Checkmate…

Strange, weird times are coming through. As much as the time appears to be slow because of the idleness, yet it is kind of pacing fast simultaneously. I feel like I didn't have much time since I finished my last blog post in Arabic, and feels like it was not weeks since I took the following shots that I'm going to talk about here! And guess what? Ramadhan is here already.
I'm actually grateful that Ramadan this year comes by while we are home, supposedly, instead of having to go to work and maybe sign up for a leave during the month to take care of my hysterical sleeping habits that get confused greatly during Ramadan, every year. It's such a bless for me, really.

Marbhsháinn

Well, this is just checkmate in Irish. I've mentioned in my previous post (or posts) a glimpse about my work with the chess set. I got this set specifically for photo shoots; I'm not a chess fan! Anyway been some time since I did something with this set, and so I thought it is time to work a bit. The annoying part though, working with chess can be quite noisy and loud unlike working with the feathers! If you are going to try to do anything like what I do here I hope you don't risk bothering anyone with the noise.

Воздушная Битва (the air battle)

Just as a starter, all my plans were set ahead to make these photos in black and white. Why? Well, let's just say it gives strength to the sense of drama here and also because black and white are strongly attached to the game of chess (in my case, the pieces are made of wood, and reddish and milky in color). In these shots, I've used 6 speedlites: 5 to flash, and 1 master to trigger the rest without shooting. This leaves me with one extra speedlite, the old 420EX which I didn't use here because it is, well, cumbersome to work with. I've checked the manual for this one and seems the only way to control its parameters is to be connected directly to the camera, but I might be wrong here. I got this speedlite for cheap from a friend. Anyway, adding this last one would not add much since I have 430EXII and 580EXII on both sides of the set, and 430EXII on top; Thus things were symmetrical. Why so many speedlites? Well, it was a high-speed session!

The chess set before adding the rest of the speedlites on left and right.
The white boards on right and left are for bouncing the light from the speedlites.

Now, the first shot, Воздушная Битва or the air battle, got me into a tiny trouble, which I had to solve by merging shots instead of doing everything in a single shot as I was planning. Well, several problems in fact:

• My hand shadow from the top speedlite did cover and obstruct the shadow of the falling knight piece. Specifically the black one because I was holding the remote with my left (I'm a leftie) and dropping the pieces with my right. The problem was minor with the white knight but was a major one with the black knight.
• As you might have inferred from the first point, I could not drop the two knights together. Working with a timer is not as precise as triggering the remote with my own hand, and holding the two knights in one hand and dropping them made them so close together which is not what I wanted. I really needed them to face each other. Thus, the only solution for this was to drop each piece alone (several times to pick the best shot) and merge them later.

Luckily, I've taken a shot before I work as a reference and that one was the base upon which the knights were merged, so in total, 3 images put together, with some edit to the shadows of the knights. Well, beside the total edit for the whole shot of course. In Воздушная Битва specifically, I like the luster on the flying black knight and in fact I've toned the luminosity of the colors when I converted to black and white specifically to keep this luster on the flying knight piece.

Фантом Кони (Phantom Horses)

Over with a high-speed shot (or composition to be precise, I guess), I moved further to the Multi or the stroboscopic flash. It's funny how this type of flash was unthinkable to me when I work with my speedlites, but now it is a favorable option when I work with such experiments. Again, I tried to throw 2 knights or horses together in one hand while triggering the camera with the other hand, but the results were not fascinating, to say the least. Thus, I needed my brother's help here and voila! It was perfect from the first shot. I had though to use also another shot for the background to merge it because my brother's hands shadows from the top speedlite. I'm not sure how many strikes of flash were there but I'm guessing 5 from the number of "ghosts" in Фантом Кони, and surely the frequency was low, probably 50Hz. In fact, 5 strikes of flash when working with stroboscopic light is now my standard and my starting point. It seems to yield some reasonable results in most cases. One thing I regret though in this shot is that I didn't ask my brother to hold the horses opposing each other face to face, so as you can see they are falling here and both looking left.

