Na Deich…

This is a special blog post for this week. Some days ago, YouPic picked up my 10^th Inspirational image. And for this occasion, I've decided to make a story of some sort and post it on YouPic. I did that a week or two ago (as YouPic allows to post Stories, some sort of blog posts, for specific users only).
So, I've created a post with these 10 images and a short story for each one of them. Even though some more inspirational images were also picked by YouPic before I even make such a post on YouPic itself, but I didn't include these images that were added to the inspirational list after the 10^th image. In the following lines (next section) you will be reading the post that I've created for YouPic, and in addition to that, you can click each image title to head to YouPic website for that specific image.
So, I hope you are all safe (and home) and I hope this posts adds something to the boring time spent indoors (but it's a must after all!). Hopefully 2 weeks from now I'll be able to make a post about some of the images that I've worked on, and been working on. I leave you now with Na Deich (the ten).

Na Deich

Well, as I received or gained my first 10 inspirational images, as picked by the editors or admins, I thought of doing this "story" here talking about these 10 images and some background story behind them. I'll try to keep it as short as possible (fingers crossed!). Notice that after marking my 10th inspirational image, two or more images were marked as inspirational as well, but these won't be included in this list, as it is only dedicated to the first 10. Since I don't remember the order of picking as "inspirational," I've decided to go here with an alphabetical order based on the image title. So, I hope you like this post.

1. Cinematic Lady Nature 

Cinematic Lady Nature

This is one image in a series of shots that I've been training myself with to create a "cinematic" look, or what is commonly known as "cinematic photography". This is an old image in fact, shot back in 2010, in the garden of "Thornbrook House B&B" where I stayed in Cashel, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, when I visited Ireland for the second time. There were many beautiful settings in this garden and it was a subject for some panoramas as well. I was a beginner back then and even at that time I had more focus on panorama-making rather than single shots (and people know me mostly for my panorama work rather than single shots). Anyway, old shots (even those neglected before) are some good targets to work, for learning new techniques in editing, like this one. I've processed this image in various ways before and called it "Lady Nature," thus I've just "cinematic" to the title here. In processing the image (which involved a lot of work with colors), I've decided to sharpen the statue only and leave the rest with a dreamy look in hope to add some depth and dimension to it.

2. Enlightenment

Enlightenment

This is a full panorama (or equirectangular panorama), encompassing 360 degrees horizontally and 180 degrees (almost) vertically. This panorama was shot inside the Chinese temple in the Scholars Garden of Staten Island, NY. I was visiting the state to meet some online friends back in 2012. Two major things that gave me a headache here: The strong highlight (meaning wider dynamic range) and centering the tripod. Despite the fact that I shoot most of my panoramas by bracketing and then merge the images into a single HDR panorama, yet, the dynamic range here was problematic as I didn't set up the range of the bracketing correctly. Good thing that some details can be observed still through the door, in the outside, but the sky should have been blue in fact. Centering the tripod for panoramas is quite essential if the place bears some symmetry like this one; And of course, I always screw that up. Few centimeters off, and you will be spending hours in Photoshop trying to balance and restore the symmetry of the place. Which I did here, though I'm not sure it is perfect still.

3. Good Morning Kuwait VIII

Good Morning Kuwait VIII

This image dates back to the time when I was more "capable" of going out alone in winter nights and shoot. The shot was taken right after I've finished working on a panorama at that spot; A spot that I've been checking for 3 months to plan for the shoot. This spot specifically was down at the beach and the only way to it was to get down some rocky slope (artificial) and to do that in the dark, with Retinitis Pigmentosa, is a great risk. Also, I had to wait for a proper time since this spot gets covered with water at high tide time, and because of that as well, I had to work as fast as I could working on the panorama to avoid the next high tide time, and the sunrise. I've finished the panorama just in time and the sun started to rise few minutes after I've finished. So, I hated to leave the place without shooting a "memorial shot" here. This shot was also printed and sent as a gift to a friend in the US. As for the title, this is the 8th image in a series of images I've taken in the morning here in Kuwait over a span of some years, and this just happened to be the 8th.

