Cold…

The engine is non-stopping and steam is venting from every ventilation route possible. Well, this is what I'm trying to do. My stuff are scattered around the house and I feel so pressured with time, and yet I didn't achieve much. I was hoping that I would be over with the project RED soon, but this wasn't the case, despite the encouraging feedback to my images.

Cold Love (II)

My first trials with the project resulted in Cold Love series. I had one idea in my mind and many liked the image but understood it as something totally different, but nevertheless, it's a good thing they liked it. What I like about this project is the push it makes (despite the pressure and stress) to make up the image, instead of waiting for a chance to make it. The first trial with this idea were good but not good enough and I was given some instructions; unfortunately though these instructions were challenging. First, the rose must be a cast inside the ice heart (which I made using bakery molds by the way), and the petals should be removed as they make a distraction. I tried 2 times more to make these instructions into fruition, but to no avail so far. However, I'm going to put on these results in the coming sorting meeting. If all fails, I think I will need to sort out to Photoshop to fix some of these problems (but not all). More ideas are waiting to be implemented and I've wasted enough time with this one and another idea involving strawberries (which will never see the light).

Black and white version from
a test shot from the project.

Meanwhile, my other trial for Selfie theme was also rejected for some technical problem (away from other problems in composition I believe). The focus is said to be on a portion of my back hair behind my ear rather than my eye. Well, with f/9 probably this is too obvious though on my monitor it wasn't pretty obvious. It's hard to do such a shot again because I'm doing it all alone. No one is going to set the focus for me!  Anyway, it's done and that's it. Now off to other projects to finish. This is getting really tiresome.

Little Universe (II)

 In the rush of projects and ideas, I've started to process a series of shots I've taken a while ago and totally forgot about them in such rush. A repetition for my previous trials with glass marbles and reflections. This time though I've changed the lighting method from dark field method to bright field method. The difference is obvious I presume. Here, however, I tried to get out of the typical scenery of reflection images by, first rotating the image, and then cropping the main subject and keeping the reflection, while cropping into a square (too much white area) and fitting the contact point between the marble and its reflection in one of the thirds' contact points. The reflection of the black boards on the sides is something I'm not sure of how to feel about really. Sometimes I see it as an ambiguous reflection and some other time I see it as something breaking the monotonous trend of such shot. I'll keep that for the next meeting to sort it out, though I'm not even 50% sure that such shot would pass. After this shot was published in the media, some friends suggested other variations to the main idea, so probably I'm not yet done with this experiment just yet.

Source: Amazon

As I go through my recent projects, I'm also reading this awesome book (which I've discovered it is volume 2 in fact). I'm trying to implement some of its tips in designing shots to my work with these projects. However, my reading pace is slow as I'm having no time to read except at work, and mostly at noon time just before I leave. The book discusses elements of design for the images in an abstract sense, as it connects between the human perception and basic elements of the image. At some point though I have to be careful about it because these interpretations are based on a Western view about the surrounding environment, and there might be critical differences between that view and our (Middle Easterners) view. For example, lines that slant to the right (/) in the image would give a sense of increment because eyes subconsciously follow the direction of writing and reading, thus making the line going up in direction from left to right. We, however, might see this line as a sign of going downward because our native writing and reading direction is right to left. This is just a simple example of the amount of information included in this book. The amount of information included makes me a slow reader as well.

Finale

Chain Reaction
Using Dark Field method.

Looking at my life now and all the things I want to do. I'm really running out of everything and time is such a huge pressure on my shoulders now. One of the projects that I've realized that I've stopped for long now is the Geltani conlang, which really saddens me to see it hanging there without a progress. I even thought, in moments of despair, to call it off and cancel all that progress, but I stepped back and said to myself "let's wait and see." I'm so taken away with photography now that it makes my life pace on brakes, and I don't know when I'm going to step on the acceleration paddle. Every time I try to manage my time and do some time management, things just slip out of my hands. Drastically. Makes me wonder now: do I need a long vacation away from my camera? Maybe…

