Djinn…

Officially winter! We already got some rains here and I'm trying to enjoy as much as I can out of it because I know in some months from now, it will be so damn dry and "cooking".
Anyway, I didn't post anything here for about 2 weeks (or 3? I didn't count!) for some... legitimate reasons I'd say: A new panorama!

Djinn

Just before I get into the story, I'd like to explain the word Djinn to those who don't know it or never heard of it. Djinn (Arabic: جِن) according to the Islamic literature and belief, are creatures created even before the creation of Adam and Eve and they inhabit and dwell Earth and even space. They are created of fire and unseen by humans (except to few, saying that from experience). So, in some sense they are equivalent to what the Westerners would call Demons. Also, they can be either good or bad, they have different faiths and beliefs, as well as living in tribes and social classes of their own, just like humans.
So, I hope this introduction fascinated you a bit to read on, as I think the technical stuff coming along this post might be a bit boring! Since I didn't touch my panorama gear for quite some time now (mainly because I didn't travel nor I'm part of any group that does activities here and there). Thus, I had to look for alternatives; Ideas, mainly to be done in my periphery: Car, home, work... etc. It took the idea some time to "cook" in my head and I was kind of slow and sluggish in preparing my gear (typical), and the target was one of the rooms in my house where typically guests use, in case we get to have any sleeping over.
Now, the keywords for the work or the general idea revolves around: Magic, black, dark aspect or darkness, and maybe a touch of some horror and fear? Since I don't have models (as usual) I had to think about it thoroughly because the task is not easy here as the idea started to take shape in my head. I will be shooting myself, in various locations within the room, while it is dark and definitely needs a somewhat longer exposure (not good for stable poses!). Anyway, things (unwillingly) went on two trials and for this reason I didn't post last week, because the plan was to have this material ready by then but, unfortunately, the first trial failed drastically and I had to re-do the whole work in a different manner and a different setting.

جِنْ (Djinn)
Click to enlarge

Voigtländer Color Skopar 20mm f/3.5

Lumicon H-Alpha (Night Sky) filter.

Try #1: The first try was done  with my modified Canon EOS 7D and Voigtländer 20mm lens, fitted with the Night Sky filter (i.e. H-alpha filter) which is, partially, an infrared filter actually, allowing a band of Reds. I've tested this filter against my B+W 092 Infrared (threshold: 650nm~690nm) filter and compared the results (in-camera, using Custom WB). Comparing the blue tones specifically, I've decided to go with the Night Sky filter instead, this is beside providing a tiny bit of shorter exposure time. Working with 20mm instead of my usual Canon EF 15mm fisheye lens meant, of course, shooting more slides or angles, and that means forgetting about doing any HDR work here because the load would be simply RIDICULOUS. Now, using 20mm introduced another problem here is the need to change the usual orientation while shooting. So, instead of starting at 0^o for the tilt, I've actually used -15^o instead. This is just to include the whole stool with my body in the separate shots that I would need to do later to merge with the panorama while stitching (having myself in two shots to be stitched together is next to impossible; It must be one shot including my whole body). Another problem is the misalignment of many slides, and the empty spaces that added to the chaos (the computer was unable to connect these slides nor I was able to do so manually because of the featureless spaces). After 2 weeks, or so, of working on stitching this panorama, I've realized that this thing is beyond repair and I must re-do the whole thing, and probably drop out some of my requirements for this panorama, like using an infrared filter, and just shoot in the usual manner.

Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye

Try #2: So, after the failed attempt, I've switched back to my 15mm lens and this time I thought of some trick to compensate for these empty spaces; I've simply stuck some electric tape on various sections of the wall just to aid the computer later on to stitch these images - and just to show you my luck, the idea did work really but the tape was some bad quality and almost fell down, so I had to work fast! Anyway, testing the White Balance before the shoot, I've realized that this is almost equivalent to infrared shooting with my modified Canon EOS 7D, because the room is dark and the major light source is to be from the candles (which issue infrared of course). I banged my head at that moment; How come I didn't think of this before instead of all the hassle with my first trial?! Of course there should be remnants of the visible spectrum but that was not a problem specially after calibrating the white balance in-camera. The scene already turned to be an infrared-like. With this, it was like shooting a normal panorama and I had the power to do bracketing for HDR merging and tone-mapping, which I did. *sigh* Just like the old days!