4. Greenery Lines

Greenery Lines

I remember this shot back in 2012, some weeks after coming back from my vacation in Staten Island, NY. I was then a member in a photography group and we managed to go to some mall (the Sharg Mall, a.k.a. Souk Sharg) after getting a permit. Having a permit here is somewhat hard if you are not a well-known personality or something. So, I didn't want to miss the chance. The first thing I did was to shoot a panorama inside the mall, and then headed outside trying to find some targets. This building was on the other side of the street and just behind the marina. It was under construction back then, and little did I know back then, that this building is the new headquarter for the Central Bank of Kuwait. The original shot underwent a critical work of cropping and perspective fixes to get it in this shape.

5. L-Orizzont

L=Orizzont

This is probably one of my most beloved shots. A short panorama done with a telephoto lens (Sigma 70-300mm) from the roof of Dar ta' Żebbi B&B where I was staying in the town of Qala on Gozo island, Malta. It was my last evening there as I had to leave the next day and the owners allowed me to go to the roof. I have to say it is such a magnificent view full of magnificent details. My aim was to capture the sun setting behind the church or chapel but I was not lucky (such shots need planning). The church is supposedly in the next town, either Xewkija or Nadur, but some followers on Instagram saw other images I've shot from that angle and said it is Xewkija. Originally, this panorama was wider, and colorful after tone-mapping from HDR (it had some blue tints in it as well). However, I've made another version which is seen here. I'm proud to say that I've even printed this panorama and submitted it as a gift myself to the Maltese embassy in Kuwait, and they called back to thank me. Originally, the title was "Nżul ix-xemx fuq Xewkija" (sunset over Xewkija) but I had to change the title in order to submit the photo to some contests.

6. Nox Salmiyah

Nox Salmiyah

Just for the records, Salmiyah (or Salmiya) is a city (or an area as we call it) which is mostly commercial by nature. The city overlooks the sea and probably famous for its corniche or plage road which goes up to the capital passing through the eastern coastal line of the country. At this spot many fast food chains reside and I think in this panorama Burger King shows up. It was my first nocturnal panorama ever, done back in 2012. I still remember that cold winter night. I was wearing 3 layers of clothes and because of my bad calculations and estimations, the water level started to rise as I was working and covered my feet completely. The panorama finished in around 2 hours, and the first thing I've done after finishing was to turn on the heater inside the car and point it downward to warm my feet up. This didn't stop me from doing another one later, though. The shoot was done in ISO 800; quite high for my cropped sensor. Thus, tone-mapping and processing this panorama was somewhat of a hurdle. Some stars did show in the dark night sky despite the city light (I did realize some patterns) but they got mixed with the digital noise in the image. Thus, when I tried to clean the noise, many stars were washed away as they were identified as noise grains.

7. The Multi-Tasker

The Multi-Tasker

I have to admit here that I wished I've named this shot "Houdini." This shot (and some others in the series) were made during a mood swing merged with boredom. I had a rest on my recliner and placed the camera in front of me with the a speedlite on its top (580EXII) and started to test the stroboscopic or multi function. I was trying to find some idea to do and shoot using this particular function in the speedlite, beside studying the relationship between the shutter speed, the number of flashes, and the frequency of flashes. I was continuously making shots moving my hands in front of my face or covering my face in a peek-a-boo movement. When I checked the images on my computer, the movement of the fingers looked mesmerizing, despite not being exactly the shape I wanted (I was aiming for symmetry). However, the background was problematic with details. Luckily, my wall is green, so I converted the whole image (and the rest in the series) to B&W and worked on hiding the details in the background by toning down the green tones and other colors. However, a special treatment for the eyes was required; I had to convert them into B&W separately to keep them glowing as they are in the color version (somewhat), because toning down the Red and Yellow tones turned the skin dark as I wished but it affected my brown eyes as well.

8. Toothache

Toothache

Never, ever, in my dreams, did I imagine such a quick selfie shot with a mobile would gain popularity on YouPic, and on Instagram and Facebook as well. It was a hard time for me when I shot this, as I had some nerves issues in my gum. I've covered my mouth with this scarf and shot a selfie merely to be posted on Facebook. I'm not an addict of selfies but I do like to take self-portraits, and I have to say, the easiness in which a smartphone is used is seductive somewhat. After loading the image onto my computer I spent quite a time to process it and convert it to B&W. The highlights and shadows had to be re-built (if I can say so), and the noise or grain level was quite high (and still). Shot with Huawei Mate 9, which is at the time of shooting this self-portrait, was indeed an "old" mobile.

