Kika X…

How silly was it for me to make a post without an introduction the last time! I guess I was in a bit of a hurry to finish whatever I can in time. Anyway, I don't think there is any important stuff to spill out in the introduction, but I really wanted to make another little announcement. But well, I guess I don't need a special section for this little one, so here we go.
I've lately uploaded my bubbles collection to my Canstockphoto (which you find by clicking the signature at the end of the post) and now I've posted "some" of these images (and some few more outside the series) into my 123RF profile. I say "some" here because some images from this series were not accepted for one reason or another. Thus, the full series is actually available (so far) ONLY on Canstockphoto. I don't know much about the pricing of each website but just in case you want to compare, go ahead. Some people have one account in one and not the other anyway. As for Dreamstime, I never received any email concerning this type of upload or series or any single response, thus I have not uploaded there at all. 

 

Kika X

And up with the 10^th week of Kika's photo-challenge. At this time, I got occupied pretty much with many things, specially helping my brother with his studied. Thus, my mind was not "that" free for much inspirational work. Mind was all over the place. This,in fact, would be the situation till the end of the series of Kika's photo-challenge.
The theme for Week 10 was "light." As usual, since I didn't have the proper time to take new photos, I've searched my arsenal and I couldn't find any better than one particular shot that had a special kind of light…

Boihéamach
(bohemian)

I love this selfie because of the light in use here. It was lit with a single candle (and posted about it back in 2019 and started a project then to portraits with one candle only). Beside the quality of the light here, it was shot in infrared (hence the blue tint and eye). I was lucky here to pinpoint the focus on the eye on my own; It was a lengthy process of trial and error! However, just so I won't be re-posting a photo just like that without any edit or any effort for the theme, I've decided to do a minor adjustment. So minor but with a huge impact: Contrast.

Boihéamach (2)

The difference is drastic and made me wonder: Why didn't I do this in the first place when I first processed this image? Probably, then, I was way too dependent on the histogram and feared going out of the gamut. The contrast here was fixed simply by using the black dropper in the Curve adjustment layer box and using it to set the black point of the image as a whole from a spot near the face (or the eye's pupil).
The image became more dramatic and more drastic and I'd say more Rambrandt-ish after this fix of the contrast, with apparently uplifting the blue tint from the whole image.
I think I really need to detach myself from perfection with histogram. A lesson to be learned in my future work; If my memory and habits serve me right. So, this far is my only contribution for Kika's Week 10 challenge: Light. 

 

Back-on-Villea

So at this time, of March still, I went back to the yard trying to catch some more "extreme" macro shots, and this time for the Bougainvillea. Or should I say, Bougainvillea's blooms. This plant really proved to be hard to work with because of its stiff branch (and thorns!) and a lot of the things that I wanted to try before did fail because of the breeze, wind, or the hard-to-reach pose. 

Hyperstigma

The stigma or central part of the bougainvillea bloom is quite interesting with its cinquefoil-like shape. However, unfortunately, the magnification I was using (4.2X) was way greater than what it should be and there was no time to change and experiment (again!) so I went on and tried to shoot whatever I could. Hyperstigmata here was shot from the top and directly onto the stigma but generally speaking, it is not quite clear and blurry. Probably good for a small size representation but definitely not a large size one. Seems even with a speedlite at hand and at 1/250 of a second, motion blur outside is yet to be conquered.

Stigma Profile

Stigma Profile II

Ironically, despite not being able to shoot the stigma right on, I was able to shoot a "profile" from the side (or behind). In Stigma Profile I and II, the effect of the direction of the light is obvious. It helped on creating an isolation of the foreground without much effort; Just by tilting the speedlite at hand just a little bit!

Stamen Head

Pinkoid

Same thing goes on with the stamen part of the flower, where changing the direction of the light did change the looks drastically (and the feel as well). I kind of find it comical that the masculine part of the flower comes out in such dominant pink, in Pinkoid; A color usually assigned to the feminine nature. Anyway, the bloom itself is pinkish/magenta in color, with all its inner parts. I was amazed to know that there are indeed bougainvillea varieties with white (and probably blue?) flowers! Would be nice to have them side by side with these pink/magenta ones. The plant though is quite random and needs special treatment to let it grow in some organized manner. Needless to say, we plant them in small pots right now, so, they wouldn't grow much like the one we planted long ago when we first settled in this then-new home. Nevertheless, the branches and the blooms do just fine as they are. 

Stigma Furnace

Back to the stigma and with changing lighting conditions again, seems I got something acceptable in Stigma Furnace. However, this result was not possible without editing; A heavy one as well. This said, there are still a number of images that I didn't touch or check thoroughly. A quick look at some of these didn't yield much impression on me but probably another visit to those again, with some cropping and "surreal" editing techniques, I might get out with something out of them.

 

Finale

As I'm typing this blog post, and specially the introduction up there, I've realized that there are a number of promises that I've made and which seems like that I've "ditched". Like the one time that I wanted to do more of the old panoramas in a new suit and upload them to Mostphotos. However, lately, my psyche had a great toll on me. Maybe some, who would read these lines, would consider it such an exaggeration to talk about the mental status in the finale of every post, but all I can say is, I really don't wish to see you in such a place, in your minds. The exhaustion of fighting off such mental issues is quite physical. Sprinkle that with back pains, and you would get such a lovely combination of stalemate.
I am in a phase of life at the moment that I really don't know what I want, where to go, or where am I going. Yes, I have few wishes, but under the current circumstances they are kind of far fetched. In fact, even those wishes I'm wishing and hoping for, probably won't make me any more dedicated or goal-oriented, nor grant me happiness. Something within is very tired.

Retinol III-IV

Busy busy busy. So busy that I can't even play games! Can you believe that? However, to be honest, the major portion of my time is consumed by bad sleeping patterns. All in all, I'm trying to cope with the daily tasks here as well as trying as much as possible to work with my camera and a little bit with a new venture: Adding educational posts to Pinterest. This is a new thing and probably I won't be doing it often, as other things in my life do already have their own priorities. But I'll try to do it whenever I get a new idea or whenever a friend (who is learning Arabic) might suggest.

Announcement

As promised and as with my previous posts, I'd like here to start with a little announcement for a new batch of uploads to the stocks. This time they are scattered across the usual stocks where I upload.

