Unconventional II

With the sudden surge of such a busy schedule and load of work, I don't know if I'm going to post this in time, but here I am trying. I'll to make it short as much as possible. Well, kind of. I want to continue a bit about my last blog post and the "unconventional" trend and then move to something that I thought I'd leave for now but curiosity got the best out of me and I think, just think, that I've made a breakthrough!

Unconventional II

After posting my previous post here with the "unconventional" representations of photos, my appetite for collages, or let's say, "unconventional" art was ignited a bit. The field of work, of course, was the yard again where most of my inspirations are drawn. I also prefer to work during the daytime to have a faster shutter speed; The night view of the yard is also awesome but at such time I'm usually lazy and tired. Also, at some point, as I'll go through some images, there would be a need for speedlites (and all are packed and in need to be installed!).

3 Suns 1 Wall

Benro MP-96
My monopod

My first trial was with the wall in the yard (facade) which I think I've posted a panorama of at some time previously in this blog. I'm just so happy that the swimming pool had been removed so I could move easily here! Anyway, to make things systematic as much as possible, I've used here my monopod with 3 tiny legs and at a low level, and of course, with a fisheye lens on camera (my beloved Rokinon 8mm). The shoot went on for HDR, and HDR did I tone-map, and tone-mapped images did I blend together to make 3 Suns 1 Wall. I had to save the main file as PSB since it did exceed 2GB in size.
The shooting ran relatively smooth, but I had to squat a lot to minimize my shadow in the scene and also to drag the monopod on the ground slowly (taking the lines between the tiles as a guide and a measure). The plan was not to make a panorama-like image but a collage. However, I've found myself drifting in that direction for no reason (yes, really), and blending the images that way did help with eliminating my shadows. The image above still has errors because shooting in such a lens do distort the perspective a lot, and it's hard to make ends meet. Anyway, it was a lengthy work and such a worthwhile experiment despite the "stitching" or blending errors. 

إِرْثُ آدَم (Adam's heritage)

However, the real trial was not for that wall, but for the side wall which extends along a narrow corridor leading to the side door into the house and another one into the kitchen. This long wall is the most greenish and it's longer, and it was my target in the first place before shooting the other wall with the window. The narrow place made it hard to move (with delicate movements) to stabilize the camera's direction as much as possible. All in all, squatting and dragging the monopod across the tiled floor in a straight line as much as possible for the two session provided a good exercise (and pain for days!). I remember working for about 2 days or so placing the shots; I tried to do my best to seek balance between systematic and chaotic placement for the shots in their positions together, or if I want to rephrase that, to make the collage random yet reflecting a full wide image. Also, with tone-mapping the HDR slides, I've tried to make the images look sunny, warm, tropical somehow; All that in purpose.
To add somewhat a 3D sense also, I've picked some specific shots and moved them the stack and used the layer effects options to drop shadows. That way some slides are supposed to appear "floating". 

The Grand Mulukhiyyah

I do like how Adam's Heritage turned out. It was saved as PNG of course with transparent background (and it should appear as such here I suppose). Some places like Facebook would still fill the space with white and apparently the image, being PNG, converted to some sort of JPG when posted. Anyway, this was not the end of the story with collages and composite images, as there was something even "bigger". This is what I called The Grand Mulukhiyyah. Well, in case you didn't know, mulukhiyyah [ملوخية] is the Arabic name for Jute (or Mellow jute?).
The shooting of this "stack" was done using 50mm lens this time at f/2.8 and quite randomly (handheld). I was just holding the camera tight to my eye and following the main stem of the plant (from the bottom of the pot) and going along the branches and then back to the main stem and up a little and then along another branch and so on, until reaching the top.
Processing this set of images came on stages, with editing the RAW files (collectively, copying settings from a single image to all). Maybe some images in this set did not appear "correct" per se (e.g. the pot at the base because it's too dark) but nevertheless it was a surreal job to be done.
The next step was to minimize the over all size of the frames or images to something around 1000 pixels in width. However, I had to pull back and restart again when I realized that the final result would not produce a big body of an image. The size is kind of important for me here to have more control over the final result. Also, I've realized that manually placing the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle was NOT a good idea, so I've sought help from Photoshop's Align option, using Relocation method (using the Auto mode did produce distortions that I didn't like). Anyway, it was apparent that I do need to work with the original files with no resizing, so I'm back again to working with PSB files, with a range of sizes between 2-4GB! In order to make some "illusion" of depth or 3D, I've applied white frames on the slides and applied shadows to some (or all?) of them.

