Infra Selfie…

A week has passed of Ramadhan already. Things are going fast, and I'm trying to cope with the new timings. So far my body is doing nice job but it requires more sleep as usual. Anyway, this is the story of my life I presume.
Meanwhile, my timing seems compressed, specially that Ramadhan this year comes in the beginning of summer, which leaves me with few hours at night to do all I can do before trying to sleep (again) to get up next morning for another course of... misery. However, I had some time to do some stuff at least…

Infra Selfie

I've been trying this for 2 weeks; shooting myself (i.e. taking a selfie not with a gun) while using the infrared filter. My infrared filter is B+W with threshold of 650nm, which makes it penetrable by Reds beside infrared. Anyway, this is suitable so far for some shooting using Speedlites.  They are good sources for infrared rays by the way.

In my previous trials, I used some low f-numbers, and hence a shallow depth of field and a blurry image most of the time. I had to lower the f-number (around f/5.3) to allow more light to get in while shooting the 2 speedlites (580EX II and 430EX II) at full power. Narrowing the aperture yielded no image at all!
This time, however, I changed positions and I got the speedlites as close as possible to my face; it is dangerous somewhat - you can feel the heat wave rushing on your skin after each flash strike. At this point, I've set the f-number to f/8 (and I would go to f/10 if I had the chance to). The results were sort of acceptable. I know some people who liked these shots! Future model? Nah... not with this belly.

While processing the set of images, I was reluctant to fix the white balance as I usually do with infrared images. Mostly, I would just use the Infrared profile specifically made for such images and fix the saturation and contrast starting from there without adjusting the white balance. This kind of filter gives a pleasant hue and shade of Reds. Just for the sake of it, I did try to adjust the white balance as on the image above (and that would shift the colors to almost black and white image).
I faced some problems in processing like banding because of the excessive saturation at some point, but at the end I got to find some good shots. My dream now lies in shooting selfies using the Kodak gel filter or something like it, which has a threshold of 1000nm (more opaque to visible spectrum). That would require more flash power! If my face almost got burned for using speedlites at close distance to my face, imagine what kind of setting should be used if I used such filter of 1000nm threshold? Of course, with rising the ISO level too…

Syllabary

I've been working slowly with my Geltani project but at least I did something. Simon Ager, author of Omniglot, seems interested in this script, and thus I'm going to prepare a template for it in order to be displayed on Omniglot. Even though he did send me some ready-made templates to be used, but they don't fit into the scheme of Geltani (Geltani is Chinese-like script). Moreover, the templates he sent me were for alphabetical scripts, while Geltani contains a syllabary system along with the characters (somewhat mimicking the Katakana system to Japanese).

Scan of the syllabary
Click to enlarge.

I've managed so far to adjust and fix some issues with the syllabary system and I think I'm satisfied with it right now. The plan now is to make crops out of this scheme and put every character in a table. It's going to take a really long time I suppose! Probably the best way to do this is to make a document file and then save it as HTML.
What is left now is to re-check the phonetic values for some characters; something I was planning to do all the week but couldn't!

Finale

A lot in my brain right now; sketches, photos, designs. I don't know from where I should start. In the meantime, I've continuing my previous work with re-making old panoramas (specially those from my 2010 trip to Ireland, Co. Tipperary) to try to find more projections.
There is a pending trip to take place in September, to Oman, which would last for around 4 days doing photography projects there with the group, and I'm thinking already of having a real vacation after this trip. Not to Ireland this time, I don't think so, but it's just an idea and I have to think about it fast.
My mind and time is occupied as I'm doing an Arabic blog post about macro photography for Arabic readers - dedicated to beginners. I was hoping to post this one Wednesday but seems the amount of information included and the images needed there would need another week of working out. The only time I work on this Arabic article is when I'm, well, at work. Beside that, I'm trying to do some of the doodles and sketches that I've planned before. Not many pleasant results so far! I didn't like my own work…
So much here and so much there. I feel like breaking everything and just leave it all behind me here. This mind is cuffed to many things. I think not much is left for me here already…

Ag Éirí
(rising)

Stop!

Another week without much activities with photography, but I've finally got my new notebook for conlangs. I've started pinning notes about basic elements of Geltani for the time being. Along with Geltani, there is a syllabary that I had to develop to write foreign names to Geltani. You can imagine this as being a Japanese writing Katakana along with Kanji. Will discuss that later.

I do have my own plans and pace for my own photography venue. With Mom's schedules taking 3 days from my week for dialysis and also because of my fasting right now for the month of Rajab (which I hope it would continue till the month of Sha'ban and then into Ramadhan), I barely find the power and the time to work with my camera outside or even think of something. Under these circumstances I've decided to abandon the Redbull project. Despite the fact that I've already prepared a plan to take 5 images telling a simple story for a A Day in Kuwait, yet the deadline is on May 20^th and I barely did something. However, there were other reasons that made me neglect this project:

• The deadline is too close as stated above and I don't have enough time with my current responsibilities.
• Some of my plans might require permissions and I'm absolutely in no mood to have a conflict with authorities or any hardships concerning that kind of activities outdoors.
• The conditions of Redbull were not so clear and frankly, I don't feel safe to submit my work to them.
• I had enough from time pressure and contests.