The new batch

First of all, one of these images (won't say!) was canceled from the upload because of some brand name and it would be such a time-consuming process to remove that mark (stock websites usually don't accept such images). Anyway, photos with faces are typically uploaded to Mostphotos, with the exception of only one which is accepted in Canstockphoto as well. The rest are uploaded across Dreamstime, 123RF, as well as to Canstockphoto. However, 123RF, again, did refuse all 5 uploaded images (most of them were denied for being out of focus!). I'm pretty sure they would not be accepted by other stock websites if they were indeed out of focus - there is something fishy or misunderstood going on.

With this new batch, I'm trying to find time to re-process some of my old panoramas, specially the old ones from 2011 and 2012 and prepare them to upload them to my Mostphotos along with the rest of the large-size panoramas there (with a width of 10K pixels). Issues keep arising here though, specially with the new lock-down and health, but I'm trying my best (with coffee!) to organize my time and priorities (and yes, I'm failing so far).

Retinol III

Then, we arrive at my third image for Retinitis Pigmentosa (this year) - which was actually done in the same day as the previous one in the previous post. It was a quickie idea that occurred to me and thought of working it out right away after finishing Sensing which I talked about in the previous post.

The Seeing Hand

The principle thing was to be simple actually; Just using the sun to shoot something and the rest is to be fixed later in Photoshop, and with the help of a fisheye lens (my favorite Rokinon 8mm), the dramatic impact can be achieved (in terms of sizes and emphasis).
The idea of the shot is about the usage of hands to navigate through our spaces as people with Retinitis Pigmentosa and how we are greatly affected with the change (continuous change or period changes) in the environment around us on us; This is specifically about changing furniture at home frequently. Something that I've often suffered from, and still.
People with Retinitis Pigmentosa, like me, are typically using their body parts and memory to navigate through places and when at home, it is mostly memory that gets activated because things are "supposed" to be in their own fixed places.
Now as for the technical part, the Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens does not have provide such a shallow depth of field, thus it was one of the first things to be done (after the general color editing in RAW first). It was important, though, not to exaggerate the synthetic lens bur here. Next, it was time to fix the eye on the palm, and for this, I've picked an old image from my arsenal (of my own eye). It was a struggle though to let it be as natural as possible as if it was drawn indeed on my palm. Till this very moment I'm not yet convinced that I did the job correctly.
Anyway, the shot was liked by some people specially those with Retinitis Pigmentosa and could relate to this particular problem. Thus, if you are reading this and you do know, or live with, someone who has such disease or any type of visual impairments, just mind the change in the environment around them. It can be just frustrating; Big time.

Kika III - Retinol IV

Yes, you read that right. I'm posting 2 shots from the Retinitis Pigmentosa project for this year into one post, here. The whole thing was actually a coincidence.
As I was planning a shot for Retinitis Pigmentosa in my head (for days), Kika gave out the theme for her 3^rd week challenge: Framing; And this is exactly the "structure" that I had in my mind for my shot about Retinitis Pigmentosa!

RPG: Retinitis Pigmentosa Game

The idea behind RPG: Retinitis Pigmentosa Game is, again, the furniture and the obstacles that we face INSIDE the house. I was actually thinking of more like an "earthly" composition; Things set to the ground. However, after watching Kika's video for the weekly theme, framing, my mind started to (automatically) combining the two ideas and I came up with this framing, with furniture (or something similar that is) - of course with the blind cane as well to deliver the idea. Now the shoot was a bit of an adventure and unfortunately, I didn't take any shots to document the setting.

Air Remote, for wireless tethering.

The idea needed a top-view, and I guess nowhere is better to do such an idea except for the balcony (and we are lucky to have one). The problem here is, though, I am shooting myself with no help from anyone. So, it was a call for the Air Remote tethering tool, which I didn't use a lot since I got it years back simply because it does lack some features and it's quite cumbersome despite the (supposed) ease of use and the relief that it should be providing. This time, it was no exception, because it did disappoint me further. I will talk about that shortly.

Lateral arm from Photek

To shoot the ground from the balcony, it was natural to use the lateral arm to carry the camera and extend it out of the balcony looking downward. Luckily, I had those weight bags which I've ordered 3 years ago or so and never used them till this moment! Nevertheless, the situation was shaky and I had my heart up my throat. I'm blessed to have an elevator (lift) near me in the balcony to go up and down; Otherwise, I wouldn't even think about shooting this. 

The lens of choice here was my Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 because, well, the field of view and the autofocus system. After shooting this though, I realized that I might have done better using Voigtländer 20mm f/3.5, to have a wider field of view and then crop it to a suitable size and boundary, and probably the manual focus of this lens won't be a big problem. After all, I was shooting at f/11, and with wider lenses, the depth of field is forgiving anyway. The main drawback in the whole process, though, was with the tethering.
Actually, day by day, I'm starting to realize that the usefulness of such device is quite limited more than I anticipated in the first place. Here for example and in this situation, I was aiming to capture bracketed images sequence in order to create HDR and be able to achieve the dramatic look by controlling the light in the image at "baking the HDR" level (i.e. tone-mapping). It turned out that because of the timer (10sec) which I've set initially to be able to do my pose, each bracketed image would be taken with a 10sec timer! Of course, holding my pose for 30 seconds is next to impossible, so, I had to go back and just take single images. I'm glad that I could somewhat achieve what I've envisioned using just a single RAW image though. I would have done it properly with an Intervalometer with proper time-delay settings to give me some time to go down to location via the elevator, and that way I would be doing bracketing quite easily, but I still need to check myself on location to pose properly. Maybe next time I will try to combine using both tools, if it was possible (honestly, never tried).
The irony is that every now and then when I decide to use the Air Remote Tethering I do get first a message for updating the firmware and I really don't know how that is done but what I really wonder about is what the update is really about? I don't see any features being enhanced at all; Specially the annoying rotating display which cannot be displayed correctly for shooting in portrait orientation. That's another story for another time and yet, there is another misfortune that I will talk about (hopefully) in my next post when I was about to take the 5^th shot for Retinitis Pigmentosa project.

