Geltani...

Not bad for such a week, even though I got myself screwed up a bit, but seems it is the sense of adventure! Details about that will come later on anyway, when it comes to my talk about my work with the camera. As for the time being, I'm busy thinking more and trying more for creating my new con-script and conlang; Geltani. All I can say about this week for now is: it was nice. Started with some work and hopefully ending with some inspirational work, all what's missing is some good news!

I. Geltani:

As for the new conlang, I'm still working on the basics, like general shapes and logograms (pictographs) and also putting the first blocks of the grammar itself. The grammar is not supposed to be as complicated as Ayvarith is (and still Ayvarith's grammar is simpler than ordinary languages). So far, I made a decision to neglect the masculine and feminine cases and neglect the definite article (the) but use an indefinite article (a, an) only - like the case is with real Chinese and Turkish. I've developed, as well,  some special logos for other grammatical cases, like the verbs, and the plurals, as well as putting a rough sketch for the numerical system which will be decimal of course (base 10). The test is still going on however to see how flexible such symbols can be when writing them down in combination with others. But the hard part didn't begin yet.
In my previous post I've explained the main idea of dividing the word into syllables of two, where the first phoneme is the leading sound and the next would make an effect. For simplification, I've decided to call them Leading and Driving respectively. To explain it more I would refer to my previous post's example (the word "Honey"):

Honey: RLW

RL - W

[RL]: "R" Leading and "L" Driving

However, I'm constructing still the major sheet that explains the values and sounds of the Driving portion of the syllables. Almost not much concerns about the Leading part, since the sounds are specified already. It is a relation, somehow, of a cause and effect. It is close to the way aspiration and eclipse work in Irish Gaelic, to some extent. I'm shifting values here and there and there is a big uncertainty in this matter still.

Example of initial values for Leading and Driving sounds (click to enlarge)

I have to think as well and decide, whether to allow duplicates in sounds in this large collection. I also think of adding some Semitic elements to the Chinese-like conlang by adding sounds like fricative "H" (Hebrew: chet) and Glottal "A" (Hebrew: ayin).  There is still long work to do on that, and then later I have to think of some way to present my work to Omniglot. Think, think, think...

II. Soak or Not:

One of the most beautiful aspects of this week is the fact that we had rains. Yes, rains. I should start a feast and a special holiday for announcing the first drop of rain to come on this land. However, despite the amazing weather (which might not be so for some people, specially those who live in rain-soaked areas) it is of course hard to work in such conditions, but all I can do is open the window and listen to the drops of rain until I snooze.

Anyway, after some wave of heavy rains, I've discovered that the "playground" or the parking place where I usually park in my work place has turned into a swamp of mud. I almost slipped there, many times, trying to find my way into or out of the building. However, the structures there gave an idea of some shots to do, and luckily I was having my camera and tools with me!

Mud Rider
Rokinon 8mm @f/22

I've erased the car logo from the tire's cover for commercial purposes. In the shot above, I had to expand my tripod's leg and make it lower to the ground level (and getting dirty). One of the hard things to control is to take a proper shot with 8mm in such low and extended legs' level. However, after merging to HDR and before tone-mapping, I had to get to cloning out some portions to remove tiny parts of the tripod's legs showing in the shot. It is always better to clone in HDR before tone-mapping. Also, there were some cropping to remove part of the building on the left and also to pull back the tire into the lower right corner and make it closer to the sides.
The weather was nice (to me) but the problem with such weather is the hardships with the WB and how to satisfy a specific mood. things were hard with other shots around the place and in fact, after close inspection when I got back home, the images hardly impressed me. Maybe HDR tone-mapping is not always a good idea in such situation and maybe I should inspect the images in single RAWs. 

Liquor Lucis

Anyway, this tiny session around my work place was not the big bang of the week. The greater event started the day after I posted my last post in this blog; last weekend, and to be specific on the early hours of Friday and before the sun started to rise above the horizon.
Everything started right after doing a check on the tidal level when I packed my stuff (and wore enough clothes) and headed out. Actually, the tide level was not what I really wanted but it allowed me to go a bit deeper on the beach (more precisely, the beach shelf, or the hard ground under water at high tide time). The tide was minimum at around 3 a.m., but I went out around 5 a.m.. For this reason, the water level was rising slowly as I was working on my panorama.
The thing that I was really afraid of is some fellows to block my way or annoy me (you know whom I'm talking about, right?) but gracefully, everything went smooth, somehow. I soaked myself a bit but that was OK. I think the whole thing paid of (despite the annoying fact that for long exposures and for high ISO levels, there were some annoyances). However, the first result out of the whole thing was a flat spherical panorama.

