Retinol III-IV

Busy busy busy. So busy that I can't even play games! Can you believe that? However, to be honest, the major portion of my time is consumed by bad sleeping patterns. All in all, I'm trying to cope with the daily tasks here as well as trying as much as possible to work with my camera and a little bit with a new venture: Adding educational posts to Pinterest. This is a new thing and probably I won't be doing it often, as other things in my life do already have their own priorities. But I'll try to do it whenever I get a new idea or whenever a friend (who is learning Arabic) might suggest.

Announcement

As promised and as with my previous posts, I'd like here to start with a little announcement for a new batch of uploads to the stocks. This time they are scattered across the usual stocks where I upload.

The new batch

First of all, one of these images (won't say!) was canceled from the upload because of some brand name and it would be such a time-consuming process to remove that mark (stock websites usually don't accept such images). Anyway, photos with faces are typically uploaded to Mostphotos, with the exception of only one which is accepted in Canstockphoto as well. The rest are uploaded across Dreamstime, 123RF, as well as to Canstockphoto. However, 123RF, again, did refuse all 5 uploaded images (most of them were denied for being out of focus!). I'm pretty sure they would not be accepted by other stock websites if they were indeed out of focus - there is something fishy or misunderstood going on.

With this new batch, I'm trying to find time to re-process some of my old panoramas, specially the old ones from 2011 and 2012 and prepare them to upload them to my Mostphotos along with the rest of the large-size panoramas there (with a width of 10K pixels). Issues keep arising here though, specially with the new lock-down and health, but I'm trying my best (with coffee!) to organize my time and priorities (and yes, I'm failing so far).

Retinol III

Then, we arrive at my third image for Retinitis Pigmentosa (this year) - which was actually done in the same day as the previous one in the previous post. It was a quickie idea that occurred to me and thought of working it out right away after finishing Sensing which I talked about in the previous post.

The Seeing Hand

The principle thing was to be simple actually; Just using the sun to shoot something and the rest is to be fixed later in Photoshop, and with the help of a fisheye lens (my favorite Rokinon 8mm), the dramatic impact can be achieved (in terms of sizes and emphasis).
The idea of the shot is about the usage of hands to navigate through our spaces as people with Retinitis Pigmentosa and how we are greatly affected with the change (continuous change or period changes) in the environment around us on us; This is specifically about changing furniture at home frequently. Something that I've often suffered from, and still.
People with Retinitis Pigmentosa, like me, are typically using their body parts and memory to navigate through places and when at home, it is mostly memory that gets activated because things are "supposed" to be in their own fixed places.
Now as for the technical part, the Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens does not have provide such a shallow depth of field, thus it was one of the first things to be done (after the general color editing in RAW first). It was important, though, not to exaggerate the synthetic lens bur here. Next, it was time to fix the eye on the palm, and for this, I've picked an old image from my arsenal (of my own eye). It was a struggle though to let it be as natural as possible as if it was drawn indeed on my palm. Till this very moment I'm not yet convinced that I did the job correctly.
Anyway, the shot was liked by some people specially those with Retinitis Pigmentosa and could relate to this particular problem. Thus, if you are reading this and you do know, or live with, someone who has such disease or any type of visual impairments, just mind the change in the environment around them. It can be just frustrating; Big time.

Kika III - Retinol IV

Yes, you read that right. I'm posting 2 shots from the Retinitis Pigmentosa project for this year into one post, here. The whole thing was actually a coincidence.
As I was planning a shot for Retinitis Pigmentosa in my head (for days), Kika gave out the theme for her 3^rd week challenge: Framing; And this is exactly the "structure" that I had in my mind for my shot about Retinitis Pigmentosa!

RPG: Retinitis Pigmentosa Game

The idea behind RPG: Retinitis Pigmentosa Game is, again, the furniture and the obstacles that we face INSIDE the house. I was actually thinking of more like an "earthly" composition; Things set to the ground. However, after watching Kika's video for the weekly theme, framing, my mind started to (automatically) combining the two ideas and I came up with this framing, with furniture (or something similar that is) - of course with the blind cane as well to deliver the idea. Now the shoot was a bit of an adventure and unfortunately, I didn't take any shots to document the setting.