Finale

Here we are, close to summer again. And yes, I'm not so excited about it. We've gone into partial lock-down here for one month period (ending at April 8^th). Everything will be re-evaluated afterward, and who knows, the lock-down might be extended.
People here are complaining about everything, about all measures and don't get me started with conspiracy theories. Each individual in this great nation is an Aristotle on its own. I just hope my mood swings won't attack me severely in the meantime as it did one year ago, last summer, when we had partial lock-down as well. Not to say it's all gone but I'm coping better. I think the routine of fasting lately beside reading the holy book added greatly to the comfort. I've stopped fasting just recently and strangely I can't stay up late now like I used to do when I was fasting; I'm getting tired easily. Probably because of the digestive operations taking place. Who knows…
Things are a bit awry on the work front, but that's a story for another time I guess. I'm trying to keep my peace of mind as much as possible by trying hard to neglect and forget about these problems. I foresee increasing responsibilities upon my shoulders, and I'm not sure how am I going to cope with these, nor whether I should trust my experience or not (apparently it's not a match, scientifically speaking). From one lock-down to another, things are just spanning and expanding and all there is to hope for form my side is…to stay away as much as possible, until some "right time" comes for a proper resignation.

 

Precautious Selfie (2020)

Meanwhile, as I'm posting these images about this year's Retinitis Pigmentosa project as well as about Kika's photo challenge, I'm still active with my camera but I don't want to post or talk about these images until I finish the Retinitis Pigmentosa series at least. I'm also anticipating working again with my speedlites, with both high speed and stroboscopic, but I'm still puzzled for what I'm going to do. Trying to seek hints from Kika herself, as well as from the work of other photographers I find (mainly on YouPic and YouTube). I'm posting these photos, of course, on my YouPic, but not yet on Instagram. You can check out the link if you like to take a peek on my YouPic profile. But I have to say that many of these images are actually old images re-made or some ignored test shots from the past that have been worked out, specifically to be posted on YouPic. My chores list, surprisingly, is building up and I'm trying to do one thing at a time (including the typing of this blog post actually). There is a lot waiting for me that I've been even postponing playing some games! No time to rest and my body is failing me as usual… also, it is time to think of a new post for my Arabic blog. I think I do need another vacation from blogging at some point, soon…

Mirrotrait!

Here we are, back to the old rhythm and the troubles with sleep and work; But to be honest, my sleeping problems are a bit down for the time being, but I often do find myself going to work without sleep and somewhat I'm OK with it! Schools didn't start yet here so, traffic jams are still lurking.
Anyway, for this post this week, I'm going to talk a bit about 2 shots I've taken some weeks ago. I was supposed to put them together with the previous post but I think that post became too long so I decided to cut it out at that and make a separate post now for these 2 shots specifically. What's so special about these two? Nothing special really; They are just portraiture shots taken at a focal length of 800mm. Yes, eight hundred millimeters.

Mirrotrait

As part of my effort of getting used to, and getting some work done, with my mirror lens, the Rokinon 800mm f/8, I've decided to put it into use for taking portraits. The design is that of a telescope and probably if I was in some other dimension or some other world with better capabilities I would be using that lens for some astrophotography indeed, or maybe for some wildlife photography. Anyway, not my luck, and I hated to see this lens just lying around being idle.

Rokinon 800mm f/8
Mirror Lens
(this one here for Nikon it seems?)

One of the "creative" tools that a photographer can (and encouraged to) use, is using lenses out of their "typical" purpose or perspective; e.g. shooting portraits with a wide angle lens which is typically used for landscape photography, or even shooting landscape with a lens which is typically used for portraiture. I, for one, been doing that for quite some time and in fact I've never believed in this "typical" purposes or dedications for lenses. Because in my mind, all I think of when I see or think of a lens is the magnification, distortion, proximity to subject and so on. This is why many of my selfies were shot using 20mm lens or wider (20mm being almost equivalent to 30mm on my APS-C camera).

Sample of donut bokeh
Source

Anyway, one of the key features of these Mirror Lenses is that they make up some weird bokeh shape. A bokeh in the shape of a donut, and this is exactly what I was after but, as the progress will go on, you will see how I've actually failed in achieving that donut, so far! Nevertheless, working with such a lens for portraiture is still an interesting experiment, despite the hardships with it. In fact, with such hardships, I'm amazed by those specs listed by manufacturers or sellers who state something similar to "for wildlife" or something like "cheap telephoto lens". The truth is, despite its focal length, I don't personally really classify it as a "telephoto" lens and absolutely not suitable for wildlife or birding; This is unless you really get the hang of it and master its controls, AND come up with some ways or innovate something for quick shooting and proper focusing. Maybe if I list these difficulties as points the image would be clearer:

• The lens is manual (of course).
• The focusing ring is bulky. In fact, it is not a focusing ring as much as it is a focusing "barrel".
• No collar, and with such long focal length, putting vibrations under control is a headache.
• Fixed aperture; F/8.
• During the shoot, I got some errors and I stopped shooting but then things gone normal again and I'm guessing the weight of the lens is the reason.
• Just forget about using filters. There are specific rear filters for this kind of lenses, but I don't have any, and the front thread is 105mm (and I have a ring for it and barely fits for fitting the solar gel filter on it).

Needless to say, with such a focal length one would need quite a space, and for this reason I've shot the portraits outside in the neighborhood just in front of my house. One technique I've adapted here is to fix my camera and tripod in position, and ask my brother to move accordingly to get him where I wanted in the frame. All I could do here with my brother is 2 shots mainly (because of the problems mentioned above) and for each one of these 2 I've approached processing in a different manner. Unfortunately, I was supposed to make some shots at night in hope that I would show the donut bokeh clearly this time because of the point light sources from cars or the houses around the neighborhood, but that didn't happen yet as I'm typing this post.

First shot
Original

First shot
After cropping

First shot probably with
a better crop using the
Golden Ratio rule.
But the image size is
drastically small.

