Mercator…

Back to normal (and moderate) life again now after the Expo has finished. It's time now to shuffle my cards again and try to do some stuff that I've been postponing for a while. However, this is not the end of the story with Expos, as we are planning to get enrolled again in another Expo hopefully in March. I do have my own plans for this "show" with the group, but of course I have to discuss matters with them.

Failure No. 1

For some time I had this idea of doing some "portrait" shot with infrared. Yes, portrait. Not my cuppa tea I know, but this time it is combined with infrared, which means long exposure. I've seen some artist which use property for creating a soft touch for portraits, and I thought of experimenting with that as well, even though I don't remember if they did use infrared filters or just a regular long exposure. Anyway, since I have no model to bear with me, I had to do it all on my own.
I made up a simple setting for experimenting with this concept and I made sure that I can rest my head somewhere so it won't move much, but only little shakes (normal body movement). The idea was a table with stack of books (just an addition) and resting my chin on the table (while sitting on the ground). Focusing and directing the camera wasn't a problem, but the problem was majorly the VERY long exposure with ISO100. It required about 65 minutes! I wasn't sure I could rest my head that long! Thus, I tried to use ISO400 instead for a total exposure of about 16 minutes. Boy, did I not sleep while waiting for the exposure to finish!
Unfortunately for me, the final image was pretty much noisy and almost impossible to clean, as well as not being soft much. For this trial, I used the B+W 092 infrared circular filter with my Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens. However, I've began to understand IR filters further and one factor that this circular filter does not yield more interesting results is the fact that its cut-off wavelength point (the point after which waves are allowed to pass) is somewhere around 650nm. On the other hand, the KODAK IR gel filter which I use with my Canon EF 15mm fisheye lens usually, has a cut-off point of something around 900nm. This means that the circular filter from B+W does allow more amount of "visible" light to pass and hence the results aren't interesting as much as those results obtained by the gel filter from KODAK, which filters off more visible light. Of course, in the case of the gel filter, the exposure will be even longer!
The next step now is to try regular long exposures with the help of ND filters only, and probably using IR filters later, but with the help of some extra light source to light the scene (my face) further and help on shortening the exposure as well as "producing" more IR in the scene; I heard tungsten bulbs do produce a fair amount of IR.

Twisted and Vertical

My work is continuing with panoramas taken from Ireland, and this time adding to it some of the old panoramas from other places as well since the occasion of the Annual Book Fair last week. My attitude was a mixture of presenting panoramas and single shots when any process of sorting is scheduled by the group as I don't want to confine myself to a specific category. However, it turned out that panoramas from my side can play the "winning" card in many aspects - and for this reason I've developed some ideas for the next group's activity but they need to be discussed first. Anyway, this is not the matter to discuss here for now!

Talamh na Neamh
(Heaven's ground)

I've been working on doing more vertical panoramas lately, as I've figured that it was the lesser projection in my collection of panoramas, probably because of the lack of straight or longitudinal features in many of the scenes that I usually shoot for panoramas. Anyway, I thought maybe I should try to discover the possibilities in variety of places even those with no distinctive straight features (roads, corridors, ..etc).
However, one of the major problems in such projection is the quite stretched sides of such vertical panoramas which require a crop most of the time because they bear no distinctive or legible features. This is somewhat a minus point for this projection because the cropping limit can be hard to find, and the vertical panorama can be way too thin. But seems there is a promising solution to this in the atmosphere. Mercator.

Táim Suas ag Dul
(I'm going up)

Dhá-Taoibh
(double surface)

It never occurred to me to use Mercator projection, needless to say in a vertical format! I have to say here things came in as a coincidence. The Mercator projection is usually looked up as, simply, an elongated form of the cylindrical projection. However, when it comes to vertical panoramas, the difference is clear. With Mercator, the vertical panorama appears wide in the middle area (like a bulge outwards) and this gives for nicer views and more details. Cylindrical on the other hand, renders this area small and far. Probably vertical panoramas like Talamh na Neamh and Táim Suas ag Dul are more elongated (they are vertical panoramas from regular spherical flat panoramas), and the geometry of the place did help here as well in achieving quite the view without such a bulge. However, panoramas like Dhá-Taoibh had not many interesting features in the regular spherical panorama in vertical format. Mercator was more interesting here, despite the problem in the middle area of the panorama because of the distribution of the grass in the scene, which is a problem already in the spherical vertical panorama; because it renders the place unbalanced in this dimension. With this notice, I'm adding one more creative brush to my palette for the future rendering of more panoramas, and probably solve problems with some panoramas!

