Strobogenic II…

Things are going so fast that it feels like I didn't post here for a month or so. Because of the nCoV-19 pandemic, people are going crazy here. My workplace decided to give everyone 2 weeks off until things calm down. Thus, more time to work with my camera hopefully, until March 15^th. Probably because of that, it does feel like ages since I've posted here and actually time is kind of passing slowly. However, I'm not complaining; I'm counting my blessings here and thank goodness for the fact that I don't have to drive in that daily mess!
Anyway, I've been working with my camera and doing many things with some old photos trying new editing techniques but I'll save that for later. For this week's post, I just want to focus on my work with the stroboscopic lighting which I've established by my last post (or before?).

Strobogenic II

In continuation for my work with the stroboscopic light, and after doing a number of selfies which I've posted about last time (before my RP post), I've kept on working on a little experiment, with roses this time. Initially, this was not my idea; I was thinking of a real model (I mean, someone posing for me in general not a paid model), but that didn't happen unfortunately (still seeking that goal though!). Nevertheless, it was a good experiment somehow from which I've learned from some mistakes (or "misfortunes" if I can call them so).

Grungy Passion

The idea was simple, throw a rose and record that in a stroboscopic manner. However, I've read online in some texts about the topic that the background should be black. For me, I've neglected this particular point simply because I don't have a black background, but I thought working in a dark room would somehow solve the problem. Also, doing my calculations in relation to the shutter speed, the frequency, and the number of flashes, I've realized practically that I do need a dark room to lengthen the exposure freely; Lengthening the exposure here does not really have to extend in terms of seconds or anything. It can still be parts of a second but still considered "slow" in terms of motion (does that make any sense?). Speaking about something in the order of 1/30 of a second and up to a second and beyond.

Side note: Using a shutter of 1/30s with the maximum frequency of 199Hz on the speedlite yields about 6 strikes of flash, which means the motion can be recorded on the sensor with such shutter speed and frequency on 6 moments during this exposure time. Notice that I'm not talking here about anything related to the power of the speedlite. In fact, at some point and under some settings, the speedlite options would limit the number of strikes that can be set in the configuration menu, and this is in relation to the expected power consumption and some issues related to the protection of the speedlite from overheating. Trust me, the heat is a serious issue even with such small units. For this reason, using multiple speedlites with each dialed to relatively low power is a good choice to overcome these limitations.

Receptive

Thus, with a shutter speed of 1/30s it would be better to work in a dark room as much as possible to avoid unwanted ambient light and leave the speedlites to take control over the whole recording of the scene. Nevertheless, I had my own problems with the white wall here, for obvious reasons! Anyway, in the processing phase, the amount of grain produced was great at times, beyond repair, so I just made it part of the image, as in Grungy Passion. Worth noting here that this image specifically was flipped upside down to make the rose as to be falling down, instead of being thrown up. In fact, the gesture here probably helped a lot. Along that line, in Receptive, the image has been turned for 90^o to mimic that receptive motion as if the rose is falling from above, and I tried to emphasize "the visual reading" from the right side here by flipping the image to let the hand start or initiate from that corner. Generally, most of these images were processed with saturated colors but saturating the Red tones only. Cropping as well was a vital tool here and I went beyond the typical cropping limits of Photoshop (remember, I have an older version which has nothing but the rule of thirds embedded to help in cropping).

Side note: In image design, or let's say it is generally accepted, that a viewer, any viewer, would start reading an image "visually" and try to analyze its elements starting from the "natural" direction for that viewer in terms of writing and reading, usually. Thus, if the viewer comes from a culture that reads and writes in left-to-right manner, then "reading" an image would naturally start off from the left. For this reason, I'm trying to emphasize my vision and my background culture by trying to emphasize the direction of reading on the photos I create, as in Receptive (and in Passionately Reluctant as will be shown), where the reading should probably start from the right side because the hand is anchored towards the lower-right corner. 