Process: Processing the images was typical: Load the files, run Photomatix to merge the brackets, and then start with the stitch. It was essential here to calibrate the white balace in-camera before the shoot, otherwise the HDR merging and adjusting the colors would have turned to be a "wedding party of wild elephants" - Sorry, the best I could find to express my thoughts here.
However, while merging the bracketed images to create HDR slides as usual, I've made a mistake which I didn't discover until I tried to stitch the panorama for the first time. The mistake was enabling the Remove Ghosting with Detection level set to High. I'm not sure what I was thinking but in a nutshell, the computer created a movement where there were none in fact, and that PRODUCED ghosting! So, the situation was like the old advice of turning off the image stabilization on your lens when your camera is actually stable on a tripod because that would trick the lens and creates a movement. This is exactly what happened, but digitally this time. So, I had to re-merge the bracketed image in Photomatix again and this time putting the detection level on Normal. I've activated this option in the first place just "in case," specially that we have candles here and there might be moving shadows that would make the stitching harder a bit.
That was concerning the merging process but there was still a side work that had to be done and that is preparing those slides of me (specially those involving my reflection in the mirror) but no need to go on with this - it was just a simple masking process. But all had to be done in HDR mode of course with HDR slides.

Effects of using High detection level for ghosting removal on Photomatix.
Click to enlarge

One slide with tape cuts.
Click to enlarge

Stitching: As for the stitching process, it was typical to try to stitch the HDR slides first right away, but as usual, it failed. I remember in old times, this didn't happen much. Anyway, what can I say here; The image was indeed dark and I've intended for it to be so. Thus, I followed the typical procedure of tone-mapping the HDR slides using Photomatix again, and trying to get the best details from each slide. Of course the process is automated; I just pick the darkest slide possible to work with and save the settings then apply that to all. From these tone-mapped images I would create a model, and base the stitching of the HDR slides on this model. Lot of details here, but anyway the thing was not out of troubles, as usual. The tape trick did work to some extent but still needed some help or let's say a "push" from my side so I had to add some manual control points to match between the slides. Actually this problem happens all the time with or without sharp details between the slides for various reasons. All these tapes on the wall would be cloned out of course when the panorama is stitched completely. The final stitched panorama still had some stitching errors which I couldn't fix before stitching so working on that in Photoshop was inevitable. The thing is that I have to do these fixes every single time I create a new projection out of the same panorama; So, it will be such a slow process after all.

Finale

Well, this was the "short" story of this panorama, and I'm still having some more ideas at the back of my head, cooking and waiting to be served when I get the power and time. Beside that though, I'm still working on other projections of this same panorama here. I didn't want to put all the eggs in one basket so I might post about these in 2 weeks time from now; If they are ready though.
Now, it is time to think about some other panorama to do, beside the other ideas at the back of my head of course. The past few weeks were kind of hard, mentally. I was literally waiting for weekends just to sleep as much as I can (and even skipping my socializing with the family around some games like I used to every weekend). I'm trying to re-discover myself here, in some ways, but seems the process is taking longer than I participated. There is a talk about change in the horizon, things going to be better, the hardships years are over... yet I don't really see any of that in the horizon from my side. The travel that I've participated for 4 or 5 years now is still an idea that I could not make a reality. Would it be soon? We'll see. I'm planning for a little vacation by the first week of the new year, but I'm still not sure if I would be able to because I need to make sure that I won't be needed in my workplace. Boy, I'm going to sleep for real, and who knows, I might head out to shoot at night like I used to in the past years…

Hektisch, a panoramic story…

One word: Hectic. The week was so in fact, but this word describes more precisely the panorama that could not just give some easy time to be done. Been three weeks trying to fix this issue, and I won't be mistaken if I simply called a "panoramic adventure!" However, it was a case worth of a study, thus I'm hoping to dedicate this post for this panorama alone. I've made 3 trials already with this panorama and despite the hardships I'm having about it, I don't think I will be going there again to do it a 4th time!

The Beginning

The story begins not the in the current time. The idea of doing this panorama was actually planted in my head long ago before I even travel to Ireland at the end of September. Many factors were holding me down, but the number one factor was: Summer. The second factor was the security guys around the place. This place, Soug Sharg (Sharg Market) was specifically a scene of some confrontations in the past with security guys; day and night. Doing a panorama close to that place (and I guess belonging to it) might get the beehive disturbed. These two main factors held me back, and the rest was left for the proper timing and the capabilities of the body.
After coming back from Ireland in mid October I got busy with many things, and I need some time to settle my mind on how to do this panorama. I paid first a visit; just a plain visit without anything in hand, but simply walking around the place. Of course, the visit was nocturnal by nature, as this place actually shows more beauty at night with the "lantern" of lights glowing then. I did simple shots of this location long time when I was a beginner in photography and I did indeed, back then, made a simple vertical panorama for the face of this corridor in the outdoors. This time, however, the story was different.

The location under inspection,
right behind Soug Sharg's Marina.

