Bounce…

Well, so much had been going on with my camera as I'm trying to use every day of Ramadhan before it is over and I'd be back to work then! Well, I have to say that I can be lazy at times but I think I deserve this! Here, I will be taking off from where I stopped last time, as I was experimenting with High Speed photography. After finishing with dropping a cherry into some colored water, it was time to try out a bouncing ball!

Bounce!

I thought about this idea after applying the "cherry" experiment. I was trying to implement my old trigger (again)  but I ended up shooting all good shots with remote cable alone and changing the method of shooting in between sessions (the experimenting took about one week or more a bit): once using LiveView, and other times without it, and also using the Mirror-Lock option.

Splashing Boom I
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/20,
8000^-1s, ISO200.

The results were majorly for splashes and droplets hanging in the air instead of the ball at the moment of bouncing, but many interesting shapes resulted with these water droplets. After my experiment with falling cherries, I've decided to increase the shutter speed to its max point (1/8000s) since that does not affect the power of the speedlites in general (the aperture does). I tried to apply another technique with sharpening when processing these images, as in Splashing Boom I and others, where I've applied sharpening to specific portions of the image only to pop out some features and make it look like a 3D image somewhat.

Splashing Boom III
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/20,
8000^-1s, ISO200

I was lucky, after many, many, many trials, to catch the moment at which the ball was bouncing of the table (which was covered with aluminum foil and sprinkled with water), while running the camera on LiveView. Many successful attempts occurred later as well and they were rotated as is the case in splashing Boom III, but with variant beauty. In fact, even with Splashing Boom III, I noticed some slight blur in water droplets and the ball even though the shutter speed was at its maximum, 1/8000s. This made me search for ways to go around this speed in some way (technical or by technique) but I'll keep that for later. The ball here in Splashing Boom III might be blurred for being slightly out of focus after all, and for this reason I've decided to boost the f-number (to increase the depth of field further) in order to increase my chances of catching the ball relatively sharp. This, of course, forced me to change the speedlites sittings (all three of them) in terms of angle at least (all were working in full power after all).

Mirrored II
Canon EF 50mm, f/22, 8000^-1s, ISO200.

As trials went on, I've changed the lens to 50mm to have more space and increase the chances to catch the ball within the frame (it was a bad choice somewhat though since water splash details are not clear at that zoom level). Anyway, at this point I decided to work with Mirror-Lock option (which requires pressing the shutter button twice to shoot the photo) as I was trying to reduce the time lag. In an email sent to Ubertronix about such lag, they explained to me that such lag is usually due the camera's shutter and it would be better to connect the trigger to the speedlite; but this is not possible in my case:

Hi TJ,

The lag is from the camera not the strike finder device or cable length. If you can set up your shot with the Strike Finder firing a flash instead of your camera, the  lag will be close to 0. Let me know what you are trying to shoot and I might have some specific setup suggestions.

Check out the information concerning shutter lag of the 7d in this link  http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E7D/E7DA6. The other thing you can do is partially depress the shutter release and hold it before a shot. That will cut your shutter lag from 83 ms to 61 ms based on these specs.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,

Jane

The Information here were kind of a surprise since working on LiveView does actually longer lagging time than working in normal mode! However, not that, and not even working with Mirror-Lock and a trigger, did time correctly with this bouncing wall, which at the end drove me to work, again, manually and by hand. I noticed that I did capture better results using the Mirror-Lock option and I got the camera within the frame more often, but probably the best of them all was Mirrored II here in which the ball was just taking off with a tiny trail of water underneath it. I will check with possibilities to work with triggering my speedlites instead of the camera later on, but that would require to work in complete darkness (and the camera shutter is kept open for a certain time). When everything failed, though, I've simply punched the table…

Fist
Canon EF 50mm, f/22, 8000^-1s, ISO200.

