of the Canon 15mm fisheye lens is not advisable in such narrow work space. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to use the 50mm because I need a wide view of some sort. Thus, I had to use the lens that I try to avoid the most: 18-55mm.
I picked the moment carefully - the twilight hour and I had to work fast and almost strained a muscle trying to force my way through the path and dealing with my tools. The white balance here was set to my favorite Fluorescent WB as I believe it is the perfect time (beside sunrise hour) to use such WB. Some adjustments were done later of course. The exposure in the beginning was enough to make light trails on the road but not quite enough to make a cloud movement thus I had to resort to ND filters.
You might be asking why I didn't simply increase the f-number (smaller aperture) to increase the exposure time. the reason for this is that I didn't want to make a sparkling star around light poles. As I was checking the depth and I've realized the even at f/8 a small sparkle will be formed still, I've decided to increase the depth to f/11 maximum as I was afraid to go down and lose some details in the far horizon. My focusing point was the first light pole (closer to camera) which was in fact the second pole - The first pole was cropped in Strahlungsaufbau.

Thought: As I was taking several shots and increasing the time, I've used 4 stops of ND (1 + 3 stops) which I've fixed on top of each other but not coinciding on top of each other perfectly. The final image then appeared to have some refractions and double lights from the light poles. This incident and mistake made me think of the usability of ND filters (not GND filters) to cover specific areas of the scene only to some degrees in order to achieve a coherent exposure all over the scene. Is this possible still? I had been thinking for some time to do a long exposure at night including portions of the city lights and the dark sky in a long exposure which would require me to suppress the city lights to some degree by fixing the ND filters to cover for the city lights only. Now, after this incident, I wonder if my ideas would be useful. I wouldn't know until I try, but I should expect failure as well and not get disappointed. Seems using ND filters on portions of the image is in no way a substitute for a real GND filter.

Tick Tock!

The time is ticking so fast before the Kuniv fair on the 27^th and I'm afraid that at this time, we are lagging behind. Nothing is prepared so far and I don't think there is enough time to print photos from members in the group. January had been such a pressure, and I would act on my own if I just know what are the procedures and requirements for such fair and expo. But I can't act alone.

Typing this before Thursday to be posted on Thursday, I have a plan to go on Al-Salmy, an area on the borders almost with Saudi Arabia with some friends to be working with star trails and maybe light painting as well. We didn't work out the details yet, but hopefully it will be a piece of cake.

One week is gone. Just can't wait for January to be over with and start a new (relaxed) schedule. The only bad thing here is, one month of Winter will be gone...

Infra Me, Infra You, Infraday...

Things are getting busier and busier! Not sure how long it will last but seems that January is a season for many events locally. The photography group seems to be chasing lot of butterflies in all directions, which makes me fear a bit for its well-being. However, I'm not forced to go to all of these events, but I do have my own share of load of things to do for the group already.
Kuwait University (Kuniv) presented a personal offer to me to represent myself with some of my photos in a special expo dedicated to the youth with the beginning of the second semester at January 27^th. However, I've informed the organizers that I'm a member in a group, and it is better to have a group of photography presenting itself rather than a single photographer; that will provide a high potential and provides a greater number of photos. On Tuesday we paid a visit, the group's leader, the chief organizer and myself, to the place and the leader seemed to like it and we are in already. What's left now is a burning engine work to filter and provide photos (and print) - and who knows, maybe add some digital media since there were some usable flat TV sets hanging.
The location is awesome in architecture and I'm really considering doing a panorama inside when possible.

Infra:
It had been almost 2 weeks since I got my infrared filter and I'm still doing experiments on this venture. The experiments done so far were mostly... silly, if I should say.

InfraCandle
Canon EF 50mm, f/1.4, 5sec, ISO 100.

One of the simplest trials was just to light a candle and try to snap it. My aim was generally to see the type of patterns, if any, that a flame might produce under infrared. The image was later converted to black and white and some adjustments followed. Probably a significant attitude for such images when converted to black and white is the abundant of the gray tone - and sometimes a fuzzy feeling to it related to the focusing shift when doing infrared photography (did you not notice a red dot on the focusing ring on your lens?).

InfraCoal
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/5.6, 30sec, ISO 100.