Passionately Reluctant

This trend of moving things or flipping things to the right side continued with Passionately Reluctant, which is apparently not in a square format (or 1:1 ratio) but rather in some weird elongated ratio here and the reason for that is I tried to keep the motion of the rose inline and coherent with the rule of the golden spiral. However, I had to change the aspect ratio here a bit to fit the curvy line for the golden spiral with the motion of the rose, which ironically, takes away the "golden2 out of it (in case you didn't know, there are other spirals named after metals and each one of them have a different ratio attached to it). This one though didn't appear as throwing the rose up (though I actually did but holding the tip of the stem only). It appeared as if I'm moving forward and backward with it. It doesn't matter anyway; I like the motion after all. Probably the grain here is not quite pronounced but it is there still. I'm not sure though if I did some noise reduction here or not, but for sure I did emphasize the red tones for the rose.
At this level, I've realized that a single rose is not quite "pronounced," if I can call it so. I had this impression that just one rose was not quite enough, specially that the images that I see and judge are viewed from the LCD of the camera; Those images you see here been subjected to a heavy work of dodge and burn and contrast enhancement along the way. In the original RAW files, the trace of the single rose was barely visible. So, in order to enhance my chances, I've decided to throw the whole bouquet of roses!

انْفِراج (relief)

I'm not sure why I named the last shot in the series in Arabic really but I just felt like it. This image as well puts more emphasis (in my opinion) on reading from the right, because if you start reading the image from the left, it would be as if the roses are being caught and not released, in opposition to the title; and again, as I always advocate, the title of the image is part of the image and an essential part of it - NEVER leave your image without a title. Thus, to convey the meaning of releasing and relief, one must start from the right to understand the image properly!
Technical: I didn't go through the technical details in the beginning, but here how was the setup: I've used all my speedlites (7), but one of them was for controlling the other six. So, in action, 6 speedlites were shooting; The seventh remained on-camera to trigger (the in-camera wireless option doesn't work in Multi mode). The speedlites were pointed to a wall in front of me to bounce the light from that wall onto the scene. The room I was in was small so this move did light the wall in the background in these images - for this reason, a black background should be a must in making shots like these. Not saying a white background won't be artistic in any way though, it is definitely a delicate matter and it often gets out of control.

Finale

Now, this is a second patch of the stroboscopic work. At the time of typing these words, I did indeed produce many more images and did other experiments, as I've stated above. During this holiday though I must also invest some time in other important things... like playing games!
With all the fuss and mess going on about the Coronavirus worldwide and the fear spreading over people, I do find myself having some strange feelings deep inside. I don't know what are these feelings, but something makes me calm, and chilling. Some annoyances are there for sure but the general theme here is, quiet. Could it be because of being away from the daily jams? The workplace? The lone nights that I got to spend wandering alone with my thoughts or working with the camera? I don't know. With this tranquility, though, comes a sense of worthlessness for this world. Maybe it is a time period of re-evaluating my life? Memories are visiting me a lot lately, lifting me to some status between soberness and drunkenness; A happy ecstasy and yet a sad one in the same time. Such weird feelings that I'm not able to translate at all for the moment, nor any help could be sought from Google Translate for that as well…I'm just here, waiting for happiness to happen.

Diaspora…

Saying "Exhausted" is not enough to fulfill the description of the current situation. At some point, I thought I would need some dose of adrenaline, and some Prozac at other times, just to get me through the past 2 weeks.
Rolling over many ideas, I kept my gear and camera scattered around the place, and that would require one day indeed to be collected back again. Some ideas were simple, but I was hoping to get through the project with something acceptable.

Spotting Red

Many props and items have been purchased or improvised trying to establish some ideas for some photos. I have to say that this project, The Color Red, was beneficial at some point for making my mind run wild and made me connect to my world; trying to express feelings by using the power of still life and setups. Something I rarely do in fact.

Broken Love (I)

The first thing to do was to repeat the rose and ice heart experiment according to recommendations given by the leader of the group. The new instructions involve removing the random petals and including the rose into the ice mold. That proved to be challenging somewhat, since the rose went afloat and froze just like that. Breaking the ice mold (resembling a broken heart) caused the rose itself to "break!" You can see that clearly in Broken Love (I). The rose being afloat was not a good "view," so to say. Thus, there was a third (and a final) trial.

Frozen (I)

Frozen (II)

The last trial involved doing layers of ice to stabilize the rose inside the mold. This was done in two days of time by pouring a layer of water and wait for it to freeze, then pour another layer and wait for it to freeze and so on till the pan or cast is filled (almost). I had to compromise here with the idea of freezing a boiling water (to make a transparent ice) as I did in the previous 2 trials. However, the shape and the translucence of the mold was even better that way! I liked it shape so I snapped several shots as it is without breaking it first as can be seen in Frozen (I,II). I had to break the mold then to mimic the main idea in mind…

Murder

Breaking the mold was a challenge by itself. This is because the ice was formed into layers and not frozen all as once piece. This made cracking the ice out of uniformity and was hard to be done in a soft and easy way like the previous trials. Had to hammer so hard and then collect the scattered blocks into one position trying to make a heart shape (somewhat!). At this point I've removed the plastic piece underneath the block (which I used to give some reflections); this would help keep the blocks stable and not easy to slide off the table. I cropped the final image in somewhat panoramic format to give more direction for the water (blood) coming out of the heart.