Кто Стоит Последним (who stands the last)

Next in order comes a simple shot, yet hard in the same time. At this point, and in order to shoot Кто Стоит Последним, I had to change the lens. In the previous shots I've used my Sigma 12-24mm and that's out of necessity a bit because the perspective needed to be adjusted a bit because of the tripod's stance. However, with Кто Стоит Последним, I had to change the lens and use Voigtländer 20mm lens so that I can use my polarizer. The Sigma lens is 82mm in diameter and I don't have a filter that fits, and converting rings (step-down) would be problematic. Thus, it was safer to just change the lens to Voigtländer 20mm which has a diameter of 52mm. The polarizer was needed here to emphasize the reflections of the pawns or pieces on the board.
The general idea for Кто Стоит Последним here does not involve any speedlites, but simply some dark atmosphere, dark enough to give me a long exposure. Meanwhile, as the exposure is on, I would be changing the placements of the pawns and keeping the kings in the middle without touching them. I was pretending to play a game of chess (don't know much about chess anyway!), so I kept knocking some pieces down and changing the placement of some others. All of this mess of course produced some ghosts, as needed. Good thing though that I didn't knock over the kings or move the board by mistake; With my Retinitis Pigmentosa in dark places thing could go... astray. Total exposure time was around 4m30s; And I guess this is exactly the time needed to defeat me in a game of chess, if not less!

Báisteach na Ridirí

(the knights' rain)

Then I had this idea, which was kind of "crazy" a bit, but I'm sure not as much crazy as other people I've known (nor my life). The trigger for this idea was that: since I've been editing or composing and merging my previous photos (except for the one using long exposure above), then why take a step further (just a bit!) and make a rain out of knights!?
I realized from the beginning that I'm going to need a lot of work done here, and as if it wasn't hard already, I had to struggle with batteries and power resources for my speedlites as I was preparing them to shoot high-speed. A LOT of high-speed shots.

Идет Дождь Коней
(It's raining knights)

My thought for working with this "project" was to divide the work on separate sessions, with each session being dedicated to shoot a specific portion of the image:

• Shooting the 2 kings at the center of the board (and fixing the focus at that point).
• Shooting the plain board.
• Shooting the dropped white knight piece on various locations from the back to the front and sweeping left to right each time.
• Doing as with the white knight but this time with the black one.
• Doing as with the white and black knights but this time dropping them both together.

The last point here was actually eliminated later and I didn't touch it because of the crowded image that later became to be when I worked with the white and black sets separately. The plain board shot was kept as usual as a backup; I didn't really use it. All shots were done with the same light, same shutter speed, as much as possible. Because I was dropping the pieces on the board, there had been tiny movements that would be visible only on comparison but they didn't have a great impact on the merging process; Excellent!
I won't go into details here about the way I organized the files and merging them, but I'd just say I've followed a systematic way (and the file size was enormous). Not all images (more than 52 in total) were used; Some of them had to be canceled for various reasons. You might have noticed in the image above that there is a knight blocking the black king and I left it there intentionally to give depth and dimension to the image.

The white and the black sets separately when combined. Of course there is a number of them that were removed in the final image shown above. Merging them alone makes some nice shot it seems so I will try this later!

Unlike the previous high-speed shots, I've slowed down the shutter speed here to 1000^-1s, down from 8000^-1s (max for Canon EOS 7D). I was hoping to capture some motion blur for the falling pieces, which it did, but not to my desire. The view on the camera's LCD was not good enough to judge, but anyway, I continued working as it is. After finishing the merging of the white and black pieces layers, I've tried to do the same with the doublets (those shots I've made for dropping the white and the black knights together, using one hand) but the image looked crowded already and no need for more. I'm keeping this set though for some editing experiments!

The Falling
One of the "doublet" images that I decided to not include in the final image.
Using the polarizer really paid off.