Nox Salmiyah

Now, despite the bluish shades and hues in this image, the original WB during the whole process was set to Daylight (i.e. a yellowish shade). Adjustments were made later when tone-mapping and also in Photoshop in the final steps. Anyway, further trials with other WB when merging into HDR are possible ventures to tickle this panorama.
Stitching, naturally, had some problems because of the big portions from the sky (night sky, no clouds visible), but there were some nice stars visible in the long exposure slides but wouldn't be visible to the naked eyes. I've set ISO to 800, which is high, but it was necessary to ensure that the exposure at +2EV won't exceed 30 seconds long. Cleaning the noise anyway took several steps and in the original file, it might not be as perfect as I wish. There was cleaning with NeatImage and Noise Ninja and then smoothing out some areas with Median trick.
Another trial, however, with this panorama and this time without changing much of the WB which was yellowish or golden in shades, but this time the simple work of enhancing the image, turned to be a graphical design of its own.

Planeta Ignis

The glowing luminance around the little planet of Salmiyah here inspired me to work on such a design and mimic a burning comet or planet. The awkward moment here is that most of these effects had to be done in 8-bit format, since they are not available in 16-bit format in Photoshop, and this might caused, at some point, some banding. around the planet. Maybe of the hardest things to fix in both images is the weird color spots (hot pixels) which is not something new to me by now.
After this little adventure on the beach in the pitch dark dawn time, this location in fact was not a prime target for me. My real target is on the other side to the left of this location (facing the sea). That location specifically has nice rocks lying on the bed at the time of a low tide, but this place better be targeted at low tide rather than a time when the water level is coming up, like I did in this trial. This said, I have to watch out now for my chances in the coming weekend, as well as checking for other potential locations along the sea shore line (and surely be careful of cops and security people).

Well, I hope to drop this now, and get back to my Geltani project. Just thinking about the future time pressure because of these many projects makes me nervous!

3D Hunting II...

Been a slow week somehow. The week began with heavy headaches, starting from Friday. It was not a pleasant beginning for my last weekend at all. It was one of the rare times that I would sleep for 12 hours (not in a row though); from Thursday afternoon, until Friday's morning. Woke up then with a pain in the shoulder and neck (and the back of course), but the most annoying thing was, the headache. This headache reached its "climax" whenever I do some activity that would cause my blood pressure to raise up; my head would feel like blown out and I almost wanted to scream from the pain.
I waited for 2 days, because I thought it is what usually is; the regular pains of long sleep. Unfortunately, the headache did not calm down. The only way to calm it down was to have some pain-killers. I decided then to check with a doctor in case it is something serious. However, with some blood analysis that I just got its results on Wednesday, it turns out that there is nothing serious. I did such analysis back in November or December and this enabled me to make some comparison between the two. My cholesterol level is lower (but still bitty bit high) than the previous time and also my salts level. The doctor didn't add much to the general recommendations; sports, diet, and being away from salts as much as possible. My headache now is gone and I don't get it whenever I do some activity, but I have to keep an eye on my body now. I think I have to change my bed or do something about it.

Been carrying my tripod and camera wherever I go in hope of catching something; just anything. Life had become a bit dull, and with this daily traffic jam from work, the situation is a complete set of misery. I find it hard even to stay awake in the afternoons after coming back from work. I hate to nap at this time in regular week days but my fatigue wouldn't allow me to stay awake, and with my concerns about my blood pressure, I had to reduce my intake of caffeine for now. No redbull in early morning and no coffee at home or in the office, but I keep telling myself that this is just a temporal procedure. I already had a nap in the office twice this week!
Back to the camera. I've started to take my stuff with me almost anywhere I go, trying to find something to catch. I still have images to process from Ireland, but I don't come closer to them anymore. I think I'm exhausted for the time being and might get back later. For the time being I'm looking around the places I go to. In fact, it is indeed your eyes that see what is beautiful and make it, not the place itself. I experienced that when I paid a work-related visit to Anjafa Beach. It is somehow a quiet beach, quieter than the usual beach where I take my photos from, The Corniche or Salmiyah seaside. I intend to take some pictures from there, despite the location is somehow sensitive because of some villas around the place. Villas, for people I don't want to interrupt!
Nevertheless, I've been taking some pictures from the beach. The usual beach. After I left the clinic on Monday, having my blood taken for tests, I headed to Burger King on that beach to break the fast. I noticed some features that I did like to take some pictures of, although the sun elevation in the sky is not quite what I desire, and the weather is not cold any more like it was in those "lovely" winter mornings before...

