Mental Diaspora…

Some weeks passed without counting them. I had to stop writing in this blog for a while (and the Arabic one too of course) after some drastic downfall in my mother's health; something almost costed her her life. Even though she is in a better condition somewhat but it is far from being the normal-her, as she is mostly bound to bed here at home and I'm trying, with the rest of the family, to take care of her and most importantly of all, to raise her self-esteem and make her smile despite the painful times.
Meanwhile, I was in fact trying to prepare for some photographic experiments which eventually were put on hold after the events, and trying slowly to get back to the pace and even trying to force myself to work on some projects.
I know, though, that some photographers advise against forcing oneself to work with the camera and leave it to inspiration alone, and initially I'm in that line of thought, but circumstances right now require some special measures, and probably forcing myself might take my mind off from the domestic problems that plague my life for the time being.

Let's Cook!

I've attended (and will in the near future) a workshop with members of the group given by the leader of the group which was about the imagination of the photographer and how to develop it. Our main theme for the practical part of the workshop was "kitchen utensils."
The topic of the workshop was, in some sense, forcing your brain to think differently about ordinary subjects (with a side dish of planning beforehand).

Boring Cold
Canon EF 50mm + B+W 920 IR filter,
f/9, 320^-1sec, ISO200.

Before the practical part, I've picked a box of utensils which I didn't really consider what was in it, and thus I had no time to explore or think about what to do until I reached the meeting place. Anyway, the first idea to pop in my mind was to use a friend with 2 ladles as hands and show some boredom, as seen in Boring Cold. To add flavor to this shot specifically, an infrared filter was placed on lens (using my converted camera here and 580EXII speedlite on camera with diffuser). I didn't feel comfortable with this one, and probably my friend here didn't gauge his expression perfectly (trust me, modeling needs skills). I changed to my second idea which was inspired by the Jolly Roger flag (and, let's not talk how I got the inspiration).

Kuwaiti Jack Nickolson
Canon EF 50mm, f/9, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

Using the same converted camera but without any filter on the lens, and also a speedlite here, the Kuwaiti Jack Nickolson was supposedly to be looking like the Jolly Roger, but with the facial expressions here and the hardships in holding the ladles in proper positions, the idea drifted away from that. Anyway, I liked the looks here so I worked for some time on enhancing the sharpness and the colors (specially the eyes and the mouth) to make it look more like a maniac's profile shot! The sharpness here was exaggerated on purpose and it was not done with convenient plugins (e.g. NIK or Noise Ninja), but it was done manually using layers in Photoshop (implementing the High Pass command). After these 2 shots, seeing that I don't work well with faces, I decided to concentrate more on the abstract lane of my thoughts and started playing around with the same ladles to come up with something unusual.

Metallic Lane
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/14, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

I've finally arrived at that idea when I made a contact between the bottoms of the ladles (and it was hard to stabilize the set). Usually in such situations, I automatically switch my mind to think about macro details and look for abstracts and shapes, just like in this situation with Metallic Lane. A twist to the WB was applied to give it that bluish luster instead of the dull metallic one.
Major problem with these experiments is that the ladles were scratched and not polished in a good way, and however I washed them the stains and scratches remained. The practical part of this workshop was not the final deadline to present some work but it was a practice under the guidance of the founder and the teacher of the group, and we agreed to give results one week later which unfortunately passed without doing anything, since I've been busy with my messy life. However, I got new ladles with good polish and worked on them later on, as I will explain later in Rain-Bubbles section below.

Nailed It…

Before the dramatic events with Mom, I was already working on a little project, related to my previous post, The Fakhroid Muse, which is about getting inspired from a song or songs from the Syrian master, Sabah Fakhry (صباح فخري). Might be a good idea to read that blog post if you didn't.
I've been working on this idea, as I've said, before the dramatic events, and even after Mom being out of the hospital, I couldn't put a mind to it and finish it until just recently. I have to say though that I did a lot, a lot, of testing shots. The main problem was that the set was on ground level and I had to find a way to levitate the camera up to a certain level from the set (beside finding the good lens and the good position for speedlites).

Lovely Pain
Voigtländer 20mm, f/4.5, 4000^-1sec, ISO200.