I had some ideas also to do an experimental light painting on the set before I move on another idea in my work with the camera but I couldn't find a suitable method or idea to apply here, and probably I don't have proper tools to do such delicate painting for small pieces like that. Most of the time, as I've encountered so far, light painting is done on a larger scale a bit and not a delicate one like a pawn and a chessboard.

Finale

Crazy times, and I'm trying to use every minute I could to the max, with my camera. Well, maybe other things as well (gaming for example?) but I'm on the go and trying to try more and more with my camera, in hope of creating something unique still.
Meanwhile, thoughts of leaving my work and do something on my own still roll around my head, as I'm not sure how stable my current job would be still. yet, I'm grateful for the situation now, but nevertheless I cannot guarantee anything in such times. Not sure where I'm heading but I'm trying to take it one step at a time, and enjoy as much as I can. If only I can control the damn mood swings.
Being in lock-down and home quarantine might not be as a catastrophic for an introvert like me, as it would be for an extrovert. Yet, I do have my feelings towards it. In such times, my eagerness for traveling has increased ten-folds than before, even though I didn't know before this crisis whether I can travel or not and probably I wasn't ready for it, but now I really need it to just change the scenery and be away from people. As for me, I don't go out of home much already as it is in normal days so a quarantine or home-stay won't make much difference, but it s the general atmosphere and the people around that would just push your buttons up and down and screw up that peace that I've been trying to work on for quite some time. I need to travel probably to change the people, and not the scenery. It is in such times I just so wish that I have a home of my own, but in a place like this, how would this be possible at all…

Strobogenic…

February! It really exists! If some other month like January is to be visiting us any time this year I'm kind of sure that half the population of Earth would be begging on the roads for their bread. from my side, I just hope that this month becomes an active month for me somewhat. I've been taking shots already and having some ideas here and there, and as usual, I won't put the eggs all in one basket in this post, but I'll be talking about a specific series of shots that I've done about 2 weeks ago; All by coincidence! Anyway, beside the series I'm going to talk about, there are some new editions made out of old shots and I've been posting some of those on my Instagram. I'm not sure though if I'm going to post about them here but there is one specific old shot that I need to post about here in relation to the series of shots I'm going to talk about.

Chain of Events

As I was looking at my images from 2018, and looking specifically for some photo that I didn't post before to my Instagram, I've encountered this shot, which is a selfie, but a regular one somewhat. The special thing, though, about this selfie, that it was an experimental one, taken with 2 speedlites holding them by hand on left and right, and each one of them had a black cardboard with a thin slit opening only. And that what made the shadow line at the center of the face. Since a selfie like that might be a bit "regular," I've decided to work a bit on it and transform it to something else.

Nach Mitnacht

Naturally, my first choice or the first thing to think about in such instances is to examine the B&W possibility and what it would yield. Tweaking the sliders around and voila! Some weird creature was created here, in addition to the eyes brightening. This was the beginning.
Some days later, as I was testing the stroboscopic (multi) flash properties with one of my 580EX II speedlites, I've decided to take a selfie or two. I was actually lazy; I was just there sitting on my recliner and taking shots. My aim was actually to make out some sense for the relation between the shutter speed, and number of flashes and the final outcome. I really did not have any aim about creating an image at this level; It was all still some testing only.
Anyway, without  going deeper into much technical details and talk,I was up to a surprise later on; I'll come to that.
As I went through the photos, I've started to filter and delete some of them which had no significant move. There are some with some good hand gestures. I kept those and started to work with them in Photoshop.

Avoidance

Typically, my first step when converting to B&W in Photoshop, would be using the Infrared preset from the list and start adjusting from there. Usually this preset do get to my taste in some way so I find it appropriate most of the time to start adjusting the tones from there. Surprise surprise, and as I was trying to suppress the background using the tones to turn it to black, weird things started to happen and I've remembered Nach Mitnacht right away. This was the spark that initiated the series, started from Avoidance and ending up with The Weekend Selfie. Some of these shots, like Avoidance, did require a significant crop (using cropping guides as much as possible). Despite the movement of the hands in some of these images, like, again, Avoidance, yet, the focus might be scattered away and I thought it might be better to ensure the focus and guide the viewer to the eye, and that required a great deal of a crop.

