Post-Oman…

Here we are, a week after a rigorous trip to Oman last week, and still waiting for the upcoming (real) vacation by the end of September. I have to say though, despite the rigorous nature for this trip it was a 50-50 adventure; I had fun despite "some" circumstances that might upset lot of people in such trips. The trip was a photography trip in the first place, but Oman is such a beautiful place that 4 days are merely enough for a single place to "document" - least to say.
We used to go out in early mornings (usually 8 a.m.) and come back to our "dwellings" after dusk, and sometimes spending more than 3 hours on the roads traveling from one city or village to another. In this rush it was hard to document the activities we were doing by writing or typing, and I barely had time to even upload the pictures I've taken during the day to my laptop (did that in the last night in Muscat only). Just to give an imagination about the rush we were in, we did in fact start doing photography at the night of our arrival in Muscat, the capital city of the Sultanate of Oman. It was a minor activity to "grease" our eyes a bit - yet I did come up with some shots that might be favorable for the group's activities later on!

Zenith
Mohammed AlAmeen mosque. Muscat, Oman.
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, 1/4s, ISO400.

The architecture of Mohammed AlAmeen mosque was quite favorable but because of the tired body and mind it was hard to focus in doing much there. Yet, I did try my best and found my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens quite favorable for such place. I had to do some body-stretching though, as in Zenith, where I laid down on my back pointing my head to one of the entrances of the mosque and resting the camera on my chest. Three bracketed shots were taken in this position, but since I was breathing (surprisingly!), the first and last exposures were hazy and shaken and had no choice but to pick the lowest exposure (at -2EV) to edit in RAW format, which made up Zenith. Considerable work was involved here to enhance the exposure and sharpness and reducing the noise, but I doubt that it would be a good view in a large print.
The main gain in the trip goes to those who are interested in portraiture and documenting the rural life of Oman (unfortunately, international contests are always emphasizing these elements which leaves me empty-handed). Some members did indeed bring studio flashes and monolights, dragging them wherever we go; and the apogee of such activity was in Bayt Al-Safah: the home town of our guide which was an active center for the surrounding villages along many aspects of day-to-day life in the past. In that location specifically I didn't touch my camera and I really enjoyed myself in the rural life style and the traditional music which I love.

The Race
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/3.5,
8m10s, ISO400.

Compared to other members in the group, I would be probably at the end of the list in number of photographs taken, specially that I was concentrating on panoramas more than anything else (but I did take single shots yet I don't think they add much to my arsenal but a mere documentation). Probably the thing that I feel sorry the most for is the fact that I didn't do much night shots despite the dedication from the group to do a milkyway-shot from the top of the mountains on our second night in Oman. The wind was somewhat cruel with our summer clothing and no jackets (which caused me some severe pains in the wrists in the following days). Even though I'm accustomed to such atmosphere but being on the top of the mountain was quite a dangerous venture and yet somewhat annoying because the job was done by a group and not a single person, me. As you can see in The Race, which was a star-trail shot rather than milkyway-shot, there is a trace of car lights which passed through the frame just seconds before the exposure ended. I guess it is just my luck and it is supposed to be so. Probably it does add some dynamic touch to the overall look of the image. I've raised the ISO here to 400 instead of settling with 100 to shorten the time (it should have taken around 32 minutes with ISO100); spending so much time in that wind and with other members lighting their torches on and off to see their ways would be just a vain. After completing this shot (and the only good one I suppose), I've went down back to the hotel (on feet as the hotel was on the top of the mountain itself) with some members leaving the others there trying to find their luck. It was an amazing night, and in the morning the sun light exposed many aspect of the breath-taking terrain surrounding the area: we were on the top of a mountain, where we could see other mountains below us. Definitely this place needs more than just one-night stay. Unfortunately, that morning and because of the pain in my hands, I didn't risk doing anything; it was a time to rest.

Ya'aribah's Halo
Al-Ya'aribah Mosque, Nizwa. Oman.