The difference comes in many aspects: the time, the size, the intent, the procedure (the erratic part of the whole story). In this plain visit I had to check if there is a chance to do a centralized panorama in this place. The answer was positive; there is a distinctive center for the place. The lights in the place would provide sufficient light for simple exposure timing in case of catching up with the architecture of the place. However, long exposure is needed if the sky is to be given some color and not keeping it simply dark. Hence, HDR comes to the mind naturally. However, for the factors I've mentioned before (i.e. security people) I had to think thoroughly to work as fast as possible and hence "real" long exposures were not an option naturally, neither metering the light on location to find out a proper intermediate value (and it won't work because the difference in luminance is far greater than 2 stops).

Versuch Eins

The first trial was a failure by nature. I went out too late to the location thinking that too late is better to ensure not much activity around (people or security). One important point was forgotten here: lights are automated, and they switch off around 4 a.m.; Ironically, this is something I used to know from last winter's experiments with long exposures on the beach but my mind was completely absent.
The result was, a short trip, to say the best. In fact, I spent a significant time trying to centralize the set to make it in the center as much as possible. With places like this, symmetry is of the optimum importance and I had enough already with my left-handedness temptations, where everything looking normal to me with the naked eye is, in fact, tilted or skewed to some direction and not perfectly central. For this, my work was greatly done with the LCD of the camera. Shifting the tripod around was not an easy job too - moving a heavy set just for few centimeters with some delicacy is never easy, specially with the tripod been extended to its full length, as I was trying to have a slightly upper view than the normal level of the eyes.
After doing all of that and all this back-tiring work, I started to shoot. But first, I had to make one shot using the white balance disk to set it as a reference point for the camera's white balance point. The work then started and as soon as I reached the 4^th angle in the process (and that would be at 120^o), the lights simply turned off, leaving me in the dark. It was a mixture of anger and disappointment, naturally. But I guess I can blame myself because I should have been more attentive to such matters from previous experience.
Settings used here were f/9 (while using the hyperfocus principle), and bracketing (of exposures) to merge as HDR slides later.Metering here was set to Evaluative, which is meant to measure the light from different areas in the scene and then evaluate an average for the different zones of the scene, and naturally some exposures took 30 seconds already (because of the camera limit to this time in Av mode, otherwise it should have been longer).

Versuch Zwei

The second trial was set the week after the first. This time I've decided to head earlier than the previous time, and that was around 1 a.m.. Again, centralizing was essential and did take some time to do. The white balance was still saved from the last trial and the aperture too; all I had to do is shoot. This time, however, the tripod was lowered to around the chest level for easy control and viewing. No nadir (bottom) shot was taken as I would need extra work and careful planning for such a shot so I had to neglect it despite the fact that it bears a significant detail in the tiles underneath the tripod. I thought that I will manage to get over such a problem later. Almost same settings were used, except that metering was set to Center-Weight (thinking that the light areas are greater anyway from those dark areas in between).
Back home the surprise was on its way to shock me. It is regular practice for me now to work with modeling; i.e. using simple JPEG images to stitch a correct model of the panorama and apply the mold of this model on the HDR panorama, since the stitching program (as of lately) doesn't recognize much details from HDR images. To my surprise, the computer made a pizza out of my panorama!

The pizza made by the computer trying to stitch my panorama

I did not really understand what was going on here. Why did that happen? Did I miss some angles while shooting? Even optimization (i.e. correcting control points) did not work on fixing this "Pizza". I even tried to use Black and White images to make the model but the same issue occurred - a pizza! The thing is there was no problem generating control points at all (except for one or two slides beside the zenith slide and this is normal).
Investigating further down the road of making a panorama, the natural culprit to be suspected first here is the rotation axis, which if not picked out right, can cause the parallax error - an error that is a nightmare for panorama makers. Checking on some numerical values with a little research about the matter, I've found out that my camera and lens combination was indeed under a shift - This is my first full-panorama to be done after coming back from Ireland and apparently the VR-Head had some screws loose and there was a shift in the arms which I didn't check thoroughly.
Checking the images on computer to see if there is really any significant shift in virtual spaces between objects in the scene (when camera is rotated) I did indeed notice a really tiny amount of shift and change (e.g. the small green barricades and their background had some relative motion with respect to each other), but I was skeptical about the seriousness of this shift - Was really enough to do such a disgusting shock to my eyes, and even squander the computer's mind to the limit of losing control in that way?!!! Anyway, the shift of the rotation axis was fixed according to the numerical values I've obtained online and I was ready for a third trial.

Versuch Drei

For this trial, I was already tired of going to that place (and it had a non-pleasant stench to it), thus all what I picked was my tripod with the VR-Head, and my camera. This time I didn't wait for the weekend to come, but I did it in the middle of the week as my sleeping pattern was disturbed (after some headache issues which forced me to sleep afternoons!). All settings were already set (including the white balance from the first trial 3 weeks ago before this third trial). This time though I've returned to the Evaluative metering.
Back home I've converted the images directly to Black and White slides (thinking that colors can add to the confusion in connecting and stitching the images of the panorama) but again, to my surprise, the modeling process didn't work and just like in the second trial, the computer made a pizza out of my panorama! And again, the optimization process did not yield any useful result.