 Generally speaking, images from this lens are "dull," if I can call them so. They lack contrast. Thus, there is some extra work to be done in post-processing phase. In the first shot, the background seemed fine, but of course no donut shapes because it was done afternoons and no pointy light sources were there. The pose itself was probably a mere coincidence, as I didn't ask my brother to make the pose and I was kind of busy doing the work with the settings when I looked up to the LiveView to see that he was there looking up so I snapped that. Moreover, in the post-processing phase, I had to crop the image but unfortunately, I didn't seem to follow any specific rule here, not even the rule of thirds. I think I've used the Diagonal Method here for cropping but I'm not sure it is quite suitable here, specially with the logo on the shirt showing. But no use now I guess since the photo has been already published on some social media platforms. The image's quality is "fine" but I wouldn't say "good" though. I had quite a struggle to put things in focus here, so there is a chance of human error I believe when it comes to some softness on the edges. Things had to be fixed later with my arsenal of sharpening tools in Photoshop.

Second shot
original
You can see how dark
is the skin here.

 
In the second shot, here I've already asked my brother to do a specific pose for me. But to shoot this one I had quite a struggle because of some malfunctioning, which I've mentioned above already, and maybe it was because of the weight of the lens, because when I've placed the camera back to landscape orientation it started to work properly. After that, I've flipped it back to portrait orientation and it kept working - and I had to snap my shot quickly to avoid any mishap.

Second shot
After crop and
fixing the tilt
Tried to lighten
the overall look.

Second shot with
probably a better crop
using the Golden Ratio

While processing the second shot, the image appeared to be quite washed out, and in order to enhance the contrast a bit, I had to play a bit with the exposure slider a bit, just to find out that there are indeed some details in the background that could be retrieved; The area was quite white! The thing, though, was that the front (my brother) got quite dark. For this reason, I've produced two versions of this shot as if I've bracketed my shots: One with dark background for the details, and one with proper exposure for the front. It was a great deal of work in Photoshop to merge the two and produce and acceptable image and still though I don't think I've made it. My brother looks darker than he should be I think. Here, too, the cropping seems to be made randomly, unfortunately.

After these 2 shots, there were supposed to be night shots as I've mentioned but nothing happened, for various reasons. Mainly because my brother is a busy man. I seriously thought of shooting a selfie of myself though (with the help of Case Air wireless tethering tool), but with such lens and such a focal length, the situation is quite cumbersome. Still an idea though which I might perform at any time. Speaking of shooting at night, that would definitely need some usage of speedlites I presume. A complicated process that already cooks in my head without doing much about it. I do have other things to do but just waiting for the right moment, and power, to do so.

Finale

Well, this is my little post for this week and hopefully I'll be having more to post 2 weeks after. I'm seriously thinking now for some topic for my Arabic blog since I didn't post there for some time, but I'm not sure what to post about. Maybe another photo story? Not sure.
Meanwhile, I'm doing some more experiments on specular lighting. Didn't get the chance to do much so far but I'm trying so let's hope I do get away with some nice shots. Just to note, that "specular" lighting is when the light direct and hard without any diffusion. In fact, there are other ideas I'm just waiting to implement.
Away from camera, mood swings had been frequent visitors lately; More than usual I'd presume. I'm trying hard to forget my pains, set backs, and the damn mood swings, by working as much as possible with the camera but the thing is, such swings make me powerless, and as usual, procrastinating. Add driving to and from work to the recipe and here we have a tasty dish of misery. If you are reading this, trust me, it was not an easy task to type this blog post over a span of 3 or 4 days and trying to finish it just before Thursday. Those moments where I would stand and look around me to see who would support me or anything like that are frequent as well; I just realized, I'm all alone. Not even those whom I'd consider friends would help me to make me feel not being ignored. I don't blame them anyway. I guess I'm just a boring person after all, who leads a boring life, and doing boring stuff just to let himself feel alive while being single at almost 40. Rant over.

Collective…

As a starter, I'm really not sure how am I typing this blog post with my continuous sleeping problems which are adorned with marvelous migraines from time to time during this week. Anyway, since I don't have much material for this post, I think it will be somewhat a quickie one.
In a continuation for my previous post, I'm still working on my project of shooting profiles (side shot) in infrared using only a candle. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in my previous post, but I've decided to call this project The Candle People. Things are now out of the profiles section as well, and I've started to shoot some face-front shots as well, upon request.

Abdullah A. (profile)

Abdullah A. (halfie)

So far, there had been only two requests to re-do the candle shots and change the profile look to the face-front look. Both from nephews. My first nephew did not like the look of his nose in such profile. Well, I guess many people are displeased with their noses nowadays (me included but I don't tend to hide it). However, I'm not expecting from people to understand the artistic values the way I see it through. In profile shots, I do appreciate the contour and the dramatic light and look of the face rather than the "beauty" of the person. Personally, beauty has nothing to do with this little project of mine. It is about evoking emotions via light and contour with no or little facial expressions. However, I've complied to the request and I still like the results. My first trial with him was to shoot a "halfie", but this halfie is not exactly done by cropping the face (even though it is a little) but by implying heavy shadows to half of the face (mainly by editing). This halfie might have a strange effect on the size of the eye here; I didn't change the size of the eye while editing, but it seems to me that is kind of large. Might be my imagination?

Abdullah A. (front)

Anyway, the other frontal shot here for Abdullah A was not exactly a halfie. Too bad though I had to crop a little too much here to balance the image because while shooting (using burst mode) the head was moving and one of the ears did not show completely in the image, which in turn forced me to crop a little from the other (and that meant cropping from the whole image and just from the side because I tend to keep the aspect ratio). On purpose here, I told my nephew to look up which I think gives a better emotional expression (at work with the forehead lines). To have some dramatic look (or to increase it so to say) I've resorted to an old technique which involves the usage of the High Pass filter in Photoshop. This of course exaggerated the noise level as well but I didn't bother to clean much of it here because the image in the first place is not intended to be "soft" in looks. This look, upward, seems to be a "hack" on its own to have a dramatic look. I've applied already with my other nephew who requested a re-shoot and seems to be OK. As I'm typing this there are still some from this series that needs to be processed yet.

Collective Ideas

Meanwhile, as I'm trying to work on the Candle People project, a flow of ideas somehow ticked my mind lately. At some level, I think the Candle People is one of these projects that just doesn't have a dead line. But it is ongoing whenever the chance shows up. Anyway, meanwhile, I think I will be back to one of my old passions, and it is a tiresome one actually, and that is: High Speed photography.
I didn't formulate a concrete idea about the subject but I'm intending to use the full set of speedlites in my arsenal (7 at the moment). I didn't make up my mind yet about how to set them up, but I think there would be two main methods or sets: a) Manual, and b) With an external trigger.