Murder (II)

A friend of mine then suggested to change the colors (in fact he was pointing out to doing the experiment all over again), making the heart red if possible. Hence, I thought of using the typical channel swap method which is usually used in infrared photography, where the Red and Blue channels of the image are swapped. However, upon inspection by the leader of the group, Murder was favored more (probably for its calm atmosphere). According to him, this can go into contests as well. I'm happy that I've finally made something!

愛 (love)

The "Red" project didn't stop at that point still though. I kept on trying to do more ideas. Many ideas proved problematic, and more problematic even was to spend valuable time trying to achieve them instead of skipping to other ideas on the queue. Painting strawberries, for example, was one of those ideas which I've abandoned for good (but came back later in another form as will be shown). The next idea on the line was simple: a mother and daughter writing the word "love" in Chinese. I chose that word specifically for its duality: it is the word for "love" and it has a radical for "heart" used in it. You can see above that the word "heart" is painted in red. Well, my writing wasn't that good specially that the brush used is not calligraphic in nature (Chinese calligraphy uses special kind of brushes and special types of inks). Anyway, I used the help of my sister and her daughter to show their hands with the brushes as seen above. Setting the speedlites was a hurdle, as I was trying to depend on camera settings and light setting as much as possible to approximate the scene to a high-key. I've reflected 2 speedlites on the sides off large white surfaces (papers or so) while a third speedlite was held in one hand with a "bulb" diffuser. Lot of work had to be done in Photoshop though, to fix the colors and contrast and also flip my niece's hand to make it a left hand (but the edit was a fail and the I uploaded the original as it is to stock sites). The image anyway did not pass the sorting process, but it was accepted in a number of stock sites.

Artificial Nature

I stopped for a while from the project Red, and chose to work with something else. I thought I was over with it back then but I got struck with some idea, but it involved editing more than just mere photography. However, the concept is the same one I was thinking about with strawberries before, and in fact I was looking for strawberries first, but then I realized working with apples is more appealing because of the larger size. The idea about the food consumption in our modern world and how it is "edited" with genetics. Without going into the details of the make of such "design" but opinions were mixed between a pro and a con about this edit. Personally, I do feel there is something missing but I can't put my finger on it yet.
The funny thing about this shoot though is the improvised "cube" or "tent" for lighting. Three large white surfaces (or hard papers, or whatever) were placed as a background and on two sides, while placing 2 halves of a car shade on the top and at bottom. Using only two 580EX II speedlites and each one of them is pointing to the opposite side, the lighting was good enough and almost similar to that of a cube or a tent usually used for product photography. The idea is to bounce the light from one surface to another just like the beams inside the microwave would do. That way, the scene is supposed to be lighted from all directions.

Side Dishes

In between those "red" photos, there were some older ideas were put on queue to be done. Specifically, some ideas related to the marbles' images I've done before. As suggested by a friend, an image of an eye reflected into the glass marble would be a better idea. For this idea, I was going to use my brother to sit behind the marble, but a better idea and more stable one was to use my laptop as a background.

They Are Watching…

The drawback here was the inability to fit the eye image to be completely full screen, and because of that some white lines appear on its sides. I've simply loaded the image into Photoshop and put the window on full screen. I had to use some extra stack on the top of the keyboard and then put the marble on top of the that stack, upon an acrylic sheet I usually use for reflections. This was essential as the keyboard was getting into the final image and this was undesirable.
In the beginning I was trying to fit the marble or the whole scene into the frame but then I realized a crop is inevitable.In fact, adding more space to the image and cropping later would give more flexibility in terms of design and placement for the marble and its reflection. In the editing phase, despite cleaning that sheet, I had to work for long time on cleaning the area below the marble.