Panorama-wise now. I was reluctant to do a panorama wherever I go; this is mainly because of the time limitation imposed on the group's activities overall. For this reason, I had to inspect in a whim and make quick decisions about whether or not a panorama should be done here or there. Well, this made me forget some points and precautions (typical even in normal conditions), but the great challenge with panoramas taken from Oman is not the architecture and the looks, but the surroundings and the people roaming the place.
As we were going around typically tourists attractions, it was inevitable to do panoramas with people roaming the place. At the time of typing this, I did not inspect all panoramas but so far so good with those done with the stitching already. The greatest challenge though is to see the yielding results of stitching Sultan Qabus mosque's panorama; the mosque is said to have the largest chandelier in the world and it is a tourists attraction, while taking photos is allowed only from 8 to 11 a.m.; I'm quite positive right now that there will be a great deal of Photoshop work and skills needed in that specific panorama, and I'm relying on the HDR ghost-removal techniques to reduce (not completely remove) some of the movements in the place. The HDR technique did some nice job in other busy places before!

Solar Jabreen
Jabreen fort and castle. Bahla, Oman.

Problematic as much as it is fascinating, those panoramas taken outdoors did have the glaring sun disk in them. Fascinating for the fact that exposures are done easily (in brackets), and also increasing the depth of field does not impose an immediate lag in the shutter speed after all; the sun light is rough! On the other hand, it is problematic because the sun disk does not provide a pleasant addition to the scene with just a glaring white spot in the sky. For this reason, I've found myself doing the tone-mapping for these HDR panoramas using Photoshop to control the tones curve freely - this way I could create the annular shapes for the sun as can be seen in Ya'aribah's Halo and Solar Jabreen. This work did extended in fact with some few other panoramas after these two even though there is no sun disk visible in the scene but because of the harsh contrast between the sky and the other elements in the scene. One thing I wish I did (but couldn't) is an infrared panorama like the one done in Ireland under a diffused sunlight (but here we got a strong sun light which should shorten the time of exposures). The time limit did not allow me to achieve this dream. My infrared panorama from Ireland did have quite a voiced support from some of the audience in the latest expo.

The Waterfront (IR)

QTVRs are early to talk about but they are doable. Despite the fact that I've taken shots for the nadir point under my feet with the intent to clone the tripod and other elements to make them adequate to be merged into panoramas, I've actually just cropped the bottom areas of these panoramas to remove the tripod without adding a nadir point. When it comes to making a QTVR later on, I'll be adding a label with the name and location for that QTVR. The only backlash here is when other projections are needed where the nadir point might be in the front instead at the bottom, which calls for heavy skills in cloning as usual. Hopefully I'll be posting more panoramas in the coming days just before my second travel to Malta on September 27^th.

Finale

I do feel like a running horse right now; all work and no play. Work with my photos that is. We have a sorting meeting coming up next week and thus I must prepare as much as possible before coming Sunday. Meanwhile, I do feel like doing nothing. In fact, once my feet stepped on the soil of the homeland, I wished to go back to Oman; not to take photos, but to live - as simple as that. I think it is time to change the people around me, yet it is such a hard task to do nor visible in the near horizon. All I can do is just travel as much as I can, as long as my financial situation allows to. If one has a home that doesn't feel like home, and workplace that bears no respect, where one should be going next?

3D Fort
Bayt AlRideedah, Nizwa. Oman.
Click to Enlarge

A Sad Week…

It is a sad week here after the terrorist attack targeting a mosque on Friday (holiest day for Muslims), and in the holy month of Ramadhan, while people were praying already. I believe there won't be a further clue beyond this event to prove that these creatures have no religion at all, whatever they call themselves.
To think about the events that took place in such period of time, and to see people stand up against terrorism as one hand despite all the different backgrounds, all that gives me pride in what I am.
My activity has been minimum this week. All I could do so far is a simple design and a poem, in hope that I do contribute something to the main stream. I called the poem: The Blooming Iron Fist.

We are the Rose,
and from ashes we rose.
The sparkling hue,
that faces life's blows.
We are the daring heart,
the valour, forever it flows.

My darling,
in peace she falls asleep.
And by the sun above us,
the hearts she set a sweep.
While in a darkling night,
never, my darling was to weep.

We are the Rose,
by the darling we rose.
The sparkling hue,
no poet could ever compose.
We are what we are,
the bloom, by iron fist,
it grows.