De-Focus

Not all images, though, did require such a big deal of cropping as I've stated above, but there was something to be done about some lines in the corners or the edges and such. For such instances, I tried to place the eyes exactly at the center of the image, as it sounds it is the natural placement for them, specially with moving ghosted palms, right? And let's not forget the horizontal placement of the eyes which I've tried to place on the upper third line via crop.

The Multi-Takser

Personally, I do like the brightness of the eyes in De-Focus more than their brightness in The Multi-Tasker but strangely, and this is the surprise, this image got popular on YouPic and even gained a star for being "inspirational". Not only that, but YouPic also published the image to their Instagram feed for the B&W category! I didn't know about its existence before. On Instagram itself, the image did gain some likes, but typically not much (yet better than other images I post daily now). I take it that this surprise might have been caused by the movement of the hand which is clearer and denser here than in De-Focus, and they take a bigger portion of the image in general.

The Weekend Selfie

This "liking" and push in (some of) the social media did give me a bit of "hype," if I can call it so. It did really make me think of future work using the stroboscopic flash often (which I did later, but that's for another post). But maybe the most important moral here which I need to remember, and keep remembering, always is that: Just grab the camera, and shoot, even when you are lazy. You wouldn't know what will be the results. In addition to this, I might be adding one extra point to my "style" with such processing, which makes portraits dark in a somewhat UV Photography style. Could be something to venture on a bit further. But probably shouldn't exhaust it to the limit of turning it into a cliché!

Finale

The Weekend Selfie
Sketch effect

Well, it is February already and the time has come, as in every year, to make up some photo shoot for Retinitis Pigmentosa. Believe or not, I did already make this shot and it is published, but I'll leave it for another post in another week or so. The shot was relatively simple and I tried to apply some elements from the designing tips I've re-learned lately. I'll come to that in time then, though.

Some variety of flash cords

Meanwhile, I'm hoping and wishing to get more time to work with my camera, specially with schools starting here and we are back to the cycle of traffic jams and the extremely-tired body. I have some ideas out there and yet I need to think them through and think on how to apply them. To add to my hardships already, my flash cord (which allows me to trigger the flash off-camera) seems corrupt and is not functioning well lately. It fell off. Is it time to get a wireless trigger? I mean one that can work under HSS and Multi or Stroboscopic modes, as well as 2nd Curtain Sync? Even if I got one, I'm not sure I would be able to trigger other speedlites that way unless I get a receiver for each one of them; A lengthy and an expensive task. I'll need to do more research in that venue.
I would be going on and on with my mood swings already but maybe I'll keep that, too, for another post. I'm so tired of everything here, literally, so much that I find it hard to chew the food I eat sometimes. January is over already but probably we are not over yet with the bad news still. In the meantime, I'm considering meditation (which I'm not sure when to do) in hope that it would teach me how to focus again. I miss writing poetry; I was supposed to write one for my late friend, Paula, who departed last November, but I couldn't find the mental power yet to compose. Maybe I should make this a priority over my work with the camera. As for now, it's time to close my eyes a bit…

Darling…

I think I was supposed to take a break from blogging for a week or two for the new year? I'm not sure; But I've been into making some photos and I thought maybe it's time to post about them. I'm typing this as I'm on a vacation from work until January 9^th. Typical, though and unfortunately, I've been lazy with my camera work as usual with any vacation that I take. But I'm trying!
Some of these trials are simple and my main aim was to go out at night and shoot but it seems I have no chance, specially with this exhausted body of mine. Some incident (not a serious one) happened as I was out with my brother outside close to midnight around the beach area where I used to practice and do many shots long time ago, and I realized there are still nosy people who would just grab any stranger to chat with; Something I really find irritating for my night outgoing and my peace of mind at such hours of the night. This little incident kind of held me back a little and I'm hesitant now. Needless to say, my sleeping pattern is a mess during this little vacation but nevertheless, I'm relaxed because I have no obligations in the early morning hours. Anyway, let's see what was achieved.