They Are Watching (II)…

As I was working I had this idea of doing an inversion into an inversion. That is, inverting the eye image, and then inverting the image while processing it in Photoshop. When that was done, I've rotated the image for 180 degrees upside down. Why? Not sure. But it looked more pleasant that way. However, the overall look still not so appealing, probably because of the blue and black combination. The eye reflection here is also weak and somewhat lost despite the simplicity of the image. I'm eager to show the first to be sorted, but not the second! I'm sure the second would not have any chances.

Another side dish was served to me on Wednesday is when I got the news for the arrival of my second camera (finally!). It is another EOS 7D which I purchased from a friend and then sent it to LifePixel for conversion to a full-spectrum; That is, supposedly capturing infrared and ultraviolet spectra. Just as a simple test, I've tried this selfie while standing next to a glass door allowing the sun to come in, and also using the on-camera flash to quicken the shutter speed a bit (at ISO400). Interestingly, as I was working on LiveView (essential for focusing precisely), with the absence of clear IR sources (e.g. sun, flash), the scene would be as it is in normal images (i.e. the shot is not reddish). My initial position was in front of a mirror with CFL lamp on top, and since such lamps do not issue any significant IR radiation (and has a coating inside that blocks UV), the image in the LiveView was plain normal. The IR influence did not appear in a clear way until I moved near the glass door. More ventures need to be explored in that field, specifically when it comes to panoramas. The selfie you see here is plain and direct from camera RAW without any modification (except for resizing of course).

Finale

Many things are going and racing through my mind, which makes me more serious about having a vacation away from my camera a bit. However, having a vacation from my camera doesn't mean not, supposedly, stopping the experiments. I do have special concerns as I plan to jump further with my panorama processing, and I'm thinking seriously of putting my relatively-new Voigtländer 20mm f/3.5 lens into work with panoramas, and my initial checking tells that I wouldn't have to re-calibrate my VR-Head for this new combination of camera-lens. It needs time for further testing and inspecting and check that no parallax-error or minimal parallax-error is achieved with this lens without re-calibrating the whole set. If re-calibrating is required, I might give up the idea. The reason for going after this, is my belief that the optics quality is better with this lens more than my common and usual Canon EF 15mm lens. Another testing series should check for the amount of chromatic aberrations. In my previous shots like 愛 (love), which was shot with the 20mm Voigtländer at f/18, the aberrations were somewhat visible on close inspection. However, the final say is to be told only by direct comparison between the two lenses taking shots for the same scene under the same circumstances. On the other hand, I need to look after possibilities of doing HDR shots with my newly-converted camera, as well as shooting panoramas as I do with my normal camera.
I'm not sure when I would carry all these plans, because I'm thinking of resting for a while for real and try to organize my life all over again. Well, I think I'm failing at this already but I might do something at least. Heck, just thinking of my gear which I need to pack back into the proper places I get a shiver down my spine! It is not only the camera that is giving me some stressful times, but everything else around me seems to be doing so. I can almost swear that if I was a brick, I could have been cracked or smashed already for such amount of mental stress. Anyway, who cares… and I'm trying not to care, the best to my capability…

Unprecedented…

Two weeks of upheaval with sickness. Respiratory system infection, and then Conjunctivitis; I was surprised to know that the two are actually connected, as mention in this article. The bright side of the story is a 3 days of medical leave from work, connected to weekend. Not bad. My health still shaky with the tearful cough, but it is the usual story I believe. Coughing always lasts for some days if not months after treatment. I'm not having any medications to treat all of that, just some eye drops and cream for conjunctivitis.

With conjunctivitis. It was redder than this!

With this, and with the closure of Winter's end, seems that my plans to go out at night are somewhat, or completely, diminished. It is clear that my health and immune system is not what it used to be. However, I got myself little boots just in case I need to get a bit deeper into the shore. With this temperature it might not be a good idea to do long exposures here for the level of noise will be something unprecedented, but with more technical knowledge that I've gained along the years, hopefully I'll manage, in case that happens.

Infrolling

Because of the lack of opportunities to go outside at night, I've decided to work more on some infrared shots indoors or in the yard. Some simple experiment. Experiments like this refresh my mind a bit and breaks my idleness with the camera. Thus, I don't necessarily have a goal of achieving a good shot in my mind.

InfraPetals
Canon EF 50mm + 56mm ET, f/16, 4m20s, ISO100.