My third trial's pizza!

At this point I've realized that the shift in the rotation axis was not the only problem in paly here. There was something mysterious going on!
In a desperate move here, I've tried to apply templates (i.e. models) from other panoramas not related to this one at all. Specifically, I've tried to apply a model file for a panorama that I've somewhat faced some problems like this with: an taobh istigh an Waterfront (inside the Waterfront).

An taobh istigh an Waterfront

I have to say it was the first time I try such an approach; applying a model of completely unrelated panorama to another. Yet, the results were significant! However, the stitching errors did prevail and were hard to fix too.

Some of obvious stitching errors (and some were cropped from below) after trying to apply models not related to the same panorama itself. Just to note, this approach was done with the panorama done in the second try.

At least for this point here, I was able to discover the other projections and how well would they do and the results were astonishing (but not to be published now). This made me more eager to solve the matter of this mess. Despite the promising look of this approach but the main problem is that optimization cannot be done to correct for such stitching errors, and those stitching errors would need significant time to be fixed, if they were flexible enough to be fixed anyway!

Versuch Vier

At this point I was tired of the situation and really, really did not think of going further. There must be something related to this issue other than a simple physical attribute such as a shift in the no-parallax point and axis of rotation. Thus, my 4^th trial now is to be done completely digital and on computer.
Despite the stress (yes, it was a real stress) the accompanies such unexplainable results when a panorama-making process goes erratic for no obvious reasons, I tried my best to organize my thought and work.

In the beginning, a general check up for the whole set of images yielded a fact that there is no problem in generating control points, and yet, optimization gives the "very bad" indicator. This usually means really bad control points (points connecting between two images) - that is, some points do not match or simply very distantly related. Anyway, after deleting these bad points, some images were left with no control points at all. In other words, complete images here were a major reason for the whole upset in the "pizza"! Now what to do?

First approach was to divide the work: dividing the panorama to 3 zones and work on the control points for each. I've reloaded the images anew, and canceled the repeated shots (those at 0^o and 360^o, keeping just one of them instead of the two). Then, I've generated (manually) control points between each 2 images in the first set of images which compose the middle zone of the panorama. At this point, optimization for this set of images alone was "good" or "very good" and them middle zone virtually out of stitching errors so far!

The same approach was done for the lower and the upper zone of the panorama (excluding the zenith point) with varied degrees of optimizations, but all were good so far! The tricky part now was in connecting these 3 zones together, as the panorama now was divided to 3 perfectly-matched zones! Thus, I've went on generating control points (again, manually) between vertically overlapping images in between the middle and the lower zones, and then again from the middle and the upper zones. It was tricky here as when optimizing any two sets of images after adding the control points, the third set gets corrupted and out of sync. Needless to say here there was a great deal of work regarding other options and properties needed to be controlled, mainly the Blending ratio for some slides in the lower zone. The situation was settled when I optimized the whole set of images from all zones; optimization then yielded "not so bad" - which was good for my purpose here at least and the three zones were matched with minimum of stitching errors. The zenith slide (topmost) was then matched with some images from the upper zone and optimized alone. Things look relatively perfect now except for few minor stitching errors AND some smudged zones resulting from luminance problems when merging into HDR (which is a resultant related to the exposures making up the HDR itself). Those are not a big nuisance for the time being but I guess they can be dealt with later.
Anyway, there was a minor problem of keeping the pillars at vertical lines which proved to be problematic. The beauty of the place is in fact in the vertical straight lines and such twist and tilt in those pillars is not a good compromise, so to say.

A model stitch. Notice the tilt of the pillars; some are slight and some are strong. Of course beside the other stitching errors.

This convergence of vertical line does effect the visual strength of the panorama as well as the ability to centralize the panorama and achieve a good symmetry (remember, the main reason for picking this location is the symmetry!). Trying to fix this problem with the usual approach (changing the roll and pitch angles) did not yield a proper solution to this problem. Thus, I've decided to go through the middle zone and assign vertical control points and some horizontal control points. These are special type of control points that tell the computer that such lines are (and should) be perfectly vertical or horizontal, of course depending on specific features in the scene. Thus, most of the pillars in the middle set of images was a target to this addition of control points, and optimization was done once again to apply these changes. The results were a joy to my eyes!

A final test stitch. The arrows point to the stitching errors and smudges caused by HDR problems. Compare the tilt of the pillars here with the black and white model above which was made before adding vertical and horizontal control points.

All what is left now is to apply this model to the REAL thing: the HDR set of images itself. After that, there will be a long journey through the different projection styles and the different tone-mapping (and each would need some degree of fixes of course).
I can feel the steam venting out of my brain. I've finally settled down with 3 weeks of work-failure-work relationship here! I have to say, I do consider it an adventure nevertheless.