9. Upper Ways

Upper Ways

This shot was taken at the "360 Mall" here in Kuwait; And I have to say that I really, really, hate this place. I don't find anything interesting about its architecture, but yet here is one that apparently people liked a picture of. I shot this after doing a panorama there in the early morning hours before visitors would come in (and yet some people were already doing their "daily" walking routine there!). After finishing the panorama, I didn't want to just leave. Thus, I've made this shot with my then-new modified camera for full spectrum shooting. I shot this using Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, which is completely manual and has no pocket for for infrared gels or filters at the back or front. I had to fit the infrared gel filter to its back through some grooves in the lens' back. I've placed the camera on the ground and raised the front of the lens using my mobile or some other object and made the shot. I think it was a bracketed shot but I didn't merge it for HDR and rather used only this single exposure after all.

10. Xemx ta' Qala

Xemx Ta' Qala

Another shot from Qala, in Gozo island, Malta, which I've visited only once, in 2015. Visiting Malta was tricky a bit since I'm used to a certain system in my visit to Ireland (3 times), which involve a lot of walking and taking pictures along the way, but this system was challenging with the terrain and with the ups and downs of the narrow roads of Qala. Thus, I usually don't wander far away from the B&B to take pictures, but it was that day that I've decided to really take the leap and wander off towards the seaside of the town. One thing captured my eyes there is the "fields" of cacti. Cacti is really a crop in Malta and not just some random plant growing here and there. I've took some shots at this location, through some broken brick wall I remember and I've lowered the camera down to the ground level. Made some horizontal shots but I didn't like the feel of it so I took some vertical ones, and I had no plans ahead that the sun would be in that position. Bracketed shots were taken and then HDR work had to be done of course. This image was subjected to some critique when I was a member in a photography group and I was asked to remove the sun to keep the focus on the raising cactus on the ground. However, when submitting this image elsewhere, and on YouPic of course, I didn't want to remove the sun because I always imagined the cacti on the ground making a leading line towards the sun in the sky. However, it might appear that there is a contrast and a distracting attention-seeking between the cacti and the sun. Nevertheless, I'm absolutely happy with this shot (and happy that I didn't get any thorns!)

That's it for now folks! I hope these stories added something useful or at least been amusing to read, specially under the current situation and circumstances of self-quarantine and home-stay. I'd love to give my appreciation and gratitude to all of you who appreciated my art, either by liking, sharing, commenting or starring. Thank you.

Projectoid…

Hectic weeks, and winter is finally here! I'm trying to absorb every single atom of this cold weather into my skin, as much as I can, before the arrival of the not-to-be-mentioned. Meanwhile, I was hanging on the tails of some of the last projects I was going on with, but I have to say the results are not what I've exactly expected; sort of disappointing. Thu, probably this would be a quick wrap about the latest. I didn't post anything last week since I was busy preparing and article for my other Arabic blog, so things here are a bit old stuff already that I didn't get the chance to post last week.

Heartoid

First of all, I wanted to redo the whole idea of essay photography (or photo story); just the first series of shots taken on the staircase. However, for some reason, things went erratic with my speedlite flashes beside having problems in positioning and managing the speedlite, while the location itself was not helping much really. The idea for redoing this was to stabilize the camera tilt and apply some of the notes after a critique from the founder and tutor (of the photo story workshop). I had to give up at the end, and rather quickly this time, because I had other plans in my head and also because of the frustration for working in this limited space! Needless to say, I had to return some of the items I've borrowed for long just for this project.

After finishing up with that project, I turned back to an old project which I've stopped temporary for the sake of the photo story project. That was about shooting transparent hearts and color them using Popsicle sticks.

Qtar 4

After successfully capturing some droplets from corn syrup with colored sticks reflected off it, I decided to work on a more meaningful idea instead of spreading droplets in a random way. Typically, for me, the object was a heart-shape; a transparent heart. I've tried hard to "draw" hearts using corn syrup itself, but that was not stable and could not be done technically. Then, tried ice (using heart-shaped molds for ice), but that way too fast to melt down. Freezing the corn syrup itself too was not good at all (it didn't freeze at all). Later, I tried mixing water with corn syrup and freeze the mix, which was a bit resistant to melting but still the mix was white and transparency was not enough. Finally, I've managed to work with gelatin and I have to admit that I made a little mistake here for freezing it after it was completely hardened, but the white layer on top was easy to break down with my finger and pushed away to get a relatively transparent heart but with some yellowish shade. This last solution was exactly what I need, since gelatin doesn't melt fast under room temperature. The problem with gelatin was its softness and it needs extra care to be extracted from the mold.