My first (and second trials) last week were with some small blooms in the yard. Despite the lack of breeze back then, but the shots were not sharp enough, and probably it is for the fact that I didn't adjust the focus (after focusing without the IR filter) to fit the IR range. The Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens has a marker for infrared re-focusing, even though, to me, it looks useless - because the distance ring is not marked thoroughly but only at specific distances. Thus, sometimes, you must use intuition and approximation in moving the focusing distance over the red dot for IR focusing.

InfraQuad
Canon EF 50mm + 36mm ET, f/20, 4m20s, ISO100.

The second trial that day wasn't any better. Anyway, I'm not planning to upload those to stock websites (or might try to do so into specific ones). The problem with this quadratic bloom is the way it should be cropped to be enhanced. In fact, I've never got myself satisfied with it, but I tried to remove some of the excess lines.
That was a simple trial outdoors. However, the real work was later done indoors when I noticed a vase with withered flowers and roses. It was made ready to disposal so I picked the vase to my room and made a simple setting. Probably the hardest part is moving around with the Speedlite without fixing it on a stand. The space in my room is not suitable anymore, and spaces around this house were taken. Anyway, work started and first it was by using two Speedlites.

Sigh
Canon EF 50mm, f/8,
5s, ISO100.

It seems, as seen in Sigh, that two Speedlites were not necessary after all. The major one was that made the effect was handheld and pointed directly to the dead rose, while the other one was placed on the side and bounced off a metallic-like surface supposedly to light the front. However, this second Speedlite proved to be a major problem when it showed glare on the glass of the vase, and hence I had to spend a considerable time cloning that out in Photoshop!
Thinking about it now, I could have used the second Speedlite to light the background a bit, but unfortunately, I do not have a proper background here, and nothing was behind this vase except the mess of my room! Anyway, it was a lesson learned the hard way. Yet, Sigh gained some Likes after all for its dramatic look. I doubt it is printable or to be uploaded though for the humongous level of noise, despite the short exposure time of 5 seconds only (and both Speedlites were on full power!).

Eski Güzellik
(old beauty)
Canon EF 50mm + 20mm ET,
f/22, 40s, ISO100.

I wasn't over with this subject yet. I liked the idea of some long exposure "indoors" with this infrared filter. The lights in my room are all energy-saving CFLs and those are a bad source for infrared radiation. Thus, naturally, the exposure without any help from Speedlites is going to be a long shot! However, I tried. The estimated time was about 5 hours and 20 minutes! I did it after all in overnight; put things on and went to bed, and tried to sleep with lights on! To my surprise, the camera didn't record the time properly (probably for the unusual time period) - it was recorded was 15 seconds only! The image was bright and good but unfortunately, shaky and the noise level wasn't promising. The shake is surprising in fact, but probably the only explanation for this is the working A/C in my room which delivered gentle vibrations to the set. Anyway, decided to do it again but with a spot light bulb (which should produce quite enough brightness and infrared as well). The result, Eski Güzellik, received many likes and favors as well. It does have some abstract sense with a side of melancholy to it. Considerable work was done to crop it, and then rotate it (and flip it). For some reason which I'm not sure of, the actual positioning was not quite right for me (maybe because of my left-handedness?). I've finally settled down with the look shown here. And that was the last trial with infrared in past few weeks.

The set used for the final shot.

Finale

Well, I would have liked to talk a bit more about the panoramas that were stitched, specifically old panoramas into new suit, but probably I'll leave that for another time. As always I'm having here a time crisis and I've realized that with my systematic time-schedule to work on some of the projects, I did in fact neglect lot of things, and specifically my Geltani conlang. I'm not sure what's the solution to this so far, but I guess I have to give myself some free time first.
I guess, at least how I think it is, I've been indulging myself into projects and stuff to work on just to let myself forget many things in my life. But this is leaving me exhausted and I'm not sure if all of that is really keeping me going forward. It feels numb here. It's hard to feel something anymore...

An Loch Codlata
(the sleeping lake)

Esir…

At some point, it was a hectic week, to the point that I really wanted to give up everything I do and everything I care for. I was in pain last week and I feared it would be some kidney-related condition, but luckily it wasn't. It was just some sore pain because of some cold air absorbed by the body it seems. A regular bottle of hot water and a nap was enough to take the pain away, as advised by a friend. Ironically, woke up from that nap and the pain was gone but a headache started! Let's talk Misery.
In the meantime, the weather is getting warmer (and it's February!) and till now I didn't have the chance to just head out and do something with my camera. For this reason, I'm starting to do some experiments indoors. Such experiments can be done almost at any time (when the idea strikes in of course) and no need to wait for the nightfall. But of course they don't provide the excitement begotten by working alone at nighttime in a chilling weather!