The Grand RGB Mulukhiyyah

This did not end here though as my juices were still flowing and I hated to end the adventures just at putting some photos (33 of them) together. I started to divide the stack into 3 groups, and assigning a color from the RGB palette to each group. I've called it The Grand RGB Mulukhiyyah - well, a name fitting the funky looks I guess; And there is more to come by the way. With this method of coloring the slides, it seems there was no need for white frames to visually separate the slides, so I've removed them. Also, the red tones were too saturated (working with ProPhoto color space mainly) so I did a little tweak of Hue/Saturation to the whole image. Looking at this image through the anaglyph glasses almost gave me a headache! Don't do it!
Again, things didn't stop here. I decided to do something I didn't do before "at all". And that is: Working in CMYK instead of RGB.

The Grand CMYK Mulukhiyyah

I don't have much experience with this system (if any) but I do know that it is the common system in use in presses for mass production. Besides, there were many options in Photoshop for such a system to convert to! I picked one which seemed to be the "default" in Photoshop, and I don't know what the heck does that mean or how it is different from the others (the one I picked says US, while there are others related to Europe and Japan). It was a complete dilemma to me. Anyway, I did it.
In this instance, and because CMYK, apparently, is composed of 4 rather than 3 channels, I've had to group the slides into 4 stacks instead of 3, and assign each stack a color from the set of CMYK. Thinking about it, I probably was able to do this within RGB system but it would be a lengthy process somewhat. My method for assigning colors to the whole stack or group is by controlling the channels of the group (via Group Properties) where I turn off all channels save but one.
Now, there is a minor setback and that is, images cannot be saved as PNG when in CMYK system, so a conversion back to RGB must be done. I won't go into details here but there are certain options must be activated to ensure that the looks of the image won't change when the image is converted.
Personally, I do like the CMYK rendering more than the RGB, and who knows, I might do more of such "art" in the future. It is just colorful and more vibrant as I see it more than RGB is. Also, I might try to discover other systems, if possible! But for the time being, I've been busy with many things (work, home, other photo ideas). So, I'm not sure when to try this idea out.

Finale

Well, it seems that the post had gone longer than I anticipated already so I will keep the other part, about panoramas, for a later time. Hopefully in 2 weeks time from now. There had been some images also that had been marked as "inspirational" on YouPic, but I think I will keep them in time (and one of them would be in the next post hopefully). I'm now 3 images short of completing my next set of 10 inspirational images. If that happens at any time now, I will be preparing a special post about these 10.

I've been going through some busy times (though at home) lately and some upheaval combined with mood swings as usual. It is as if I'm hitting a new ebb every few days. On the darker brighter side (as ironic as it sounds), I was able to compose a poem after some long time of dormancy. No need to post the poem here, but in case one is interested in reading it, it can be found here. I've called it Lion's Heart. When I read it, again and again, I do somehow find it hard myself to follow my emotions through it, as if I cannot connect with my emotions with which it had been written. All I'm sure of is that it was written at a time of a severe mood swing that made me otherwise stunned and paralyzed except for writing this poem. Now, how many mood swings do I have to endure to write another poem? God only knows.

As a direction, I don't know where am I heading with my camera, or with my life as a whole anyway. Trying to take each day as it is and trying to think of a new project that I can bear with, with my camera. There is no lack of ideas in fact, but a lack of power and will from my side to just get moving. Probably I'm better just sitting behind a desk and do the ordinary office job? After all, this is how I did make some money to get what I have right now of gear (though it's pretty old right now compared to the new stuff coming to the market).
Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts... and all my mission is, every single day, is to fight back and stop them as much as I can…

Dormantile

Well, this is my first ever post to be done with this new Blogspot platform changes. Everything is so white here and I don't know if I can change things later. However, I really don't have the mood to even think about doing changes to this. Why does everything I get used to change? How do people get the time to adapt to new changes every now and then? 