Single heart made by mixing water and corn syrup then frozen.

Instead of using one heart, I thought it is meaningful more to use two. Thus, I've completed a series of 6 shots for two hearts, each with a different color. I have to say though that some surplus on the sides of the hearts made it a bit awkward, but I didn't try to remove these additional parts in Photoshop (except for the purple hearts).

Two hearts made of gelatin. The red tones here are more flexible when suppressing the highlights reflections, unlike the water+corn syrup combination.

The purple hearts were cleaned on the left side removing some of the unnecessary parts on far left.

The final "product" was a cropped and cleaned (also darkened the background) hearts. For some reason I'm not sure of yet, it seems that the double gelatin hearts were stuck together even though each heart was a piece on its own! Anyway, all were uploaded to various stock sites, but to add some flavor to the process, I've made a collage of the 6 shots in a smaller size and uploaded to Canstockphoto website, only. Unfortunately, the status for all these images is pending for review. Things were faster on Canstockphoto. Some other stock sites, however, such as Dubistock (which is relatively new for me) did accept the series of hearts, but I didn't upload the collage there yet.

Hearts Collage

Mandaloid

I've been following some trend for mandala art on Instagram lately and I have to say that my love for symmetry (and probably my OCD-ish tendencies) pretty much like such art and shapes. It needs serious patience I suppose; something I disastrously lack. However, I tried my luck with such patterns digitally, once by converting some planet panoramas into line art (with specific technique) and once by working with typography, or doing art by letters. There is also one idea that I still didn't try yet which is drawing shapes by hand, scan them, and then repeating them in geometrical shapes digitally.

One of the doodles
turned into a vector

Scanning sketches and turning them into vectors is something I used to do from time to time, as I surprised myself for some of the doodles I used to do almost unconsciously in boring meetings and classes. Some of these are uploaded already to Canstockphoto (the only stock site up to which I upload vectors).

JOHN

The whole thing started when I was doodling in fact, and noticed how I can draw a heart by merging 2 J's, tip to tip. From that moment, I started to work digitally in Photoshop on combining letters, which later became full names combined in a complicated texture. The name "John" was first, then "Jesus." Well, I was thinking in advance here since Christmas season is coming and such vector might catch the eye and become trendy. Who knows! Finally, a whole complex design with the letter "J" alone. However, my real wish is to do an arabesque design some day, all out of geometry, just like that!

J
colors inversed

As for the time being, I'll try to think of more designs of that sort, with different names probably. All of the previous designs are converted to EPS, which should support vectors; it is the only format accepted by stock sites usually. Still, though, I think I'm doing something wrong here and I do need to re-check the processing of such files. I have to consider to if I should upload these vectors elsewhere, since Canstockphoto exclusive option had been removed, i.e. no special consideration or pricing for exclusive images, it seems.

Finale

I'm trying to push myself further with my camera now, trying different things other than my tendencies for panoramas, which, truth be said, I miss so much. Meanwhile, I still feel there is so much to be done with the music and songs of Sabah Fakhry (صباح فخري) and I keep having visits of thoughts and ideas by the lyrics of his songs, but the lot of them would be hard for me to do, specially those that might need a model. The only model I feel comfortable to work with, so far, is me. As for now, and finishing the experiments with gelatin, I've packed up my stuff which annoyed some people a lot for being there in the guest room spreading all over the place. Until I get another trend of thought and an idea to work, I might as well get my stuff down again... but I'll try to do it first in the small space available in my condensed room.
As days pass by, the mention of travels comes in my face wherever I go and head. People talk about it, even my horoscope talks about it, as well as tarot cards. Where to? Can I afford it really? Would I be able to manage things with Mom and the family before I go? Many things to think about before giving a concrete answer.

JESUS

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.

Halt...

For some reasons I don't understand, this week had been a disaster somehow with lot of problems on my head - home, work, relations, you name it. For this reason, I can't post much for this week. I couldn't do much work with Geltani nor my camera, except for few self portrait to test my flashes (and some items got broken as well). Guess it is one of these weeks that you wish you are just on a vacation, or simply slept and never woke up till it is over.

