TGIT...

Been one of the most catastrophic holidays I've encountered so far. Four days of complete boredom. No going out because of the jams (jams of celebrations), and barely doing some activities out of home in the mornings, and now, trying to organize my room little bit. TJ, cleans his room! This is what life is coming to!
I've taken the chance one morning to go to the beach, again, to try out some time-lapse with the sunrise and this time with my intervalometer. Because I was so lucky, and please note the sarcasm, the weather was foggy at the day in which I was able to go out in the morning. That was the morning of Friday, February 25th. I'm trying to pull myself back to photography on the beach. I didn't do that in a very long time now, specially at times of low tide. Sometimes, I do hate my work because of missing such moments in my life.
Anyway, In the fog there were some chances worthy for taking. The turbulent movement of the sea (high tide with some wind made the waves crush against the rocks on the shore), made some kind of effect when I processed the images in HDR, similar to the effect of using a slow shutter speed (long exposure) with moving water...

Terra Natantes

Floating Land

I almost got myself wet to take this photo, going a bit deeper into the beach and closer to the water. It was wet sand already and the air blowing almost pushing me towards the water. The fisheye was the first option here to add some weird depth to the image, but I was thinking of getting even lower than this, but the conditions didn't help. I didn't want to cover myself in mud!

The effect of the sea turbulence was greater when I snapped directly into the sea from the top of the rocks, just at the back of some restaurant (I think it was pizza hut)...

Fogland

This shot specifically was merged into HDR under ProPhoto space. I was kind of "missing" working in that space. Yet, because I was concerned about uploading this image into some websites that do not support such space, I had to pull back and put it into Adobe 1998. Because of this change of space, the bluish hue turned dull, and I had to add extra layers to put it back as I want it. By the way, the concrete structure in the middle is in fact a sewage outlet pouring into the sea! And despite this, and despite all the warning signs, people still do go to swim in that area! However after taking that picture I've been snapping with my 70-300mm macro lens, zooming into the rocks trying to catch a splash of water, and I had to use high ISO, as high as 2000...

Splash

Monday now, February 27th and the last day in this boring long holiday, I've decided to go out a bit and do some activities. Had lunch in my favorite Chinese restaurant and at day time, the beauty of the decorations is pronounced more. The only special thing at night time inside the restaurant is the spot lights which make it more interesting. My brain was wandering off in style of a daydream about possible shots inside the restaurant. I made a plan that I might ask the owner for her permission to take pictures from the inside and the outside for this restaurant. The facade of the restaurant MUST be photographed at night, otherwise I believe the image won't be that interesting at all. Even some thoughts for a panorama went on but a complete panorama should be taken away off the center to show a special Chinese-like lantern in the middle of the restaurant, hanging from the ceiling. Being under that won't be of much interest (not even in a QTVR).

On the same day, I've went for a car wash and it was such a crowded place. Took me around one hour to get out of that place! However, I managed to settle the tripod and the camera with the timer remote control in front of the seat next to me and started to take shoots for every 5 seconds. The situation was shaky and the camera fell down with the tripod on my first turn out of the station, thus I had to drive slowly and holding the tripod with one hand while driving. At home, I managed finally to combine the slices to make a simple time-lapse, without any sounds of course...

I still need to learn more about these codecs and formats. It took me some time just to get it in a suitable size! Now since this one is done, I thought of the previously done manual time-lapse for the sunset from the roof. This time-lapse was done in HDR and then tone-mapped, but something went wrong in some slides making the sides of the JPG files go dark or bright (all HDR slides were processed under same settings with a batch process command). I had to struggle a bit with this one to fix the size of the file and the dimensions of the clip.

The timer remote control is a must in time-lapse photography, and I thought in the beginning that I can't take bracketed images with a time-lapse process. I was wrong. Don't blame it on me though because the manual didn't mention any tricks about that. I emailed the support center for Canon-US, and they gave the answer in the very same day (thank you guys):

Thank you for contacting Canon product support regarding the Timer
Remote Controller TC-80N3.  We value you as a Canon customer and
appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

This is possible, though a combination of features on the camera and on
the timer.  On the camera, set the drive mode to continuous, and
configure Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB).  In this configuration,
you can hold down the shutter and take three bracketed shots in rapid
sequence, and then the camera will stop after the third shot even if you
continue to hold the shutter.  On the remote, configure your intervals,
and then also configure the exposure time for 3-4 seconds.  This will
"hold the shutter button down" long enough for the three bracketed shots
on the camera.  This should achieve the effect you are aiming for.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance with your
Timer Remote Controller TC-80N3.