Ikaros 2014

Finally done. One more objective is off the list: A visit to Failaka (Ikaros) island. To avoid any rush, I had to book a ticket almost one week earlier and I was lucky to make it in the middle of the week; as the ferry schedules are becoming more congested in weekends. My travel set off on Wednesday, and I came back on Thursday after spending one night there.
Luckily this time the reception in Ikaros hotel didn't make a big deal of me being a single occupier. There are certain laws here that I just don't quite understand, but anyway, what to understand nowadays with many other laws?
The quantity of photography this year from the island wasn't as much as before, mainly because I was busy exploring rather than getting inspired; specially with me having a new car better acquainted for desert and rough conditions. There were some nice geographical features but artistically, they won't have much value in the eye of the camera, but they were something for the eyes to please.

Ίκαρος

The first day wasn't full of activities in fact. As I've stated above, I was mainly busy exploring. I've found the idea of recording some videos a fancy idea to include more about the atmosphere on the island - specially with some spooky sense at some specific places!
I won't be placing all the eggs in one basket for this post, since I'm still working on sorting out the images and trying to fix some of the images (specifically for the noise problem). Summer is coming, and my chances for a good long exposure are diminishing slowly as well...

The video you see above was taken in the court of an old mosque (now just ruins as you can see). These banging sounds prevented me from going further deeper inside, but I had the chance (and courage!) to climb up the narrow minaret⁽¹⁾. The bad thing is, I didn't have any shotgun mic, because the wind was blowing up there and my voice was barely apparent...

Though I had an idea to take a panorama up there from the top of the minaret, but the conditions were bad and dangerous. In fact, I couldn't even climb up to the top of the minaret with my gear, and I barely made it out with my backpack only on my back and the camera dangling from my neck. Up there, I knew there is no place to place my tripod and VR-head, specially that the location was not central. Since a panorama up there would (and should) be handheld and merely few shots to be stitched, I've decided it's not a big deal make the troubles for and a video up there is enough.

I had some troubles fixing the exposure in the video. As you can see, I had to stop every few steps to adjust the "shutter" of the video. I'm not a videographer, thus such concepts are somehow beyond my understanding. Probably because the lens here is Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, which is completely manual, the camera didn't adjust to the lighting conditions automatically. Just a speculation!

I've left the mosque after taking one shot only (before doing these videos) and still till this very moment I'm wondering what was that banging sound that was coming from inside. The sound in the video isn't as loud as it was in reality (mainly because of the limitations of the camera's mic). I'm pretty sure, it wasn't the wind. The loud noises made by these bangs point to a staggering wind, yet it was breezy with a nice atmosphere - only up in the minaret, the breeze become a bit faster (but recorded in the camera loudly!).

As I've stated before, I won't be putting all the eggs in one basket; otherwise it would be a pretty long, thus I will just state the activities of the first day on Failaka. I'll leave the next post (hopefully) to discuss more thoroughly some of the panorama work and panaglyphs.
In the first day I've went deeper into the desert land, far away from the urban (uninhabited) side of the island. Lot of geographical features and nice green spaces because of spring, and lot of troubles too as my car got stuck at some point but I was lucky to pick it out! At the end of this journey I decided to take a shot of a lonely tree, with a twist...

Μονήρης
Canon EF 50mm, f/1.4, ISO100.

This tree, for some reason I'm not quite aware of, attracted me for its simplicity and loneliness. I tried to add some twist to it by shooting with infrared filter and in HDR bracketing. I've used here the 50mm lens with f/1.4 (widest aperture) which enabled me to work fast even with an infrared filter - helped by the sun in the middle of the sky as you can see from the shadow of the tree. In processing this image, I had to process each RAW file for infrared as I usually do with infrared images, and then convert the shots to TIFF. and only then HDR was merged from these files. Merging infrared RAW files is somehow, senseless. The surprise here is to see that the image retained its greens on the leaves of the trees after being relatively lowly saturated or almost black and white when processed in RAW! The rest was a job of fixing the vignetting and the saturation of colors, and of course, noise reduction.

The night hovered over Failaka and I was reluctant to go out in the pitch darkness on the island; there is no electricity except in few buildings in the periphery of the hotel. No street lights. Anyway, I decided to head out not far from the hotel and try some long exposures. The disappointment is, to find the sky out of any significant features; and needless to say that the periphery of the hotel wasn't much in features that help formulating a foreground to the images - the only thing I could think of is the ruins of some old clay house which I've taken shots of before several times.

