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…

Mono, Duo, Tri, Quad!

One third of Ramadhan is gone by now - and things are tightening on my schedules and life pace. I literally spend most of my time sleeping or trying to catch on my sleep; specifically at work! Even though I used to fast before Ramadhan already, Ramadhan becomes an issue. Always.
For this reason, I didn't have much to do with my camera, but I did some experiments eventually and some of them are still on going.

Duo

In the process of doing more studies with the tone splitting technique, I've re-visited a mode provided in Photoshop, along the RGB and CMYK; the Duotone mode.
This mode in fact provides several modes in it: Mono-, Duo-, Tri-, and Quadtone. Each mode provides a specific number of tones to be implied to the image and in that sense, it is a step further from tone splitting. Further more, for each tone, the control of the "amount" of the tone is a bit decisive.

The Duotone mode window in Photoshop. Here, Quadtone is picked from the menu,
allowing for 4 colors to be mixed.

There are some awkward features for this mode of course, like the fact that to convert the image into it, you have to pass by the Grayscale mode first. Thus, converting directly might hinder the user cuffed with the tone distribution before doing Duotone. Probably it would be better to use the Black and White adjustment layer first to control the tones and THEN convert to Grayscale mode - this is if it was necessary of course. It seems, however, that controlling the tones in this mode is actually a control of the levels of "ink" for printing this image itself. This is what I perceived when I did a little research online about this mode. This makes it harder to control, unlike the easy way to do it in the RAW editor or by laying out layers in a Photoshop process - because in this process or in the RAW Editor, the thing under control mainly is the distribution of the tone to highlights and shadows, and its intensity.

Doppelganger
Duotone: Shamrock Green, Black.

One of the interesting features as well is the Overprint Colors, which is somewhat like a control for how to interpret the merging of two tones together. Of course it's going to be a tedious task in case of Quadtone (4 tones) but it's worth the study to gain more perception of what related colors could do. This is a nice instance for using Colors Schemes, which are groups of related colors that can be found and deduced using many websites like ColorHexa and ColorHexCode. Such groups can be, for example, analogous colors, or tetradic colors. The other awkward feature here is that a file done in Duotone cannot be saved in a proper common format, like JPEG or even TIFF. It must be saved in one of Photoshop's own formats like: PSD, PSB, RAW and EPS. Note here that "RAW" is not the conventional camera RAW, but it's Photoshop's RAW format (which I don't exactly know how it works or what is it). EPS is a vector format, while PSD and PSB are the usual conventional Photoshop Document format. Here, Doppelganger, was done in Duotone using a color named Shamrock Green (Hex: #009E60) with Black. To save the image for displaying it here, I had to roll back the mode to RGB and save the image as JPEG. This, I think, produced some artifacts and banding (specially in the background in the blurred green plant area). Controlling the curves of tones for each tone of those was really a rough job to do with delicate observation to see where there are issues of banding and such. That was only for two tones, so imagine the work for a quad!

Luster

My sole work this week with the camera was to give it a try and do some commercial-like shooting for this piece of jewellery which I got for my niece for her coming birthday on the 23^rd. The piece is silver-made and this put on a bit of dilemma on the choice of the white balance to work with.

Right: Flash WB. Left: Fluorescent WB.

Most of the people whom I asked did actually pick the bluish tint. However, one or two persons picked the adjusted or corrected form (i.e. Flash WB) because this shows and emphasizes the blue stone in the middle. They have their point of course. I decided to work with the blue tint but I've found myself working more with the adjusted level because it gives more luster to the metal work and it gives more shine (beside contrasting the blue stone of course).