Anyway, never mind the grumpy mood and the whining here from the very beginning of this blog post. I've lost track of my posts and I didn't have much material to be posted here anyway. I was seriously thinking of stopping to blog for a while. My life with the camera and conlangs had been significantly dormant. I could hardly motivate myself to do any work or even think of any idea. If, by miracle, I do think of an idea, then I'd not the power (and mood) to work on it. 

Yarding

I guess I'm inventing new words into English. Hope you don't mind; English is not my first language and I'm trying to be innovative in the last bits of mind that are left intact still. Anyway, the term "yarding" is just a term I'd like to use for my activities in the yard, where I take my sunbath almost on a daily basis. Now that we have some nice and shiny plants, I've been trying for many times to get away with some shots, specially in ultraviolet. My attempts, though, failed miserably for most of the time. No denying that such failure did put me down even further, and made me lose the appetite to hold the camera often. A whirl of emotions that was, and still is, hard to get out from.

The yard as shot with my favorite Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens from my room's window; (top) normal, (bottom) Red/Blue channel swap. The rectangle at the center is the swimming pool.

One thing (to be positive a bit here) brings me joy though, is when I go out to check the yard and all the plants there that I've been watering myself (not every day) and some of them were planted by me personally. Anyway, I was thinking of some sort of a challenge with my own like I used to do back in the day when I would go to work every morning taking my camera with one lens only, as a challenge to squeeze creative juices out of this rotten brain of mine. Probably thinking too much about ultraviolet and infrared photography did ruin (in some sense) my appetite for just normal photography trends.

HDR version of the same shot.

 

Noticeably though that I've stopped thinking about doing bracketed shots (for HDR merging later), and this is good and bad in the same time. Probably I've stopped thinking of shooting in HDR as I usually do because of the long immersion with infrared and ultraviolet in the past few months (because I usually don't shoot bracketed for such type of photography). Anyway, this is a good and bad point as I've mentioned, because bracketed shots do have the initiatives for more artistic work and not necessarily just for HDR merging, specially as I've learned some new editing techniques that basically uses under-exposed images (or pulling back the exposure down for a properly/brightly exposed image). But did you really think I could stop shooting infrared or ultraviolet?

 

InfraPots

 And just to get myself ongoing with the camera work, I've decided to play around with my fisheye lens (Rokinon's 8mm of course) in the yard, fit on my modified 7D. Since I didn't do a panorama in AGES, I've decided to shoot a little one. I was stuck between the swimming pool and the scene I wanted, so this lens was the best for the job here. And just as if I do need more problems as it is with this very simple shoot, the weather was humid and I had to shoot the scene twice after noticing how humidity blurred the corners of some shots.

InfraPots (Red/Blue swap)

Since the work was with the Rokinon fisheye lens, I didn't really put any filter into the lens to shoot infrared with my modified camera. So, probably I shouldn't call InfraPots with such a name since the image is, technically speaking, a combination of visible and infrared spectra. Shooting without a filter, even under a harsh sun, does make it easier to shoot in brackets for HDR, which I did here even though I didn't go crazy with tone-mapping like I did with the yard shot above. Stitching the panorama, as expected, did bear a lot of stitching errors; I've fixed some and neglected some. I really didn't want to waste much time with something I'm doing merely for fun and to get me going with my camera and break the dormancy. What I like here is the lines on the wall; These are not visible in reality, but only when shot in infrared (or infrared+visible). As you can see, too, that my shadow is on the ground in this panorama, so it is absolutely not something I would be wasting my time on fixing it. Shooting a panorama here would require a lot of work, and with the pool installed at the middle of the yard, it would be hard to setup a tripod even.