I've noticed in the statistics of my blog that I've got many visits from Germany for posts when I posted my Alexander story, some 3 years ago or more. If this person is reading this now, I'd be glad to give a direct link for the whole story of Alexander here:

http://www.writing.com/main/portfolio/item_id/1667340-Alexander

In this link, you will find the English narration arranged in six chapters, as well as an Ayvarith transliteration of the story with sound files after each verse to listen to the language. I'm not a story writer but Alexander was a project to form a dictionary and start making more words for Ayvarith. Unfortunately, the website for Ayvarith was pulled down after Yahoo! stopped supporting GeoCities. I do have the dictionaries still and might one day upload everything back in a new design; it just needs time that I don't own right now...

I'm going to post this for now and have some rest. Things are getting scarier...

New Heights...

What a mix of a week. Slow and fast, but nevertheless, I'm happy it's over already. To me at least since it's the last day here and the beginning of a weekend by tomorrow. Started out the week with a drama when the AC stopped working suddenly and the weather was humid, at a time I was already planning to do some experimenting with my camera on the roof. Anyway, after fixing the AC and after having a shower in sweat (then a shower with real water), everything got back to normal. Literally speaking, on Monday, July 11th, I did NOT sleep at all, and even went to work the very early morning without sleeping prior to that (I was awake since 7 p.m. the Sunday before). Could not sleep until the next day, Tuesday, at around 2 a.m..
I got some story here to tell, but before I go on talking about it I got to announce that I got a new tripod now (headless) and I think I've should have had this long time ago. It fits my VR-head perfectly giving more stability and on the other hand I can fit a previously-purchased tripod head (or panning head) separately. This pan head has one handle to rotate around making it easier (and faster) to handle rather than using two controls for panning sideways and vertically. I couldn't find this brand on the net or on B&H, but it's called Fancier, followed by some model number.
Just as a little review, the tripod is extremely useful for my work specially when it comes to panoramas, and it extends to some lengths longer than my previous tripods (only matched maybe by my monopod). The camera can fixed on the central column of the tripod either way (up and down). The weight is not an issue, but I have to say it is a bit heavier than my previous aluminum tripod. The legs can be stretched out to low levels as well (giving me some ideas now).
Now to the bad points: It doesn't have a handle to carry around. To carry it around I'd have to put it in its case. It does not have a lock around the central column to hold the 3 legs firmly, making sliding legs a possibility.
I've measured the full length of the tripod extended, with central column completely stretched, and having my VR-head above that, it gives out a length of around 204cm (~ 6.69 ft), and that inspired me for a little thing to do, as I will explain later. Now let's start the little story...

1. Chapter One: Idiocy:

Yes; Idiocy. I admit (but maybe you need to look in the mirror in case you are laughing now, ahem). Early this week, I was going on and on trying to figure out a way to extract a vertical panorama out of a full panorama, which I did successfully, with delicate calculations and procedures. To explain this, I might need to draw a little diagram.

Panorama Plan

Instead of using the slide numbers that I usually get after converting to HDR images for the panorama stitching, I'm using simply numbers for angles. The outer circle is for the horizon or 0 degrees tilt, and the inner circle is for 45 degrees upward tilt. There is no need to use a downward 45 degrees tilt when we talk about vertical panoramas, but maybe in certain occasions it might add some depth by putting more of the background. The middle point "Z" here means the Zenith of the panorama. I will be using the notion "^" for angles on the inner circle.

Now, an example to work with. The first target to work with was the Ardeaglais, as I explained in the previous post last week. This vertical panorama followed with the same plan, but as a comparison I will put it here again...

Suas agus Síos (up and down)

To make out this panorama, I've started with frontal angles first [12,1,2] and start from there going upward [12^,1^,2^]. At the zenith, I realized one slide from the zenith won't be enough, so I must take others on the side, i.e. [10^,4^]. Now, the hard part, which had to be done outside in Photoshop then plugging in the results into PTGui. The coming part includes the slides at angles [8,7,6] at 0 and 45 tilts (notice that I keep the order from left to right). I had to rotate these slides upside down to mimic the view of upside down (duh!) because simply, I couldn't change the rotation of these slides within PTGui without affecting the whole stitching process. The stitch was successful, to some degree, and the image was there online.

Later on, I thought that this is not enough. The vertical panorama was too thin to my eyes. So I decided to include more width, and that is by taking angles 11 and 3, and also 9 and 5. This inclusion meant I had to include more from angles 10 and 4, and other work related to flip the images of the lower side and... wait a minute! huh! How come I didn't see this coming...

The Hanging Dominican
more width added.