Air Remote, for wireless tethering.

The idea needed a top-view, and I guess nowhere is better to do such an idea except for the balcony (and we are lucky to have one). The problem here is, though, I am shooting myself with no help from anyone. So, it was a call for the Air Remote tethering tool, which I didn't use a lot since I got it years back simply because it does lack some features and it's quite cumbersome despite the (supposed) ease of use and the relief that it should be providing. This time, it was no exception, because it did disappoint me further. I will talk about that shortly.

Lateral arm from Photek

To shoot the ground from the balcony, it was natural to use the lateral arm to carry the camera and extend it out of the balcony looking downward. Luckily, I had those weight bags which I've ordered 3 years ago or so and never used them till this moment! Nevertheless, the situation was shaky and I had my heart up my throat. I'm blessed to have an elevator (lift) near me in the balcony to go up and down; Otherwise, I wouldn't even think about shooting this. 

The lens of choice here was my Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 because, well, the field of view and the autofocus system. After shooting this though, I realized that I might have done better using Voigtländer 20mm f/3.5, to have a wider field of view and then crop it to a suitable size and boundary, and probably the manual focus of this lens won't be a big problem. After all, I was shooting at f/11, and with wider lenses, the depth of field is forgiving anyway. The main drawback in the whole process, though, was with the tethering.
Actually, day by day, I'm starting to realize that the usefulness of such device is quite limited more than I anticipated in the first place. Here for example and in this situation, I was aiming to capture bracketed images sequence in order to create HDR and be able to achieve the dramatic look by controlling the light in the image at "baking the HDR" level (i.e. tone-mapping). It turned out that because of the timer (10sec) which I've set initially to be able to do my pose, each bracketed image would be taken with a 10sec timer! Of course, holding my pose for 30 seconds is next to impossible, so, I had to go back and just take single images. I'm glad that I could somewhat achieve what I've envisioned using just a single RAW image though. I would have done it properly with an Intervalometer with proper time-delay settings to give me some time to go down to location via the elevator, and that way I would be doing bracketing quite easily, but I still need to check myself on location to pose properly. Maybe next time I will try to combine using both tools, if it was possible (honestly, never tried).
The irony is that every now and then when I decide to use the Air Remote Tethering I do get first a message for updating the firmware and I really don't know how that is done but what I really wonder about is what the update is really about? I don't see any features being enhanced at all; Specially the annoying rotating display which cannot be displayed correctly for shooting in portrait orientation. That's another story for another time and yet, there is another misfortune that I will talk about (hopefully) in my next post when I was about to take the 5^th shot for Retinitis Pigmentosa project.

Finale

Here we are, close to summer again. And yes, I'm not so excited about it. We've gone into partial lock-down here for one month period (ending at April 8^th). Everything will be re-evaluated afterward, and who knows, the lock-down might be extended.
People here are complaining about everything, about all measures and don't get me started with conspiracy theories. Each individual in this great nation is an Aristotle on its own. I just hope my mood swings won't attack me severely in the meantime as it did one year ago, last summer, when we had partial lock-down as well. Not to say it's all gone but I'm coping better. I think the routine of fasting lately beside reading the holy book added greatly to the comfort. I've stopped fasting just recently and strangely I can't stay up late now like I used to do when I was fasting; I'm getting tired easily. Probably because of the digestive operations taking place. Who knows…
Things are a bit awry on the work front, but that's a story for another time I guess. I'm trying to keep my peace of mind as much as possible by trying hard to neglect and forget about these problems. I foresee increasing responsibilities upon my shoulders, and I'm not sure how am I going to cope with these, nor whether I should trust my experience or not (apparently it's not a match, scientifically speaking). From one lock-down to another, things are just spanning and expanding and all there is to hope for form my side is…to stay away as much as possible, until some "right time" comes for a proper resignation.