Beach Shed

Despite the harsh sun here, I've used Fluorescent WB here to reduce (somehow) the sun's flare. Amazingly, it kind of gave out (with HDR tone-mapping of course) some sense of a night scene. I took several shots for this scene from different angles but I guess this one was the most appealing, and also after doing that, I remembered that I need some items into my 3D collection, so I went for it as well. This time I didn't use the fisheye lens, as I wanted to concentrate on the structure of the so-called "shed" here. It is the main subject that interested me in the first place for such 3D play-around. Fisheye also proves problematic for some structures as will be shown later...

 Beach Shed (3D)

It was one of my interests really to make 3D images (anaglyph) with fisheye lenses, and even I'm thinking of expanding this ambition to do it with panoramas, but it's early to talk about that for some reasons. I believe in case of a fisheye 3D image, the aim must be a a landscape or a wide area in the first place and not one specific structure (and I believe this is natural and obvious because of the nature of a fisheye lens). Now, what happens sometimes is that the structure itself, doesn't help at all to be a good 3D under a fisheye lens. This makes me a bit picky with when to use a fisheye lens. In the following example, it's my work place in 3D trial, but the problems occur with the pillars. The nature of the fisheye lens, to bend the scene on the edges, makes the difference between the left and right portions (i.e. the left and right images) at extreme on the edges while minimum in the center (that is if we were focusing on the center like I did here)...

 Work Place (3D)

Maybe the only thing, in my eyes, that did really pop-up as a 3D object was the bushes or trees behind the cars (that silver one on the left is mine by the way :) ). There is a lot of "ghosting" in this image specially at the edges (like the top of the pillars or the top of the building on the right side). Ghosting here is not like ghosting in HDR processing. In HDR, usually, we say "ghosting" about some phenomena that causes some blurring in the final HDR slide when combined from original bracketed images because of some moving object in the scene which the software that combines these bracketed images, in order to minimize the differences between the images before merging into HDR, tries to eliminate and replace the pixels, and the end result is some blur or a light shadow of some object. In 3D images, Ghosting means the fact that the red and blue (or Cyan or Green) portions in the image itself are so wide that the eye of the viewer can't combine them anymore to form one image in the spot. Ghosting in 3D images is somehow normal and like there is no really perfect 3D image (to some extent) but there are limits I believe to really settle down with such defections. Sometimes the ghosting effect can overwhelm the whole image making it meaningless! I have to admit though, my HDR tone-mapping for this image might have been a bit "over done".

Anyway I kept using my fisheye lens in the location that day (Wednesday) and focused on one of the trees. At this point I think I'm sort of made a mental point for myself on how to use a fisheye lens to do a 3D image...

Surreal Tree (3D)

I made this one here in Black and White to avoid the noise coming out from the shades of green and blue, and in fact, they say Black and White images make the best anaglyphs because there are no color confusions that might disturb the view. This sample in fact (with a previous one) made me almost sure that to use a fisheye lens for making a 3D image, your focus should be on the edges (left and right in case of landscape orientation or top and bottom in case of portrait orientation). This will leave of course the rest of the image and specially the opposite side of the focus point highly venerable for ghosting effects, but nevertheless, these ghosting are far away (relatively) from your focus point and maybe won't catch a glimpse at all!

3D Infinitum

Focusing on the lower center rock

Seems so much notes to keep in mind right now. However, with working a lot around this matter, it will eventually become like a second nature. More work needed here.

Now, to the matter of panorama in 3D. This is something I've been thinking about for some time but I didn't settle down with an opinion of my own and I just don't know how to achieve something like that! The main problem here is that when doing a proper panorama you actually use VR-heads to rotate the camera around the no-parallax point of the lens+camera combination (to avoid stitching errors resulting from parallax errors of course). Now, isn't 3D processing is generally made by overlapping 2 images with a tiny parallax error in between them? Because this is how our eyes work in the first place! 

Exercise: extend your arm in front of your face with your thumb up. Now, look with one eye for a moment, then close this eye and open the other. How does it feel? Isn't the background, sort of, moving? This is exactly the parallax error that happens in the camera and prevents the PC from stitching!