I tried here again to picture the splashing water, but seems the water wasn't enough, and it is a good thing that I used 50mm lens; Otherwise, my fist won't fit in the frame. And apparently my skin needs some care! Now, all these shots (lot of them not shown here) need to be sorted out again and filled with information for uploading to stock websites.

Sitting for the bouncing ball experiment, with my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens. This was the initial position for speedlites, things changed later on as well as for the lens.

Finale

I could have gone further with this post, but I'll keep it short for now. There are other experiments I'm attending to at the moment, specially with my very old microscope with which I'm trying to shoot better and sharper images (so far images are kind of blurred). Along with the microscope experiments, I've been working on some various images ideas for our group's June project which is themed "Abstract." I might have some material to be posted by the next blog post.
Meanwhile, I couldn't keep my promise to myself for not placing an order right now, but I had to process an order for various items (and books) but I'm not in a hurry. Thus, all items were shipped for free (which takes nearly a week) and still to this very moment some items are being processed because they are not available. Some of these items are essential and I might talk a bit when this package arrives to me (which might be in July!). I consider this to be my own gift to my own self for my birthday, since no one I know around me would appreciate such gifts for me! Hopefully I'll cope with the finance later on.
As the financial situation is shaky; once up and once down, I'm still not sure about my plans to travel (and not sure where to). One thing is for sure: I need it. I need it like water and food. If only…

Colorado…

Well, Ramadan is here and boy ain't I happy to have a leave off work during this month! Despite my usual troublesome sleeping pattern during this month, yet I feel refreshed at some level and I'm eager to work with my camera more often than before (specially with me doing my experiments near my room). With May project with the group, which is about colors, I've started to re-kindle an old passion for high-speed. The work is still going on as I'm typing this, as there are a number of issues I need to fix still and some more ideas in hope I can try later.

Colorado

The May project was a priority, so I spent some time thinking about what can be done in that venue. It is easier said than done, as colors are everywhere but it's hard to get some concrete and unique work of art involving colors. In the beginning, I was trying to follow my typical steps in creating an idea: Find a deep emotion inside myself, and cast that particular feeling on the subject at hand, be it color, shadows, or whatever. However this step seemed hard and technically I was so mentally confused that I couldn't realize my own feelings or how to organize my thoughts! Thus, I had to shoot for mere fun and I started mumbling with my props and gear to find something colorful.

Colorado I
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/29,
250^-1sec, ISO100.

After playing around with some props and accessories, I decided to use the refraction power of water to create some colorful abstracts by using colored Popsicle sticks placed in a separate glass jar behind the glass of water. Later on, however, I've decided to add corn syrup into the water during the shot (putting the camera on timer while pouring already). This was just to add some action to the scene instead of plain silent colors. There was no need to high-speed mode as 1/250 of a second for the shutter speed was enough to kill the ambient light, but the greater hardship was in having a proper framing for the shot since I was working inside my room and could barely have a proper distance to stay away from the set with my 100mm lens, while using 50mm lens would require me to get closer beyond the nearest possible point of focusing.

Colorado II
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/29,
250^-1sec, ISO100

Distributing the light was not so hard to do but it was rather hard to adjust (as I usually work in manual mode). I've used 2 white boards on the sides to reflect off the light and later on I've placed a shade on the top of the set to reflect any astray light from below and reflect it back (and it did a great job!). While shooting, there was always something going off which made the power sometimes excessive or too low without even touching any flash settings. Not sure what is causing this but the first culprit in my mind right now is the fact that I was working in LiveView mode. Some professionals always warn against using LiveView mode for serious shooting. However, with my back problems, I find myself often forced to work that way!