Finale

I'm here. Sweeping through life like a pinball game right now from side to side wondering what I really want. I'm planning to increase my activity within the group, thinking that it might give my life a further meaning with all the collapsible dreams that I've been watching fall down so far. I've been told once that things would look and turn for the better after 30; I wonder where from did they get this?.
In the meantime I'm giving work and home my back (almost) and all what I'm going to do is just work on my own projects, my own photos, and on my reputation as a panorama-maker. Say, what do they call a person who makes panoramas? Panoramer?
I leave you know with this musical which I fell in love with. Gentle as it may be, violent on my heart it is. Simply the work of a band of geniuses: The Chieftains...

Alexander 6, V41.

Welcome to Kuwait, where everys possible and impossible in the same time! I just discovered a new equation that I might go over and study it for my M.Sc. thesis. "Student Allowance" means, also, "Employee Reward". Yes. After having some amount of money in my bank account days before the actual date for my salary, I went on trying to investigate about the source of such money. If the money is not reported and, well, not rightfully awarded in the first place, some legal consequences might follow as why I did not report it. Hence, I had to go over and investigate the source. I spent most of my day yesteday (after fixing some stuff in the car) calling the beloved admins, but none answered except of one who advised me to go and ask someone else. Thus, today, I decided to go myself to their offices and ask and found out that this money is actually the employees' annual reward but the bank enlists the amount under the name "Student Allowance". Perfect.
Away from the fuss of the admins and back to my world where everything is not as pretty as it appears! I spent most of my day yesterday struggling with my RAMs limitations and eventually I had to compromise more so I minimized the panorama I talked about yesterday more than before. I was ablem finally, to tone-map it but eventually, more problems occured as well.
The black area in the bottom is supposed to be filled with sand (since I didn't take a good nadir point). But then I changed my mind for filling it up with a texture that might not look the same as the original, and thus I decided to make a water reflection effect. There are many tutorials on doing this effect but maybe the most realistic one I could get was this beautiful one here. As a consequence of the previous tutorial, I've discovered as well that some effects in Photoshop do not work even in 8-bit, if the ratios of the image are not adequate enough to do so. I had a problem with the displacement filter because it goes disabled whenever I stretched the 2 sides of the reflection layer to 400%. So I lowered this down to 200%. Everything went fine but then again I had the RAMs problem again and again but I managed to lower down the values till I got it right. Although I didn't like the strength of the effect (I would liked it to be more than this) but well, I have no choice here at all. Anyway, I made my QTVR later on with PTGui, and made 2 versions; small and big. And here you go:

I called it "A Walk on The Moon"

It looks though like you are standing in a wet spot or a lake while taking this photo! The difference here is that, it is completely 360 panorama where you can look at any direction. The horizon is fixed properly and not like my first trial with a cylindrical form of QTVR, when it was bulged up making the viewer like peeking from a fisheye lens! I think I can see now that the proper ratio for a good spherical panorama would be 2:1 (WxH), or in other words, the width must be twice the height. This consideration might enable me to make some tricks on less fortunate panoramas and try to make them, somehow, spherical ones. Like my house cylindrical panorama before!


This panorama though, might suffer from the lack of zenith more than a nadir. I remember I've took a shot for the zenith, but I did not align it because I couldn't realize how to do it back then, and hence, the regular cylindrical panorama was enough for me! Some plans are still in my head concerning the Gamma Lab here that I might consider re-shooting it, but this time, the shoot must be in HDR and I shall try to make it into QTVR. Somehow, this is a plan for the future and not now. I have stuff to do other than this currently.

Gamma Lab, CRER

As for now, I need to work more on my transliteration and book reading that I left for long time now! But finally I retained some thoughts and wrote something yesterday and published it on writing.com already. I called it, Father.