 

Precautious Selfie (2020)

Meanwhile, as I'm posting these images about this year's Retinitis Pigmentosa project as well as about Kika's photo challenge, I'm still active with my camera but I don't want to post or talk about these images until I finish the Retinitis Pigmentosa series at least. I'm also anticipating working again with my speedlites, with both high speed and stroboscopic, but I'm still puzzled for what I'm going to do. Trying to seek hints from Kika herself, as well as from the work of other photographers I find (mainly on YouPic and YouTube). I'm posting these photos, of course, on my YouPic, but not yet on Instagram. You can check out the link if you like to take a peek on my YouPic profile. But I have to say that many of these images are actually old images re-made or some ignored test shots from the past that have been worked out, specifically to be posted on YouPic. My chores list, surprisingly, is building up and I'm trying to do one thing at a time (including the typing of this blog post actually). There is a lot waiting for me that I've been even postponing playing some games! No time to rest and my body is failing me as usual… also, it is time to think of a new post for my Arabic blog. I think I do need another vacation from blogging at some point, soon…

Retinol II

To be honest, I'm sort of lazy to type this blog post! I've been loaded with many things to do and little power to do them, specially with the start of the month of Rajab in the lunar (Islamic) calendar and typically every year, I would try to fast as much as I can of this month (and the next month as well, Sha'ban). This leaves me a bit powerless most of the day and napping along on and off. Anyway, I'm trying my best to re-schedule my time and organize some of it (if I can call it so) and trying to do bits here and there. As a starter, I'll start with my little announcement here:

Little Announcement

As I've promised before, I'll be uploading more images to the stocks on batches, and I've done so already with the first batch of 8 images (originally they were 10 but had to cancel one and keep one specifically for MostPhotos alone since it's a selfie).

Preview of the batch

The batch had been uploaded already to Canstockphoto (you can also visit my profile there by clicking on the signature at the end of this post) and on Dreamstime (only 3 were accepted!) as well as 123RF (all accepted but one still pending at the moment of typing this post). As for MostPhotos, I didn't upload this batch on there because I'm planning to keep my account there specifically for artistic selfies (or self-portrait) and large files of panoramas, specially with the fact that I've received an email recently from MostPhotos stating that they have changed some of their policies, and raised the bar for the minimum resolution accepted, from 6MP to 11MP!

This said, I won't be preparing another batch any time soon I guess since my dish is full already as it is, specially with the supposed preparation for contributing to Trierenberg's Circuit (or Austria's International Photo Contest). I was reluctant to participate, but I've decided to get into it. Sounds like gambling to me though specially that there is money involved (AND I didn't receive my gold medal for my panorama back in 2018 because of the bad postal services and protocol).

Retinol II

As I've stated in my previous post, I won't be posting all my work regarding Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month altogether. Just to not keep all eggs in one basket. So, in this post I'd like to talk about the second image in the series that I've made so far, and it is a quite simple idea but I have to admit, I've struggled in the beginning with the camera. 

Sensing

The idea was simple and reflective on the process of going down the stairs. It is quite a struggle for people with Retinitis Pigmentosa, like me, specially when going outdoors in the sun or going indoors as well. The problem is in finding the edge of the step using the sense of color and shades of color (this is how most people perceive depth and distance when going down the stairs).
The hassle (somewhat) was setting up the camera vertically on the ground. Typically I would use the L-Bracket and it does the job perfectly, but this time it didn't, probably because the ground was not even. Thus, I had to fit something under the lens just to let it stand still. Exposure-wise, it wasn't a big deal as the shot was taken indoors and with most of the lights being off. The exposure of 4 seconds (at f/11) was just about enough to depict the foot motion as if it is trying to sense the step.

When posted on Instagram the shot gained some momentum (as well as on YouPic) and some people with RP did relate to it indeed. It was a "Mission Accomplished" moment for me. I guess I've proved to myself that complicated ideas are not necessarily the best. If I wanted to complicate this further I would have implemented some stroboscopic flash here. Saying this, I've been having this urge to work a bit with my messy speedlites but I'm not sure for what idea, specially with my busy schedule nowadays; A schedule that I'm still not grasping its horns.