Lustrous Green

With all that shooting during the daytime, I have to admit that it is probably by night that the plants (though simple compared to other professional gardens and other floral arts) do look fabulous; With all the LED lights in the yard that give a soft touch of light to the leaves. Finding a proper composition was not something to really work with specially in a (sort of) stacked yard like this but I tried. I've relied heavily though on the post-processing aspects, as in Lustrous Green and those that would come afterward. The main point though is to focus on shooting dark on purpose and processing the image with that intent in mind and not adjusting the exposure to get every detail possible from the shades of the image. With my 50mm at f/1.4 it was not a problem to shoot handheld in such a dark place with faint lights. The shutter speeds were just about enough at ISO100. Though later, I think, I've increased the ISO up to 200. No HDR shooting this time though. 

 

The Bright Side of Shade

Bougainvillea Stoccata
Click to enlarge

Something that night pulled toward minimalism and abstract work, but probably this is natural in such place and such limitation (of lens). The lens itself does not give me enough distance to include large bodies into the image (and it is the only f/1.4 lens I have), but nevertheless, I'm just happy to work with it that way. I don't mind abstract or minimalism after all, even though I know that around my circles, such forms of photos are not quite appreciated except in few instances for whatever reason that could be. The whole thing sounded like a "picture-hunting" challenge, like those I've used to do at work, but a nocturnal version of it. At some point, some of these images were actually dark; too dark. Apparently I have to adjust my LCD settings to make sure that I get a close representation for the lighting of the scene. Yes, I did a mistake here for not checking the histogram. Anyway, it was not a big deal as I went on with processing these dark or semi-dark images specially that I don't need a bright image anyway; I needed a representation for the night in these images after all. The image Bougainvillea Stoccata inspired me to start with something (along with a previous re-make of an older panorama) but I think I will leave that for another blog post.

Tranquil Solitude
Click to enlarge

So, I got somewhat encouraged to hunt again, and this time during the day (morning time). And Ta Da, it was humid. Probably you can tell already how much I miss winter already as it is. Anyway, this time, I was more dedicated to find some details, and in order to do that, I've connected my 12mm extension tube to the 50mm; This is just to get closer and not to shoot macro (the magnification factor here is way below 1x). One of the striking shots (to me that is, I don't mean to the outside world) is a somewhat macro shot for the bloom of Portulaca oleracea (or some related plant) which I've struggled to shoot before specially in extreme macro conditions (reversing my 20mm lens and using a rail just to get it right, and never did). Turned out that this simple sitting of 12mm extension tube and 50mm lens was just about enough to get some nice details of the little bloom (diameter might be a bit more than 1cm). The reason for fitting a 12mm extension tube is not to do any work for macro actually; As explained, the magnification ratio is way below 1x. But I had to use it to shoot at a close distance because of the pool in the middle of the yard which limits my distancing from the plants (the shortest focusing distance for Canon's 50mm is 45cm). Anyway, I've used apertures between f/1.4 to f/2.8 to shoot several images (and still under inspection as I'm typing these words now). When checking Tranquil Solitude the photo looked promising even though there was maybe a slight motion blur (caused by the breeze) which I tried to compensate for by selectively sharpening (using NIK) the bloom. The image had undergone massive crops which probably enhanced the "proximity" of the bloom giving, maybe, the allusion that it is a macro shot at 1x. The cropping was due to some undesired elements and distractions in fact and also to re-locate the bloom at one of the cardinal points in the law of thirds (golden ratio in fact). Still, it looks not bad and I might considering uploading Tranquil Solitude to the stocks at some point.

Green Delight

Now, since I didn't process or check closely all the images I've shot in that morning, but Green Delight was one of the images that got my attention from the first round of check-up. The light green hues grabbed my attention already without editing even. In editing, I've increased the brightness on various levels as much as possible and then stretched the blacks or shadows almost to the end. Finally, the image was sharpened selectively at some specific zones of the images. Another thing I like about this one is the fact that the maize leaves acted as a background (to most of the image). The image was also cropped according to the triangular method which fitted the two (left and right) branches perfectly.

(Golden) Triangle crop marks labeled on Green Delight

I have to note though this is usually not the proper way to use this method of composition or cropping, because the trend is to use the spaces (the triangles) to put the elements within, and not the lines to set the boundaries in the image. However, it is a work of art and I guess we need to experiment from time to time. The whole thing is an experiment after all.