Thank you for choosing Canon.

Sincerely,

Dirk
Technical Support Representative

Such trick was not really mentioned in the manual and I never thought about it. The way that the manual put it is just so specific and to the point. Every mode in the intervalometer has a job to do and that's it. However, I tried what the support suggested and it worked! I spent a nice one hour on the roof of my house just relaxing beside my camera and tripod in the nice breeze while reading. Eventually I had a nap on my chair that got me a stuff neck!



There were 24 slides of HDR after all, and each slide (or bracketed sequence) is taken in an interval of 3 minutes. I wished to make it smoother than this really but I was afraid of my CF memory card limitations. I might try shorter time in some other occasions. The tone-mapped images were then combined into the video you see above and I had to struggle again to limit the size and other things. Now what came as a surprise to me is the following: I was trying to combine several slices into one image (not a movie), as I was aiming to make an image showing the sun on the move. I used the Photoshop's blending, and I never had in my mind (which should be something natural but I think I was dreaming or something) - never had in my mind that the first thing blending command in Photoshop would do is to eliminate the difference to make one coherent image. I'm talking here about "image stack" blending and not "panorama blending". Image stacking is usually used for increasing depth of field when you take several images with changing focus zone (specially with macro techniques). However, the result was astonishing. A nice blend of colors (which is more vivid in ProPhoto but I had to put it down to Adobe 1998)...

 Sunset

Not all the 24 slides were combined actually, but I picked them out on an interval of 3 (i.e. 1, 4, 7, ...etc). This is because I had in my mind the movement of the sun in the sky, but I never thought that Photoshop will simply eliminate the sun in ALL of the slides and keeps up with the color blend. I think this unexpected result is a lesson! I think it would be something similar to the Exposure Fusion (EF) technique that I used before to blend several images with different White Balance (WB) and not different Exposure Value (EV) as it is the usual with HDR images. However, I will try to work on my previous aim, that is creating an image with several suns in it. I did it before but it was simple that time and not many frames involved.

Today, I've finally managed to stabilized the tripod inside the car on the back seat. I did take a video already this morning and I'm aiming for time-lapse from inside the car. In practical use, I've discovered that 18-55mm is better than 15mm fisheye lens when taking a video from that angle. Mainly, this is because the tripod is so tied to the back seat and laid back a bit and a fisheye would show unneeded parts of the car inside. Still though, I might want to achieve such effect later. I learned also that it is better to leave the EV level at 0, instead of raising it to +1 to brighten the things inside the car. The front (the road) was so bright in the videos. Is this a trend towards videography that came over me? This is a bit scary 'cos mainly I've always hated to take or watch videos (movies and shows, ...etc) - but only a few of them. It's fun though with people looking at you thinking how weird you are!

Now Ayvarith-wise. Fortunecity, which was my last hope, made me sick now. I can't upload anything to that website and barely able to upload some pictures. No audio no video, just plain! I'm looking now further to see any place that can host such files. I don't want to squander my files here and there, like building the web page in Fortunecity and host the audio files somewhere else. It's going to be a tiresome process that way. For this problem now, I'm sort of delaying my recording for the Ayvarith text of  Alexander's story. I've finished recording the samples for the Preface (samples of how to say the letters), and all I need now, a place to host them. Yuck!

I'm trying to get myself busy as much as possible despite my physical capabilities, but well, I don't know where I'm heading at... man, I need a shower...

Alexander 5, V3.

Nothing like having some fresh air on the roof of your house. Try it out! It was a bit tiresome just go be there, but it's fun. Of course this is nothing for people who climb mountains just for fun, isn't it?
The idea occured to me at the last minute and like 45 minutes before the actual sunset and that gave not much time to do much and it was a blind shot. Hopefully I can take some more images today (if I have the strength to climb up again with my fear of heights!).
However, the photos were taken every like 5 minutes or less, and I was aiming to get it all later on stacked. Later on I find out that this idea is not a good one and not a good substitute for a good long-exposure practice; which I'm thinking of performing today. I bought some black hard papers (maybe A2 size) in order to do some stuff with each one of them. Mainly, I think I'm going to make a black box which I can use to cover the lens sometimes in cases of long exposures.
Back to the photos taken, I've set the white balance mainly to Tungsten to give some coolish effect on the hot colors in the sky. I took bracketed exposures (3/2), i.e. 3 shots between -2 and +2. Most of the images are best by themselves. However, I tried and merged "some" images (in EXR) and blended them as a stack in Photoshop. The result was kind of nice but unfortunately, I could not fix the banding in the image;

 

Combined of several Photos, the banding around the sun was hard to remove.