Thoughts and Conclusion

The question now remains: Why did that happen? What went wrong here? Despite the simplicity of the situation, yet this panorama persisted in its stitching errors (even with the final results), and despite the reality that there was indeed a shift in the rotation axis away from the no-parallax point of the lens (Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye), yet fixing such problem did not bring any practical enhancement to the situation. This made me think of some points here that might have caused this problem and some of them if not all are kind of uncontrollable (to me at least):

• Moving shadows. Because of the abundance of light sources on location there were multiple shadows in the place beside my shadow of course, which was moving and probably did appear in more than one slide. 
• The symmetry of the place could be a culprit despite being the reason sought for creating this panorama. The resemblance between two images which are NOT related to each other could have possibly (just possibly) trick the computer on thinking that these two images ARE related. Hence, control points were generated to two unrelated images making a pizza out of the situation!
• Just like the moving shadows, reflections on the ground might have a minor role here in "baffling" the computer and tricking it into generating what I might call False Control Points. 
• By now, it is very common that repetitive patterns in the space do undoubtedly produce stitching errors; Galore! Thus, I was not really surprised to see stitching errors in the lower zone of the panorama where the tiles make a lot of lines crossing each other.

Finale

Well, after this long story (and hopefully not so boring one), I'm just glad and happy to see such an achievement. I didn't get such a feeling of accomplishment for a while (even though it wasn't far back behind when one of my panoramas was displayed in a luxurious coffee table book!).
I dedicate this post to "some" people who thought the work of photography is simple a deed of Photoshop and playing with the camera, specially when it comes to panoramas. I just hope this post would open the eyes to the hassles that we, photographers, must put up with just to come out with something - and most of the time, it is for our own satisfaction and no one and nothing else. For those work already with this venture of photography and reading this, I hope it is of some benefits to you all out there. There are some details that I couldn't mention here of course, but I'm sure you can figure them out on your own!

Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating it, 

or as the Irish say: Nollaig Shona Dhaoibh.

In Failure We Trust...

Here we go, my new PC is finally online, and the process of keeping it up-to-date with the software arsenal is going on in fact. How much I'm relieved. I didn't feel such speed in ages!!
Because of the busy schedule (sleeping time is included in this statement) I couldn't do much work with my camera or with Geltani. Some mental work was involved here though. In a haste, anyway, I tried my luck with another peeling project which was not achieved as I wish (hence the title of this post!) but I got my lessons somehow.

Censer Censer Against The Wall

This week I've noticed that Mom had a small censer, other than the one that I've already used in a previous experiment to capture smoke. The new censer is small and thin and quite seductive to my eyes because of the curves it has, but all of that proved to be a real challenge later for the peeling work (which was never done right here up to this moment).

The previous censer.

The new censer.

This time, and because of the shape of the new censer, I've decided not to light the object from above like I did previously with the mug peeled mug shot. I've realized that if this is done, then the thicker top part will cast a shadow to the bottom. Hence, I've decided to use both of my speedlites (580EXII and 430EXII) on the left and right of the censer - a decision that I've regretted later.
One of the critical aspects of this object is its relative small size, and hence, any small offset from the center of the rotation was drastically apparent in the series of the shots taken (meaning the objects won't be rotating around its own axis, but it will move in a circle around a common center!). Another problem was, as usual, the tilt of the images taken which was not so obvious until the images were examined on PC.

One of the trials done for peeling.

As you can see above, the final stitch had many errors and mainly it became a fan-shaped stretch instead of (relatively) flat stitch. This is mainly because of off-center movement mentioned above which means the base would look nearer and further on different angles as the object rotates. This was also evident when the mug peeling effect (posted in previous posts) but the general size was larger and the offset did not show in a drastic way as in this experiment.
Notice also that the top portion (top right) of the stitch has broken lines and not a smooth stitch. In my mug experiment, when this happened, it meant that I need to narrow my crop or the slit from which PTGui should scan to make the connecting lines smoother. Here, however, this was not possible. The above example is stitched at -/+8^o from a common central point (picked by comparing the minimum and maximum extensions of the body to the left and right during its rotation), meaning the total angle was 16^o.

Cross-hair marks added on feature-less sides to help on stitching later.