Captive

Esir 1
(Captive 1)
Canon EF 50mm, f/2, 1s, ISO100
IR

The first idea was simple: A rose, inside a small cage. Trapped love? Love cannot be expressed and let out? A love that cannot leave the mind and heart? Name as you like. Anyway, the twist to this is using the infrared filter. Understanding more about the infrared filters and the threshold wavelength, I wanted to do with Kodak infrared gel filter. However, because of the lens decision (50mm), I had to stick to the weaker (low threshold) filter, the B+W. This choice was also reasonable for the time being because I wanted to use my Canon Speedlites here and I suspect that the IR emission from these flash tubes are strong enough to go all the way through an almost-opaque Kodak filter.

Esir 2
(Captive 2)
Canon EF 50mm, f/2, 1s, ISO100
IR

After setting up the two speedlites and trying out some directions, I did settle down, as usual, with my most favorite technique: the unidirectional; mainly for its dark aspect and harsh contrast yield. Beside the position of the speedlites, we have the framing problem which actually proved to be difficult because of the low level of the tripod. Hence, I've decided to approximate the look and then complete it with cropping in Photoshop. I did take several shots, changing the settings or the direction a bit. However, at the end only 2 were chosen from the set, and they produced 3 images (so far).

Esir 3
(Captive 3)
Canon EF 50mm, f/8, 250^-1s, ISO100
IR

Esir 1 and Esir 2 are actually made from the same RAW file, from a single shot. However, the difference between both is mainly the Clarity indicator when processing the RAW file. For Esir 1, it was fixed on a high value (but lower than 100%), while for Esir 2, the Clarity was reduced somewhere midway between 0 and -100%. Both of these shots were taken at a relatively shallow depth of field (f/2) and I tried my best to aim the focus on the rose itself (synthetic by the way!) and keep the bars of the cage out of focus. In addition to that, Esir 1 had undergone a channel swab. Esir 3, however, was made from a completely different shot (which was taken almost at the end of the session that day). In this particular shot the depth of field is increased (increasing f-number). By this, I was trying to reduce the luminance in the scene by the speedlites (and killing the ambient light still with faster shutter speed). The reason for that was just to add more dark mood into the shot; Things would change later anyway because of the fixes that must be done; generally, the white balance. Of course the bars of the cage now are sharper and clear.
Among the three, probably Esir 2 is my favorite one, for its softness in general and the mystic luminance. Esir 1 has a special touch to it as it looks as a sketch somewhat. Maybe Esir 3 is at the end of the list but yet it has some good contrast there I presume. I think the crop I made to Esir 3 wasn't fair. Despite the black and white look, the images do have a tiny blue tint to them and of course this is obvious in Esir 1 where channel swab (red and blue) have taken place. Just to note, the word "Esir" means "captive" or "prisoner" in Turkish, as well as in Arabic (أسير).
On the queue, there are other ideas that I will try to implement, including using glycerine and using the Kodak gel filter (of high threshold) in this experiment, but I have to figure this one out and see if I can use my 15mm fisheye lens in this little macro-like experiment!

Dubh agus Bán

Beside working on old panoramas with new ideas for new projections, I've started already the black and white trend with my recent pictures from Ireland. Of course there were some of them that were already processed as B&W images already but this time I'm digging for another dimension within the stack of colored images. Probably I'll make a separate album for black and white images from Ireland 2014 trip and make it ready for mass-mailing in one of these days.

An Teach ag Deatach - BW
(the smoking house)

Some images, like An Teach ag Deatach, were completely astonishing even to my own eyes that I can't imagine them back in colors. This image in particular (taken on my way to Ashford castle, and seems in a town named Maam within Galway according to a commenter), was a favorite for many on several online communities. This image had its own hurdles though and I had to use dodge and burn on many layers to adjust some areas. Even though it might be good in a small version but I doubt that it would be good on a large scale print.

Roimh an Dorchadas - BW
(before the dark)

As the case with An Teach ag Deatach, tinting is usually used with most B&W images, and at times tinting in a way if splitting tones is also used like in Roimh an Dorchadas. However, unlike my experiments before with splitting the tones, I've decided to make it light and not necessarily based on any color schemes (e.g. complimentary colors). The process is still going on, and it is not mainly restricted to single shots only. But to be done with panoramas as well.