You might ask why do I want to combine several images together here. Well, after some time in working in the process of the sunset, the street lights went on automatically (as they work with photo- or light-sensors). When the lights turned on the sun was already gone, and I thought it would be somehow a nice effect to make them on, while making the sun still in heaven. Anyway, I think 2 images for this are enough or maximum 3 images stacked and blended are enough, rather than the 5 or 6 images blended here, which increases the banding.

  

Sun in heaven still. Photomatix tone-mapping.

 
 

Sun almost below horizon and lights still not ON! Photomatix tone-mapping.

The last image was actually tone-mapped and been processed in many adjustment layers to add or remove some hues and colors. I missed the old days when I used to do this to my normal JPG images (specially before I get my tripod and being able to shoot for HDR with a stable camera in RAW!).

I had some pretty load of work today in the labs, with FISHes. I guess you can imagine how stinking it was. I was gridning a complete mass of frozen sardines and putting powdered samples in bottles and sealing the bottles with some special wraps and tapes, and with all of this and that, I'm certain now that I've been watched already. I don't like this at all, but let's see where it leads...

__________

49. the gate opened as it was by itself without anyone
50. and no one showed up behind the gate but only dust
51. Alexander and his one hundred men got in slowly
52. and wandered around between old houses without doors
53. so old they were like if time forgot about them long ago
54. until they reached a hill where a plain extended behind it
55. and from above the hill and they looked upon the plain
56. they saw lot of people work in their green fields
57. men and women with ancient clothes were working together
58. all of them were old, as old as the village they live in it
59. then Alexander decided to go down to them and talk to them
60. and so all men and women stopped working in the field
61. and they stared at him with his men in a strange way
62. then one old man with red garments approached to them
63. and after greeting them with peace, he asked them a question
64. about their identity and their origins and their story
65. Alexander agreed to tell him everything if he tell their story
66. and the old man started to tell about his people and the village
67. and he said: we are the branches of goodness of ancient times
68. we lived here for hundreds and hundreds of years before
69. we are the followers of a prophet whose people sinned
70. and we were protected by the walls of this ancient village
71. while the remaining of our people were turned into mutants
72. and we banished them there to a land called Zimúrá

5 hours!

As I tried hard to use this 3 days weekend as much as I can, I decided to go to the shore Yesterday's morning and try to give it a shot. The results were disappointing. I tried to be there just before the sunrise. I reached the place before the sunrise, but unfortunately, there were some people who were like camping in the place, and this is not so good to catch things with your camera. This is one thing that counts for the virtues of winter time! No people in early morning because of the coldness and yet you get nice sunset and sunrise views and colorful skies... in summer, nothing.
I didn't give up though, so I tried my best ot use the photos somehow. The HDR trials (with 3 successive shots in 3 different exposures) failed because of the little breeze, the bushes started to move making unstable shot. The tone mapping also did not work, as I am no so experienced with it and maybe the exposure gaps between shots must be something greater than 1/3 stop? I'm not sure.
To not turn the situation into a complete disaster, I decided to use the magic of photoshop here and try to do something here, and you can see the result above in the beginning. The sunrising wasn't so obvious as the sun started to raise up behind some clouds of dust or so, and the sundisk was not obvious until 30 minutes after the beginning of the rise!

The great disappointment however, was when I got back home and worked a bit with my pc, some photo processing and some games, and then went to bed. I was awake for like 12 hours or more, but after all I couldn't sleep more than 5 hours. The timing is almost a constant for me... the 5 hours thing is the fixed sleeping time however tired I might be. Today, I slept more than 5 hours but in fact, I was just flipping in bed napping and waking up every 30 minutes, but essentially, I slept for 5 hours only!
I don't think I will be able to do anything with my story or the translation in this holiday, but I will keep on playing and playing! I might consider stopping my fasting just to take a cup of coffee and write something by day time. The cold AC in this room freezes my fingers and, well, I guess I must stop typing this!