Finale

First of all, I have to say that this new design for Blogspot is really giving me a hard time typing the post and organizing the photos. So, you might have already noticed (if you reached this point in reading that is) that there gaps and texts stuck to the photos. I've also stopped checking the statistics of the blogs here because of the bulky design and navigating through the options and too many clicks just to check a graph or see origins of hits. Why do they do this? Why do developers like to complicate other people's lives? Specifically, my life; As if I don't have headaches of my own.

I wanted to talk a bit further about other things and ideas that have crossed my mind lately and I'm trying to work on them currently, but I'll keep these ideas for later posts, hopefully. One of these ideas involve re-working panoramas, and another one involves breaking the conventional photo display. The latter one is still under inspection and I'm trying to find the ins and outs and form some ideas about the... idea (if that makes sense). Anyway, we'll see if I can post in 2 weeks time. 

I think I've been grumpy enough at the beginning of this post, so I guess I don't need to pour more into it here in the closing of this post. Everyone is waiting for 2020 to finish as if things will be better by 2021. I really don't know how they got this idea as if circumstances and epidemics do count the years and are limited by some time limits. To me, I don't find much difference anymore in the passing of time. All I want is a garden, or a sea, and some birds; And if possible, to die there as well…

Thar-Corcra…

Been a while since I typed something here, I know. Been like another little vacation to myself, but this is not the case unfortunately. I was plagued by many issues; Mainly, health problems. Back-Shoulder pains, gum pains, weakness in general (as I was not able to eat properly) and mood swings in a great deal. So much there was on my plate, which really left me a bit paralyzed and unable to do much. In fact, the pains are still there as I'm typing these words but to a lesser extent and I'm praying that they don't come back - not any time soon.
Because of all of that, my activities with the camera had been minimum, sort of, and I was wondering for a long time about what to post for this week actually. In fact, I was almost going to skip this week as well, but I thought maybe typing something here would initiate a spark for me to carry the camera again. I do have little experiments done in the past few days that might be suitable for posting here.

A Little Announcement

I've announced previously in one of my posts that I will make my Mostphotos profile a place to upload some of these artistic selfies, since Mostphotos is down easy in terms of faces and model releases. This said, I do upload my selfies with a model release there (a release that I've made myself). 

Anyway, I've recently uploaded three of my infrared artworks there and I thought it would be nice to announce them here just in case someone reading this would wish to check them out and maybe download them for any artistic purposes (well, that incorporates commercial purposes I guess).

Link

Link

Link

 

I've talked about the make of these images in some previous posts (probably back in June or July) and I thought why not uploading them to stock websites. In fact, I'm still working on creating such looks but on other types of images, yet it didn't work quite well. 

So, this was my little announcement, and now to the post!

Corcra

Corcra is purple  or violet in Irish. Anyway, I had some minor activity with my B+W ultraviolet filter after my daily "sun bathing" routine. I have to say, after sun bathing and watering the plants I barely get some energy to do anything else; and that was before being struck with the various pains in my body.
Now, one of the hurdles of shooting with such filters (UV or IR) is that I can't see a thing through the viewfinder, and I have to depend on the LCD LiveView, and that means a tripod, which I was too lazy to carry around. I was shooting these shots freely handheld, but also because of the swimming pool that was installed in the yard, I wouldn't have much space to set up a tripod and shoot some of these plants in the yard. In return, looking through the LCD was not that easy and on many occasions I was shooting almost blindly and checking the photos later. All in all, not much of results did I get, but I'm going to show some of these that I've processed already.

Portulaca oleracea (UV)

I have to admit first that this is not exactly Portulaca oleracea, but it is something close to that species. I've known that later after giving this name to the image. Anyway, this was a UV image shot under the blazing sun. Of course it's an abstract as can be seen. What attracted me here specifically is the fact that leaves did retain their green color after adjusting the white balance (and the color profile of course before that). I had to, though, push the vibration a bit further and like magic, there was a plenty of green in the image mixed up with violet. I think it depends on the angle of the reflecting light here that the leaf would appear as green or purple when shot in UV and processed. Anyway, that's just a speculation of course and not a real "scientific" say in the matter. As for the black background here, it is done digitally as there was nothing interesting in the background and been more like a distraction.