Kika II

In my previous post I've talked about Kika's weekly challenge and the theme for Week 1 was "Childhood," and to be honest, I didn't like my simple shot then. Anyway, the week after, i.e. Week 2, bore the theme "Hidden;" As in, hidden face. 

Anxiety (II)

Once I've heard of the theme's name, that image that I've made back in 2019 jumped right into my mind; That is Anxiety.
Ironically, the shot was made in January 2019, as if it was reflecting on the anxiety that would ensue by the end of that year with the start of the pandemic.
The photo here, though, was re-retouched, for adjusting the aspect ratio (4X5) to be posted on Instagram and adding few dodge and burn, contrast, and few touches here and there and adding a soft dreamy effect. This photo had been uploaded to some photo contests before, so I figured that Kika's challenge is all about creativity and not authenticity or strict photographic rules and conditions, so I kind of had my time with such edits to my liking. But this was not the end of the story there, because I did take a similar shot just few days before that theme started already!

Three Quarters Blue

I did add the proper hashtag for Kika's challenge (#Kikasphotochallenge) to Three Quarters Blue but it didn't get that much attention I suppose because it was not new when the theme started. It was posted already few days before the theme officially started. Three Quarters Blue was shot with my Huawei Mate 9 phone while I was in the office in my workplace (yes, been there few times already to supervise the "cleaning" process). While I was waiting in my office, facing WhatsApp in my tablet for any new "orders" I've decided to kill the time a bit. I noticed that most of the protective gear come in blue color (intentional?). Anyway decided to do something similar to Anxiety and fill the image with blue, but since the phone camera can't focus up close and personal to my face, I had to take the shot and then crop it considerably in post-processing in a way to hide all other features. I've succumbed to the fact that I can't crop this keeping the aspect ratio of the original image and I had to do free cropping and that made the image come a bit elongated more than the usual 3x2 ratio (or whatever Huawei uses). The other hard part of the story was inducing vivid colors and brighten the eye. The eye would have been brightened in a suitable way if it was struck with a flash or sunlight, but with this quick selfie, it was all a burden for the post-processing. Processing JPEG files of 8-bit and in sRGB color space is not the ideal condition to create vivid colors as it is, thus one of the first steps to do was to assign ProPhoto color space to the image and work from there. The image was saved later in Adobe1998 when finalized. The eye here looks unnatural but I tried to make it so as much as I could, I just couldn't pin down the "normality" level here. All in all, I think it just contrasts the overwhelming blue in a good way.
On a side note, this photo was recently used by someone on Instagram as their profile image AND even sent me a DM to get to know me (probably it was a bot after all). Reported that, and Instagram removed the image (yay finally something good), and they put it back again and reported it again and Instagram removed it for a second time (yay another good thing). Waiting to see if this would happen for a third time.

Finale

Things are going slow on my side, and at some aspects, it kind of anxious as well. I'm trying to manage my time to the best I can in order to do the tasks that I've set myself to do, like uploading some photos for Trierenberg contest. I've uploaded a set of panoramas but I still need to add some more, and each image needs some inspection before uploading. This said, I need to see when to prepare the second batch of uploads to the stocks.
Work-wise, there had been some developments along the lane which made me awry and uncomfortable. There is seldom a moment when I wouldn't think of the upcoming events and how things would develop. There is a certainly some point along the line when I would have to leave this job but how, when, and what then? Such a pressure on my mind that leaves me paralyzed at times. Retinitis Pigmentosa is not giving me the best moments of life and I would have taken it differently, maybe, in my 20s or 30s; But at 40, that's a load on a back that already started to bend for the passage of time. I lay it all in the hands of God.

Announcement: MostPhotos…

Well, this is another short post of some sort. I want to announce something and in fact I'm barely having the time to type this! Things just started to get busy suddenly! Home, work, health... mood swings, you name it. With all this mess, some ideas had been building up in my head, and I will talk a little about them down below. But first, with the announcement.