If I take a panorama in the old way before getting my VR-head, i.e. using a tripod alone, that means stitching errors and a bad stitch (and I already get bad points of stitching even when using VR-heads!), while the parallax error is somehow the main factor for achieving some good 3D image at some point (concentrating on a point and letting the other differ in portions of red and blue). The process here is quite complicated and maybe can be achieved only with using 2 cameras altogether at once and not only one, and these two cameras should be leveled horizontally in a perfect manner while pointing in opposite directions with difference in few degrees. For the time being, the only cheap solution I have in my mind is to overlap 2 layers of the same panorama and shifting one of them a little bit to the left or right and do the process of combining into a 3D. OR, as an option, is to lengthen the process of taking a panorama a bit and take the whole scene in one spot and then do it again after shifting the tripod itself few inches or centimeters (or whatever units).

I'm, myself, still not sure on how to exactly take two images for 3D processing (handheld): should I shift the camera itself to the left or right a bit, or should I rotate the camera some few degrees. Logically, seems rotating is the good solution, and again, this solution won't work with panorama processing because you are in fact rotating your camera already! Unless... you re-take the whole panorama not by shifting the tripod this time, but by starting from a different angle, few degrees away from the first starting point. So many ideas that I need to test!

I've took the chance to take some pictures for the moon, or what they called the "super moon" as it is the closest distance for the moon to Earth in the past 18 years! So they say, anyway. However, my main goal was actually some time-lapse movie for the moon moving along. Anyway, I did take the chance to do some bracketing for HDR slides and I think I did learn a lesson or two from this experiment...

The shoot was done by Tamron 70-300mm with its full zoom at 300mm. The short time lapse was done on the roof of my house with some breeze, and as it is well-known, with great zooming a little shake in the tripod is noticeable, and hence some images were a bit shaky but with minimizing the size of the frame they are barely visible. The shoot almost took around 30 to 45 minutes with a shot every 5 seconds, and the little clip was combined with 10 fps. Now, for the HDR trial. HDR here proved to be hard to be tone-mapped because of the noise level that occurs in the black areas around the moon. The idea I had in my mind was that to show more details of the moon's surface, then HDR is a normal choice, but I think it didn't really matter in this situation...

Normal (WB: fluorescent)

Tone-mapped HDR (with some artifacts)

I used the fluorescent White Balance here to reduce some of the white bright areas in this glowing moon and to help on pronouncing more of its details a bit. Lot of people like the normal version more than the HDR version and I don't blame them for that. I myself don't like the HDR moon very much, but yet, I do feel the need of more power in my zoom, and for this reason I'm thinking of getting one of those "focal length extenders" (probably one made by Vivitar) to extend the zooming power behind the current limits.

Right now I've began recording videos while driving (2 days now) in the early morning. Just trying to catch a nice moment or so, and that makes me stabilize the tripod in the car most of the time and remove it only when really need it. This thing now kind of keep scattering my tools, in the car and at home! Oh well... isn't it worthy?

Playgrounds in My Mind...

Just decided to go on and write some words in my blog since I don't seem to be able to concentrate my words into a poem. Words come and words go but I just don't understand anything. I can't type or write anything. I hate this when it happens. Been fluctuating now and then between various songs for Phil Collins that hit to the core of the heart, and then change to Black Eyes Peas for some breathing away from my melancholy. Yet in all that process, the words don't stick together to allow me to write something, nor my daydreaming stops. In fact, I feel that my daydreaming is blocking the string of words from being complete and hence I'm jammed. However I try to write something, my pulses go passionate, always. I don't want to write another love story, and I'm afraid if I let go of my imagination and write something about my life or world, I would be going wild and violent. Not a pleasant picture if you ask me. Not for me. I'm not a rapper after all!
I think I need someone to aid me on completing the words or the sentences I make. Yet, this is somehow, a far away solution. 

An interesting experience though, that when I worked with my camera for some time now, and work on concentrating on my pictures (processing and so on), I tend somehow to lose myself into it, and forget about all the vivid images or daydreams that I've been into. I know that occupying your mind with something might help already but, till when? I don't work with my camera all the time. I barely took some snaps in the past few days even, and all of them were in a hurry, being afraid of any cops, or security people.
One of these shots were taken beside the shopping center where I usually pick up my breakfast every morning...

The Giant Chessboard.