General scheme for the setup

First of all, sorry for the bad sketch here (and the bad scanning, done with my mobile in bad lighting conditions). As you can see here, this is the intended general setup that I'm thinking of for method A; the manual shooting. What I mean by manual shooting here is that I would control the camera manually with a master speedlite light on it to control other speedlites on the set. Meanwhile, the master will not shoot, but only responsible to give out the command to shoot to the slave speedlites. What I'm intending to do here is (and let's hope it works out well), is to use a very low flash power (if I can, lower than 1/32) and try to shoot using burst mood in hope that the low power consumption at this level of power would help on quick recycling and re-shooting quickly. I wouldn't know if this will work until I try! It would be a shame if it doesn't work that way though because with such number of speedlites, things could be balanced out somehow. Of course the position of the speedlites and direction is subject to change accordingly when the practical work is ongoing.
As for method B, the same schematic above applies, but the master speedlite is placed on the set as well and would be connected to a trigger. A laser trigger (which I failed using before). In previous times, I've used this trigger in connection to the camera itself but researching a bit and asking some professionals, I figured that the lag time (the time for the signal to travel from the trigger to the camera) is considerably long, making capturing the exact moment quite hard. Most professionals, as it seems, connect the trigger to the speedlite and not the camera and thus reducing the lag time considerably. I can connect one master to be triggered in that way and set others to slaves and all should (theoretically) shoot about the same moment. However, in this method, I'm supposed to leave the shutter open and work on the subject and speedlites with the trigger. For this, such method must be done in a dark environment, or maybe some ND filter on the lens would do? Not sure. We'll see about that. And like the situation in method A, the power is supposed to be set low for a quick recycling time and low power consumption.
Thinking about it, just theoretically, it seems that method A is favorable, despite my wish to get my old trigger working again since I failed using it many times. But if the burst mode works well in such setup, then things are set and I don't think I will try method B. The hardest part though remain: To setup my gear to work!

Finale

Beside the idea mentioned above, I'm thinking of other things as well but no need to put all the eggs in one basket. There had been also some simple shootings with my mobile for some geological stuff around my workplace and I've even uploaded one of the images to the stocks. I didn't upload to them in a long time.
With me now putting the contest on Duolingo behind my back, after some incidence of cheating as I've discovered, I've realized now the big mistake I've done in using this platform. I'm now trying to be more at ease and back to learn the language on my own pace instead of trying to gain more points and be leading the "score board" (or whatever they call it). In fact, I've had more time to post some articles in the Arabic forum after deserting the forum for quite a while. I've realized now how people do appreciate these posts which have some delicate matters and tips about Arabic that Duolingo is not providing for those who really want to learn the language. This made me think: What is really made for me? What I'm really supposed to do? I think this appreciation and this enthusiasm is the answer. Thinking about it, what did I really gain from being #1 on these leaderboard contests or whatever? Nothing but stress. While the solution was quite easy but I didn't see it back then; To leave these contests and focus on education and learning, and teaching those who need to. After turning off the "public" settings on Duolingo (which removes the leading board and all these scores stuff), I do feel such a relief. I have no more time and more organization capability for my time. I won't regret this.
Now, it's time to post this and go and figure my next move. A poem, or a new photo, or maybe a new article for the Arabic Duolingo forum. I can't believe it is weekend already. I'm perplexed as to whether I should sleep more, or work more on the things I like to do. or maybe play more. Two days for a weekend are just not enough… Not enough to forget what I need to forget out of my life…

By A Candle…

Well, just when the holidays are over, here I am having a short vacation on my own just to rest at home and have some sleep! Anyway, at the time of posting this, this would be the last day of my actual vacation and I'm going back to work after the weekend. Luckily, there had been some activities, and ideas still on the go. But let's start first with those that I didn't post about 2 weeks ago.

Remains

Some weeks ago I got this idea, or maybe a recurring idea, of doing some cubism in combination with selfies. Of course, the best (and first) solution that occurred to me is to do that with my Huawei. But despite its relative easiness, I had some hard time shooting because I wanted to use the rear lens rather than the front lens, because the resolution is greater. I also, somehow, had better view using the rear lens and shooting a selfie while looking at myself in the mirror.

بقايا إنسان (Remains of Man)
Click to enlarge

One of the problems was the perspective while shooting and I had to re-do some of these shots and just hope for the best focusing possible without looking directly on the phone's screen through the mirror. Moving my head would change the perspective of course and this is what I was trying to avoid, right? I made several shots (I believe more than 10) but I didn't use them all in composing the final image بقايا إنسان (Remains of Man). The main idea was to figure out one image per part of the face, and since we are talking cubism (well, sort of) then I had consider even the plain areas of the face, like the cheeks and the forehead and I'm glad that I did so! The image you see here is a complete collage, i.e. the images were not pasted on an original image of a full face. But totally put together from separate pieces.
I have to admit that the idea of shooting cubism like that is still going on in my head. Originally, I wanted to do this with my brother (my typical model in such cases) but he was too busy to have some time for me, so I decided to do a selfie out of it, as usual. However, I'm still hoping that I can do more of such art and probably with a DSLR if possible rather than a phone camera. But is it worthy? The phone camera seems more flexible and way too easy to handle the job, but the grave downside about it is: No technical flexibility. I really shot all these slides to compose my face you see above without controlling anything; from light metering, to shutter speed, to aperture. All I had to do is click the shutter button (which I've set to my volume button). Such pros and cons need a bit of thinking I guess, then I'll be ready to pick my next victim!

Candle People

I've been working on doing something with my DSLR, after all that fuss that Huawei contest made for me, so it occurred to me to start slow a bit. I did some macro shots but I'll be talking about in some other post maybe; It was something small and not really that interesting. But what happened later on is the thing that sparked a project in my head.

Candle Selfie

 At some point, I had kind of a flashback about portraits (or rather selfies I should say) done with my modified 7D and B+W 092 infrared filter, namely a series I've called Candle Selfie. I thought then, what if I expanded the idea further, with a bit of modification too. A face, one candle for light, but this time with a profile of the face and not face-on. Technically, I decided to use the Neewer IR720 (that is with 720nm threshold) filter instead of my typical and old B+W 092 infrared filter (which has I think around 690nm of threshold). Maybe just for a change? Not sure. But probably just to stand away from the typical looks of the infrared selfies that I used to take before. Even though, while processing, the looks persisted. Anyway, I started off with myself of course.