Colorado III
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/32,
250^-1sec, ISO100

After shooting Colorado I I decided to increase the amount of action and pour even more corn syrup to fill the frame (while some were already accumulating at the bottom of the glass) which created such a mess as seen in Colorado II, but oh well, I guess this is much better than having much plain space as in Colorado I. There was one last shot I needed to try, and here, I've replaced the colored sticks with colored pencils and filled the glass with corn syrup instead of water as I loved the looks of the bubbles in the bottle of the syrup. To add something to the scene, I've placed a small cut from a branch of some plant I've found here (no animals were killed to try this!). At this level, I wanted to step further and try the risks of using f/32 with this lens which I've experienced some weird behavior before at this aperture value. However, after several shots I did get something stable as seen in Colorado III, and even created a 3D Anaglyph out of this scene. Now, I'm creating the habit of documenting the set every time I finish one experiment. I guess it is a good practice?

The set used for Colorado I and Colorado II. A reflector was placed on top during the shoot.

The set used to shoot Colorado III.
I used 2 small candles on the sides in hope to excite the fluid and produce more bubbles inside the syrup but that wasn't useful!

Cherry Boom

I thought I was over with the Colorado experiment above, but then I thought why not implement high-speed onto the project, specially that I'm trying to work in a space near my room (even though no proper table for me yet, as you can see from the sets above). Implementing the idea of colors here emerge from the concept of the color circle and complimentary colors. Thus, I simply googled "Cherry Red Color" and I got the code #a61f34, and starting from there I got the complimentary color which is some degree of cyan. I picked cherry specifically because it was available, and because of its distinctive red color and tiny branch which typically stems out of it. I could have gone with grapes but I think grapes do not have a distinctive shape or color (and the red variety would be typically larger than I need them to be). Thus, the choice for cherries seemed legit!

Final look for the set of the project.

Ubertronix Strike Finder Elite.
Source: B&H

I used watercolors here to color the water and later I've added a bit of milk to kill the transparency of the water a bit. As seen in the set above, I've used here only 2 speedlites (580EX II) and didn't want to use my third speedlite (430EX II). I used here also my UV filter over the lens front just to protect the front from water droplets. I should have protected the flash heads as well with plastic bags but I skipped that actually. The big hurdle was to get my old Ubertronix trigger to work, specifically with a laser-gate. Without detailing the troubles, at the end the laser-gate method proved useless to me because of the shutter lag and the cumbersome laser pointer I was using. Thus, for the rest of the experiment, I went on doing a manual job, holding the cable remote in one hand and dropping the cherry with the other.

Cherry Boom I
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/9, 3200^-1sec, ISO200.

It was apparent from the beginning that I'm having a problem and probably should have used a larger bowl of some sort since the white edge of the plastic dish was hard to remove. Some problems did not show up till later on as I was inspecting the images like Cherry Boom I. Beside the shallow depth at f/9 (which was not enough), it seems that 1/3200 of a second was not enough for the shutter to freeze the water movement! However, during the experiment, I've raised the speed a bit more without really knowing the final outcome that I will be getting later on. Good luck? Maybe!

Cherry Boom II
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/9, 4000^-1sec, ISO200.

The speed of 1/4000 seemed just enough to freeze such a fall! In total, out of 20+ shots, I got merely 2 useful shots and one or two shots for splashes without the cherry(ies) which I simply liked for their shapes but I don't think they would be useful as stock images or printed and displayed. As for Cherry Boom II, the cherry here fell upside down and my brain being in love with illusions, I've decided to rotate the image 180^o and thus the water came up and the cherry down, but standing up. What annoys me about Cherry Boom II is, like the other shots, the white space from the plastic dish edge which cannot be removed or substituted. I continued the work further in the next day and going manual too with 1/5000 shutter speed, and changing the camera tilt little bit (and pouring some water into the dish) to hide the white edge as much as possible. Again, out of 20+ shots, I've one suitable shot here.

Cherry Boom III
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/20,
5000^-1sec, ISO320.