Minimal UV

Ultraviolet Jute

So, generally speaking, I did like this idea of getting green leaves despite the shot being spectral (that is ultraviolet). Usually green foliage turn white in infrared images but here they are green, with sometimes tint of purple of course. I find the purple tint of the image annoying, specially after increasing the vibrancy of colors in general (to enhance the Greens mainly). For this reason, I tend to "suck" it out of the image, or in more technical terms, desaturate it. The image would then automatically look like a photo with "splash" style (those B&W images with only one color prevalent in them), and sometimes with a slight blue tint remaining a bit as in Minimal UV. Sure, since it is a surreal type of photography, some bits of minimalism won't hurt!

Colorful Watermelon (UV)

The last one, is my favorite one I guess, where I shot almost blindly (because the sun didn't allow me to see LCD clearly) some pots or tubs where we planted watermelon (but not fruit did yield!). Anyway, here in Colorful Watermelon (UV) you can see the original shot after fixing the color profile and white balance in RAW on far left. The rest are just results from channel swapping in various methods. Actually, I do like them all and it's hard for me to choose one if I wanted, for example, to print something of that for any reason that might be. Each one has its own mood. Saying that, I think I'm more inclined to the far right one for its mood and colors that ignite some feelings in me that I can hardly describe; But something that reminds me of film days and my old times, as well as cloudy winter (despite the fact that the shot was taken under a blazing sun).
Now for the record, I do follow two methods in swapping channels mainly, and I use them both for infrared and ultraviolet images. I have to try them both and see the results as I can't decide beforehand. The two swapping techniques are (using Channel Mixer adjustment layer in Photoshop):

• Red to Blue, Blue to Red, and Green untouched or re-distributed between Red, Green and Blue. 
• Shifting each channels to the next one: R to G, G to B, B to R. 

For those who are reading this and didn't try the Channel Mixer before, you might get an idea what I'm talking about once you open that adjustment layer and see the options for yourself. I'm trying to keep the post a bit a shorter so I can't make tutorial about it here!

Now, there had been some trials to do some long exposures in the yard as well but those didn't work well mainly because of the inadequate perspective (couldn't set up the camera correctly because of the narrow space and not being able to see through properly). The long exposure was to be for some plants in the yard moved by the breeze as well being sprinkled with water; However, none of that was really impressive. On a side note, I was thinking of doing some pinhole work as well, maybe in morning time, in the yard as well. Typically under such sun the exposure with the pinhole would be a matter of seconds and not minutes as it would be indoors. Still thinking about it though as I don't have any specific composition in my mind yet not a specific goal.

Finale

LCD Loupe
In case it's a weird terminology!

As I was typing this blog post I've reminded myself that I have to find a solution for my loupe problem (a scope to fit the LCD of the camera to see it better, specially under the sun). I bought this thing months ago and I didn't really have made any use of it, and the sticker that was supposed to stick the magnetic holder to the LCD was weak and fell down easily. Adding to that, the holder itself was not exactly the size of my LCD. Such a headache! Probably I will end up using it like that anyway for more mobility, despite the ambiguity.
The humidity here is wrecking my body, as well as my mind. I'm seriously growing sick of it and can't wait for winter to come. With every wave of humidity comes illnesses and pains, as I am having right now with my gum and my shoulder-back muscle pain, and at some other times, my skin as well. Maybe my gum has nothing to do with humidity but the rush of health issues that come with the humidity every time really blows my mind away.
Time is going by and I'm still not able to find a venture of a side-way for some sort of an income that might enable me to detach myself a bit from my current work, which is surprisingly getting more annoying while I'm staying at home. I'm even growing tired myself of my own mood swings, and I just wish I could sleep, and never wake up. I'm trying to improve some habits still, like reading Quran in early morning while sun bathing. In fact, reading Quran has been indeed my joy and the only help I could get to myself against mood swings. For this, I'm trying to read it often to calm me down. On the other hand, the more I read of it, I kind of loathe the world and all its events, realizing how much worthless it is, and how much this life lacks luster. But I'm keeping up with it with all I could get of power, in hope that I might get some sort of good news or a happy event that surprises me to draw a smile on this solid face.