Generally speaking, the idea was inspired from the same song discussed in the Fakhroid Muse post, but a different line:

أثاريك نسيتني مع الأيام
ورضيت تفوتني على الآلام

Just to find you've forgot about me along the days
And you were satisfied to let me through the pains

The second line of this verse is the one that ticked in my mind and decided to implement the idea here. I've spent some time drawing a valentine heart on a cardboard and pinning some nails in it as it can be seen in Lovely Pain. In the beginning, the idea was to use 15mm fisheye lens because its perspective would help on forming the valentine heart more clearly (because of the distortion), but the wide field of view made it problematic to use such a lens, specially with speedlites placed around the set. As it can be seen above, the shutter speed is high, because I wanted to kill the ambient light completely (and of course that requires working in High-Speed mode).
I wanted to work with red food coloring in the beginning too, but apparently that was hard to show on metallic heads and (since I had no model to work with except of myself) it would make a mess for me, thus it was safer to work with red gel filter placed on the main speedlite. One speedlite was actually enough, sort of, but added another one on its side (was planned to light the feet alone), and for this we have here light heads sparkling (and lighter red tone). At the end, I've changed to Voigtländer 20mm lens for it is not as wide as the 15mm fisheye lens. Working with this lens can be tricky somewhat since it is manual completely and I had to re-focus as I adjusted the elevation and the direction of the camera several times (beside changing the spot to be under the focus several times).
The tricky part here is after shooting: on camera's LCD view, everything was alright, but when the file is opened on PC with large monitor, the valentine heart is barely recognizable and would require longer time of concentration to realize that it is a heart. Maybe it was my mistake even to draw it in reverse like that!
I'm still on the lookout for more inspiration and probably from the same song still. I do have some ideas already as I'm typing this, but the vivid glimpse of this idea would require having a model - someone to work with; something I'm not good at, and not available as well for me (of course, unless I pay money for a professional model I believe). I'll keep that for later though.

Rain-Bubbles

As a continuation for the kitchen utensils project which was started with the workshop mentioned in the first section of this post, Let's Cook!, I've tried to work with new ladles I've purchased specially for this project, and they are with good polish (but completely though). Big, small, and some tiny metallic container; I liked how they looked in the store without really thinking what to do with them. It took me some time to wander and to look, and finally got the idea of shooting reflections in some way, since these utensils do look like half spherical mirrors (concave or convex). Anyway, I did reflections, but in some other way. Completely different way!

Qtar 1 (droplets 1)
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/10, 250^-1sec, ISO100.

As for the title of the image above, Qtar, I somewhat miss the Maltese language so I decided to use Maltese to name this series of images. After roaming my mind about, I finally sought hanging the ladle on the edge of a table (using clamp) and putting some drops of corn syrup (as a substitute for glycerine); water won't help much here with its low viscosity. Of course a setting as plain as this seem boring, so we have to add some colors to add life to the abstract, and thus I got colored sticks (like those tongue depressors used by doctors) out of my accessories arsenal, and placed them on the top of the ladle making a small window for the lens to peak into the droplets.

Full setting used with 2 speedlites. As it can be seen, the tripod legs were opened wider to get lower and closer to the ladle. Upon the ladle sit a number of colored sticks. Click to enlarge.

The first problem to encounter is which proper lens to use and I have discovered that sometimes, lot of times, we tend to complicate things instead of going directly to the problem. After trying a lot of lighting methods, and lenses with extension tubes, I reached the decision that I should keep it simple: single lens, no tubes, and even speedlite without any modifiers. The only thing here, as seen in the settings, the speedlites were not pointing directly but almost lighting the edge of the ladle which in turn spread the light all around the droplets.

Qtar 2
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/3.5, 200^-1sec, ISO100.

Qtar 3
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/2.8, 200^-1sec, ISO100.

Qtar 4
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/10, 250^-1sec, ISO100.

As it can be seen here with this series of 4 shots, each change in the aperture (i.e. f-number) or the direction or power of the speedlite can produce interesting results; all that without touching anything in the settings but only changing the parameters in the camera and speedlite. Not to say also, the order of the colored sticks can be changed or the colors themselves (or even use something else other than sticks). Such a simple experiment can have great variety of results and the expectations are limitless!
Probably of the 4 above, Qtar 3 is the most liked one. Processing these images underwent a number of cleaning processes and adding lens blur to remove some of the scratches in the background (except for Qtar 3).

Finale

My mind is scrambled right now after all the dramatic events. Somewhat the world doesn't mean much for me. I don't feel it. But in the middle of all this sway and trying hard to concentrate and to work on something I like, to take my mind off from my personal problems, despite the fact that my work of art would mostly reflect some of the personality side, as in Lovely Pain.
On the other hand, my addiction to games is increasing as well as a way to escape reality (and people), as well as my worries. What does the future hold? Would I be able to see the outside world again? I'm going back to work by next Sunday, just to add more to my mental struggles…

Pains...