Close Look
Sigma 70-300mm @180mm,
f/6.3, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

In the beginning I was planning to take a picture of the whole earring, but then I realized that this approach would take up the fine details of the craft done to the silver itself. Thus, I moved on to using a telephoto lens, namely Sigma 70-300mm, with the help of extension tubes to allow me to stay close to the piece (closest focusing distance for this lens is around 1.5m, or around 5 ft). I admit, my work was pretty quick and filled with errors, like not cleaning the piece (you can see the blue stone being dusty little bit). The background is a black cloth (which I got back to do some scanography experiments) and from which I hung the earrings. This background is not suitable but I had nothing better to use; the texture was pretty annoying and could not be removed. A black metallic surface would probably be better.
The work of the speedlites (580EXII and 430EXII) was experimental, and at some point I used the on-camera flash as well to give a frontal light to shine on the blue stone specifically. Not bad I believe, but I didn't achieve still what I was aiming for: a gem sparkle. I think I had here a conflict of interests; a wide aperture to blur the background, while I do need a narrow aperture to achieve a sparkle effect. I gave up that idea anyway. Light from 580EXII was concentrated using a mesh on snoot, while 430EXII was reflected off a shiny surface (car windshield shade). When all was set, I decided to add some light from the front (and the position of the 580EXII with the snoot was changed repeatedly), this was done by the on-camera flash with a slight power. All work was done wirelessly; obviously I was lazy to use some wires here and there! After all, there was no need for it really - it would be essential if I wanted to go beyond the sync speed of 1/250 seconds. Only then, a cord to connect the speedlite and the camera is essential.

Silver x Blue

The interesting experiment was still to come. I decided to go extremely macro and placed 50mm lens with 20mm+36mm tubes. The significance here is that I managed to take 3 images in vertical order and then merge them like a panorama (in PTGui). I'm not sure if I can say it is a macro panorama for this though! Since it was just an experiment, I didn't take the whole jewellery piece into consideration but merely some portion mimicking an abstract sense and feel.
For some time, a software, namely PhotoAcute, is used to process several images to produce on high resolution image (beside other uses). Even though it is still a useful software, but in this process of taking several images with some distance and stitching them, the resolution of the overall image was boosted from 18MP (if we assumed the same framing) to around 26MP, and if I managed to take more shots, I believe it would be boosted more. The only problem with this method is the movement of the camera itself; If things are to be done in a proper manner, something should be automated here or systematized: either the camera movement, or the object itself. In my shot for Silver x Blue, the camera was moved slightly up and down with the use of the central column of the tripod; sluggish movement but did the job. If I was to take more precise images at such macro level, I would probably try to do it in a different way. The final image is composed of 3 shots, with 30 seconds each, and because no speedlites were used here, there was actually some slight green tint caused by the surrounding walls as it seems. Some editing reduced this tint and, again, despite adding a slight blue cast but with contrast and other edits and adjustments, the silver turned almost neutral like before. Glamor effect helped on showing some luster as well. All what is left, is to hope this shot is to be considered for addition into some stock websites!

Twirl

I've been trying, for some time, to study the relation between the rule of thirds and the golden spiral concept in terms of the placement of the "power points" in each system. This is to help me with framing with the camera, which doesn't have a spiral system but only a regular grid and a rule of thirds grid (in its LiveView mode). The main point here is to find a basis for the difference between one power point in one system and the other.
I have to say that I've failed here so far, and probably I have to polish my geometrical concepts a bit; didn't use those much since college days! Anyway, there is one key difference between the two and for which I had to rely on some approximations, and that is: the golden spiral rule depends on a rectangle drawn with the golden ratio (given the symbol φ), while the rule of thirds as it is in the camera, based on the ratio of 3:2. I'm not sure yet what kind of results I'm trying to find out but I'm still working on it and hopefully I can share some thoughts about it!

Finale

I have here some appointments that I guess I have to skip. Clinics should really stop giving appointments in Ramadhan - the schedule is just unbelievable. I think I will re-schedule this appointment (supposedly to be on 13^th) and I hope it won't clash with my travel to Ireland; otherwise, I have to cancel, again!

My reading process is going slowly as well, and despite this book being small, it surely is rich in information! I'm glad I bought this book really. However, it needs some careful reading still to gain a firm understanding of how optics work. Too bad that I can't do the experiments mentioned practically myself, thus I have to depend solely on my imagination for this matter. There is a book about archaeology still waiting for me and, if I was lucky, might take it with me to Ireland to read at any point.

Everything is going slowly here. Needless to say how my life goes as well anyway. Dying to head to Ireland by every single passing day, where I can have some fresh air, and some clear mind and some more photos and nicer weather. The air is getting heavier to breathe here. I get a wave of panic from time to time but no obvious reason but simply like that. It's annoying. It's a killer.