Notice here that I've added cross-hair mark by pencil on the censer itself to aid the stitching process, but I have to say it didn't help much in this situation. Going lesser than 16^o for the crop caused much hassle an PTGui would miss a lot of the matching points. One of the ironic things is, why did I use 180^o in previous posts to measure the different in pixels, while I can measure the number of pixels for each degree simply by measuring the move in two successive shots of 5^o.
I've mentioned above that I've regretted using both speedlites on the left and the right of the censer. I've realized this fact while working on PC and comparing images to establish some control points. The thing is, the body is not unique in its shape and has many protruding features, which means shadows on the body itself. However I try to balance the lights from both directions it was almost impossible to eliminate the shadows completely. The problem of the shadows is, as the body rotates, the shape of the shadows will change eventually, making the stitching and matching control points even harder. Maybe I should have proceeded with speedlite from the top as I did before (or one from the bottom, but I would need a glass surface below the censer as it rotates).

Comparison between two shots few degrees away. Notice the change in the shadows and the light levels.

It wasn't till I've installed DxO Optics again when I fixed the tilt perfectly. DPP (Canon's software) was not much of a help and cumbersome when I tried it. Probably the less problematic stitch was achieved when the images were corrected with DxO.
As I was going on to find a solution to the problem, I've tried to make the crop literally by Photoshop. I'm lucky now that I have a faster Photoshop (32- and 64-bit) and what would take 30 minutes is done in the matter of 30 seconds or even less! Anyway, such method didn't work as well, and even blending in Photoshop didn't go much far away with the results than PTGui did. However, one interesting experiment in Photoshop yielded something of fractal-art quality I would say and I really liked the result and might upload it later to some stock sites as an abstract art.

Fractal Censer (blend of 72 images)

I'm not sure how the colors were produced in the image in that way, but I do appreciate abstract art anyway and I don't mind the extra colors!
I need to go further and study this matter further. I might try to do it later but one thing for sure: I need a new base for rotating, as the current one is not precise with its center of rotation.

Γλώσσες

As I've mentioned in the beginning, I didn't spend much time doing a practical examination for Geltani, but there were some mental notes, specially that I've started reading a book about learning Turkish. Well, I'm not intending to delve much deeper into the language itself as of to speak it, but it did give me some insight on some matters (mainly grammatical) that were absent from my mind even during the make of Ayvarith.
However, I'm not intending to copy-paste features from real Turkish into Geltani but it is worthwhile to think about some grammatical cases and special verbs. Turkish, being somehow similar to Arabic in some aspects, got a special features in its verbs to denote the verb that acts on itself, and the verb that acts on something else (sorry I don't know the exact name of this grammatical case). Just to explain, here is a simple example:

Arabic

Study: daras [درس] (someone studies on his or her own).

Teach: darras [درّس] (someone teaching or making someone study).

Turkish

Study (learn): öğrenmek.

Teach: öğretmek.

Notice that in English the two verbs are completely different, and this is how Ayvarith used to work. In Turkish and Arabic, despite the critical difference in roots, they do act according to some basic regulations to formulate verbs that act on their own, and those which act on something else. The question is now, how to implement this with Geltani? Leave Geltani; What about Bulughman - an artificial language that I've made it sound like a Turkic language?

In Geltani, the verbs are derived from the noun (mentioned that in previous posts). Hence, the noun "flight" is used with suffixes and prefixes to make the verb "fly". However, I don't have a clear idea yet of how to formulate a verb that expresses the action "made something fly". Would I have to introduce auxiliary verbs in such instances? How that would sound and look with the dilemma of the writing system already? Too much thought and my mind is so tired of thinking much into this matter for the time being. In hope that all this mental power will be boosted after Ramadhan.

Finale:

It was relatively a busy and a tiresome week that just passed me by. I just can't wait to get into the regular time-table. I think what really wears me off is that the whole community goes under a time shift making working in the usual way, for someone who is used to fasting, a hard task to do (with waiting).

Earlier this week, there was a meeting for photographers invited by HIPA of Dubai, to introduce and identify the HIPA reward in its third session. I tried to attend, but with the delay in the opening which was supposed to take place at around 9:00 p.m., and me being awake since 6:00 a.m. to pick up for dialysis and then back home to work on something else, made a 30 minutes of delay such a great displeasure. Thus, at around 9:30 a.m. I've left the scene, before the ceremony would even start.

However, during the waiting time, I've met a friend who was a member of the photography group I'm in, and left after some tensions with the management. As expected there was a chitchat about the quality and the functions of the group, but I have to say he had some points that I share, yet, I'm really so tired of all that tension between photographers in here. It is largely a talk of money-making, and how things are done, but I didn't hear much about the philosophy behind photography. This friend pointed out to some photographers and mentioned to me some names, and when I answered, simply, that I don't know any of these guys (who apparently are famous in their fields) he said "Whom do you know then if you don't know these?". I replied: I'm working with the camera since 2007 for my amusement and never made a contact with Kuwaiti photographers up till 2012 when I joined the group, and now I'm regretting that I've been social with other Kuwaiti photographers. No offense, not to say all are bad, but surely it is something that probably I should regret. I got myself into struggles and wrestles that I should not have been into. I can't remember when was the last time I talked with a Kuwaiti photographer about the art of photography or its philosophy and its meanings; It was mostly a talk dominated by money and gear, and nothing else. Useless talk if you ask me.