Black-Out…

It's been some tiresome 2 weeks, so this is just going to be a quick wrap. I'm still enrolled in some workshops which I'm trying to get over with. Unfortunately, for some reasons related to the lecturer (the founder of our group), things got to be delayed a bit. Anyhow, my Abstract Photography workshop is over, yet no concrete results yet. I tried my best trying to make up some ideas but to no avail. I usually shoot abstract which already exists, but this workshop was about "creating" abstract and play with ideas; and let's not talk about how hard it was to make up an idea from scratch! In fact, I've never made up an idea; I was solely playing with techniques. Afterwards, there is an ongoing workshop about the philosophy of colors, which also required some assignment to do. Anyway, things on hold now for some private matters.

One of the abstract shots of marbles.
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/7.1, 400^-1sec, ISO200.

Meanwhile, I've abandoned my idea for shooting a bursting bubble. It seems to be a pure team work needed with this one, and for someone like me, it is hard to be get it at that. Add to that, I cannot yet get the right mix or tools to have good bubbles production. Thus, I want to invest my time doing something else for the time being, beside the assignments for my workshops. Also, I do have some specific projects in my mind. All that will be done with the help of flashguns.

Probably the best single bubble shot I've made so far.
Used Dark Field technique: white background, black sides.
Sigma 70-300mm @70mm, f/16, 4000^-1, ISO400.
Used three flashes on HSS mode against the background:
2x 580EX II + 1 x 430EX II

I'm having some weird issues with my flashguns and cables; specifically, the 10m (~33ft) long cable, and my newest 580EX II flashgun in particular. Researching the issue a bit, it seems that 580EX II does indeed have some glitches and that's why it was hard to find (and it's discontinued already). Anyway, I can always rely on making it a slave after all. It is just a matter of time before converting completely to radio systems though (which is more expensive). Till the utmost need urges so, I'm not going to get into the radio systems for the time being. However, I'm gonna have some hard time because of that long cable.

Source: Amazon

On the other hand, I finally got my new "toys" but I still could not try my new lens for real. I don't have the time, yet! I also got a new book, which I'm not sure how to start reading, but for the time being I've read 2 pages or 3 in bed along with some other (thick) book which I'm supposed to read since last year!! Yes, such a stuffed schedule, and mind. The book is about the so-called Visual Design. Something I think I do need indeed in the current time specially that I want to work on converting ideas into photographs and kick in some creative work. I'm not sure if it is just a temporary black-out for my brain or it is indeed a basic problem with my own imagination trend, but I feel paralyzed and unable to achieve something unique with my camera away from the panorama trend and landscapes. Well, not portraiture as I completely have lost interest in that field specifically. In addition to this book, I've also ordered a stack of 3D (anaglyph) glasses (100 pieces) which I'm planning to put to some good use when circumstances allows it!

Now, I think it is time to add a bit more to my forgotten website, and check out more for chances to add artwork to stock sites as well. I think I can call this as a real work since I'm not doing any real work (or gaining real respect) in my own workplace. If only I can have my enough of sleep…

Free Fall...

Struggling struggles and fighting fights, all of that to keep coming out with new ideas for photography and other aspects of conlangs, amid the increasing responsibilities concerning the house. Well, I guess I'm glad I'm not married at such moments.
At least in this week, I got to test the trigger partially, and under the light of the new book I'm reading (and almost finished) I've got more insight about my mistakes. More to come below.

Source: Amazon

As I've mentioned in my previous post, I've ordered 3 books, and they are here already. Instead of reading 2 at a time as I usually do, I decided to concentrate better on one book at a time. The first one to pick was the Tabletop Photography book by rockynook. I would classify the book as general (because under tabletop photography, you can enroll product photography or food photography... etc) but it has some nice tips about the lighting and how to do some stuff with emphasis on low costs. It is really an encouraging book despite the lack of some technical data when dealing with the light but, anyway, I think the depth of such topics is out of the scope of this book. I've already almost finished the book!
While reading the fore mentioned book, I was working on my own experiment which is also my first real trial for the new trigger since I got it back in March. I've pointed some of the lacking points in my previous post and some of them (if not all) were very true. From my side, I had my own problem too with my own tools already (other than the trigger that is) and also, I didn't learn quite enough about such type of photography.