2. Chapter Two: Spark of Light:

In case you wonder why I named the last chapter "Idiocy" and didn't know why yet, well, here it is! After working with the above panorama, The Hanging Dominican,  I realized that I'm practically... using the full set of the panorama! Should I flip some and keep some? Is it really easier than I thought? It's really amazing how we lose our conscious when we concentrate about details of procedures and forget about the whole picture or concept! The whole procedure of flipping images before stitch, picking the proper slides, and all the fuss in the memory because of that - all of that could have been avoided by a simple touch. Changing the pitch parameter for the spherical panorama and point it upward to the roof! As simple as that! The width of the panorama can be controlled then later on by cropping in Photoshop after all.

Monkish Design
full spherical panorama with changing pitch orientation

3. Chapter Three: Complicated Simplicity:

Now, this is something related to panoramas but it's not related to the previous points before. I explained above some aspects of my new tripod and I had plans to try it out on the roof. I thought such good height that this tripod can provide for me would be a good start to see how it works with a simple panorama from above. I had to climb on the highest point on the house and from there spread out my tools. My aim was a simple panorama; a 360, i.e. one horizontal line.

Homeland Summer

Despite its simplicity, the stitching took me hours to fix, and I'm still not satisfied with the results. Technically, the process of taking the panorama took me less than 5 minutes, literally. To take this panorama, I used a method that I've read about before but never used it, which uses metering for highlights and shadows of the scene with a fixed aperture (f-number) and then take the shutter speeds that you get from metering, and work in Manual mode, fixing the shutter speed to something in between the two shutter speeds (of the highlights and of the shadows). This way would make a coherent exposure across the whole set, but it didn't work quite well probably because I'm in the open sun (and I don't want to talk about the heat).

For some reasons unknown to me, there was always break in lines even in this simple panorama, and optimization would fix this but with some weird stretching lines (caused by distorting some images to fit some areas down there). The biggest problem was one of the slides didn't have control points to stitch with others, and fixing my own control point did make the situation worse. I tried to optimize the exposure in hope that would fix the control points problem (exposure might be a factor for not recognizing some points or pixels on adjacent images, sometimes), but that didn't work out. There was some crop in some of the slides, but it was not much of a big deal (one to three pixels I believe) so this reason was rolled out.

Finally and just to get the process going on, I gave up stitching in HDR. I simply tone-mapped the whole set, and stitched from there. The set was stitched nicely without any loss in control points! Since I'm satisfied with the colors already, I thought it's not needed to save the control points and stitch back in HDR to tone-map again. No need for this. There were some broken lines and optimization saved the work, but with some stretching in the lower portion (can be apparent even after cropping it in the image above). Left now with problems of noise and grain pixels which were hard to remove without losing some details. I still don't understand why such problems occurred in such a simple panorama as this one...

My books arrived now and I can "waste" some of my time reading. Three books they are:

 

 

Of the three, the Night Photography book is the one that captures my interest the most. Did I mention that I have an artificial language to look after?...

WOHO!

It is finally here! The translation of Alexander's story the 6th part is over! WOHO!
I won't say it is without mistakes of course and the lines are lesser than 3000 after I've discovered many mistakes in the order of numbers, but it is a relief to finish all of this! The total was 125 pages! My hand hurt so badly while trying to type this entry because I was speed-writing and tryin to finish everything before I leave my work place, and I don't want to leave without typing something for my blog here.


Now other load of stuff to come in, basically, the transliteration and along with that I suppose there would be lot of corrections as well. Then, we have to add the new created words into the dictionary, and maybe while doing the previous tasks I would search and think about some new way to establish the webpage back again somewhere! Uh, one stress after another!


I'm reaching some interesting parts in my reading about HDR and I think there are loads of information that I need to consider from now on when I work with HDR images in the future... near future. Anyway, it is time now to get back home and read the new Flash manual a bit and see what I can do with it! By the way, never play with a Flash without wearing sunglasses. This is just a bit of an advice, take it or leave it, on your own risk!!!

Still Greasing Up...

Despite my work with the translation, I still need more activity on my way. I hardly translated 2 verses today.
My sleeping time is a bit of a mess and I really don't know how am I driving to home after going out of this place. When I get back home I forgot all about this tiresome time and I start working on my photos and trying to get out something out of them. I got really frustrated and annoyed with the many refusal for my images after spending hours on creating them and enhancing them. I can't understand what do they really want. Moreover, I found out that some people actually submitted shaky images and still these images were accepted into some sites. I feel that whatever I do, is useless and helpless.