Next Saturday it is scheduled to have a meeting to sort out some images. I'm sure I'm going to have another batch of disappointments. The sorting process is aimed for Cyprus photography contest and I'm not sure how it works, but it is apparent that registration is for single photographers and not groups. What I've noticed that in most contests, the most renowned photos are those of exotic places and/or those of portraits and people shots. Now, how am I supposed to get into exotic places (specially with my situation being stuck now with Mom to care for her)? And am I supposed to do something I hate just to please the judge? Am I supposed to please the judges to get some good results in a contest, or am I supposed to do photography for my own sake? The answers to these questions lead me straight to the belief of the futility of such contests in my case and made me even less interested in them. I'm not supposed to take a burden just to have a photo. I'm supposed to please myself in the first place, despite all the criticism I'm receiving from the group.

Peace of mind is a precious thing, and simplicity, I reckon, should be in the core of my goals. Yet, I ask myself, would life allow me to do so? Would there be someone who would help me to be so? The view is blurred...

Alexander 6, V12.

Despite the sleeping time that was relatively good (7 hours instead of typical 4 hours or 5 hours in generous times), I still feel tired. Well, not as tired as yesterday however. I barely woke up this morning even though I slept earlier last night, after putting on the stitching process ON.
I don't remember I've read this before in the panorama book by Harald Woeste (Wöste?), but it was a thought that occured to me by coincidence and I always see it in PTGUI software for stitching, but I never realized what does it do. It is something called "apply template." It's there all the time and could even spared me the fuss in some other occasions, but anyway, I still need to try it out more.
The idea is simple, you stitch some panorama, save the control points and the other settings of the stitch, and then apply what you have saved of settings on another panorama. This will save much time mangling with and trying to fix the HDR images with their large file size. I produced already a list of images with Exposure Fusion and stitched them together and made out a JPG file out of it and this stitching was saved (merely as a safety procedure in case I need it again some other time but it came in handy just now!).

 

The EF version of the Living Room panorama in Little Planet projection (not finished).

After loading the HDR images into the software for many times and mangling with it, I had after all to cancel 3 images of the list (reducing the number from 55 images to 52) just because they made a problem with control points (they have no distinguishing features as they were taken for a blank space in the ceiling). This step resolved the issue of the blurry background that I faced the day before, because the software thought these images were for the floor and fixed them there with no control points however.

However, in my trial to do the HDR stitching and because of the problems related to alignment of lines, I tried another approach which was not very liked by me, but it was a trial and I saved the control points file. The approach was to tone-map all the HDRs according to some fixed parameters (in a batch process) and then nail them down with PTGUI. I noticed that here, most of the problems with the lines vanished (but few remain as well which aren't so obvious as I was working with the HDR version);

 

Tone-mapped then stitched (based on painterly style), flat spherical projection (not finished).

The 2 images above had been adjusted a bit in Photoshop for contrast by the way. Anyway, after all of this fuss I decided to "apply template" of this tone-mapped version of the HDR (which sounded good enough and without much fuss in the lines) to my HDR stitching list. There is one option that is always recommended to be run whenever a stitch is to be done, that is the "Optimizer". It helps on fine-tuning the control points over the images and also to fix the shear and other stuff in the images depending on data taken from the camera or entered manually. The thing is, this option did screw me big time indeed! After applying the template of the tone-mapped version to my HDR list, I just forgot about optimizing, because I did once and all it did was to screw the panorama more. It is purely a mathematical approach, I understand that, and hence it cannot substitute completely the sense of the human eye. Moving along now, I made already a flat 360 panorama of the living room in HDR format (but with reduced size and not in maximum output, since I don't want to play games with my CPU) and also I left the house letting the software stitch a "fullframe" version of the panorama, which made it look like peeking into a keyhole somehow. I need this panorama in HDR in the first place to fix the errors and to remove the tripod remains in the image and then manually tone-map it since I like to control some aspects of the picture, specially the light sources in it (light bulbs in the ceiling). Otherwise, I would settle down with the tone-mapped version of Photomatix.

 

The work load in my work place seems to be on the verge of increasing somehow with many missions given to me between my hands. I already neglected an invitation for a workshop to Ukraine for 5 days since I don't feel like it is worthy. My mind has completely changed from what it was 5 years ago when I just graduated. I think problems of life do change the scales of aspects of the life greatly, so much that I don't even care about science like I used to do before. All what I have in my mind now is pleasure and photography which brings me pleasure as well.  I have a list of fish samples to work with currently and just now I've been asked to prepare a layout for the poster that we intend to do for some of our results in a simple research we did. Moreover, there is an intention to work with some people (from the ministry of health, the radiation department) on some aspects of non-ionizing radiation (mobile signals ..etc) as a friendly gesture without something official  in order to have some experience with the work in such field. I'm even reluctant now to go and ask about the available scholarships and the ability to study Archaeology as I wished before. I still love Archaeology really, but who knows what's in the job market for this field, otherwise, it is such a magnificent field of mystery and living in the past. I'm no treasure hunter with childish dreams of some adventures, but traveling for such a job or such a field and get to know "friendly" cultures and live the past again away from these busy times, is surely something that always kept my imagination vivid.