The setting I've worked with in my experiment. Sorry about the bad quality but this is what you get when you ask a non-photographer to take a photo with his iPhone. I think my brother never heard of the word "focus" before!

As you can see from the blurry image above, my brother never heard of the word "focus" before as it seems. My setting was simple (and the trigger is placed on camera) while I needed a long cord to connect the sound sensor to the trigger. The sensor was placed on the surface of the black sweep (if you can notice, it is a small tiny black box on the left side of the sweep, which is your right side). Luckily, I had such cord long time ago when I used to record some music for a friend!
I've used my both speedlites here on both sides but I think this is a wrong step. I will explain further below in form of points for easy reading. My target was to freeze the falling moment of some marbles.

Free Fall
Canon EF 50mm, f/7.1, 2500^-1sec, ISO100.

Many trials went on to check for position and light levels as well as the depth and the shutter speed required to freeze the moment. Believe it or not, a 800^-1sec shutter speed was not enough to completely freeze the moment, and some marbles kept on showing motion blur. Yes, I'm a physicist (or so my B.Sc. announces) but I don't have the time to count for the falling acceleration and velocity and check it out with my camera's shutter speed; besides, I really hated mechanical physics! However, let's move on to the points:

• I've used some marbles randomly here and with different sizes. The problem with Free Fall above is that two big marbles dominate the scene in the foreground and this is a bit distracting. It is a trial and error job after all but it might be better to use only one large marble or leave them all at the same size, I think.
• The positioning of the speedlites on two sides (but pointing in different directions) was a mistake I believe. Under the light of my new reading, I think the best method to conceive the feeling of glass in the air is to have a reflector on one side and reflecting the light off it. I think a narrow strip of some white board would do. I think this way would also help me on concentrating the power of the light in one direction to get an intensified effect from both speedlites under the operation of High-Speed mode, which reduces the brightness severely. This is way much better than scattering the power of the two speedlites in different directions.
• The prop or sweep I've used was not completely black, or let's say it reflects bright tones when light strikes it. Besides that, simple cleaning from dust particles was not enough for clearing the view. Anyway, I do recognize the importance of capturing a glimpse of the ground to emphasize the sense of falling, but this ground such as the one in Free Fall is not a favorite.
• With trials, it was evident that there is a time gap between capturing the sound and then sending the signal and triggering the camera - this is natural of course, but with time and trials, it seemed the time gap between these processes is getting bigger (bigger in terms of micro or milliseconds).
• Maybe it is not very clear in this situation, but probably I should start using a black board over my lens when I shoot up close to avoid any reflections from the camera onto the glass.
• The low level of the settings in general is not helpful and I think they better be up a bit. 

These were some of the points that crossed my mind so far and bearing them in my mind, I might work it out again some time later. I'm just glad that I've tried the trigger at least and I'm ready to write a review about it on B&H website. This is like a duty for me. In the mean time I have to think of something to do about the increasing number of tools and how to organize my room!

Linguae Artificiales:

In the course of developing some thoughts about the future of some of these conlangs I've created, I've decided to keep a regular notebook. Probably, a notebook for every conlang I'm trying to work on from now on. I've had this idea since I've been looking at my scattered leaflets on my desk at work with all scribbles for Geltani and figured it is really easy to lose track of ideas made before! For example, I'm still not sure of the possessive articles that I've made already nor I'm sure about the grammatical cases! I have to organize my stuff.
On the other hand I was thinking if it is possible to work on 3 conlangs altogether? Seems huge step but who knows! Geltani, Bulughman and Betenic; and probably Caqobian as well - an artificial language spoken hypothetically by Alexander, and the plan is to make it go along with Greek somehow. Ideas, ideas, ideas. This is all what I can promise of. If only I can get my brain to organize itself as well...