Boihéamach (Bohemian)

One critical change in the process here is the usage of my 50mm lens instead of the 20mm lens which I used to take those candle selfies back in 2017. Increasing the focal length played a critical role in giving my life a hard time to take a selfie with no help from anyone :)
I tried to use my wireless solutions but holding the candle in one hand and the mobile phone (which runs the wireless app and connecting to my camera) on the other hand was really cumbersome and I had to drop that idea once and for all. I won't be exaggerating if it took me about 2 days of trials and errors until I shot Boihéamach in the traditional way (focusing on a monopod and then trying to stand in its place). I used to shoot in a dark room but then I realized that I'm shooting in infrared with somewhat a high threshold and the lights in my room were all LED or CFL, so I can shoot with lights on! Which I did and it made my life just a biiiit easier…

Boihéamach (details)

Despite working on my own, I was lucky in fact to get my eye into a sharp focus. I was so fascinated with the details that I've cropped the image later and made a separate image out of the eye alone. In processing the image (and the images afterward) I've emphasized the blue and the "pink" color of the inner eyelids and the lips by increasing the Vibrance up to 100%. I don't normally do such a thing but since we are going crazy with this trend, why not? The problem with this step is that it increases some apparent chromatic noise (typical to infrared images), specially that these were shot using ISO200 instead of the lowest, ISO100. I picked this ISO just to have enough flexibility with the shutter speed (which ranged between 1/6s to 1/10s for all shots, this one and later ones). This was about enough to freeze the motion and avoid motion blur (because of the body movement not the camera's of course) but still, problems were ahead.

Abdullah F.

So, the project started and I've been already calling family members (males mainly) to model for me. Working with family members is one of the hardest things to do and that made me think of seriously calling for some professional model, but I'm not going to spend money just like that on some experiments and ideas I'm going through; After all, I'm not still a professional photographer. Shots for some of my nephews like the one of the left here turned out good (relatively) but still made me think of more work to be done. For example in this shot for my nephew, Abdullah F., a large portion of the shoulder is apparent in the shot (and this is because I kept my camera and 50mm lens away), which was not the case with my Boihéamach shot (it was cropped but still not much and the shoulder did not show up in the original shot that much). In this shot of my nephew as well, it seems that I've kept the camera in a lower position; lower than his head level. Despite all that, I still like the shot here and I've worked on dodging the hair to add some delicate details on that part of the image. So, probably I shouldn't get my camera that close to the face and show some portion of the head and hair after all?

Jassim H.

Unfortunately, I was not lucky with the rest of the people I've shot and many of them are to be re-made, if possible. One of the hardest aspects here is not only keeping the person stable, but also to look straight instead of looking at the candle. Raising the level of the candle as well did not help much, and that kept some of them look down (apparently my "high" is not equivalent to their "high"!). Also, 1/8s was not quite enough for the shutter speed to freeze the body movement in some shots like for my nephew Jassim H., and using 1/10s left the image quite dark even at ISO200. Thinking of going over ISO200 was out of the question (in fact I've hoped to lower it down at some point but that did not help and made it worse so I switched back to ISO200). I told my nephew already that I have to re-do the shot, maybe next Friday.
I've taken other shots but I will post them later maybe. Some of them were good and some are bad and need to be re-done, so let's see how the next week will unfold. I've already lost hope in re-shooting some people because I've already re-done it and it didn't work any better!

Finale

I'm typing this in supposedly a short vacation (for a week) off work and believe it or not, I'm seriously lacking the time to do many things I want to do! My time is torn between having rest as much as I want and doing my routine daily chores (e.g. Duolingo exercises and learning). I'm typing this just in the final hours of Wednesday.
Things look foggy around my workplace. Moving to the new location, which would be quite problematic for me, is still foggy for me. Things are quite but sometimes it feels like the calmness before the storm.
This little vacation makes me think of a bigger and longer vacation at some other time. A vacation that I need to take, and a travel that I need to make. I'm looking at my panorama gear with some sorrow as I didn't use them for some time. Probably the last panorama I've shot was here at home back in 2018. However, the world is going crazy and that makes me reluctant to do much in that field. I need to get some habits back but it's hard to fit them into a schedule. Maybe I'm being a bit of a perfectionist and I shouldn't think or work that way? But again, if I leave these habits for long, I'd be losing them, maybe, forever; Like writing poetry which I didn't do much about for months. On the same line, I didn't also make any posts for my Arabic blog for months as well. Is it all because of the summer season? i really wish if this is the reason; At least I'd be having some hope that I will be active again next winter. Some hope…

Ar Ais Arís…

I'm back after a "little" vacation of my own, during some holidays as well as working days in fact wit a lot of sleeping upheaval, as usual. This post won't be much actually but just to announce my return! Well, if anyone cares anyway.
So, in this post, I barely have this selfie which I've shot in the first hour of August 17^th, and turning 39. I think I've made a new tradition of my own, to take a selfie with every birthday, in the first hours of it. The selfie (or self-portrait as some make a distinction between the two) was shot using Voigtländer 20mm lens (my favorite for the time being) and using a candle to light my face. My hand is not strong as before so it was a bit shaky and a bit out of focus (naturally using a wide aperture). With the help of the white balance as well, the image came out orange or bronze somewhat in color. I like the color but I have to be honest, I really hate the overall quality. It might look good in such a small size but it's not so in the original size. For this reason, I've promised myself to do some other selfie and using the candle light as well at some other time. Meanwhile, I did indeed take other selfies, with the same style, but this time using LED torch or flashlight.