Εδώ Είναι ο Ίκαρος
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/11, 18m, ISO100)

Surprisingly, one of the first problems was, what lens I should use? The 50mm made the features of the ruins somehow far away. I didn't want to use the sigma 70-300mm here simply because I was hoping that a prime lens would the image better - I'm expecting a load of noise already as the weather wasn't cold enough! Thus, my only choice as it seems was the 100mm macro lens (of course I can use it as a telephoto lens!), besides, the proportions when applying the law of thirds looked appropriate. To focus here, I had to keep my car's light on and pointing to the wall, then turn them off after auto-focusing was done. Several test shots in ISO12800 were due of course and then the work began with a 18 minutes exposure. However, before starting with the exposure, I had to do some testing for the White Balance. Even though at night times, the Tungsten WB is my usual choice, here I've decided to sway a bit from the typical and headed to Fluorescent WB (which I typically choose for dusk and dawn times). I didn't regret this choice afterward when the file was processed and gave out an astonishing blend of yellows, and blues! The only bad point here, the sky was featureless (not even clouds were present till next morning).

Υπήρχε
Canon EF 50mm, f/11, 9m, ISO100.

Just to show how much dark it was even near by the hotel, the other portion of the ruin was not visible until I took the previous shot and started to move backward with my car, when the car lights fell upon this feature, and thus decided to stop and do something about it. Because the focal length here is smaller and more landscape is included originally, the exposure time became almost half of what it was before, rounding to 9 minutes. Since the general atmosphere is not complex in terms of composition and quite normal, I've thought that the only way to get something interesting out of such settings is to produce unnatural colors, and here, again, I had to bet on the white balance change. This time though, it was set to Shade WB. This white balance made the image in general quite yellowish with a golden theme. Something magical a bit. The car's and my shadows were present in the foreground because of the lights not far away from some building - the shadows can be faint on location but they persist with a long exposure; something that you MUST be careful from. When processing the image, the noise level was hard to fix; the general noisy population on the image was reduced, but many hot pixels or hard spots remained. As for the shadows, I tried to clone them out but I chose the easy way out: crop the image into a square. A small sized image like Υπήρχε above, can be easy to look at and pleasant to see, but I wouldn't risk printing it on some large prints! Probably a canvas would be fitted the most for such printing method to suck in the noisy appearance as much as possible.
(1) Despite the fact that the word minaret is used now mainly to note the tower of the mosque, in most of English speaking word, the word itself is a misnomer. The word "minaret" is derived from the Arabic word Manárah [منارة] which means "the place of light" and used for the lighthouse. The proper name for the mosque's tower is Mi`thanah [مئذنة] in Arabic which means "the place of the prayer-call". It is probably one of these words and concepts that got lost in translation over time.

Finale

This is part one of Failaka's print, and hopefully more to come next week with more discussion about panaglyphs, anaglyphs and panoramas and some fixes to the ghosting problem (more like reduction in the fact).
I've started as well posting in Arabic in another blog. The blog is mainly for beginners in photography in hope that the language would make things easier for some people to understand and comprehend the photographic concepts. With this in mind, my schedule might be busier than it is already.
Trying now to enjoy what's left of days in my short vacation before I head back to work next Sunday. Just remembering this day makes me shiver with anger... Seriously, if only young people know what does it mean to be an adult, they would have probably ended their lives before reaching 25...

Mente Turbata in Mosque Magnam...

What the hell was going on with me in the past two weeks is something I wouldn't understand, ever. Stress, fatigue, injuries and finally, personal issues; feels like being dead and alive in the same time. Ah well, what's the difference after all... wasn't it like that most of the time?
I feel like nothing is left for me now except of my camera. I guess I will put it beside me on bed and hug it instead of getting a teddy bear myself. I spent this week somehow trying to test and use my new toy, the 8mm Rokinon fisheye lens and trying to adapt it to my panorama workflow.
For the time being, I'm still not so sure that I will adapt this new lens for my workflow. It is a double-edged sword. In the same time that it lowers down the number of shots and effort (and time), but on the other hand, in the same time, it reduces the resolution drastically. Although my usual size for panoramas ranges between 8,000-10,000 pixels in width, but with Canon's 15mm fisheye lens you would have the choice to expand beyond up to 20,000 pixels in width, while with Rokinon's 8mm fisheye, you are limited to 13,000. The depth of field and the sharpness are still under the scope for more testing. Setting the VR-head with Rokinon's 8mm was also a struggle and it pronounced the tripod legs and the VR-head itself more often and makes it pronounced more; talk about hardships in removing them. I need to try more and see if I can get comfortable with this for real.