Announcement

As I've posted some announcement in my previous short post, here is another one and this time for something a bit more than just stock photos.
I'm actually providing some of these new panoramas that I've been "re-making" with their original size at the time of stitching. What does that mean? Well:

Typically when I set my images to be stitched and make a panorama, the stitcher would take the original sizes of these images by default, and the resulting image by default would be somewhere around 22k pixels wide! However, when I stitch, I reduce the size to about 10k pixels wide, and from there I do even minimize the size further usually before uploading to the stocks because usually such websites do have a size limitation.
Right now, since MostPhotos does not have a cap on the size, I've decided to upload these panoramas at their 10k pixels wide size and put them in a special gallery on MostPhotos for sale. They would be perfect for large prints, being up to 86cm wide (or more), that is about 2.82 ft, at 300dpi. Meaning, the size can still be enlarged further with proper DPI reduction, if needed.

So far, 10 panoramas had been uploaded to MostPhotos and hopefully more to come. I've been spreading the word across social media and now, in this post. In case you would like to follow up, you can also mark this page and check if any new panoramas been added. Worth noting that these panoramas are exclusively available on MostPhotos, alone.

A glance at the gallery in MostPhotos. Clicking each thumbnail would provide more info about the panorama.
Click to enlarge.

Now, the reason I'm doing this is for the technical (and financial) hardships that I'm having concerning printing and sending prints (even before COVID). Things are worse now because of COVID of course (specially with technically a non-existent postal services here and relying heavily on private couriers which charge much). Thus, I've decided that maybe I should offer those for sale with a suitable price online for people appreciating arts, and leave the choice of printing (and sizing) to them, instead of doing the whole work of printing and sending. As noted, this is a first batch I would say, and hopefully more will be added when I get the chance to make some more (I have some ready but wouldn't upload them for various reasons, but only display them, on smaller sizes).

Finale

Well, as you can see above, I've been busy with the issue of creating panoramas (and still with that in fact), and in the same time busy with new ideas that I'm still trying to figure out how to apply them. In addition to that, I will be preparing another batch of single shots to be uploaded to stocks (mostly some old shots re-processed).
All this work with preparing photos for the stocks makes me think seriously of checking for some "keywording" software to aid me with generating relevant keywords instead of thinking about them from the top of my head! I do use some websites already but I'm guessing that they are not too advanced. That's another story for another time.
On the other hand, I've been surprised by 123RF, which rejected ALL of my previous 25 uploads! The reasoning for 90% of them (if not 99%) was set to "Pixelation" or "Pixels". I deem this completely a non-sense, as I know that the images that I've uploaded were reasonably sharp and clean. Setting this reasoning for mostly all the images makes me think that there was another reason behind the rejection, probably not technical at all. Meanwhile, Dreamstime did accept about 11 out of these 25 uploads (and these 25 are also available on MostPhotos).
February is on the way, and I'm trying hard to squeeze my mind for some ideas regarding my annual shot for Retinitis Pigmentosa; If you are reading this and don't know, February is named as Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month. I used to do a shot every year since 2017. For this matter, I'm trying a bit of brainstorming using some websites for random word generating in order to spark something in my head, beside surfing Pinterest but so far no chain of thoughts had been established yet.
On the other hand, some ideas visit my head concerning drawing inspiration from my daily (or semi-daily) readings for Quran; A habit that part of a resolution I've made some years back and got fulfilled during COVID and lockdown till this very day (and so far I've read the whole of the holy book for 3 times and doing the 4^th nowadays). That would not be an easy task of course, specially when trying to avoid modeling (which brings me back to selfies). Anyway, since I read one part of Quran almost every day (Quran is divided to 30 parts), then initially the idea is to create 30 images, with each image being inspired by some line I do read in each part. I don't see results pretty soon for this but let's say it's a goal in itself and to be achieved with an open time limit. But I do have to put this aside a bit and focus on my Retinitis Pigmentosa project for now.
Now, all I'm praying for is, some peace of mind, and less mood swings, and yet further some quiet place. Maybe I would be able to recollect some of my thoughts that way…

Quick Note…

Well, I've been a bit idle lately with my camera, and I didn't do my "promised" stroll outside, yet, but I thought of posting this quick post for this week to announce something I was working on this week. I was not going to post anything actually but I thought, well, not all posts have to be long and detailed!