Shot this right after having a shower (good thing I didn't catch a cold, yet) and used a small LED torch. Despite its size, it was such a powerful source in fact, and I've reflected the light off the wall but still there were some white areas that were out of details (because of the hard reflections from the water-soaked skin). This shot was taken with my Huawei Mate 9, so I had little control here. The only virtue I had here is the lightweight of the device. So, in a nutshell, this one, too, is not to my liking. I had other selfies which are a bit personal or occasional rather than artistic so I'm not going to post them here anyway. This said, I'm in fact about to work on a new idea regarding a selfie or a self-portrait as I'm typing this but I didn't finish it yet. Not sure how it will turn out but hopefully things will go as planned and I'd be able to post it by a week after the next.
Slowly now trying to get up on my feet again, specially after finishing off with the Huawei contest and my mind is ready to receive other ideas. I have to say though that such a contest really did some work on my brain and I'm not afraid to use my mobile phone to shoot, but definitely not as a substitution for my regular work with my DSLR and my passion for it.
I've worked already with some abstract concepts as well (on macro level) so we'll see if there is anything about it to be posted later on. Alas, I do miss my work with panoramas, but where to shoot in this place? The need to travel is arising and I'm still not sure about my decisions yet. First, let me fix this damn sleeping pattern…

Greasing The Engine…

Here we are... Ramadhan is over, and my vacation is over as well and I'm back to work with the usual greasing my engine problem like after every vacation. A number of stuff I've been doing with my camera through this short vacation, and somehow was trying to catch my chances before I get back to the humdrum of the daily life and the tired body. Sleeping was a problem of course, and can't imagine how my life would have been if I didn't take that vacation as well! I'm grateful though for one last miracle, and that is my shipment is finally here after taking a long route and some extra expenses through the sick mailing system we have here. Anyway, I might talk about that later.

Out of The UV

It has been a while now with my thoughts about trying a portraiture or a selfie using my UV filter. I even got myself some CFL-type blacklights to try out and experiment in shooting such portraits (with some plans of painting with sun screen). However, after working a bit and some testing, it turns out that such blacklights are not quite practical and/or useful for portraiture at least (might be useful and practical for static objects for tabletop photography). Anyway, I had my own little experiment with a selfie using these blacklights…

UV Man I

Googling around, I didn't find quite the descriptive article that describes how dangerous are the blacklights, and what is their damage on the long or short terms. Anyway, I worked with them anyway fixing my exposure to one second only and raising my ISO to 640. I was wearing my glasses without really realizing it, but then I thought they would be a good protection for my eyes. I've worked before with these blacklights and I noticed that I get some irritation to my eyes when they are on. All in all, the glasses were a good addition to the shot I believe, as I didn't plan for these reflections off them.

UV Man II

One of the signs of a good UV filter (or a combination of UV filter and a hot mirror) is that glasses appear black or almost opaque when shot with these filters and this is how I exactly realized that the DR-655 filter was a good filter because my glasses got dark when I tried to shoot some selfies under the sun before (when I first got the filter). That worked well here making my glasses like a mirror reflecting off the blacklights under my face (placed into desk lamps).

Transmission chart for
Kenko's DR-655 Hot Mirror.
Click to enlarge.

However, when I tried my speedlite (though I know it's not a good UV source) the opacity of the glasses was gone and my eyes appeared from behind the glasses, proving that speedlites probably fire some infrared BELOW the limit of 700nm (which is the beginning of the blockade by DR-655 hot mirror according to charts). This effect for the speedlite over my glasses persisted even when I covered the speedlite with somewhat thick blue and purple layers of cellophane with the hope of blocking the infrared range; However, no use. I've made several shots (and UV Man II taken before UV Man I actually) and I guess only 2 shots were somewhat the best of them all. I've used excessive sharpening with UV Man II here to compensate for the little motion blur in the image (probably doesn't show clearly when in small size). For this, it seems that there is no escape of doing my future UV portraiture projects under the sun; The summer's sun. Speaking of "escape," I think it is time to move to the next title: Escape.

الهروب - The Escape - Al-Hurúb

Somehow I loved to call the next shot in Arabic rather than, typically, in English or any other languages. Hmm, this has been a trend in my mind lately. Anyway, this is all about a panorama shot which I've been planning to do for a long time; I won't be exaggerating if I say that the idea had been there for 2 years, if not more. Initially, the idea for this panorama was to be shot in "normal" mode, so to say. However, when time arrived for its execution, I decided to do it in infrared (with my modified camera of course) as this would add more drama, contrast and visual impact.

الهروب - The Escape

I did indeed a panorama (a simple one) in this location before and I remember it didn't go well (it was in HDR too). It was so simple, with only doors showing. The idea of adding an element like this hand was the thing that delayed my work. I was thinking of using my bro as a model to show his hand only out of the (bathroom) door, yet I couldn't fix the timing with him and I doubt he has the patience for such work. I went as far as thinking of getting a mannequin (or the hand alone at least), and again, I couldn't get to that. Thus, again, I'm all by myself.  Unfortunately, I didn't take single shots to explain some issues, so I will go explaining some of these issues by points:

1. First things first: It's an infrared panorama, which means I need a good infrared source. Thus, I had to change the bulb in this small square space from CFL to tungsten bulb (150W!) to ensure my intake of infrared in the place (and I was not disappointed).
2. It was perplexing to position the tripod in the first place, and it was obvious that it won't be at the center anyway, so I tried to place centered with respect to the bathroom door where the hand shall be exposes.
3. Naturally, there would be overlapping of images when doing this panorama because of the added element (the hand). So, things has to be unchanged between the shoots as much as possible. For this, I opened the bathroom door and let it swing on its own to its own limit (the vent fan was on so the air sucks up the door a bit in addition to the door's weight). At this point, I've placed a marker on the ground (let's hope Mom didn't notice!). Later on, after shooting the panorama, I've gone inside the bathroom and extended my arm outside and tried my best to align the door with the marked line I did earlier. I took many shots with different poses for the hand and when stitching I really wanted to add them all in some sort of a surreal look, but because of the troublesome errors, I've satisfied myself with only one hand.
4. Even with one hand, stitching errors prevailed and to be honest, I'm not sure if the final product here has all its stitching errors fixed! 