Long story short. When talking about infrared filters (with unconverted cameras), then we talk about tripods as well. One night after coming back home I've encountered the family gathering around a typical coal tray and grilling (or frying) chestnuts and hamburgers and sausages. Since it's hot, I've directly brought my camera and fixed the infrared filter and tried to capture something with it. The view is abstract of course and my aim was to try, and not to create art by any means.
You might be wondering why 100mm macro lens, well, simply put, this is to stay away from the coal and its heat and also to frame the coal only. I've tried the 50mm but I couldn't achieve the same framing, while it kept me close to the coal and its heat. After uploading the image, first thing was to settle the white balance to the completely red image. After doing some reading online (specially at www.infrared-photography.co.uk), I've started to formulate some workflow aspects for such type of photography. After the white balance is set (which sometimes doesn't change much) I've reduced the red saturation which left some areas as white while some as magenta or orange. Contrast and Vibrance were added slightly too.
In Photoshop I've tried to swap the channels (red and blue) to create a look that is similar to those colored infrared landscape shots, but here, with no sky or anything, the red was simply replaced with blue, and I didn't quite like the new look, so I kept the original as is.

Meanwhile on The Moon
HDR

The journey with my infrared filter continues when I tried to combine it with the polarizer and also do HDR on the beach one morning. Sometimes I would face hard time focusing so it is time to raise the ISO to max, focus and measure the exposure and push it back to ISO 100 and do the calculations, but in early morning hours when the sun did shine already it won't be much a hassle after all - yet it is considered a long exposure of some sort.
When processing Meanwhile on The Moon, I've tried different approaches to the RAW files taken in brackets to produce the HDR:

• Merge the originals into HDR and tone-map them then.
• Convert each RAW file in a similar way as it was done to InfraCoal, and save the files into TIFF, and merge into HDR from there.

Seems, however, that the second approach is more feasible and more pleasant. I have to do more research on this aspect. That session from the beach still has some (normal) images that I didn't process yet - I've just remembered that while typing these words!

Blind Me!
In some effort to create some new images, specifically as a homework for the Philosophy of Light workshop, I've tried to create something; anything.
Many ideas raced through my mind and eventually settled down with an idea of a light bulb and a water drop. I had my plan for the water drop specifically to make it hanging in the air but I ran out of possible capabilities to make it so, and hence I had to drop it for the time being.

InfraLight
Canon EF 50mm, f/11, 0.5sec, ISO 100.

Since I'm at it, I've decided to take a picture of the light bulb with infrared filter. It was not much of a design or anything, and when I tried my 580EX II speedlite, it didn't quite effect the lighting drastically. I had to work a bit with dodge and burn in Photoshop to emphasize the edges of the light bulb. Significantly though, the infrared filter reduced the halo around the filament of the tungsten bulb without the need to use a high-shutter speed, as it was done later in Lighting Through.

Lighting Through
Canon EF 50mm, f/3.5, 8000^-1sec, ISO 100.

After playing around with the infrared filter, it was time to get serious a bit and start my speedlites: 580EX II and 430EX II. In the beginning I've tried to use the manual mode, but I've realized it is hard to control it in such conditions, specially with such high speed. So, directly, I've moved to E-TTL. mode. The 580EX II being master and 430EX II being wireless slave, I've tried to change the power of the speedlite by controlling the aperture, after finding that a slight change in the shutter speed had some catastrophic effects from both, the speedlites and the bulb itself. The location of the 580EX II was fixed on the right side of the bulb while 430EX II was carried by hand and always changed while taking many shots and trying the polarizers to reduce the flare on the glass. In the final result, Lighting Through, I've cloned out some flare as well. Using the polarizer filter with flashes is hard specially that it does not have an indicator of the direction of polarizing, while using the polarizing sheet on the flash head while not on-camera, it is even harder to judge to what angle the polarizer on the lens should be. Anyway, the final image was emphasized in contrast in Photoshop by setting the Black Point in Curves layer to eliminate some light noise around the bulb (and had to use layer masks to confine its effects). Dodge and Burn were used again to emphasize the edges of the bulb. In this final image, the 430EX II was on top (and close) to the bulb and tilted little bit toward the camera's direction (to avoid casting light on the black board as much as possible).

Lingua Aevarica:
In the meantime, I'm trying so hard to organize my time but to no use. I think I should probably finished reading some of those books before I get my time re-ordered in order to work more with Geltani and Ayvarith. As for Geltani, it is a not-yet-finished business with its syllables and some basic grammatical structure of the language and its script, while for Ayvarith, there is always the matter of establishing a website capable of holding my media files (images and sounds) and also working further on creating something new out of it. My love for fantasy and conlangs is almost a match for my love for my camera and photography - it is the first thing why I've created this blog in the first place after all! It is just sad that I can't do much about it for the time being. I have to make some plan, but how, I'm not quite sure. I think photography did suck me in greatly that I've paralyzed other areas of my life, like the conlangs and the poetry. Now imagine how my life would be if I was married already. Simply, dead.