To tell the truth, this is not the view that I wanted to achieve. However, the light is nice in early morning just like that. That's why I like winter more than summer, well, along with other reasons. I used my 15mm fisheye lens here, but maybe I should have used the 55-200mm instead (which I did the next day). I wanted this to be taken from some elevated point as in a bird's eye view, but unfortunately, this is hard to be done in that location specially with all security people being around the place and you just don't know when they might catch you in. I left the lamp post o nte right side as it is, just not to make the sky all plain an dull. To take this image I was turning on the camera (and it goes into sleep-mode automatically after one minute or two) and left it in the car as I went inside getting my breakfast, and once I'm in front of this I had to park and get down and snap in a hurry. My first trial was blurry, thus I changed to AutoFocus to do my work faster. All this fuss, for this snap. Yeah, how easier can it be?

My next snap was the next day directly, in the parking lot in my work place. I noticed that the light lamps in this place were awesome in the morning, when they are still on. The thing is, I thought these lamps work by solar inductance or whatever it is called, i.e. they are turned off whenever enough light hits the main switch or, again, whatever. I discovered then they are switched on and off manually. The moment I went there with my camera into the parking lot and just when I parked, the lights started to go off one by one so I had to take some snaps in a hurry. The result then, when I got back home, I didn't realize how lucky I was despite all the anger that was inside me for that incident...

Alone...

As you can see, I called it "Alone." The thing that happened here is that I snapped it before the other lights at the back turn off as well, resulting in one light post being off while the others are on, like if this post is isolated from the others. I think this is somehow a lesson to me that I should wait on bad things and bad happenings, and see what or how I can change, do or deal with such things. Valuable lesson, let's hope I have the nerves to apply it to my daily life...

On the other hand, there seem to be some panorama that I won't waste my time on processing it. It was the one taken from Salmiyah park last week. The place was really empty except of some trees and even a HDR processing didn't do much to attract the eye, so I had to do just anything. So, I went on with the "ant's view" again or maybe I should call it "tunneling effect". Later on I used the name "tunneling effect" for another image.

I didn't bother to give a name even...

The image here was processed in HDR, then since the saturation was high in general (and lowering it down was not attractive as well), I converted the whole thing into B&W with some touches of slight yellowish hue and adding more contrast to give a touch of drama to the whole thing. That's all I could think of, and as for the straight flat panorama of the same scene, I don't think I will bother with it. I might have worked a bit with it if the trees were more and dense a bit though.

Following now on the same trend, I did the same effect for more "interesting" scene. The one I took last Wednesday in Bayan park while I was there with my friend. I made 3 different projections of the same panorama. The time was in the morning so, the sunlight was interesting and gave nice contrast and hues already.

Flat

Little Planet

Tunneling

The last one of those maybe gained most of the popularity on Mostphotos.com. Despite the fact that this panorama was taken completely on a monopod (with 3 mini-legs), this is one of the panoramas that I didn't have much problems with broken lines in it. Notice that I'm talking about a HDR panorama, with 3 exposures on each angle. It was shaky as usual but everything went smooth that day (despite the breeze as well). Taking a panorama from a monopod, although it might be shaky, it is much easier than taking a panorama with my old tripod, mainly because the legs problem (they show in the lower angle slides, along with the body of the VR-head too) and because the monopod head is equipped with a screw that can fit the VR-head and can be flipped to fit a camera. I'm currently in the process of ordering a separate head (just a cheap one) for this monopod. The problem though remains: stability. The end of the story is, of course, a QTVR.

There are some times when you do process an image and then you find yourself being into melancholy because of it. I don't know how it happens but, it just happens!

Once Upon A Time...

This one is taken from the same place; Bayan park. Just like the panorama from Salmiyah park, I really didn't find something interesting about it except that it is a general view for the playground in that park. I tried hard to make it somehow interesting when I processed the HDR slide, but no use. Thus, after the tone-mapping was done, I decided to just turn everything into a dramatic black and white with a touch of golden hue. By the way my usual "golden" color is #FCC200. There are other hues for "Gold" that can be found in Wikipedia. When I stare at this image, I try hard to remember did I ever play in those? I sure did but, when? Frankly, I don't remember much at all.

For the time being, I'm thinking of a new project and this time, no cops or anything or any security involved. I want to do a panorama from the inside of my car. I don't know how yet, but I have to try this practically myself, and of course I have to be in a spacious area and not in front of this house, where you can barely jump into your car. Probably I would have to switch to the tripod here since a monopod is hard to be stable inside such a situation. I've been roaming some places now looking for some kind of a converter that makes a small screw head fit into the large screw hole of the VR-head, but no luck so far.