The working infrared filter here is Kodak's gel filter (#87B) which has a threshold of about 820nm. The tungsten bulb here provided with just what I need of infrared and I started shooting at f/10, 4 seconds each, at ISO 160. Of course, no HDR bracketing here, that would be a far fetch somehow. In fact, even with 4 seconds, my hand was not that stable but it might not show easily in the big picture. Yet, with such a strong infrared filter, 4 seconds of exposure is plausible indeed. To ensure the proper exposure time, I've shot the bathroom door some several shots and checked their histogram to decide for the proper exposure for all of the scene (because this door is the most important in the whole scene as well), and that worked well. The black space under the arch was not dark in reality, but this is the main hall which was lit mainly by LEDs and CFLs, and these two do not emit enough infrared to show up clearly in just 4 seconds of exposure with this filter - It was just perfect! Well, there were some tiny white dots which I needed to clear out. The white-gray space under this black space under the arch is just the sofa covered with some "black" cloth to hide the details of the sofa. But you know what? I'm regretting that and now I wish if I made it ALL black there.
I've made various projections so far and still working on more out of this panorama, so I might leave those for my next posts anyway, but the priority was for creating a QTVR out of this panorama. Unlike my previous posts where I would post a little QTVR here (which requires QuickTime to be installed), now I'm going to depend on 360Cities.net embed my QTVRs here. And this one has been published already as well!

The Escape

Pinhology

During the last days of my vacation I started to get excited again about my pinhole (lens) and really wanted to do something about it. I was focusing on getting sharper image in the past but now, my focus is mainly surreal in essence. Thus, sharpness was not much of an issue for me this time. All I wanted to do is record some motion, and in B&W. Some of these images as I saw do have a mental effect on me at some level. Something out of this world, or simply psychological. With this though, I've dug deeper and learned further about pinholes and I'm seriously considering making one on my own for my camera (but first I need to clean my mental desk of some hanging tasks and issues).

المقرئ - The Reciter
Pinhole: 2m, ISO100.

My first idea was doing a bit of motion (as I stated already) and the idea was to make a moving silhouette. Easy said than done when the talk is about a pinhole lens. Using ND filters was out of question here (even though I do have some gel NDs and I could have easily stuck them on the pinhole). Originally, I wanted to have a light coming from above, but when I saw the window in this room of the house (specially in the morning) I really loved it. It was perfect for the job and in fact more plausible for a silhouette (even though more work was needed with dodge and burn when processed). The exposure of two minutes (plus 1 minute timer to prepare myself with the black cloth) was just enough to record this motion as I was flipping through the pages of my Quran (Koran). Maybe the background was not well organized but I can't complain. I've already had a problem with the camera to get enough distance in the room to get the framing I wanted (one more reason to think of some way to integrate pinhole work with my regular lenses). Converting to B&W saved the situation further, because I realized that my clothes showed up with all the fanciful colors and designs! 

Escape 2
Pinhole: 39s, ISO100.

The streak of "inspiration" did not stop with that room, as I'm starting to notice the light patterns wherever I go now and truly putting my mind into this pinhole work altogether. The room this time was the guest room and the light was coming through from the door that leads to the outside. Again, it did capture my sight (even though it was getting dusty by that time and got extreme after I've finished, luckily!). Had some go with simple poses like in Escape 2 (thought of it as a sequel to The Escape panorama). Even though my body was not completely stable during the 39 seconds exposure, but the image looked stable enough. During the post-processing phase I did decrease the clarity to give it the dreamy-like (or should I say psychological horror) look. Also, and again, there was some work with the dodge and burn to be done and I made a compromise here between showing little details in the blacks but not quite enough to figure out any shape. To keep things in black here, I had to wear my t-shirt turned around to hide those designs! Anyway, I couldn't stop thinking about keeping myself in motion, because motion in such long exposures, to me, resembles the life of the image and somewhat like resurrecting something within the viewer when he or she looks at it.

Escape 3
Pinhole: 39s, ISO100.

Thus moving to the next idea, with only one hand extending through (not behind the glass door) and this time moving my fingers only, and the result as you can see in Escape 3, it did have that motion effect somehow. However, instead of reducing the clarity when processing this image as in the case of Escape 2, I've increased it. That way the shades of the fingers appeared clearly further. These shades of the fingertips were made by the motion of the fingers actually. By the end, I still had one more shot to take and this time I did have some motion by head and hands but the end result was not much to be noticed, and the whole thing appeared as if some Anonymous person standing behind some glass. 

Anonymous
Pinhole: 39s, ISO100.

The focus on pinhole photography made me expand my thinking a bit; Somewhere behind the pinhole lens that I've purchased and in many occasions I would find myself senselessly digging myself into numbers and calculations trying to figure out or visualize the outcome of various light wavelengths, diameters, and even focal lengths (despite for me it has been fixed at 44mm). I think that shooting with the pinhole for some time would, naturally, push the photographer further to focus on the light and its quality, as was the case in the classical times with films. Of course, it is still digital and one can shoot and check it out later and fix it later, but still, the length of the exposure alone makes it worthy to invest some time in focusing and reflecting on the light available and what to do or how to do the shoot. All that, I believe, would reflect back and add to the experience of the photographer and his eyes and vision when working with regular lenses. Right now, I'm thinking seriously as well of merging speedlites with the work with this pinhole (in terms of a stroboscope). Needs a bit of thinking…

Finale

Neewer Set of Infrared Filters.
IR720, IR760, IR850, IR950.

A bunch of ideas are roaming my mind and with me being back to work doesn't make it any easier for me to work on them, but I shall try. I know it will be some long time. Miraculously, I got the shipment that was wandering the globe before my expectations and in my hands now a set of four infrared filters that need to be tested. I have some curious interest in the IR950, which supposedly has a threshold of 950nm; Such a high value for an infrared filter and I've been clicking around with it using high ISO (12,800) here and there. I might post these results later. But I need to go beyond that as well; I really need some scientific method to get a concrete idea of the capabilities of such filters, specially after being tricked with Tiffen's Hot Mirror before! All I can do so far is just click and test against known sources of IR like the sun and tungsten lights, as well as speedlites.

Seems I've been away from poetry for weeks now (again) but I do have these visits of some words which do not quite settle down in my head. I think I've been running with my pace in life lately specially with the end of my vacation, focusing on my camera work. I need to get back to that. I really don't know how to pass this summer, specially with no solid plans for traveling in the near future. Things are getting so narrow; So narrow that make me chest feel like crashing on its own, but as if nothing to be done. Sometimes, depression would not be clinical nor mere sadness, but simply feeling to be in the wrong time, in the wrong place, simply surrounded by stupidity. All I can do, then, is to keep myself amused, on my own…