__________

961. Alexander held the hand of Birbuár firmly
962. and asked him to come in with him
963. but Birbuár refused to go in and stepped back
964. and this he said: they did not like me when I was alive,
965. and now who is going to respect me when I am a Shágí?
966. I will cause you more troubles if I went with you
967. but Alexander replied: I will not go inside,
968. and I will never help you with your body,
969. until you come with me into your own village
970. and tell me by the way, what is your village's name?
971. and Birbuár replied: its name is Táhús,
972. and there to the north of it lies the Táhús river,
973. it is the river I wanted you to do things with it before,
974. but if it is a must to go with you as you requested,
975. then I ask from you to protect me from the people
976. and Alexander asked: and where does your body lie?
977. is it still under the ruins of your house?
978. then Birbuár made a long sigh and said: yes
979. then the two of them took careful steps
980. and both of them got inside the village from the gate
981. they looked left and right but people were busy
982. some of them in the markets and some were craftsmen
983. they walked beside the walls of the buildings
984. when suddenly a small stone struck the head of Alexander

Alexander 6, V40.

Well, here I am. The first day of work after the accident (and not the vacation). Yesterday was sort of an idle day. After the accident I called my work place to send a letter requesting an extension for my leave for 2 more days. By luck, Monday was the day of some seminar about nuclear power and I was almost sure that I would be invited to it and pushed to attend, but I was not there luckily! Somehow, my mood is not for socializing at the moment.
Too much work awaits me here. The spare car I have (my sister's old one) needs some work. Oil change, balance for the tires and other stuff. I'm planning to do this today. Add to that, I have to ask and investigate about some weird amount of money that got into my bank account. It's not a salary, but entitled as some "Student Allowance", and yet, I'm not a student at all! The amount was almost 75% of my own salary. Spending such money can be troublesome indeed if it is not mine and got into my account by mistake. The money was added to my bank account on 14th of April, the day I went to Failaka last week, and hence I didn't pay much attention to my mobile and the messages in it. There was a message already about putting that up in my account!

Now, let's talk a bit about the procedures for logging into my bank account:
1. Go to website (Not mentioning it here).
2. Click Login.
3. A new window opens and you put the ATM card number, and click Login.
4. A secret question is asked (???).
5. If the answer is right, a small thumbnail of some picture shows up with a button to proceed.
6. Now, put your password and log in (???????).

Can someone please explain to me what is going on here?

For the current time, I've been having troubles with one of the panoramas here. I must restart the PC just to do tone-mapping for this one, and I really got issues with restarting my PC. Ah! It's a case of honor! However, I did a tone-map for a smaller version:

The problem is, I wanted to make this out as a 360 spherical panorama and encode it with QuickTime for 3D viewing as in the place itself. The nadir (bottom point) was not a good shot so I canceled it out, and for this, I got a black space after the stitching process (and it was such a huge image, around ~14,000x7,000). I cropped the black space below and tone-mapped the rest. After encoding it for QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR), the image was bulged from the bottom like if the viewer was always looking into the sky with a fisheye lens! Hence I recognized that for a spherical panorama, you must have quite a constant proportions for width and height (and also when you tone-map with Photomatix, you must check the 360 image button to equalize the tone between the left and right side of the image). From this moment, my problems started and I couldn't tone-map the other (original) version and even after minimizing it down to 10,000 x 5,000. I don't want to minimize it more than this to keep it large somehow. As for the black space, I think it might be fixed somehow since it is all a texture of sand, hopefully. The first step is just to tone-map it!

I discovered some profiles of some people on Photobucket who had been to Failaka and I think they were mostly archaeologists. It was nice, but I didn't imagine some people do wear bikinis on the shores in this land. The law is applied only for us natives but not for foreigners? Other people have more freedom in our lands more than we do ourselves. Yet, no one respect us in the outside. Well, not all, but you can check the news and the procedures taken against muslim women for wearing simply a head cover as an example.

My transliteration process is still on hold. I need to figure out the car problems and finish them. My mind is so busy that I can't concentrate on the transliteration right now, but I'm hoping with me being back to the office, that I would do more since I stopped idle the passing week. Remembering that also reminds me of the book that I MUST read as well!
_________
937. then Alexander continued his speech to Birbuár
938. "all what I would ask from you is to answer a question,
939. and to guide me through these lands that I do not know"
940. and then Birbuár answered with no hesitation
941. "O good king yes I will with no doubt, just let me rest!"
942. then Alexander noticed something he never noticed before
943. and he asked Birbuár: how come you speak Caqobian?
944. did you not say that you never heard of such names before?
945. then Birbuár answered and was amazed like Alexander
946. "but O king, I am asking myself how you speak Ayvar?"
947. and the two of them were amazed for what is happening
948. verily both of them spoke different tongues
949. and yet both of them understood each other perfectly
950. and Alexander said to himself: what weird world is this?
951. then he dedicated the speech to Birbuár and said
952. "come and let us see how to bury your body,
953. guide me through these lands and tell me where to go"
954. and Birbuár got up from his rock and held the hand of Alexander
955. and it was two or three steps only on the ground
956. while Alexander saw everything passing so fast
957. so fast that he could not open his eyes at all
958. and when the hero felt the ground is not moving
959. he opened his eyes slowly to see what happened
960. so he found himself standing at the gates of the village