Darling

After doing my previous shot, The Beggar of Nothingville, which was inspired by a poem of the same name, I've had another idea at the back of my head, which was already planned in B&W as well. This shot, however, is more like a starter or a dedication for the new year (sort of). Despite its simplicity, shooting it was not as easy as The Beggar of Nothingville (relatively). To make the shot this time I had to use my wireless tethering with Case Air tethering tool which I didn't use for quite a while (not even for The Beggar of Nothingville). Working was a hassle and I was about to cancel the whole thing.

Case Air for wireless tethering

Happy New Year, Darling

First of all, the idea of the shot is about these things that we love, care for, and appreciate, but unfortunately we are forced to leave behind. Despite its title, Happy New Year, Darling, the shot is not really specific to the new year - But the term "new year" is used symbolically to signify these new beginnings; Well, some beginnings that I might be willing or wish to start with (or not). This is the philosophical side of the shoot. Now, back to the technical.
I've proceeded with my 50mm lens, as I thought it is the "norm" for such a shot, but thinking about it now, probably I should have used 20mm to give myself some more space and crop later. However, all worked well in the end but after quite some trials and errors. It was one of these experiments in which I've got a bit upset for not finding someone to help me. Holding the problematic props in one hand and the mobile phone to control the camera via wireless tethering was indeed a great distraction. The props consisted of a little cut branch and a small broken cup (my niece made that and broke it!) and since I didn't find any soft sand around, I've decided to use some Ovaltine instead; After all, the image will be in B&W and the real material of the soil is not important, right?

For those who
don't know what
Ovaltine is!

The shoot was done over the span of 2 or 3 days with many issues. Mainly, the level of my hand and how clear is the broken cup. Despite the somewhat natural gesture in Happy New Year, Darling, the pose was hard to be done for me as I had to twist and stretch my arm and palm. Adding to that, the little branch would fall often and it was not possible to stabilize over the soft Ovaltine. When I created a shot that I like, I've realized after examining the photo on screen that the most important part of the image, the plant, was out of focus. Despite many trials later, nothing really worked as I like.

Source
A book I'm re-reading recently.

However, and thanks to some of my recent reading in Learning to Photograph Vol. 2, I've decided to settle down with the version seen above despite the slight cut in the thumb. Another reason, beside the incomplete thumb, that made me go over this shot in the beginning, is that the little plant was not straight up. All in all, I can't say that I'm absolutely satisfied with this shot but I have to (or had to), because in some way this is a kind of "perfectionism suppression" that I need to practice because otherwise I won't finish a single job or idea I get into my mind. Moreover, as per Learning to Photograph, it turns out that a slight cut like that to any shape (specially circles) works on anchoring the image, or in other words, as if the image is stabilized, or it does start, from this anchor point and forward. This is a somewhat psychological effect to be perceived by most. Bearing these aspects in mind, I've decided to pick this image which was one of the earlier trials to make this shot. I was hoping to shoot in natural light and I've picked a specific room in the house specially just because of the quality of the light coming through the window. However, unfortunately, and because of my laziness, I couldn't be there in the early morning to shoot and use the daytime to perfect the shot with daylight; So, I had to get some help from a speedlite (430EX II) which was not a big deal. Just pointed it to the side wall with its 14mm panel to get a wide-angled beam and bounce it back to somewhat mimic the effect of natural light through the window. This also helped with the shutter speed a bit to make things faster a bit (something essential with my shaky body!). The color cast of the speedlite is not important (not completely) after all since the image is to be converted into B&W.