Oldies

After getting an initiative from a punch of new perspectives or projections in recent panoramas from Ireland, I've started visiting old panoramas, specifically those from Ireland 2010 (Cashel and Cahir in Co. Tipperary) and Staten Island (2012).

Oriental Lights
Staten Island, NYC.

It's too early though to see what's the future of these oldies, but it was fun to work on few of them this week. Specially that I'm having hard time being able to go out and shoot. Winter is almost over by now (if not already).
One panorama in particular was interesting to me is the one taken inside the Chinese temple of the Scholar Gardens in Staten Island, Oriental Lights. In this panorama, not the projection (which I didn't apply before for this panorama) that attracted me specifically, but the lights. Since the original panorama is in HDR (and I had to merge it all over again and stitch it all over again), and since there are some gaps in the luminance range, I've decided to NOT show the details in every part of the scene. Specifically those areas with high level of highlights, the entrance and the windows (up and down in Oriental Lights). Thus, the work was done in the HDR mode here to mimic the outside light coming into the scene through these features (and some delicate work a bit was needed around the pillars). I think it is more normal that way and gives a more mystic look as it should be. Nothing a soft brush can't do!

An Eaglais Ghlas - BW
(the green church)

From recent panoramas from Ireland, An Eaglais Ghlas from Inchagoill Island was a target for this trend and also split toning. In splitting the tones, I picked mainly deep green and deep blue to mimic both the green cover in the original image and the sky (and this is after using infrared preset to convert it to B&W). This is not the first panorama to be converted to B&W in fact, there is one already which was done some time ago and right now it was picked by the group leader to be displayed in the coming exhibition of Mawahb 2015 next March. That panorama was from the forest near the Waterfront in Oughterard which I've made into various projections before.

Easnacha - BW
(ribs)
before adjustments suggested by the leader

Finale

In hope that more peaceful days are to come yet I'm not sure this is the case we have here. I'm not sure what is the finale of this. I'm seriously out of words and all I want to do for the time being is to stay silent for days if not months. Alas, this can't be done in this crazy world I'm living with. For once I thought I'm getting sick with this country and the people around me, but seems I'm seriously sick of everything, and everyone, worldwide.
I'm spending my days reading and teaching myself a bit of Irish Gaelic not for a thing but this seems to be the only way for the time being to increase my brain activity, and somewhat forget my problems and failures. Why doesn't the world leave me alone?

Paralyzed...

As the title says. This week I've been paralyzed. Not much activity (except of some self portrait issues) and all of that because of, mainly, the car issues. In the middle of the week we had a special religious occasion and it is customary to fast on this day so I did fast 2 days in fact - and with fasting, my powers go down a bit and I wouldn't be able to do much after working hours. some ideas are there, but to work them out, I would need either more resources or, so to say, more objects to buy and/or help (something I seriously lack).

Source: B&H

My savior cable turned out not much of a savior. However, it still works. After getting the Vello 33' cable, I've found out that I can't access the speedlites via the menu in camera but I have to do mostly everything manually. Strangely, this problem persists only when the speedlite is attached to the far end, but I can access the menus when the speedlite is attached to the main head connected to the hot shoe on camera.
After contacting B&H they did indeed help me out and sent me a Return Form to be sent through UPS, but unfortunately, this service doesn't work out for international destinations like from Kuwait. Thus, I have to keep myself contented with what I have right now. The main thing is applying High-Speed options which might be problematic, but the wireless triggering works just fine so probably I would have some work out around this problem.

Source: B&H

On the other hand, the new ColorMunki is working just fine and I've already calibrated my new laptop and the desktop monitors. What is left is to try out and calibrate some projector (which I don't really need but to get the hang of it) beside doing some printer calibration when possible. All of that is on hold for the time being till I finish my car problems!
What I like about this ColorMunki is the more sophisticated options it has (beside of course the basic calibration which a beginner can still use). It has options to calibrate according to the ambient light or according to a light temperature (e.g. D50, D65) and so on. My monitor now looks significantly darker than it was with the calibration done from the old simple ColorMunki (with monitors settings set to default or factory settings).

