Happy new year, and I hope you had a nice one. To be honest, I wanted to take another week off from typing my blog here but I thought maybe I shouldn't and thought it would be a good idea to stress myself more beside all the things happening in my life right now on the home front. So, here we go.
As a side note, while typing these words, I've already been out in a random shoot in the morning like I would do every winter; around the neighborhood. This time, I've picked my Sigma 12-24mm lens (which is challenging really) but anyway it was a simple stroll around and I'm still "trying" to work on the photos I've shot back then. Hopefully I will talk about them in time but this post is supposed to be following the chronological order so I'm going to take off from where I stopped in the previous post (well, the previous previous post). However, before I proceed, I'd like to give just a liiiiittle announcement.

Little Announcement

I've recently uploaded a full set of images which was a project initiated in 2021 but didn't get to finish it (let's speak procrastination here) except in 2022. Long story short, after sending emails to the major stocks i deal with, I've uploaded this set to Canstockphoto and Dreamstime. However, to my surprise (and for some reasons beyond my humble understanding), Dreamstime did accept some images (about half of the set) and refused the rest and it seems for reasons related to quality; despite the fact that all images are the same with only one element that had changed.
This said, I've tried to delete what had been already accepted in my profile on Dreamstime (i.e. what had been accepted from this set of images, 39 of them) but I could only delete few. When I inquired about it, I got the response that I have to wait for 6 months until I can delete these files (Why? Just because…). Digging through the website further it turned out that it got itself wrapped up in political views that i think are not supposed to be there in such a website that offers art in the first place.

For these reasons, and despite having a profile there (and I can't withdraw anything from there), I've decided to stop uploading to Dreamstime completely. It's a loss for sure as it provides exclusive rights to images and I do have some exclusive images there, but such terms and also getting into the political issues for no reason, such issues are a red flag to me. Thus, I will stop uploading my work there completely but my profile will be active still. Who knows, might be deleted one day.

Meanwhile, the set of 39 images, which I've called Arabic Eye, is available on Canstockphoto.

Dewy

So, now, to the bulk of today's post! Now, before the main thing, I did take some shots and even edited some shots from the past but it's not the topic of this post. Some of the shots taken were simply for embracing my (new) window which I just like to gaze at in the morning when the light comes in, specially in winter time. Anyway, away with that.

This "experiment" (if I can call it so) was somewhat a "two birds taken down with one stone"; if that's clear anyway! I wanted to do some macro experiment (away from bougainvillea and picking the flowers of the poor bush), and in the same time I was looking for ideas for my Arabic blog as I didn't post anything for a while, and my thoughts led me to make an article about Super-Resolution (SR) images and how to do them in Photoshop. So, the two ideas combined into some macro job in Super-Resolution; What was missing though is a proper target. Chasing my tail again looking for ideas, I arrived (again) at my beloved colored feathers, which I didn't use for a while (maybe since 2020 or 2021) for any photo-shoot.

نَـدِيْ
(dewy)

I'd say, initially, it was a success. For creating a SR image, one wouldn't need a lot of images like in the focus-stacking technique. In Dewy, around 13 shots were taken. The problem here though, because I've sprinkled water (plain water, no glycerine added), the droplets on the feather wouldn't stay in place completely but some (just some) of them did move a bit. Originally, in fact, I wanted a simple one droplet to be stable on the tip but (surprise surprise) that nearly impossible, so I sprinkled the whole feather with water. Anyway, the movement in the water droplets between shots (even though they were taken quickly, relatively) - all was fixed in the process of merging and also some extra job was done with Photoshop magic (cloning, and stuff, you know). The dimensions with this technique ramped up from the typical 5184X3456 pixels for Canon EOS 7D (my camera) up to 10386X6929 pixels; So that's like double the original resolution. Of course, things had to be taken down, like cropping and other cleaning stuff and sharpening. Increasing the resolution in that technique is "somewhat" good, but not "absolutely" good. 

نَـدِيْ 2
(dewy 2)

Of course, I wouldn't let things go without playing around with the colors, like in infrared. I went on to do some color inverse and I think the color cast is still impressive. However, I must mention here that this is just one of the things that I've experimented with in this image. The main issue here is that I've tried to put my vision as a person who reads from right-to-left (normally, I guess); Thus, to me, the image seemed more "normal" to my eyes if I just flipped it horizontally and let the lines going from the bottom right to upper left corner. I kept the original orientation as it will be seen with Dewy 3.