So, I've been working on uploading some contents to the four main stocks that I usually deal with: Canstockphoto, Dreamstime, 123RF, and MostPhotos. I've been Preparing keywords, titles and minor edits before uploading, but most importantly, looking for what to upload. I've been editing and taking a lot of photos and I've realized that it had been such a long time since I've uploaded anything new to the stocks. I've uploaded already a first batch I would say, but some more would come. At the time of typing this, I'm preparing another set of images, which I will explain in a bit. Anyway, this is an invitation for dear readers, to check upon the new items uploaded.

The uploaded set (first batch)
Click to enlarge

The newly uploaded set is available on my Canstockphoto (1 photo was rejected though), as well as Mostphotos, while Dreamstime accepted part of them so far and maybe the rest are under review. 123RF, on the other hand, still needs more time to review the content so it will take a while. 

The ongoing process right now is about preparing another batch but rather a special one, of some sort, and it is concerned with the panoramas that I've been re-making (and still in fact). I've realized that these panoramas might not be of any value for the stocks but they might be of value as pieces of fine art. Thus, I've decided to prepare them and uploaded exclusively to Mostphotos! Mostphotos does not have also the maximum size limitation and so I'm preparing the files in their original sizes without any resizing. My Mostphotos account had been neglected somehow and I think I need to spend quite a deal of time to re-organize it and probably make a special folder or gallery for the new fine art images that I'm going to upload soon. Hopefully I will post about it here as well.

In case you are reading this and the curiosity got the best of you (maybe?) about the nature of these panoramas, you might see a glimpse of them in this previous post here, but of course they are not limited to them, as there had been a lot of other panoramas that I've re-made but did not post about (and still working on some more). 

That's all I wanted to announce for now, with hope of some more uploads soon as there had been a lot of edits for old and new photos that I think would be good for the stocks.

That's it for now folks. Wish you a happy new year, with a load of common sense! Ciao!

Xiŋwiñzaji!

A somehow idle week with iterative sleeping problems. Not sure though if the sleeping problems are related to my back and legs muscles pain, or are they related to my busy mind. Because of this, my activities were minimal and I didn't even head to work for some days (also because some painting job in my office). Yet, I was working on some ideas while in the meantime uploading more photos to some new stock sites which, unfortunately, seems not doing any good.

Glossa

I didn't work much on Geltani conlang this week and I doubt I would do much as well because of all these time-consuming "problems". However, I've done some trials to solve one problem that was buzzing my mind for a while, which is the ambiguous formation of words from Arabic into Geltani in which the short vowels are different but the main consonants are the same. Just to give out an example:

laħam [لَحَم]: (he) welded

laħm [لحْم]: meat

luħim [لُحِم]: welded (passive)

In Arabic, there are many examples of this kind. In one of my previous posts I gave out a similar example with the root [M-L-K], which is related to ownership and ruling.

However, since I've been making trials with verbs for some time right now and decided to derive verbs from nouns (mainly because nouns would vary significantly in their consonants), which solves the problem partially, I've decided now to derive nouns of professions and titles in a similar manner as I decided to do with verbs. Thus, The word for king would be derived from the noun kingdom. Just to show:

Kingdom

King

Kingdom: Xiŋwiñz'

King: Xiŋwiñzaji

"X" as "CH" in Loch,  "ŋ" as "ng" in English, "ñ" as a nasalized vowel, and " ' " as a schwa.

Of course this transliteration and vocal system is still not finished but let's call it a demo. I'm not sure if I'm happy with the "-ji" suffix because it sounds too Japanese and I'm trying to put something on the same line but would better sound differently. However, I'm not going to put much thought on this issue for the time being, as if I didn't find another suitable substitute then I'm going to accept it as it is. Notice that I've added a vowel "a" before "-ji" to merge it into the word, this is because "Z" has a schwa and not into a syllable itself. 