Seems I'll be having a rest for this week and maybe for the next week. I'm having some pains that I'm suspecting to be kidney-related. I'm not sure of anything yet, but surely this pain is draining me from power even further more than it is already. I didn't check out with a doctor so far, and probably I will try to do a remedy on my own myself. I got to say, I hate doctors, specifically here. However, if the pain persisted, I guess there won't be any escape from going to them. All what I'm hoping for in the meantime is for this to be just some pains related to exposure to cold air after a shower or a minor inflammation which is not kidney-related.
I have been working with some panoramas (old ones) and trying new geometries and made up some new perspectives. Hopefully I'll post them next time I can type this. Till then...

Alexander 6, V107.

Just whne I thought Thursday is finally here. The pain with my right wrist is becoming greater after some sudden stretch resulting from my clumsy movement. Went to the doctor to take some paper to do an X-Ray, and I was lucky (yeah really!) to know that the X-Ray is in the same clinic upstairs and I don't have to go to any hospital to this.
The X-Ray showed no signs of injuries to the bones, so the doctor said that it is most probably related to the tendons or muscles (not sure if this is what they call it, tendons?). She said come back in 3 days if the pain did not calm down (or go away?). Anyway, I got a feeling that I'll have to visit her by next Sunday.

As a result of today's "journey" I didn't work in the lab and barely had time to read after coming back. But, I had some time to write something! I named it "Just Like A Hero." It reflects my belief about what or who is the hero in this life: Is it the man with the gun that fights for either good or evil, or is it the the person who spreads the passion and the bless wherever he goes? Despite my haste in writing this, I hope you like reading it. I wrote some of it in the early morning before I leave my office to the clinic, and the rest was when I got back, thus there might be some apparent discontinuity in the chain of thoughts that might be felt in between the lines.

Back to photography, I was lucky now that Canstockphoto did accept my three versions of The Drama Lake (as I called it). Sort of got me back some confidence. I shall try to see other images sitable for black and white conversion.
Yesterday, and instead of working on a new image, I was testing some cropping on The Drama Lake (the BW version). I used to use cropping to eliminate many unwanted stuff in my images but now I'm trying to raise up a step and try to imply this to enhance the composition of my images, when possible.

Named it "Grace"

I can't really say the composition is good, since you are the judge. But I was trying to use the law of thirds in here and place the tree in one of the essential points around the center of the image, but because of other elements around, that was not possible without losing or putting back things. The rays of light are, of course, made up here. Just to make up something and not let it be a boring one. Some people actually didn't like it because of the "noise" as they said made by the clouds. That is, a compositional noise. Well, I do agree to some extent, although the clouds is the thing that made me take this picture in the first place.

Now with this pain in my wrist, photography is more like a challenge rather than something I do because it makes me relax. With this wrapped up hand that I ca barely move, things are going to be hard for me when dealing with the camera, and most importantly, my VR-head!

__________
2545. the food and water they had did not satisfy Alexander
2546. and the day seemed longer than it seems in reality
2547. while their stomaches started to groan loudly
2548. and Alexander felt his body's weakness severely
2549. but his Cadid went on trying to catch something
2550. but the land was so dry and no hopes for survival
2551. then Alexander gazed upon the clear blue sky
2552. and he prayed to God, his savior and the Giver
2553. then Alexander fainted because of the weakness
2554. and he closed his eyes and gave his soul to God's mercy
2555. some time passed which Alexander did not count
2556. and he suddenly felt a cold touch upon his cheek
2557. thus he opened his eyes and gazed into heaven
2558. and he saw the miracle of God in front of his eyes
2559. the sky was raining like it never did in centuries
2560. while the green cover was growing with every drop
2561. thus he knelt down and praised God, Almighty
2562. while his Cadid was running like if he was dancing
2563. it was raining for a short time but all the green came out
2564. and the trees riped again and carried different food
2565. thus Alexander started to gather the food and water
2566. while his Cadid was helping him with a happy face
2567. thus everything was prepared and supplies were taken
2568. and the two had some rest until the arrival of the night

Alexander 6, V82.

Supposed to be a calm day without the annoyances! By the early morning a sudden pain stroke my feet and ankle and I've started to limp since then! This said, now it is Thursday and seems no going out for tonight, well, because of the World Cup. You know, sometimes I try to push myself to watch or like sports like other people do, but really, no use at all. I can't stand it, and I can't even stop thinking about it as... silly. As simple as that.
Made some lab work, and checked the damned admins to see how to request a leave without my salaries being paid in advance, and as usual, no satisfying answer. But I'm working on it still.