We have, adding to the load, some guests that are expected to come tomorrow and they are some expert in the field of radiation and hence, I do really hate to be there. I'm thinking seriously of making something up just to avoid going to work.

__________
265. Alexander controlled his anger severely
266. he almost wanted to kill the demon
267. and the demon was laughing with no feelings
268. then the hero said to the demon slowly
269. "have you not done enough evil to the world?
270. to come here and trick the minds of people,
271. verily your end is near by my hands"
272. the demon laughed out loud and said,
273. "what people? nothing shall live on this Earth,
274. except of us, who are made of fire,
275. if your God loves those, He shall give them the mind,
276. and since no mind on them is set, I am their lord"
277. and since that moment Alexander could not stand
278. but got his sword out and attacked Kadmún
279. with a direct hit on the head
280. but the demon was fast and not a fool
281. and Kadmún then raised his fire sword
282. known in the legends of the ancient days
283. the sword of Balíkhah
284. the one made by the father of demons
285. whose name was Marjí Shadúm
286. who used it to cut the mount of Fototuus
287. and made it the Fulkan Muttere as today
288. to be his home and for his children

Roaming...

Three days of holidays. Weekend and Sunday for the new lunar year. It is the beginning of the month of Moharram, where the sadness hover around for the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Mohammed (PBUHH). For this, I shall try to be all in black at least for the first 10 days. Some people are even braver than me for wearing the black for 2 months; that is Moharram, and Safar. Safar contains also the martyrdom of many holy personalities for Shiites, starting with the Prophet himself.


With the usual delay of my plans to clean up the room (typical), I couldn't stop taking my trials with the camera wherever I go and however I can. The image above was taken last Friday when this moth crashed into mom's head and fell down on some table. Many shots were taken in fact, but I think this one is the best. The bluish luster of the moth was in fact a result of the flash itself, and since I don't have a dedicated flash yet, I was not able to control much of the direction of the light needed. However, some people liked it that way. I tend to take the camera with me in the car wherever I go, because you wouldn't know when some idea flashes in your mind and makes you want a camera at hand immediately. Few days ago I was out for dinner with a friend and this is exactly what happened when I saw the Kuwait Towers. It is not the first time to take a snapshot for them, but this time I was closer and in a darker time, which made me think it is a nice trial for some HDR and exposure bracketing;







The initial settings were for a small aperture (f/22) which made a nice effect of glow for the lights in the beginning but there was not much differences in the exposure rate. I need to work and experience more to adjust the aperture according to my needs and to what I really want. However, I reduced the aperture after all and made the shot above with 3 bracketed exposures, adding to that the tungsten WB, to balance the yellowish lights around the place in general.

We had a meeting in my office today (my office is the meeting room actually) and hence, I did not have enough time to translate more than 2 verses as usual, and to type down this blog as well. So, I'm typing the rest of it here now at home, after doing some work with the photos I've taken today and after some hot shower to clear this greasy hair!

Since the meeting today was for the heads of the center where I work, it was a bit like something not for me, and fortunately my camera was with me to snoop around. After taking a group photo for the staff members of my place, I decided after the beginning of the meeting to go around and roam snapping pictures from all around. I still feel annoyed when I remember that the sensor needs cleaning and maybe a heavy one, since there had been some spots showing on the images that I'm taking. The spots can be cleaned of course by photoshop but it is still annoying and the sensor should be "clean" completely.

I had many shots, and I figured that using "exposure fusion" is more pleasant than the make of HDR images with tone mapping to give some weird artistic looks. With "exposure fusion" as well, I can merge photos with different WB (White Balance) to give some weird looking gradients all over the image, and with some tweaking you shall have it. An example of this tweaking:





This shot was made with somehow high exposure (+1.75 if I remember correctly) on several WBs and then fused together. I've been taking other photos from around the building in different angles trying to do some experiments with the vanishing points and how to use them to give somehow infinite look into the horizon (of the image) amid the constructions being under "inspection". I didn't prepare the other photos for now, but I shall hopefully post them here whenever they are finished. As for the time being, I've been reading some texts about panoramic photography, and seems there are some good (and complicated) softwares to test, that can do a better job than photoshop when it comes to stitching photos. I'm ahead for trying some!