I've made up a special character for this characteristic syllable (or maybe I should call it the profession syllable), but a critical question come to my mind amid all of these fuss: what about the Queen?

In Geltani, unlike in Ayvarith, I've tried to strip the gender bases in formulating the words, but as time progresses, I find myself creating words for He and She or words for His and Her. It seems to me that however I try to step away from this issue it just pulls me back in and there is no escape but to create a special grammatical entity based on genders. This said, I might be inventing a special character for the profession in a feminine form (like in Queen), and probably the suffix would be simply "-jin". This is just the beginning but I'm willing to think it through and see if there is something around this problem. Another problem that is already prevalent somehow is the fact that with such method of deriving from nouns, the writing and pronunciation processes might be longer than normal. 

I might be the first to invent nounal verbs instead of verbal nouns? And then, what about adjectives? For the time being, I'm taking adjectives as they are, i.e. transform them directly from Arabic (in masculine form) without referring back to any idea about derivation from verbs or nouns. Might be a bit illogical in the context of the process, but hey, it's a language after all!

Smokes

I've been planning to take some pictures of smokes for a while since the time I've seen this lovely censer among Mom's possessions. It wasn't until last week though that I've finally began to do some experiments with this subject, and I've hardly done it.

Censer I
Tamron 70-300mm @124mm,
f/13, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

There is a funny story about these images but I'm going to tell that in the next section of this post. When I decided to work with this censer, I've taken around 30 minutes or maybe more just trying to adjust (and search) for everything. It was late at night in the weekend which is the perfect time to work peacefully with no kids at home. In the beginning I had to take several test shots using only my 580EXII speedlite with a correcting gel (to balance the flash color temperature with the tungsten light in the room) affixed with a reflector and a panel for turning the reflector into a softbox - nice stuff from Expoimaging Rogue lighting kit.
I kept some white boards at hand and it proved very critical for some minute details, as I've used it to pour some light on the dark areas (and the dark areas would change with any slight change in the speedlite's orientation). 

Censer X
Tamron 70-300mm @124mm,
f/18, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

The next hard part was to fix my other speedlite, 430EXII, to light smoke that comes out of the censer. I've used a spotlight setting (with honeycomb grids) to direct the light and make it spread as less as possible to other parts of the censer - but this specific detail was changed several times to see which setting was the best. Burning incense sticks was not successful enough, thus I had to resort to a more robust solution: burning tissues (Kleenex). With burning tissues, I had more smoke and could test my 430EXII and see if it is really working with the smoke. I put two gels on 430EXII just for fun and see the results. However, the result was like a mix of the two colors; naturally!

Censer XV
Tamron 70-300mm @300mm,
f/14, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

After taking some shots for the whole body of the censer, I've decided to go deeper and get a closer look (since I'm using Tamron 70-300mm already and no need to move the tripod). The final result for the whole experiment was something close to100 shots, but after filtration and picking those special ones, with specific move in the smoke, a total of 21 images are left out. There was some editing in Photoshop as well to enhance the saturation and to darken the background completely, as the background I've used was not completely dark and it did reflect some light (probably from the room's spotlight rather than the speedlites), beside some unexpected additions to the scene that I didn't notice during the shooting session! I wanted to increase the shutter speed beyond 250^-1sec, which requires using High-Speed settings, to kill the ambient light completely (and darken the background even more) but unfortunately because of using the wireless function to control the speedlites I was not able to achieve this. This can be done with a cable or cord only (and some specific wireless controller or radio transfer probably). Such situations make me more eager to get a long soft cable rather than the helix-like cord that I have already (which hardly extends for more than 2 meters, i.e. around 6.6 ft). I made a mistake here though for not creating a sweep as a backdrop and I've simply placed a black board behind the censer, but checking the limits of the space itself, I think creating a sweep was also out of hand.