Since I'm not going out tonight, I might give it a real test this time with my VR head that I didn't use it still for real. My target might be the Guest Room again. The decoration or should I say, the composition, had changed in that room now so it won't be like the same composition as before. It is also a chance to check the parameters that I have to note down for my fisheye lens concerning the calibration factors.

Had some plenty of time in my hands in the office today after finishing the work with the samples, so I decided to go on with my note and pen(cil) and I wrote a piece that I called Over There. It is, somehow, about someone who immigrated away from home, but it also fits from my perspective, for someone who lives like a stranger in his own home. And by home, I mean homeland.

I hate to end it like that with no images at all, so here you go...

__________

1945. Alexander picked one of those ball-like fruit
1946. and throw it on the ground until it reached the tree
1947. the tree banished the piece of fruit rapidly
1948. then Alexander said to Kaliván: quick, help me,
1949. let's put this pile at once beside the tree,
1950. I shall make the tree busy hitting those,
1951. while you help me cut out the branches
1952. Kaliván hesitated in the beginning
1953. because he did not want to hurt the tree
1954. but with the confidence of Alexander he went on
1955. so the two threw the pile on the tree all at once
1956. and the tree became like crazy hitting the fruit
1957. while Alexander worked with his sword on the back
1958. and Kaliván helped him to break small branches
1959. few moments passed and the tree was like naked
1960. no branches the tree had but only a top with leaves
1961. while some noises came from inside the tree like moans
1962. as if the tree was indeed shouting for the pain it had
1963. and the branches lied around and turned black
1964. then Kaliván said to Alexander: something inside it,
1965. there must be something inside this damned tree,
1966. never heard of a tree that cries out loud from pain
1967. thus Alexander said: we should cut it then
1968. but Kaliván replied: we would only kill the tree then

Pain Pain Pain...

Sounds like if my life is a wreck.

The pain in my right ear is increasing. It increased right after using the medicine given to me by the doctor. I feel like if the right side of my face is paralyzed. I guess I need to take more painkillers.

I took the sick kitty right now. I feel sorry for him. I didn't want to see him dying with such bad conditions. No one is helping me in the house to take care of him, and apparently my life is a mess right now and can't get a grip of it. I put him somewhere, near the seashore, just before what they call the "Marina Mall Crescent." I laid him on the grass and put some tuna on a paper dish for him there maybe he would be able to get up again and eat, though I don't see any hope there. I spent like KD30 for the vet to take care of him, but nothing changed. I guess he has a great malfunction or disease. I hated to do it, but I hate more to see him dying in front of my eyes without being able to do anything for him. God, Thy mercy.

I guess I won't be able to go out this weekend at all. I was planning to go back to Failaka in the coming days just to check for more sites, but I guess this is not possible with such pain in my head. My only choice is to relax, completely and not moving at all.

I need to write down a word in my diary...

Twirl...

Working on the sketch of the manuscript still with no idea of what to do or what to put down. I didn't start sketching the object yet, but merely the ornamentations that are to be on the sides. I chose to depict a scene from chapter 3 (The bulughmans), first and second verses. The first verse is supposedly showing the image of Alexander crossing the land of day and night, while the second depicts him meeting the Bulughman nomads. This is the idea for now, and of course I had to add the Ayvarith text, and all should be handwritten. Add to that, I did not start writing down the translation of the last chapter. It is just so exhausting, simply by being at work!

On the other hand, I'm trying to squeeze my brain for more words for poetry. I had a nice period last week of flowing words into my mind. This week seems dull. Some emotional matters are shaky at the moment leaving me in a dilemma of what to do next. This might be reason for the busy mind and the inability to write more poetry.

I picked the little kitty to the vet and kept it there. Hopefully I'm going to get it by tomorrow if possible, and I hope he's going to be OK and walking again. I think I have to build some sort of a house (maybe from a hard-paper box) and keep it cool somehow away from the sun heat, for him and for his mother as well.

Maybe I don't know or understand how animals talk or think, but I could see clearly the sadness on the cat's face for taking away her kitty, specially that she was not around when I picked him up. She doesn't say much in the yard now and mostly outside, probably looking after him. I hope she feels OK when I bring him tomorrow... if everything went alright.

My ears are aching, most probably because of using the headphone at work all the time and listening to the Irish music out loud. I hate to go to the doctor to check for this. Today, I forcefully stopped using the headphones and listening to music at work. I hope it gets OK soon that way, or else, I have to check the doc.