Test image with Rokinon's 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. Mom didn't like to move so I blurred her!

I didn't care much about tone-mapping the HDR here. I just had the urge to play around. Not an image for the stocks after all. As you can see, such shot would require maybe 2 or 3 (and maybe more a bit) with Canon's 15mm fisheye lens, but here it's all taken with one shot. Well, 3 bracketed for HDR processing of course. The tripod was elevated to around 2 meters high.

My joy in the past week was with some shots taken here and there with my photography class. I had to work in a haste little bit to prepare the images for this post. It was so much of a headache to work on these photos specially now, on Wednesday, after a really sick long day.
Anyway, our class went first to Al-Babtain's Library for Arabic Poetry (Let's call it BLAP for now). On Tuesday however, and unexpectedly, I got a phone call almost one hour before I leave work saying that we have a session today with the class in The Grand Mosque; a great mosque in the capital and beside BLAP building. It was a real hassle, as my tools were at home because I thought we won't go to a second location after BLAP. It was an exhaustive day.

I. BLAP:

BLAP was an interesting place, not for its construction only, but also because it is the first time I hear of it. The interior design was nice but unfortunately I went there without my VR-head. The architecture in the place is generally modern-type, but maybe with bits (only tiny bits) of antique-like structures, like the pillars for example.

Columnae

The pillars here were outside and on the side of the main "yard" if I should say. It is a bit like an open corridor. This shot was my first in that session (and here you see the tone-mapped HDR, but the RAW is also good). To take this shot I've spent almost 5 to 10 minutes trying to adjust my tripod and the tripod head (Velbon panhead) to make the perfect center. However, seems after all it is still inclined a bit (or is it an illusion?). I've having some hard time with keeping things straight (specially when it comes to panorama making). At such moments it would be useful to have a tripod with central lock like I used to have before, but on the other hand you lose some flexibility after all. My current tripod is nice, but also can be light that you might knock it off and shake it before you put the camera. Talk about clumsy movements; welcome to the story of my life.
The occasion was also a good one to give my new Rokinon 8mm another trial. In fact, I'm less impressed for the time being in putting this lens into my panorama workflow, but nevertheless, it gives some really nice shots in singles. I have my own doubts about the claimed sharpness though; could it be I'm doing something wrong?

Reading Hall
Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens

One thing was for sure though; a simple tilt in the center means a severely tilted image as a whole. This is true with this fisheye lens. Although in this picture above, I've spent also around 5 minutes adjusting and leveling the tripod and the camera accordingly with the vertical straight line of the door, I've just found out when I got back home and after merging into HDR that the whole image was quite apparently tilted; it is mostly apparent in the sides, while the center was a little bit off. I'm not sure how to solve this problem further.
And there is that one shot that I "stole" from my teacher. He was taking it and I told him I can do the same, so he said go ahead! It's weird how I didn't remember such point: the most interesting views are those taken above or below us. It is a true statement, and was stated as well by George Barr in his book,Take Your Photography to The Next Level: From Inspiration to Image.

City of Mirrors II
or maybe I should call it Zenith.

It was taken in front of the entrance portal (or door, or whatever it is). This HDR version in fact doesn't differ much from the RAW version, except of maybe for adding more halos to the light bulbs. My teacher here fixed for me a problem with the tripod as well, which was not being able to point at 90 degrees up. The solution was simply to rotate the camera body itself (unscrewing the base little bit). Might be shaky situation, but it was the only solution I got. I tried hard to keep the space in the middle in the center of the shot.
In case you are wondering why it is City of Mirrors II, well, naturally there is a first one that I didn't mention here.