Jokes in Stocks

I've stated in my previous post that I'm looking forward to upload some of my images into other stock sites and try to increase the exposure. However, I'm quite aware of the fact that I'm not a commercial photographer and I don't deal much with tabletop photography, so far. Thus, my mission in this regard is not an easy one. Stock sites are not like fine art dealers nor like beauty lovers; they want something practical for usage in designs and ads. Nevertheless, some of their methods and ways in sorting out images are still funny to mention. I've realized that I've created a login in some of these websites long time ago and it was just a re-discovery from my side. Probably I know now why I didn't like the idea of uploading to them in the first place.
Dreamstime: In the beginning, they rejected most of my images and accepted only 2 (out of 10 or 20?). Now, I'm back again uploading to them. I've started to upload almost with the beginning of this week (including the 21 images of the censer) and so far, till the time of writing this blog post, no updates about the rejection status. Yes. I'm not that optimistic about accepting these files.

Depositphotos: This website has really good humor. My account was actually a buyer's account and I had to contact them to switch the login to a contributor. To be able to upload you need to fill in the tax form, and then upload 5 images as an examination to be able to upload to the website. All of my five images were rejected BUT hey! my tax form completion was done successfully! You can't imagine how happy I am. One more happy news here is that I can't put images for examination again till the passage of 10 days from the first examination.

123RF: All what I can say here is, stay away from this website. If Depositphotos rejected 5 photos from the examination sample, this website rejected 30 out of 33 images I've submitted, including ALL of the 21 images of the censer. You see, I'm not expecting all of the images of the censer specifically to be good - after all, the reason I've made several shots is to make different shapes of the smoke and also different zoom levels. For example, Canstockphotos did already rejected 11 and accepted 10 out of 21. When I checked closely, I've realized that reviewers on Canstockphotos did accept mainly images of the censer as a whole and rejected images of the censer in close-up. Here with 123RF, the whole set was rejected under the reason of "Poor lighting/Composition". OK, I understand the fact that I'm not a good photographer, but what kind of composition you are expecting for an isolate object in a tabletop photography? Or what kind of light you are expecting when I state in the file description Golden Censer lit partially? If they stated the reason as "Not marketable" I would quite understand that, but poor lighting and/or composition? That just doesn't add up. From some info bits in their website, I think the website is based in Dubai, and that thing specifically made me more optimistic about submitting to them but now, the whole game rules have changed.

FeaturePics: This is one agency that I do have some hopes for. They did reject some of my images and they did accept some others. One thing I don't understand here is the fact that I have to have 10 accepted images to be able to upload via FTP; my favorite method. So far, I didn't upload my censer images set onto this agency because I do prefer FTP for such large quantity of files. One thing I don't like here is the change in my images titles but to be fair, they did explain that already in their uploading tips, as they see poetic titles are not a good way for marketing and makes it hard for search engines to find the image, i.e. such titles would lessen the exposure to the public. They got a point somehow, even though I think in search engines routines it is usually the keywords that play the key role and not the title.

I'm still looking further but I can't get into any stock website I see. Canstockphotos and Mostphotos seem to be my dominant admirers for the time being.

Finale

There remains some experiments to be done yet but I didn't have the time this week, mainly because I need a model, and my model is, usually, my brother. Even though I did some tests and the results were fine so far, but I do need a good background.
I've notified the group about my inability to enroll in Redbull's contest and they expressed their disappointment. What's significant in their response is their reply: our participation is weak and we will disappoint them. When I asked about who was the initiator for such offer, turned out that the group was and Redbull's team didn't come to the group to ask for participation. I've blamed them (gently) for not checking on the preparations and the readiness of the group's members before involving the name of the group in such contest - specially that my own circumstances with my mother are well known and it is natural that I wouldn't have the full capabilities and time. Their response in fact, to some extent, did prove my point that they did have some heavy dependence on my shoulders which I didn't meet.
For the time being, it seems all I can do is concentrate more on tabletop photography and try to find new subjects to photograph with a twist. Probably this will have some marketable value as well. And they say don't carry the globe's load on your shoulders - how that is even possible?