Beside enhancing the looks, I went on enhancing the depth of field as well pushing it to f/20 (to have greater chance of having the cherry sharp wherever it falls), but that of course called for an increase in ISO, as I didn't want to use my third speedlite still. Water splashes now are more stable and live! In Cherry Boom III, seeing that the two cherries fell on their side, I've decided to rotate the image 90^o clockwise to add a surreal feel to it.
In all of these shots of high speed, there was always a problem with the noise level when processing the images, despite the ISO being relatively low. With my Canon EOS 7D, I'd say that the ISO is somewhat easier to handle up until ISO 800 or around that, but in these images the processing was cumbersome and I do have my doubts about being accepted for exhibitions with the group (if they pass the aesthetic critique). However, some stock websites did already accept these images without a problem and they are up for sale!
Finishing from this cherry project I did proceed to another one, involving high-speed shooting as well, but I will keep that for a future post, as I'm still trying to work on it further.

Finale

After kindling my passion again for high-speed photography (adding to that the lack of locations and ideas for panoramas), and after the failure of my trigger, I've emailed the company asking about the reasons for such time lag and after some discussion, it seems that the reason is my shutter and not the trigger itself. I was advised to connect the trigger to the flash instead of the camera but in my working conditions this is not possible, as working with triggered flashes means opening the shutter in a dark environment while the flash becomes the only source of light. However, reading about some aspects of my camera, it seems that I do have also to adjust some of my photo-shooting habits to reduce the time lag in shutter release (depending on LiveView being one!).
Though I'm on leave without traveling but seems I do have a busy schedule here (beside taking care of Mom), but I feel some satisfaction that I didn't feel in a long time now since I could work with my camera and really think of something to do with it, without feeling exhausted like everyday after coming back from work through the traffic jam. Meanwhile, the idea of traveling is still ticking and tickling my mind, despite the fear of the hassles that I might have to face outside because of all the madness going in the world today, specially for a guy like me from the Middle East.
In the meantime, August is getting closer, my birthday that is, and I'm preparing to have some big order (well, not so big, but a bit big maybe?) of some gear and maybe some books. I would have to place the order before August I presume since there are some items that are considered "special order" (i.e. need time to be prepared and dispatched). This is to be a gift to myself, since no one around give such gifts except of perfumes! On my mind is a 4^th speedlite (and probably another 580EX II if available still) and maybe some filters. I feel so excited that I want to place the order right away in the coming few days, but my financial situation and the course of Ramadan makes me hold it back and wait. Thus, I might be placing my order by the end of June or so! I need to miss my camera so much to work with it with passion…

Geometria...

Here we go, another week, with not much of activity, but at least I'm trying to grease the engine slowly. In the meantime, I do have something for mathematics and geometry still going on in my mind so far since the time when Mom was in the hospital, and that made me think of some weird stuff - simple, but weird I'd say. I'll come to that later on. Also, the group sent me (or maybe I should say put me in front of the cannon) for an interview on TV regarding aluminum prints. Ironically, I have nothing to do with this, except that I was "supervising" the printing process for the expo back in March. It went well (and short) but I have problem getting and viewing the video from the TV channel's youtube channel, mainly because they used a copyrighted topics and issues in their show which made the episode unwatchable in Kuwait! Thank you guys!

As for Mom, her health is progressing, specially that she started to head to the kitchen often and THAT is a very good sign in general, yet, personally and for my own state of mind, I won't feel comfortable until the number of dialysis processes that should be done per week is reduced. At the current time, we have to pick her to the dialysis center (luckily near my working place) 3 times a week, and each session takes around 4 hours. As far as I know (and some by logic), doing dialysis on the long run can cause more hibernating to the kidneys (because dialysis is doing what the kidneys should do) and that would weaken the body even more, beside weakening the immune system naturally. Two things that I don't wish Mom to be acquainted with.

Grease:

Source: B&H

It's been a month or a bit more since I've got the Ubertronix Strike Finder Elite for triggering the camera (or flash as it seems), but unfortunately I'm still unable to work out any ideas to work with it. Sure, water drops and splashes seem to be an obvious target but they are cliches by now. I was trying to find something new or some creative venture within these two topics (water drops and splashes). Since I couldn't think of any, I've tried at least to do some testing for the device.
The Ubertronix seem to work fine except for few awkward delicacies!