Yet, with my work with the translation, such work does not require much thinking, but merely making up words and direct work, while my work on the story is still hanging into the air without anything I can write with. My mind is empty of ideas and I can't continue writing just right now. My mood does not help and makig shadows over my head. Ideas for poetry hover around my head, and yet I can't gather them in a concrete way.

With a time of boredom waiting for the time to leave my work place, I started to sketch some lines across a tiny white piece of paper which later on developed to some imaginative sketch made of lines and dots. I think I shall scan these later. I did not make any topic out of thefirst lines in the first place but seems my hand is working all by itself.

I took some shots today around our building, maybe I shall pin these down here later as well. I got lot of work waiting for me out of the work place itself. My real work with my beloved photos. At least it is something I do like doing...

I got a surprising feeling out of a sudden, that whatever I do or whereverI go... I'm alone.

Back Home...

Here we are again... home. I arrived at Kuwait almost at 1:30AM Friday. Ironically the next day I had to at night time and in the middle of the heavy traffic around the airport to get my sister who arrived back from Iran. All what you need is few moments to get your pressure built up again as it was before your vacation, but to grease my engine and get me out of the vacation mood I need a bit more time. I'm doing things slowly at the current time... my room is a mess as I left it before leaving to Ireland.

I got myself an external harddisk to help me with storing the images from the laptop and work on them with the PC and my sweet ol' Photoshop CS4! I got really sick with the laptop and its speed and the old software too. The panoramic capabilities and HDR composition is just "SUPER" with CS4!

20GB of RAW images were transferred to my new external hard disk... some of them are shaky though, but I might get around that later on. I'm working right now on some panoramic views that I want to fix and get ready to print them out and frame them, and send them to the owner of The Waterfront, as a "little" gift for such beautiful place and vacation.

I won't go on telling other stuff that happened when I arrived here, but not everything was pleasant. Continuing my activities, I want to visit Failaka island (hopefully on next Thursday) and might check for Miskan island later on or in the same day IF I could. I need to grease up myself again and get to work on stopped project now... the translation of Alexander's story... the Blackened Image story (which I have to read again to build the chain of events in my mind back again)... also there are books waiting for me to be read! I think there is no time for heart affairs right now... as I am just... exhausted...

Greasing The Engine...

The first day of week here, and it starts up with a headache. It was indeed an unbelievable disaster just to open the side door and get into the building and head to my office! All what I did is, instead of waiting for this damn sick old man to open the door in 15 minutes, I just figured out that I can get into the side door and open the inner door of the labs and then be in the main hall to head to my office, and what a big issue was it that they are working on a request to change the lock of the door! Hail Stupidity!

I worked today slowly on the translation and made out only one verse, which took me almost like 3 hours from the early hour of the morning. I think this is the only verse I'm going to translate for today. I hardly put my mood into it and there were some words that I could hardly go around and made up from previous words in the dictionary. I get even sicker when I think that I have to build a website again, or more accurate, a "webpage" that is. I didn't decide yet on which domain shall it be.

I thought of some plans for tomorrow. I won't be here at work, but I'm going to do the fingerprint thing and leave. I was thinking of going to Failaka and get back if the time permits just before the official attendance check-out, but I don't have the schedule for August. I don't know if I'm able to get it today. I can hardly wait for my vacation at the end of september, which reminds me that I have to buy lot of stuff. A suitable suitcase (the type you drag around) and a backpack I think is better than a handbag. I pray so everything goes as smoothly as possible. It is my first time to travel alone, and wished if I have some company... at least to chitchat along the way.

My only joy for the time being is to look for something to snap with my camera and play around with it. I, somehow, don't even have the power to write down my diaries. It was so dusty yesterday and in such weather I feelthe urge to sleep more than usual. I can't remember when I was awake yesterday and I even woke up at 9 p.m. just to sleep again after 3 hours and barely wake up this morning to go to work. One reason why I hate the yellow! However, I would need to stay late tonight to go on for some photo snapping by night, if I was able to. In that case, I would neglect the idea of visiting Failaka at all, but I have to fix my sleeping time so that I would be awake all night until morning time to do the fingerprint sickening thingy.

I was wandering under the dome this morning, again, and I feel that I didn't take my enough from snapping at this glass work. I might do it again some time later. I'm spending the time in my office right now, trying to write something extra for my story on writing.com. This is better than working in a useless job, and useless place like this college, which has useless future.