Other toys are just fine and the pinhole mount specifically needs more experimenting, but initially the test is fine. For the time being, I'm thinking of using my light meter to initiate the calculations for finding out the required exposure time when using the pinhole (of f/222). To find the required exposure here I would have to measure the light level at a specific f-number and then build up the exposure time up to f/222. I will try the simple formula:

V = 2*Log(N) / Log(2)

Where V is the number of stops needed, and N is the f-number. However, for N here, I would substitute for the difference in f-number (i.e. ΔN) between f/222 and the initial f-number (say f/8 for example). I'm not sure this is mathematically correct, because I think I'm suppose to drive ΔV and not simply V. Anyway, my mathematical expertise is not good enough to derive such a formula. My main, and simple, derivation is from the equation mentioned in Wikipedia's page here.

Of course then, after calculating the stops (V in this case) I would use it in the following formula to get the required time for the exposure:

T = S * 2^V

Where T is the Time that we need to know for the exposure, and S is the shutter time calculated at the initial f-number (f/8 for example as stated above) by means of the light meter. You might think or feel it is kind of ridiculous to work with all these equations just to use a pinhole (while you have a set of lenses that I can use still with TTL systems), but trust me, it takes a physicist or a mathematician to realize the sweetness of such experimenting and the joy when you find out that you've done the right thing.

Away from this mess, I'm still spending some time with other people's photos and trying to enhance them somehow. Lot of nice photos but the noise level makes it horrible to work with such photos. Anyway, I'm advising everyone I can reach to get a real camera instead of a phone camera.

The Gaze
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3,
400^-1sec, ISO200.

In the meantime, I've decided to work with my own camera little bit and do a half-portrait; after all, I didn't take much photos of myself for a long time, and I didn't even edit much of my photos to make some of them as pieces of art. The setup was time-consuming and I had to stand, literally, in a jungle of tripods. 

I've taken many shots with different setups of the speedlites and among the tens of shots Ive taken, only one that got through, even with some lighting problems. 

The Gaze II (Edit)

The main problem here is that I was using the 430EXII speedlite with a honeycomb grid to act as a spotlight and give extra light to the eye area, after lighting the whole face with 580EXII speedlite plus reflector. Anyway, pointing the spotlight is so critical and I've never got it right after all, and as you can see in the images, the closest I could get is the area under my eye, on the cheek and thus we have an overexposure in this area specifically.

The Gaze III (Edit)

However, I'm glad that one shot survived at least from the tens of shots I've made (and how ironic in the beginning I was using the speedlites on the wrong side of my body). Everything in this experiment was set on a tripod; two speedlites, monitor, and camera. Moving was something delicate. My main idea in the beginning was totally different in which I wanted to use some flash drag technique while moving my face (to create a ghosting effect) but for this case I would probably need a darker atmosphere rather than the hall in which I've conducted this experiment. In hope that I would be able to do this soon. Just thinking about the configurations and the settings that I have to do makes me a bit sluggish and lazy to do all of that. For this experiment though, I might use a simple hatchet configuration, which is made by placing 2 light sources on the sides of the face, and yet because I have 2 different speedlites here with 2 different powers, I might as well have to change the distances accordingly, making the 580EXII further away from my face (or reduce its power accordingly) - and probably the guide numbers would help with this. New venturing, let's hope it goes smoothly without much headache!

Finale

As of writing these words, I'm still struggling with my car yet and I'm not sure there is an easy way out to fix the damn A/C. Living without an A/C in your car in Kuwait means a catastrophe for most of the fields of your life - because you need to do your business outside and with no A/C, you are simply a melted chocolate!

After the shock from the original car dealer which offered fixes for 520 K.D. (approx. US$1500), I've pulled the car from there without fixing it and now I'm trying to find a good substitute. Some times I do get some hope from some garage owners, and some times they get me down, but after all one thing is certain: it's not going to be a cheap fix. I'll be just happy to finish this topic and have some peace of mind before Ramadhan's arrival and the beginning of the fast.
Mom's situation worries me and it does sound more like a chronic issue. Despite the fact that she seems to be in a good health and she goes in and out of the kitchen as she used to do before, but the matter with the dialysis is not finished yet and my elder sister brings some bad news now and then. Poor mother, we keep the bad news away from her to keep her calm, and God knows what's waiting for her. Just wish if I can give her one of my kidneys if that was possible. The least I'm hoping for for the time being, is some reduction in her dialysis times.

All what I want for the few coming days, is to stare at the sky at night and see some stars. Just, some stars...