• The wires of the sensors (for sound and motion) are short, but probably can be lengthened by some means.
• The device contains no controls for the sensitivity of detection (specially when it comes to sound detection).
• The port used for connection to the camera also bears "Flash" on it, but in the instructions manual there is no explanations involving triggering flashes instead of cameras. Could that be with the help of the PC port in the flash itself?
• Motion and Laser detection seem a bit unpredictable. 
• The sensors for sound and motion with their short cord are also hard to be placed. Probably duct tape is due in some situations. They are in a bulky rectangular box shape and because of the sturdy cord it can be hard to make them stay flat on a table for example or make them still on their sides.

These might be some awkward points, otherwise, the device works in a wonderful way. I think even the Laser detector can be used as a motion detector but I'm not sure of that yet and I need to do more experimentation.

Rising Eye
Canon EF 50mm + 12mm & 35mm tubes, f/11, 400^-1sec, ISO100.

On the other hand, I was trying to catch some eyes with the help of extension tubes but my trials with other people were in vain, so I've tried to do it on my own eye. Of course it is not like a piece of art (specially with all these reflections of flashes on the iris). I've been fascinated with the lines formed on the iris and I thought maybe the best way to do this is to use extension tubes. Using speedlites, on the other hand, was problematic but it was a must; otherwise no light is available in such narrow corner! Doing the whole thing on my own eye is a really hard task, specially with using an external portable monitor to judge the focus and the composition. After many shots, I've decided to pick Rising Eye to work on its RAW and filter it a bit more. I like this version mainly because the iris is situated in the corner (and I cropped a little from the top right corner to emphasize this fact) and it breaks the monotonous look of the iris being in the middle of the frame (and I did take shots that way as well). I've never imagined myself going so deep with the macro field, but it might be time to plan for some rails for fine adjustments?

Geometria:

With my sudden amusement with geometry and mathematics (not something new in fact), I've been playing around with circles and rectangles, along with squares of course. Needless to say I had some crush on Schläfli and his symbols.
From that perspective, I've been thinking of ways to organize my composition or the way I see things in my pictures. I'm quite a believer in what Bruce Barnbaum mentioned in his book The Art of Photography about the myth of the law of thirds; something that I would beheaded for if I talk about in here inside the photographic community in Kuwait! Bruce, however, had his own points and logic indeed. Anyway, for me, I do tend to think of the law of thirds and the golden spiral as means to merely organize the objects in the scene but not a critical tool to get the attention of the viewer. I'm aided with this point by the common belief among photographers that Rules are made to be broken in general!
Stemming from this point of view, I've been working around to base some order based on geometrical means rather than visual means opposed to the theory of the thirds and the spirals.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds
Green: Diagonal-Circles

My first trial was to draw quarter circles from the corners of a 3:2 rectangle; with 3:2 being the usual ratio for imaging sensors (at least for the APS-C cropped sensors?), and the radius of these circles is half the length of the diagonal. Thus, the quarter circles would meet at the center point of the rectangle, and by drawing the diagonals of the rectangle we can specify the points of intersection between these circles and the diagonals (green on the image above). Now, would these points make an interesting composition? This, I wouldn't know without trials. However, I do imagine it is a good starting point for circular (specially overlapping circles; e.g. in a rose) subjects. But the intersection points seem a bit far away from the center which makes me skeptic about its use in general, but again nothing can be talked of without trials.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds.
Green: Diagonal-Circles.
Yellow: Central Circle.