However, just for the fun of it (and who knows I might do these ideas later) I did sketch a plan for the process with 5 images and each image telling some phase in a typical day in Kuwait:

1. Morning: Sunrise; the beginning of a new day in Kuwait. This idea is already reflected in one of the panoramas I've done back in 2011.

   

   Towers of The Rising Sun

2. Traffic Jam: This is the phase of going to work. My plan was to shoot some traffic jam from a pedestrian bridge over some road, but having the problems I had in the past, I think my chances that this would pass safely is like 50% of even less. In periods of traffic jams cops are usually spread over the place and a person with a camera is not a favorable spotting.
3. Busy at Wok: For this phase, I was planning to shoot some office with a busy look (scattered papers, scattered furniture...etc). In fact, thinking about it right now, I might as well use one of my own panoramas which I've done in my own office in my work place including myself in the shoot!

   

   Busy at Work!

4. Evening: This is the period of family and friends visiting and the typical Diwaniyyah I'd say. For this idea, I was planning to do silhouettes by the help of my speedlites and some colored gels to light the background blue (reflecting evening time) while people laughing in the foreground. Might do this later even after abandoning the whole idea of the contest.
5. Night: This particular time I would have used it to reflect the safe atmosphere that we live in despite all of our problems. Initially my idea was to take a shoot of someone sleeping with the Towers of Kuwait in the background, but if this is done in the public, God knows what hurdles I have to put up with, specially with unnecessary people in the scene. I'm not a people's person and not so social, beside that, I might need a special permit to do such a thing in the public. The only alternative here is to do it with props in some studio or a room; yet, that won't have a great impact on the viewer I believe.

It was quite a brainstorming session for me to get out with some of these ideas, but I can't say I'm completely satisfied. Moreover, in the current time, I'm trying to prepare a dinner party if I should say, as a gratitude for friends in the photography group and out of the group as I've promised before - Just a tiny gift for Mom being out of the hospital. It should be on a Saturday, but apparently it won't the coming Saturday as there is no time for any kind of preparations right now.
Meanwhile, I'm looking further for other agencies of stock photos to submit my images to. I've long abandoned Fotolia and Bigstockphotos, while things are going smoothly with Canstockphotos and Mostphotos. One of the targets had been 123RF and Featurepics, but still looking for more outlets. I'm not that optimistic about Dreamstime, but I might try it again just for a change. Here and there, who knows what might come next from such websites.

Geltani Glossa:
As I've mentioned above, I've been working lately with Geltani further more and recording notes and trying to establish some basic elements of the conlang. Plurals, numerals, and many other things are all on papers right now, and when it's all over, I would need to do those digitally somehow but for sure without any fonts. It might be scanning all the way (and I'm having hard time with the scanner already!).

Scan of my notes with some scribbles of Geltani.

There are still though some basic stuff not settled down, like the sound of some driving letters (sorry folks, can't explain this all over again, it's in other posts already!). Some innovations and some regular rhyming must be added to the list to finish this task, I believe. On the scan on the left you can see some of the basic grammatical cases that I've been trying to settle down with. They had been changed from time to time and I think it is now the time to finish it one and for all. The plural is achieved by repeating the last syllable in the word, and drawing a special character for plurals. I'm not quite happy with repeating the last syllable method but this is the best I could think of for the time being. Would there be a change? Maybe!
One thing to be dealing with as well is creating a suitable transliteration system for pronunciation.

Primary Geltani Syllabary

On the other hand, I've sketched a primary syllabary for writing foreign names into Geltani. I say primary because these shapes are still under consideration. The system is like a mix of syllabary and abugida. I didn't want to put on more loads of vowels, thus I've pinned only 3 types of vowels and whenever the vowel is to be long, a marker is added on the syllable, while if the syllable is to be still (i.e. without a vowel) then it is done as in abugida systems; a marker is added below the syllable (as you can see in the scan). If there is a vowel in between (e.g. as "A" in way) then it is approximated to the closest vowel(s).
To make some twist in the whole conlang of Geltani, I've decided to make it sound like Chinese, yet with more sounds and consonants that aren't originally in real Chinese, mainly of Semetic origins like ħ [Arabic: ح], and there is some thought about adding the sound of Ayn [Arabic: ع] as well, but not now.

The complete picture of the grammar and the order sentence is still fuzzy in my brain but for some reason I'm not sure of, I do like the order of the sentence used in Sumerian and Akkadian (notice that those are REAL languages!), which is SOV (subject-object-verb). But I have to see further into this matter after the basics of the writing system are settled.
I've avoided, so far, working on several other conlangs (like Betenic and Bulughman) just to concentrate my efforts. Multi-tasking won't work here I guess, specially with such time schedule in such a mess.


Finale:
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. This is what they say. It seems for the time being that I would conduct more experiments in the field of tabletop photography and product photography. Even though I've never considered it before because of the equipments that I must have with me most of the time to take most of such shots, but it seems the only solution available in my case; to try to innovate something and avoid being outdoors too much unnecessarily - in locations that bring problems. On the other hand, who knows, I might as well make a good idea and impression with such field to open up the fields for some financial gains in the future. However, I don't tend to be over optimistic in such matters. I just need to think of what to do next.
Some of my plans for the near future include shooting a censer, a silhouette (as mentioned above), objects dipped in water with some special effect and maybe custom bokeh effect. This is some of the ideas that I've been noting down in my photography note. Would there be someone interesting and interested in what I think, what I do, and share? That, gonna take such a long time as it seems... if any.