Now as I type these words and trying hard to squeeze my mind for some words I'm writing, let's hope I finish this. Work is dull, but I have to not complain, because it has been worse in the past few weeks. I'm trying here to seriously control my love for coffee in some way, specially after getting myself a 3-in-1 coffee package  and put it at work. This, can really screw things up. I've taken my camera with me this morning trying to snap the "chessboard" scene again but this time with a 55-200mm lens, but that didn't really solve anything. It won't do much unless I can snap that scene with a bird's eye view. However, I might shoot a scene like this again, from my work place...

Ad Coelem (to heaven).

which was shot originally by a fisheye. After tone-mapping this and cropping a bit (and still it is off the center a bit), I realized this better be in black and white because the colors were, dramatic, but to saturated and desaturating them, again, will leave it dull. But I think if I'm going to try my 55-200mm lens here,  I have to try some different angles. I tried it already on some junk around the place the other day but it wasn't a trial I worked hard for. Just for fun...

Government

Named it "Government" for obvious reasons, I guess. I tried to achieve some blur here but I think the distance in between the fore- and background didn't help. I wonder if a stronger lens like a macro lens would do the job. Mentioning that, I'm on fire, waiting for my first macro lens to arrive. It's a tamron 70-300mm. Although it is well-known that to get a sharper image it is better to take a picture with a stable lens with a fixed focal length, but I don't that now. Let me find my way with the macro, then I might decide about it. The most important fact now is my fisheye got a fixed focal length and this is way too important for doing panoramas with this lens.

Now, it's time for me to rest, from the whole world a bit...

Daydreaming...

The long week didn't hit its end yet but I'm already feeling sick of it. I feel lost, aimless, and the most dangerous part is... I feel I can't work on my photos for some long time as I used to. I don't know if this triggers my needs of socializing but for sure I'm not in mood to be around the people that surround me at the current time.
There are, unfortunately, some people that you tend to respect not for character nor for wisdom, but solely for the fact that they are older, but yet as much as you do respect them (because I do really have faith in my own faith and its teachings), they just tend to leave more scars in your mind by sparking more of the painful questions and memories that you just don't want to remember and work hard to overcome. I'm spending my time, as usual, in my room, but maybe more than before.

Lately, I've realized that I might have a real and serious problem. Daydreaming. Or maybe to be precise, Maladaptive Daydreaming. I know that I should ask for some opinion and ask some professionals in the field about it to make sure that I'm indeed having this case or not, but I know one thing for sure now. It is embarrassing. I'm tending to get some vivid images and in fact I thought everything is normal. This had been there since I was 7 or 8 years of age. Started from being with cartoon characters and trying to imagine another scenario for the story, until growing up and being... more serious. The spark for this "consciousness" was the realization that I'm in fact hurting myself. One moment living one beautiful dream, then BAM! Reality. I think this is what has been causing depression in my mood for big time of my life now. Add to that, the embarrassing moments when people tend to ask why am I laughing, or why I'm doing some gestures with my hands (this had been seriously out of control lately) and then I realize I'm not alone, and my answer would be "sorry, I remembered something funny," or "yeah sorry I got some itch there". I've been following news around the net and checking around people who has something like this. Some of them take pills. I don't want to do this now. I hate chemicals. I hate medicines. This state of mind made me somehow abuse coffee beyond my daily limits and intake. Around 3 to 4 mugs a day (preceded by some coffee cups from vending machines at work and a redbull) is not really what I wanted to do with my day. But what you know, sometimes I feel it really helps me to write. Write, write, even if it was a nonsense at all.

Maybe it is not that bad after all. To dream a little bit, maybe? I've been pushing myself to write some words here and there and glue them together, trying to form some sort of lyrics form. Maybe I'm not that successful in lyrical form mainly because I don't play any instruments but within my dreams I was there playing some guitar or a piano, and in fact, usually I have some background music mimicking some already existing song. In one of these trials I've created what I've called The Beggar of Nothingville. Some piece, I dedicate to someone, engulfing that with some meanings in it. Depending now solely on what people might think of it, they say it's a good one. Some people even commented that it might be a song, meaning they did indeed feel what I want to pass through, but of course I'm not sure about the tone. My mind was kind of working on a country style music.