نَـدِيْ 3
(dewy 3)

As for Dewy 3, it was actually a direct edit for one of the shots that made up the original SR-image (which was cropped later to make Dewy 1 and 2). Here, you can see the original orientation of the image as it was shot. Worth noting that the shot was done with 50mm lens and 36mm extension tube, and at f/22; So, nothing fancy here and no focus-stacking (that was not the aim to begin with). If I would go for focus-stacking I'd probably use more zoom power via lens reversing technique. These images gained some nice momenta on YouPic (specially Dewy 1). Nice to see such a simple experiment go wild like that. I still need to work on more though.
After this I've done some little shy shots with a leaf from one of the basil plants in the yard (didn't want to upset the bougainvillea again!) and I'm not sure if I'm going to post about them here as they were just simple shots with various zooms (exceeding the 1X limit). They got some nice details to them though. We'll see…

PSAChina

Here, I just wanted to put a little announcement about the results that I've got from participating in PSA China contest. The contest had its deadline in December, and the results were announced on January 3ʳᵈ. I have to say, for the majority of my entries, the results were disappointing. Yet, just by the last category, Architecture, I've had a surprising swift turn of luck!

Results report card

Out of the 4 entries for the Architecture category, I won 1 gold medal and 2 honorable mentions. Even though the last image is not awarded anything but it gained enough points to be "accepted" and exhibited. In fact, I've received another email asking me to upload the bigger files for all these images, beside a personal photo and some text about these images. It seems that the judges at PSA China contest do appreciate panoramas pretty much unlike other contests I've been into before (specially the Trierenberg Circuit which was ended in 2021 or 2022 already). This makes me happy, as well as sad, because it reminds me of the fact that I didn't do much panoramas for a long time now (for reasons beyond my reach already). Just to finalize this, here are the images that were accepted (and awarded):

 One thing I'm hoping for here, and that is to receive my gold medal, unlike the one that I've never received from Trierenberg Circuit back in 2018 (which was my first gold medal ever in any such contest, and this one now is my second).

Finale

I was hesitant to type this post and was afraid that I wouldn't finish it in time, but here I am. Things on the home front had been very disturbed; No maid to help with the housework and tend to Mom, and a challenging Mom on various levels with health issues, a household that doesn't feel like home, and coping with mood swings and depression, trying to think hardly about the camera to find some kind of salvation through it. I've honestly lost a lot of appetite for everything (beside food, and the camera work). Spending my day just thinking if this is going to end at all at some point, and whether it was all my fault to be here in this position and place. It's a blame game with myself, and trying hard to convince myself that I've done my best whenever I could.
Traveling is quite essential at such a time but with the world going crazy and with my eyes condition (which apparently is going down even though not as bad as my other siblings) - such conditions are just not quite encouraging. Sure, I can travel to well-known destination and sure I can just travel to get some breath away from this house, but I always feel it is a money wasted if such a travel wasn't for a solid purpose (like a religious pilgrimage for example) or without my camera. I didn't shoot any panoramas in ages and my current results from PSA China contest were quite encouraging to do something, but where and how, this is way beyond my thinking at the moment. It does feel as if my life is getting isolated more and more by every passing day, and soon, my life would be no life at all. I wonder where is that light at the end of the tunnel that everyone is talking about…

The Walnut…

Here i am with another post, and I was going to take another break for a moment, then I realized that I should talk about the walnut high-speed experiment. I'm typing this just days before my birthday (and it will be posted after my birthday), so Happy Birthday to Me!
Anyway, this might be rather a short post actually, as I gathered the shots in a video which I will be posting below. Unfortunately, i didn't manage to take a shot of the settings, but maybe a drawing would do?

Before I heed, I'd like to announce that most of the images from this experiment are available already on my Canstockphoto. They were rejected mostly from other stocks I deal with (maybe accepting 1 or 2 only) but the majority (if not all) are available on Canstockphoto.

The Walnut

Well, first let me post the schematics or chart, or plan, whatever you like to call it, and sorry for the lousy drawing here; I'm not the best artist out there you know…

The working area: (1) Silver small car shade, (2) 430EXII with globe diffuser, (3) The working area, (4) A group of speedlites; 2x 580EXII and 1x 430EXII, (5) Camera with controlling 580EXII speedlite.

Impact's oval diffuser
which was fitted
on 430EXII

Worth noting that the shooting here was done with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens. Also, the car shade (1) was placed there in the beginning to reflect off the light coming from the speedlites at (4) but I realized it's not enough. The speedlites at (4) in the drawing are placed on the table but in reality they were beside the working table on stands. Anyway, since the reflection was weak, I've decided to place (2), a 430EXII speedlite with globe or oval diffuser on top, and I've made several test shots to gauge the power of the speedlite here; All work was done in HSS mode (or high-speed mode) of course.