Alexander 6, V30.

Again and again. Issues with this damn connection like every morning. I'm connecting now to a wireless network that is sittled in the building next to us, and my ethernet cable is not working at all. Even the signal from that building is low, so I'm expecting problems soon. This is a nice way to say 'good morning' to me by this working place. I can't even understand how did I wake up in the first place.
Still struggling with my Guest Room Panorama here. This time, I played around and around with the 8-bit images trying to fix something suitable panorama to make as a template. I also tried another software, Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited.

 

Although many people talk about this software and about its strong algorithm in stitching, but I rarely use it and, unfortunately, I rarely find it useful for me. It has an option to produce a QTVR (those 360 panoramas that you can move around in). Maybe I shall try to make panoramas by PTGui and use this software to make the adequate effects. As why it is not so useful for me, here you go, some of the reasons:

1. Does not support HDR files (although there is a menu for HDR in the program itself but can't find out how it functions). [It does]

2. Unlike PTGui, I can't find my way through the program. It has some buttons and that's it for me. Tried to experiment with it but I couldn't learn much out of it. So mysterious.

3. Unlike PTGui as well, it's full automatic (even with some extra options to control images in a panorama).

4. Some buttons there, just don't have the pop-up comment to make you understand what it does. I ended pushing buttons all the way trying to find their effects to learn, and yet I couldn't see any effect, and still I don't know what they do at all!

5. Some options are not as easy as PTGui like panning or rotating, but it has zooming in and out which PTGui does not have in the display window after stitching a model.

Well, maybe you might say I should read tutorials before working with the software, but let's be serious, does any read them before working with a software unless later? I found out (and still learning more) from PTGui and still I didn't read much of its help file (except for few times when I wanted to know the definition of some projections and the meaning of some terms, yet I was using them already). Anyway, Autodesk Stitcher is one of the recommended programs (along with others) that were mentioned in Harald Woeste's book, Mastering Digital Panoramic Photography.

 

And so far, I'm not giving up with it. I will have to try more in some way. It might come in handy when working with 8- or 16-bit images, but unfortunately it doesn't open HDR images, and hence, it's on the side at the moment. If you ask me, I think $329.99 is a bit too much for the software.

Back to the panorama, and after trying out Autodesk's software, I couldn't do much, so I'm back to PTGui trying more tricks from the bag here and there and changing some values. I did something but I couldn't check up with the results since I had to fall asleep indeed! This time I changed what's called, the pitch. In panorama softwares usually (and also in other softwares that stretch and morph the images I guess), there are 3 variables that can be controlled to change the orientation of the image: a) Yew, b) Pitch, c) Roll. I laughed when I read these 3 terms in the first time really, but then I understood they are more like a coordinates system; just like (X,Y,Z) or (R,Theta, Phi) [yeah, that's spherical coordinates system]. At least this is how I imagine it to make things easy for my brain. We physicists got weird trends and fashions, trust me.

However, Yew is supposedly to control the panning from left to right and so on. It can be done manually with click and drag by the mouse, but you can also make this precise without any handshake that might shake the panorama up and down by just inserting some number (degrees) in the dialogue box specified for this.

Pitch, which is the value I changed, controls the curving of the panorama. I can also think of it as dragging the panorama up and down as well. I did this and I found out that more lines are connected easily at the bottom of the image and hence, the broken lines in the rugs were fixed to some extent!

Left to say, Roll, is the value or degrees to rotate the panorama around its center. All these three values can be also edited for any single image in the panorama as well, but this is a far reach for me since I got blinded already when I worked with control points alone!