City of Mirror I

I won't go through all the details here with the tilt in the image as well; I guess you know it by now. However, I had to pick my location carefully in hope my reflection on the glass won't appear (and guess it didn't so far!). The glass translucent, making an interesting pattern from the inside and the outside mixing them together in a surreal look. Maybe this is one of the fewest things I like about the city life; architecture. There were some issues with the clarity of the image as well, but oh well, this is a typical problem with my 18-55mm EF-S lens. Now, thinking about it, could it be that I see things tilted because of some barrel effect? 18-55mm lens DO have a barrel distortion and I've tested it before.
There are other shots that I might keep for myself or add them here later on. But one day after this event, I got that surprising call for a session in the Grand Mosque; a perfect place for a panorama!

II. The Grand Mosque - Mosque Magnam:

Maybe I'm not that so-religious person, but surely the Grand Mosque here is a chance not to be missed. The whole thing was a hassle in the beginning, but rewarding later. Even my teacher was surprised when he got a phone call saying that we were granted a permission, as he said. It was a last moment phone call.
Anyway, because I went to work with no intention of photography work for the rest of the day, I had to sign for a short leave as soon as I got that phone call about the session, just to avoid the apex of the jam here. Went back home, prepared my tools, and then after a one-hour rest I headed to the capital with ALL my tools. What are all my tools?

• Backpack: containing my camera and all my lenses and filters (with the adapters of course), and also contains my little spiderpod.
• Tripod and panhead.
• Lateral extension arm.
• Manfrotto 303SPH VR-head.

For the time being, I don't want to talk about the weight of these things. It is not a pleasant memory! As I headed there, I was the first one to be there as usual, and remained there till others arrived and my teacher as well, and I, alone, waited for something around one hour in the outside.
As we went inside, the first thing to do was to do the hardest part: the panorama. There will be plenty of time for single shots later on.

Mosque Magnam

It is not the first time to work with people going around; I've already done that in Ireland, in the Ardeaglais Cormaic in Cashel Rock. However, here it was a bit harder with fellow photographers since some of them had to remain in one position for minutes and I have to give them their own time to take their shots.
This image you see above is done in a haste in fact because I wanted to put it here as soon as possible. There were lot of stitching errors (that might be related to the moving bodies in the scene rather than bad alignment), and I might give it one other try and try to fix these stitching errors by using Blending Priority if possible.
In this HDR panorama I preferred to use the (M)anual method and put the basic shutter speed at 2", while ISO was 400. As my teacher stated in earlier classes, and in a humorous tone "... using high ISO with a tripod is an infidelity!". This is true, but in HDR the situation is different a bit. I had to make sure that the +2EV bracket won't exceed 30", and the place was low in light (the workers in the mosque didn't turn the lights on until the dusk time after I finished the panorama). There are other projections on the way, like the vertical and the tunnel-view and the little planet. All will come in time hopefully, with a QTVR.

The dome of the place was a bit problematic. As you can see from the panorama above, there is a glass cabinet which contains a handwritten Quran with some writing tools. It is said that it is a Quran written by hand by the 3rd ruler of Muslims back then. Anyway, this cabinet was exactly in the middle of the hall (where I should place my tripod eventually), and it is exactly at the center of the dome. Although I finished my panorama placing my tripod as close as possible to the cabinet, but that didn't stop me from trying to take the center in exact position. It was the time for my lateral extension arm to be in work.
The bad thing is, I didn't bring my other camera to take a picture of the setting, but anyway, it was simply done by using the later arm to extend my camera with Rokinon's fisheye lens above the glass cabinet. Shaky, and dangerous and I could have been in trouble if the camera fell down on the glass and... break it. In the beginning, as a precaution, I was placing my hand under the camera body as it pointed upward, but Rokinon's fisheye has a really wide view and I have to give my trust to my tools and leave it hanging in the air like that and bow down to avoid capturing my head as well...

Tholus Magnus

Maybe a little bit off the center, but it was rewarding I believe. Would be off with a close up zoom, but the general geometry is fantastic as well.
There were many shots but I don't want to put everything here for the time being. I'm just glad this week is over and hope of a "brighter" week. I feel sick being myself now. Wish if I can sleep, and wake up when the world is over...

Gloriae Campus