Another thought then occurred to me is to draw a central circle within the 3:2 rectangle in such a way that the center of this circle is shared with the rectangle, bearing in mind that the radius should not exceed the height of the rectangle (the y-axis length). Then, drawing quarter circles from the corners like before. This one diagram is unusual for me because it shows here more than the usual 4 intersections; in fact we have 8 intersections. However, four of these intersections don't seem to be practical (the two central intersections up and down) because they touch the edge of the frame itself. Probably, after removing the 4 central intersection points, we are left with the other four that are close to the diagonals and work more in harmony with the law of thirds and the golden spirals (yet far away from the diagonals-circles intersections). I guess placing a subject in these points won't make much difference visually since it is close to the other perspectives. However, those points close to the edge of the frame which I've omitted in the beginning might make a difference if they are to be included in the rules of the composition. Notice here that I'm talking about placing a subject in ONE and only ONE of these intersection points, whether it may be law of thirds, golden spirals or any other perspective I've been mentioning so far; but what if some of these perspectives, specially this last one (Central Circle method) would work as a whole, meaning that intersection points are to be used all together to organize subject(s) in the scene and not one subject only? You think this would be visually interesting? Again, only trials would prove if it's appropriate or not.

Red: Golden Spiral.
Blue: Law of Thirds.
Green: Diagonal-Circles.
Yellow: Central Circle.
Grey: Diagonal-Central Circle.

By the end of my thoughts chain I was almost going to forget about the result of intersecting of the diagonals with the central circle. Not strangely, these grey points are in harmony with other perspectives like the thirds and the spirals, as well as the central circle intersecting points. In fact, I think the four perspectives or divisions: thirds, spirals, central circle and diagonal-central-circle do all make clusters for one position at a time around the center of the frame, and if we have one big subject within the frame it would be covering these four points in one corner at one time probably. This leaves two main questions of how affective these perspectives are when it comes to the Diagonal-Circles perspective (Greens) and the central intersections of the Central Circle (those closer to the edge). Well, as for the central circle perspective, we might, as I've mentioned before, work with the 8 points altogether (or 4 of them at a time) to place a certain subject. The greens, however, might have been tried before from my side without noticing like I did with one of the shots for some roses and petals.

Die Sanfte Ringe

Probably Die Sanfte Ringe reflects in a way how the Diagonal-Circles perspective would work - but I have to say here that this shot was taken long time before thinking about these different geometrical plays within the 3:2 frame. Yet, it does coincide somehow as a subconscious drive I presume! Notice that the Rising Eye mentioned before does somehow imply the Diagonal-Circles perspective and again it is as if it is a subconscious drive within my mind to do it that way, specially when it comes to circular subjects or rings and loops. There is a difference though between the Rising Eye and Die Sanfte Ringe in that the former is indeed a 3:2 rectangle, while the latter is a square. Not sure yet how to think about the visual impact in between these two but one step at a time - I think there is a plenty of time to think about these crazy geometrical means. As for now, I need to work a bit more on more serious stuff!

Libros!

I've exhausted all my arsenal of books by now (and only one or two short stories are left). I've been working on my queue of Arabic books that I've purchased some months ago from the books fair back in November. Back then, I did purchase some stories just to rest my mind little bit from the technical aspects that I usually wander on. Now my eagerness is back to the technical side and I've decided to purchase 3 new books from Amazon. As usual, I've decided to take up 2 books about photography and 1 about science (specifically archaeology).

Source: Amazon

One of the books that I'm eager to read is Lens Design Fundamentals by Rudolf Kingslake. The book is cheap and in fact I was going to order another one which costs around US$150, but judging from the contents, I believe the latter is way too advanced for me for the time being (it appears to be too academic in style). Thus, I changed my mind and picked this one since it's cheaper as well as it is aimed for beginners. I'm not sure where does this lead me but I've always wished to gain more insight about the make of lenses and where the power lies in the design after all.

Source: Amazon

 The second book deals with Tabletop Photography, by Cyrill Harnischmacher with some twist about using speedlites. From what I reckon about its table of contents, it is dedicated for people who don't like to work in studio environment, and eager to use some tricks with their speedlites. Not sure how much I will gain from such a book, but I'm pretty sure that I won't be disappointed as it is the case with most of rockynook publishing.