Stimulus

Quiet weekend. Not going out or anything but sitting here facing my photoshop and mangling with my photos. I woke up at almost 9 p.m. last night and stayed awake until the morning of today. Diarrhea was attacking me now and then. I think it is a consequence of the change in weather or the wave of dust we had lately here. However, by the morning time and just before the sunrise begins, I started the engine and went over to the beach beside some restaurants there to try to catch a glance of the Kuwait Towers and convert the images into an HDR. Boy, was I sick of the situation! Kids and families were sitting there before the break of dawn and playing soccer as well! The most amazing interaction was, when I was pointing my camera in some direction and then suddenly and icecream guy looked at me and just stood there and not budging. I know what's the definition of being rude but this guy can be set as an example!

However, I left the beach in a hurry as I couldn't catch much and the sun started to rise already. I think HDR are best when you have a dark atmosphere somehow and not to catch photos under plain lights. This is my impression at least. I might post some photos for the Kuwait towers later on though.
After leaving the beach I was heading to some market to buy some stuff for my own breakfast but unforutnately on the way I felt such a severe pain that made me get a U-turn and head back. On the way back though, and despite the pain, I decided to stop a moment after I glanced some view that captured my attention, and so I decided to snap it. Of course, after snapping, the work at home starts:

The picture above was taken from several angles but I think this is the best angle it was taken with. At home, the picture was composed into HDR and then several processes took place to enhance colors and give some other effects to the image. This scene reflects the old and the new Kuwait and whether we are building or knocking down our heritage to be a nation without a history. The old muddy house below dates back somehow to the 1950s at least, judging from the way it was structured.

Last night as well, and since I was not going out anywhere, I spent most of the time playing around at some of the photos I took of the dome, that I snapped on the 12th. I had a problem since the best image I had and composed into an HDR was in fact not centered and the right side of the image was cut. After many, many, many trials and hours of working on it, I think I got a fine result by now, although I can't say it is as pretty as the one I did before and posted in the last entry. This image was composed of sticking and gluing parts of other images together and doing a short panoramic merge for 2 images and then taking parts from other images to fix the lost area. After all, I took the complete half (left side) of the image and tried to complete the right side with it. When all failed because of the light and shadow in the image itself, I got some success, when I converted the image into a rectangular coordinates then back to polar (guys who deal with photoshop know this from the distort menu). This move filled in some empty spaces in the image which made me crop it later on with some equality on the sides.

Just few hours ago, I was also working on the panoramic view, taken from the same hall of dome, and despite the colors, it had in fact lot of noise and remove them I had to sacrifice somehow with the sharpness of the image, which makes me reluctant a bit to submit it to stock photos sites. They are hard to accept such "normal" photos even! The real size of the image is supposed to be 240cm tall and around 110cm wide, and sorry can't convert this to feet right now!

Notice that the "pipe" looking thing at the top of the image, is in fact the pillar that was just behind the camera. The photo shoot was running from the ground level (at 0 degrees) and I was pushing the camera upward for few degrees between every shoot. At the end, when the camera was at the final position (90 degrees) you can see the result is a pillar going on the top of the image!
i have to make some cleaning for the images taken in the past 3 days. I have 3 folders so far and the PSD (photoshop format) files are mixed with JPGs. The size of the 3 folders reached almost 2GB!!! I have to remove stuff, and store it the usual way in its own folder to be packed later on on a DVD, but that does not mean my work with the dome is over yet. I'm still planning to look more into it so I might get a new idea and new construction that can be made with what I have so far.
An idea just occured to me, I might make a shoot of my own work place from the outside. But such a building is a sensitive place to be posted in stock photos!

It had been some days now and I didn't do any work with my Alexander's story, which made this blog more like an artistic place for photography and not the conlang of Ayvarith. The translation is almost stopped. I have to think of some way to stimulate me on writing more of the translation! Now, with my partner's coming back from vacation, I think I might have some time for myself and try to write down both, the Alexander's translation and the Blackened Image story. The month of fasting, Ramadhan, is on the doors by next week or so, thus I don't know how am I going to do, specially that I need some stimulants (coffee, redbull, ...etc). I pray my mood would be in a better situation by the coming days. Mood is very important in writing, and for this I didn't write any poems lately, and my pace with other activities is downed. All what I'm waiting for, for now, is my vacation...