The Diagonal Method

Probably it is noticeable how the image is sort of elongated a bit and does not go under the conventional or most common ratio of 3:2 (at least for my DSLR). Actually processing this image did require some valor, and some challenge to my perfectionism trend (again). Meanwhile, I recalled that I've installed a special plugin for my old Photoshop which helps on cropping on various systems, such as the golden ratio and the golden spiral. One of these rules is The Diagonal Method, developed by a Dutch photographer, namely Edwin Westhoff, after studying many artworks. Now, the special thing about this method is the claim that important or significant points of interest for the viewer are not single concrete points of intersection, but rather interesting subjects can be placed along diagonals which stem from hypothetical squares within the frame (see the link above). You can see how that works on the side, and instead of keeping the aspect ratio the same, I've cropped freely without keeping the ratio and placed the lower central point on the plant. I had to crop my head a bit to remove any distraction or dominance on that side. Now, the rest of the work is simply toning down the colors in B&W making the Greens as bright as possible along with the contrast, and many, many, many layers of dodge and burn! And… the story is over.

Finale

Well, I really wanted to post another shoot and new venture with mirror lens, though simple but I think I've blabbered a lot here that I guess no need to lengthen this post some more! In fact, this might just give me the time to do one last experiment with this mirror lens which I was planning to do with my brother but I didnt for the lack of time. I was thinking of shooting a selfie of me by this lens with the help of Case Air but that would be even more troublesome than it is already. But, it is still an idea to consider.
Now, my vacation is coming to an end, I need to re-organize my life after living clueless for a while. Going back still feels like a burden though but good thing that my toothache is almost gone, even though I can really bite on that side, but the pain disappeared, thanks to my sister and her knowledge in traditional medicine. The thing that is left for me now, to find a direction…

Feathers…

Many things are going around lately and kept away from the blog for a week, beside preparing for a post in my other Arabic Blog too. I was going to cancel a post for this week too after a little incident and spraining my right foot, but things seem better now. Anyway, I will try to be quick here (and every time I say this I end up with a long post!).

Eanáir

I've stated before in previous post that there was a stack of projects on my desk (well, virtual desk that is) and I was going through them slowly. One of these projects is related to the month of January (which is Eanáir in Irish) with the group re-establishing this activity: A project for every month. This month's theme was Black and White with no specific limits to the subject to be involved. I previously had some ideas and after stating this theme, I thought I might merge the two together, specially after the lack of materials!

Entwine Series

I had some ideas already as I said, and I was looking already for white feathers, and then changed my mind to black feathers, but well, I couldn't find any. I was looking for the feathers for another project under a workshop entitled Art of Seeing which finished back in December! However, with the arrival of this project for January, I started to merge the two.
Since I couldn't find either black or white, and only colored ones (red, green and yellow), I thought it would be fitting now to shoot in B&W and mimic the black and white feathers! As thoughts were racing through, I made some abstract experimenting with macro shots as seen in Entwine Series above. I've made several shots and filtered them down to 3 only, and then asked for a vote from the group members to see which composition is, to them, feels better. Most of them picked #2 (the middle one), and this is the one which was submitted. I'm keeping the others for various projects as well; I like them still!

I went on working on some ideas and nothing worked out, but I had to move quickly from one to the other for the lack of time I was suffering with! A substitute idea was to throw some feathers on my Omani dagger and capture the moment in high-speed. Unfortunately, didn't turn as I wanted it to be for many factors, like space available and lenses, but I've sorted the shots into final 7, and again, asked the group to vote for one.

Aftermath Series

The vote picked #2 here too. I was hoping to record the motion of the feathers, but working alone didn't make things easier for me even with a 10-second timer. Anyway, I had to satisfy myself with these results after changing from the course of the main idea: A feather penetrating a knife; as I couldn't apply this idea in any possible way I could think of. My goal was impressionistic endeavor of how gentleness could come over sharpness and savagery. Thus, throwing feathers on a dagger merely has a potential for something or some idea. In fact, it was done completely randomly with no specific philosophical idea in mind! Anyway, image #2 was submitted as well.
I got special drilling bits later on, to drill a hole in a knife to apply the idea I was seeking in the first place, but it's too late now with my lack of time and I would, and should, be applying that some time later. However, for the irony, I loved the patterns and luster for those drilling bits, and decided to include it with my submission.