The panorama above now, is not the final product and as you can see this yellowish or goldish hue is just a result of fat tone-mapping by Photomatix to reduce the HDR and make some images to build my template upon. Upon that configuration, the optimization process rendered and yielded 'Good'. For this, I saved the template (and the panorama image as well) and I apply it directly to the list of HDR images without doing any oprimizations. Unfortunately, the stitching process took a long time as usual and I was already preparing to go to bed. The red (supposedly) rug is stretched at the bottom and the tripod legs aren't cloned out, but it is not important for the time being since it is just an example here. I'm not bothered much by the stretched red rug, which I think can be easily cropped from the bottom. This curve emphasizes the idea I had in my mind before, that the spherical projection (or sometimes called Equirectilinear) is not the best way to represent this particular panorama yet. I think a Little Planet (Stereographic projection) would be fit more. I shall try this later. An idea I'm thinking of right now as well is, to apply the Transverse Equirectilinear projection. As I understand it, it is a spherical projection but it works on the images or starts to stitch the images in a flipped position, like 90 degrees. Sounds logical to me, if the normal spherical projection works for normal landscape orientation of images, then the transverse version might work perfectly for the portrait images, like in my case.

As it is usual with every Monday, the day does not come without any surprises (except of few times when the bad surprised were delayed to the next day). I was asked to watch over a group of students in their exam, and it was tricky and hard to go through out the situation and refuse. I could barely bear myself as a student and now I have to watch over them and see if they are cheating or not... ugh. Add to that now, there is a plan that I might have to go out and "collect" some data from somewhere accompanied by some people that I don't know really... great. Seems it is just another one long week...

__________

697. Alexander then asked: is it a treasure that I am seeking?
698. and Utéfah answered: what you are seeking is greater than a treasure,
699. but this man's head made tricks on his soul,
700. and he imagined that you are after the gold and silver,
701. I read some papers from Ázilis, the blessed,
702. and I know what to do next and where to go,
703. but first we must find the Charnagút
704. then Alexander said: but I lost it, maybe to the groove,
705. I cannot seem to find any trace of it after the fight
706. and Utéfah replied: call upon it by the name of God,
707. and kneel down on your knees to show the respect,
708. verily the Charnagút will come back to your hand
709. thus Alexander slowly bent down on his knees
710. and shouted with his voice like a roaring lion
711. "by the name of God, I call upon you O Charnagút"
712. it was but moments and the sword raised up in the air
713. and slowly went into the palm of Alexander
714. then Alexander turned around to Utéfah with a smile
715. and this he said: verily there are lot of tricks that you have O Utéfah,
716. was all of that mentioned in the papers of the blessed Ázilis?
717. and Utéfah replied: yes O good king, he kept these papers away from others,
718. thus when I saw them separated I knew they are special,
719. so then I read them and they were written with Yabjadítah
720. just like Ázilis taught us all how to write it and read it

Thursday Is Here!!!!!!

I just can't believe it is my last day at work before the BIG vacation! Also the last working day during Ramadhan! I feel so hyper that I wanna do everything today! Specially sleeping!!!

Been snapping around some places lately, and I got that panoramic shot that I was planning from last week; The Sharg Market Panoramic View.

7 sections with 3 shots in each for HDr composition, totaling 21 RAW images to do this. I hope the colors are OK though, despite the fact that some areas remained extremely bright. I tried to fix these areas by moving the "shadow and highlights" curve up and down but not much could be revealed. Anyway, they are small areas.

The other work which was tiredsome as well since I was not shooting in straight line but instead in several directions and I made mistakes again and again (forgetting to zoom out with my lens and setting the camera too close to the object);

it is a walk way that was built as... a walkway... why I don't know actually since people can walk here or there! Anyway, they had the money to do it after all. This is a panoramic composition as well, by the way. The shots are taken on 3 main levels and in 3 different angles for each level, and then composed using spherical panorama. Cylindrical panorama was somehow good as far as I remember, but the Auto option in which Photoshop takes the lead in deciding what coordinates to use was disastrous (for the first time I do see that in fact!). I still I have some remains in my camera that I didn't download, so I might go one and check it out to see if I can do some other compositions with them.

I had an idea in the current time to chase after old houses all around Kuwait... specially those that they say they're haunted or something. In Failaka island, such type of houses are every where in fact because of the post-war effects.

Now it is the time to check after some of the essential things before traveling, like my visa, and my clothes! I'm so nervous about it, yet I need it so badly... so so badly...