Monday. I didn't go to work mainly because of sleeping problems. My schedule had been a mess. In fact, it somehow solved a problem for me, but of course I had to sign for a "casual leave" the next day. I only have four days a year of this type of leaves, and now I've already lost one with the beginning of the year still. I just had to. I couldn't push myself to raise up from bed at all. Besides, I was supposed to be in some gathering in an open buffet that my boss told me about. I really am not in the mood of socializing that much for the time being. Thus, circumstances came altogether, two in one; sleepy head and unnecessary socializing. Despite the fact that I was indeed going to go to that buffet, at least for few minutes or just stay in one corner to avoid unnecessary questions and remarks.
On this day, I, since I didn't go out to work in the morning, decided that I might have some power to go out on my own and do something outside. Just anything. The house was squeezing my brain out; shouts, screams, yelling and crying... all sort of those beloved sounds. Please note the sarcasm. Sometimes, I seriously think of just getting married to whatever who in whatever manner in whatever shape without any care in the world for a single drop of love in between us, just to live in my own place. Rentals here are like fire and I, alone, can't take it. However, the journey took me to a near by park. Salmiyah park. I worked in that place last week to take some readings in the very early morning with our 12kg device (~26.4lb). I liked some features in the place despite the fact that people tend to be around the place from the very early hours of the morning even before me. Thus, on Monday, I decided to go there and try my luck. It wasn't really something I worked so hard for or planned for. I was just going to be away from the house for some time. The first thing I did was to take a spherical panorama on my monopod. Shaky, but went fine. I've worked on some snaps from that day also and processed them, mainly some cut pieces of a tree trunk laying around the place.

Annuli Annum (Rings of The Year?).

In fact, the shots taken from that park (even the panorama) were not that impressive. To me at least. What happened is that I was hoping for some good light in the park with the sunset on its way. Long shadows and warm kind light to my lenses, but seems my notifications were only valid for sunrise, when I worked there in the morning. At the time of sunset, there were barely sun rays falling down on the place. Thus, I decided to look for anything impressive and tried hard later on to do some "action" with HDR rendering. I think all my trials failed or it could be that my mind was not in the mood of creating something, maybe?

To make out something from this piece here, I decided to go on Photoshopping all the way. I decided to mimic, to some extent, the bukkeh effect that my lenses cannot produce. Not at such a distance. So, I made 3 layers and blurred them in different amounts, making the stump blurred a little, while the far tree blurred more, then I blended them in using Layer Masks. I guess my blending was not that precise, because some areas around the edge of the falling trunk here do look a bit sharp. Anyway, I worked hard on the HDR settings just to illuminate the rings of the trunk. The White Balance here was a big problem. I couldn't settle my mind with any color temperature. Finally I decided to go with Fluorescent and give a cold, dead sense to this image.

I'm still working on the panorama I've made that day, and frankly, it doesn't look good for the great difference in exposures between some areas. I've already stitched a flat one and a little-planet one, but need some work on cloning out some areas, the usual, for nadir. Also, I might have to fix that difference in exposures manually with adjustment layers, and of course all the work must be done in HDR mode still before tone-mapping. Memory exhaustion on the way.

Wednesday now. I had a little work-out or an adventure if I should say with a friend that I didn't see in a long time (but chatting from time to time over the net in fact). We went on "fishing" for some shots in a park, this time in Bayan area. Both of us were sick of the laws and regulations and simply, for the lack of nature in this place that barely enables you or inspires you to do something with your camera. Maybe that's why in fact most people in Kuwait tend to go on with the portrait venture, simply because there is not much to snap with the camera and if there is, you would need to get a permission of some sort. This is exactly what happened today when we arrived there. For the first 5 minutes of our snapping, everything was fine. Then the keeper came and asked for the permission from some ministry (huh?) - and of course, we told him that we don't have and we are taking pictures "innocently". He said he would call the "ministry" to ask or maybe just to scare us. However, we continued to snap pictures around and I had one panorama from there without his intervention. It was generally a trial on some architectural photography since the nature there was almost absent except of some trees. I also made a panorama, again on a monopod. The difference here though, last Monday, the panorama I made in Salmiya park was done in a low level (the monopod was completely collapsed down), but this time in Bayan park, the monopod was a bit raised higher than my waist level. Of course the VR-head holding the camera over the monopod would add to the height after all. I'm still working on that panorama.

The single snaps of images varied, and there had been also a little handheld panorama done in a hurry, which can be counted for as a single image regarding its size and ratio anyway.

My friend working on his shot while I took this little panorama 

at his back and blended with vedutismo projection.