Golden Strips
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/32, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

I took many shots at different angles, and had many problems with the flash systems (which I really find a solution for!). I was using 430EXII Speedlite here mainly, reflecting it off a reflector (silver car shade in fact). To my surprise, this speedlite specifically has no inlet for external power source, and thus I had to work solely on batteries, and in time, the power of the flash diminishes: The 1/1 power with full batteries is not as much as 1/1 power when batteries are low. I even made several shots in hope to make a focus stack (f/32 was not enough to include the whole depth of field!) but sorting through the files later on, I realized I didn't do the stacking right; it still needs a rail to do it correctly which was not at hand back then. Anyway, I'm satisfied with Golden strips, which was converted to B&W and tinted with golden hue (#ffd700). Originally, the bits got a slight yellowish tint but reflecting the flash turns them more into silver tint. This is the only shot which was not purely B&W shot but a tinted shot in my submission.

Art of Seeing

This was the title of a workshop that was over with in December and yet we had to work on a submission specific to this workshop. It took me a while to look for the feather as I've said above, and decided to apply cubism as I was urging to apply this concept in my future shots. I think I got just the chance here. Even though I'm not pretty convinced that what I did does enroll itself under the topic of "Art of Seeing," but I got the green light from the leader of the group to keep on going with this. Yet, it has to be judged and critiqued.

Version 1

Cubism in photography is mostly about shooting individual images for the same subject (with or without motion) and merging them together in some way, mostly resembling squares. This is at least what I've seen from examples online. As I shot my series for this project (as seen in Version 1), I tried to include the whole scene as much as possible; with a stack of feathers it's easy to lose track. It does resemble working with a panorama to some extent but my options to work outside Photoshop were limited here and I had to work in Photoshop itself. But first, I had to cut down the slides into squares. Then, fitting them manually and stacking them according to my vision alone.

Version 2

As I finished Version 1 manually, it occurred to me that Photoshop has some useful bundle of commands for panorama making that I could use. I'd love to discuss the results here but I have to conclude the final matter here with Version 2, which was composed using the Reposition option under Auto-Align Layers command. So far, I can say that these two, Version 1 and Version 2, are the ones that I like most. Merging these layers seamlessly doesn't look good at the end, and no need to mention how Photoshop consumes memory already, and with this number of large-size images, it was a hectic process. A question that still going on in my mind is: If any of these were accepted and must be prepared to be exhibited, am I going to print each slide alone and try to combine them physically as they appear in the image file? Or simply print the image as it is? Time would tell I guess.
The idea in the beginning was about killing peace, and that's why I wanted to use white feathers. Even though I always felt that the composition needed something extra. However, I've noticed that the grip of handle of the dagger is already white, so it is better to use black feathers to add contrast, and there came in the change in the original idea: Killing evil (instead of peace); and probably things has to be violent to reach the peace of mind at the end…

Finale

As it can be seen from this blog now, things are more drifting into photography rather than conlangs. Should I abandon my passion for conlangs just now? I'm not quite sure but I hate to think about it even. My life seems racing itself to nowhere. But I'll try to look into that matter later on. The only connection I do have with my beloved Ayvarith right now, is my instagram account (@ayvarith) which I post in weekly. I even managed to add new words to my lexicon.
From the events in this week, it seems I'm losing my grip on the handle slowly and the call for a vacation is even getting stronger. All incidents happening to me last Monday and my foot injury, all caused by a simple show of anger, and over a video game (yes, video game). I didn't play this type of games in a long time, probably since high school, but seems this anger is still roaming inside. I remember how it was when I used to get mad at such games back then and I didn't have this spark of anger for such stuff in a long time, and it's all back now. Makes me wonder if I'm really in need of anger management. But definitely, the thing that would sooth my ailments is, a travel.