Source: Amazon

The last book is something attracted me mainly because of some formulae inside! The Handbook For Classical Research, by David H. Schaps, seems to be a general overlook about humanitarian sciences and how mathematics merge into them for purposes of studies. I was looking for a pure archaeological book with pure scientific prospect, but unfortunately most of the books I've found were novel-like and don't deal much with the scientific and mathematical side. This book, however, bears much about studies and how to do them and how to analyze data in such fields like anthropology and archaeology, in different sub-fields. This is, at least, what I've regained from reading the table of contents and some few pages in between the covers. I don't think I would be disappointed here though - anything that has some numbers in its language can be quite interesting in the current time!
The only problem that remains now is how to manage my time between these 3 books. I think I'd read the rockynook issue first, because they can be over with quickly, usually!

Conlang:

In the meantime, I'm not forgetting my beloved conlang(s) in such frustrating times, but actually I'm not putting ideas onto papers or notes - but simply everything is going on in a mental note. I need to enhance my memory about some basics about the Bulughman conlang as well as Betenic.
There had been an idea of a funny or a comic version of English as a conlang. I thought about it long time ago and proposed it to Simon Ager, the author of Omniglot.com, but as he said, the priority is for conlang with conscripts (i.e. artificial and new scripts) while my version was simply using modified Latin alphabet. From that point I've been thinking of inventing a new conscript indeed. Priorities for now, however, is for the Geltani project that seems endless. Sometimes, I do think I need a wife not to love or share dreams together, but simply to organize my time. Might be a plausible idea, but I don't think I would call it a marriage, can I?

العين التي رعتني
The Eye That Cared For Me

Sorry...

Another week without much productivity I'm afraid. I didn't have any guts to touch the camera. I thought when Mom is back home things would be calmer a bit but in fact they are still busy almost to the same rhythm but in another timing, since Mom got dialysis to do 3 days a week and we have to pick her to and from the dialysis center. Moreover, we are doing a regular check up and checking updates with her doctors behind her back - she doesn't know much about the situation, but we are working on it and we get highs and downs from the doctors. Good thing that she is moving more often, and her spirit is getting back slowly and she started to get into the kitchen slowly! I think I can call this good news.

Because of this mental stress and continuous thinking about her condition, my mind is lacking of ideas for photography (specially with my new Ubertronix trigger that I got a month ago almost), and also little plans and thought about what to do next with my conlangs projects. Completing the Geltani is of course a must, but I was thinking also of studying Ayvarith back again to refresh my memory about the words I've made already. In hope this would make me a more fluent speaker of my own conlang! I think it might help me as well to make a stronger sense of the language as to make some words even without referring back to the basic ingredients: Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew.

Beside all of this mess, there is the real or the physical mess that is in my room and around the house that I've set my mind to organize and fix, yet I can't do this for the time being with this exhaustion and busy mind and body. All what I can do for now is to hope for some productivity by next week. As for the time being, I'm going to read a bit more about mathematics and geometry...

Grace...

Mom is finally back home right now, but that doesn't mean the end of the story. In fact, I think the struggle had just began now to elevate her spirit and make her cope what life throws at her, specially with boring hours of dialysis.
We are hoping now that the dialysis process is a temporary procedure until Creatinine is reduced to some level. All we can do for now is to pray for her and, of course, be on her side as much as possible. The other challenge from our side is to cope with life's schedules and rush with an added responsibility like this. We've been managing for the past 3 weeks by having leaving from work and changing shifts among family members, but at a certain point, I believe Mom has to be alone at home, probably with the maid only to help her out.

One of the greatest challenges for me right now is to try and work on with my camera after being mostly idle in the past weeks. Not completely idle, but I was aiming at various things without thinking just to try out my camera and not stop using it. Mainly I was aiming at geometrical shapes in flowers, specially those sent to Mom in the hospital. I won't bother you with the technical details here, but most of the images here were taken with 50mm lens plus some extension tube(s) beside using one or two speedlites (580EXII and 430EXII).