My friend, however, had his own pace, world and story. He might not have the tools I have, but he surely KNOWS what he is doing and what he is catching. In fact we had argued many times about the benefits of actually owning the tools to create the effect you want for an image, and creating the effects with HDR and go completely computerized. He is a pro for the first opinion while I'm for the second. Of course, he is not wrong about that, specially that he talks about official photography contests and what is accepted and what is not, and I have to admit that this approach, I think, does indeed make a successful photographer because, simply, it will gradually build up his knowledge and acknowledgment of his or her surroundings and how to adjust the eye and imagine the final product. Me, myself, did say to him on our way to the park that I tend to see every scene in its HDR equivalent and my eyes simply, analyze the scene for possible HDR-ish outcome. My view of things is different a bit as I don't consider photography contests as a big event. I concentrate my effort on the final outcome; A beautiful scene. Thus, I wouldn't maybe squander my money unless I need a hardware badly to create something (e.g. considering now getting a macro lens). Such images cannot be created simply by HDR or Photoshop or anything like that. You have to own the tools. As for the filters that my friend is trying to get, some of them can be already mimicked. By the way, I do envy him for his "coolness" when it comes to work with the camera. Maybe because of my usual problems with guards and security people, I've made a trend for myself that I always take pictures on the go and feeling always followed or soon I will get kicked out of some place for taking images. This feeling accompanied me in Ireland, even though I'm on a vacation. For my friend, the situation was a bit different. He works in a slow pace and wanders his eyes slowly in the place and picks his shots carefully. Yeah. This is how a photographer should be. I act more like a paparazzi and, no, a paparazzi is not a "real" photographer for me. Not when you work to expose other people's lives (even if they're celebreties, they have their own private lives, don't they?).

One of the first things I've aimed at was the sliders in the playground. As I told my friend, metals are a good subject for HDR making, whether they're shiny, or corroded. In both cases they give the drama you need, or the natural saturation you might want. All what is left is the angle from which you snap your image...

One of the angles (and done lot of them from here)

My friend made me aware of this angle after he snapped it with his 17-55mm lens, but 

with me I went with a Fisheye 15mm lens.

There are other possible ways I guess to play around with those images. HDR got many potentials and simply changing the white balance of the original images can produce astonishing results. I do miss working with ProPhoto though. The vivacity of colors is just unbeatable with ProPhoto and seriously tempting and seductive. I want to blow everything off and simply work in that color space. There is one specific image that I seriously wanted to keep in ProPhoto but I had to put it down to Adobe 1998 space, and then I had to compensate for the lost vivacity with some adjustment layers.

Boards (Waiting for Children)

The fisheye here made the trick of giving the spacious look while this square of wooden boards is lesser than a meter in width and length (around 3 feet). The white balance here was on "Shady" which made the image yellowish generally. It was a game for me, and although I could have changed the white balance while merging the HDR slide originally, I've just left it as it is. Later on though, I had to go on and put some adjustment layers to assist the cold look and add a bluish hue to the scene. The ProPhoto version (not what you see above) was almost direct to the point and I think I wouldn't need to change anything about it (except of some noise cleaning and sharpening), but since I had to change to Adobe color space, the fuss began with adjustment layers trying to compensate for the lost colors. There is another similar shot that I didn't prepare for the same subject but in a different angle.
Left to say now that after coming back from the park (and taking a tour to Baskin Robins!) heading back to work, the usual headache began again. Some visitors checking the place (and believe me please when I say they have nothing to do with my work place nor any interest), and extra fied work on the list to places I don't know anything about (and, I thought it is over by now). Yeah, hit "Bad Day" again. This is the national anthem from now on.

I've finished my fourth album for pictures from Ireland (2010) and already started the fifth one, but the progress is slow. As I said before, I'm kind of lazy to work on it. There are some smal panoramas that I didn't process their images yet into HDR format even to be stiched later. Should I dig more around for more junky places and architectural features to snap with my camera, despite all the regulations that make me sick here? I really need to spend more time behind my camera.

I've been trying to work on my webpage but, lazy again, there was no luck getting some things sorted out. At least I made the "About" page and it's ready to be converted into HTML format. Just some text really. The next step then is to prepare the Fonts download page and create samples for each font. I remember there were 4 fonts in the old webpage... or 3? Anyway, nevermind.

I think I will post this now, and try to get my brain connected with some music and write some poetry or lyrics or whatever it is to be called...