Blooming Alone

Sanfte Aufbau

Zentrum Aufbau

The Dark Side of Beauty

Introvert Petals

Lumini

Vortex

Floral Fractal

Mother's Heart

Die Sanfte Ringe

New Toys:

With the rush of the events lately I've ordered some new toys for my camera that I've barely touched or experienced something with. I hope in the coming days I will do this accordingly.

Source: B&H

One of the simplest "toys" here is a step down ring which is aimed at fitting filters on lenses with different diameters. My ring here is a step down from 62mm to 58mm (62-58mm) which I got specifically for my Tamron lens (70-300mm). Most of the lenses that I'm using have a diameter of 58mm and hence most of my filters (polarizer and IR for example) are ordered accordingly to this diameter. In order to make these filters somehow complete and fit all, this step down ring can do the job. The only problem here is that it sometimes gets stuck in between or stuck into the filter read itself. Typical problem (and I'm planning to get special wrenches to detach filters from lenses).

Source: B&H

The other toy is an eyepiece from Polaroid which acts as an extension at a right angle. It is supposed to be quite useful for shooting at waist level but I didn't test it for long. One of the hardships in this piece is how to fit it into my camera. It comes with plenty of adapters for various cameras (specially EOS cameras) but unfortunately, there is no direct adapter for EOS 7D camera and I had to make several tests. I could hardly fit one of the adapters into my 7D and I'm not sure it is quite useful for shooting at waist level but probably more useful to shoot on sides (i.e. to be on the side of the camera and look into the eyepiece). I will leave this for time to sort out its benefits.

Source: B&H

Maybe the most important toy for me right now (and didn't try it yet!) is the Ubertronix Strike Finder trigger. Some years back I got a cumbersome circuit to trigger the flashes by sound (and needed the PC cable to connect it to the flash but never got this cable). This trigger now is all-in-one type: sound, motion, laser and lightning. The difference here though is the fact that it is a camera trigger (and it comes with N3 cable to be connected in the place of the cable remote into the camera). Without trying it all seems good, but with one thing: the short cables and sensors. I want to try this as soon as possible but yet I didn't formulate any ideas on how to do so. The trigger box contains a jack port saying "flash/camera" thus I do believe I can connect it to flashes (speedlites) by special cables too and it's not limited to cameras only. Among other models, this brand was the only one probably to support Canon EOS 7D. In a twist of options, it has the Laser gate, i.e. triggering the camera with the change in Laser reception as I understand it while other brands depend on infrared gate which triggers the camera only when an object crosses in between a transmitter and a receptor. I'm not sure though how I'm going to use the trigger for Laser but according to the instructions it works as well for infrared just that way, as well as for lightning photography. Too bad the lightning season is over right now!

Thoughts:

In the passing weeks, with Mom's sickness and up till this moment, I had some weird urge in geometrical wisdom and started to read whatever comes my way from Wikipedia; specially the schläfli symbol. There were many stuff that were complicated of course and my mind couldn't digest but reading about simple stuff could spark some imagination. Reading about mathematics and geometry can never be in vain - it is up to you of course!
I'm trying in the meantime to look at the problem with Mom's health as a test for something; probably to change my attitude toward the world, probably to test my capabilities of challenging the world with increasing responsibilities and yet keeping up with my own projects and photography. Mom cared for us as a mother would do, and her memories still race in my mind at the moment; memories of some time when I was 10 years old or less and how she used to dress me for school. Despite the health problem is upon her, but it is our test, her children. Probably God wants to see how we do care for her and I'm lying my hope in succeeding in this test. After all, I arrived to the realization of the fact that at some time, at some moment in time, there should be that point of departure between her and me as it is the case always with every living thing. My only prayers go to make this point in time just far away; far enough in time to make me stronger to bear it. I've realized as well the fact that just wishing to depart life before her so I wouldn't have to see her leave me alone in this world is a mere selfish thought. Mothers can't bear the departure of their kids from her sight - it is me who has to bear it all instead...