Canon EF 100mm
f/2.8 USM Macro

The lens in use here was just about right for the perspective that I was aiming for. However, working with this lens in particular in LiveView mode is quite challenging for the change in the exposure in each test shot despite the fact that the powers of the speedlites were not changed. Finally, I've fitted a blocker on the eyepiece and it seemed to work fine but still some shots were off (probably this time related to the power of the flashes this time). Not sure why, but this problem doesn't happen often with other lenses when I work with them in LiveView; only this lens!

Initially, I started with f/16 for the aperture, but eventually raised it to f/22 (maximum for this lens). Strangely though, there was some apparent shallow depth (out of focus areas and sharp in-focus areas) in some shots despite this high f-number! It seems to me now that high-speed and macro are a No-No combination. All in all, there was of course a tweak in ISO and other things, and even the shutter speed was eventually raised to the maximum; 8000⁻¹s

Cokin's special
effect filter

Also, related to the lens in use, I've decided to place a special effect filter which I purchased from a friend (actually they belonged to his brother). These Cokin filters are apparently old and I don't have the needed adapter to fit them on the lens, but still I could hold them in front of the lens with the help of some paper clips. Before this time, I've never used these special effect filters in a shooting except for testing. You'll notice the flare in the image of the filter on the left here, and I made it that way intentionally to the show the texture of the surface, as they won't show in direct shot upfront. The filter added some touch to the images but not quite dramatic as I hoped actually.

 

The Sinking Walnut

Now coming to the actual experiment and work with the walnut shells. The main idea was to capture the impact of a water droplet on the water surface or just above the walnut shell. However, this proved to be challenging. First of all, I don't have the proper Gate gear to trigger the speedlites or the camera for that moment of impact, so I had to do all the work manually as usual, relying merely on my senses and coordination between eyes and fingers on the shutter release (using the cable remote here).
Another hurdle was the shells themselves, as I thought  they would sustain some water, and they did for some time, but eventually, started to sink, as it can be seen in The Sinking Walnut which was a test shot but I kept it just for that sparkle in the droplet (thanks to Cokin's filter here!). Apparently the walnut shells are porous naturally. Trying to keep some luster and reflection off water, I've exchanged the bowl of water with some can, put it upside down, and rely on the shallow edge to keep some water. I've also placed play clay (or whatever they call it) to stabilize the shells which proved a bit annoying in the editing phase later on, but it was a must.

Anyway, I will keep it short here and let the video do the talk. You can click the button to view it on a larger size. The whole process ended up with about 220 shots (mostly test shots of course and failed attempts) and sieved down to about 34 shots and finally, probably around 11 shots that were properly edited. Actually of the images is a composite of other shots that I deemed unusable; Not going to tell which!
I've realized during the work that I don't really have to shoot water (was using a head-less syringe for that), but at some point I've started to blow air from the syringe into the shell that had been filled with water just to make a turbulence and it worked just fine! So, a lesson to keep in mind when working in the future that the goal can be reached in more than one way, and some might sound a bit unconventional… I leave you with the video now.

In addition to these, I've created some extra pieces, just some artistic composition from one of the shots. Not sure why but I just felt like it really, but these pieces are not uploaded to the stocks like the rest. The two were saved as PNG to preserve the transparent background; So, even they are rendered as squares, but in reality they form a "X".

Vortex Pac-Man

Gluttonite

Finale

Now that I'm done with the walnut experiment post, I'm not sure what would my next post be about, but we'll see. For this reason I might even take a little vacation off from blogging until I do something significant with my camera, or maybe to put a little announcement here for some new photos uploaded to the stocks. Meanwhile, it seems that I'm already breaking with the resolution of making an Arabic post for my other blog once a month, as it is already August, and I literally don't have any idea what to post about there. About this same topic of this post? Maybe. Even though I wouldn't know how to render it up because that blog is dedicated mainly to beginners, so a lot of instructions and explanatory must be involved; Tedious, and might be overwhelming for a beginner. I've done such a post about high-speed photography before though, so this is another thing which makes me think what is the use of a new post about the same technique (almost).
Artistically speaking, I do a lot of editing for old photos but I'm not sure if i want to post them here since they don't have any specific category or theme, or belong to some project I'm working on. But I'll keep them on the side just in case…

Eagerness for traveling is back at me again even though I know that it is even harder than before with all the crazy world around me and me being the weight of Retinitis Pigmentosa. Those travels I used to do were the only reminder for me that I can survive and live alone, doing my own business, and above all, with some peace of mind. But that's something farfetched for the time being. I think no escape from facing these mood swings and coping with an environment that feels so strange to me as if I wasn't born and raised here.
Meanwhile, I've been thinking about placing some orders online, and among the things I wish to have is some soundproof panels or anything like that to give me some peace and quiet atmosphere in this house. But because of the bad postal services, I have to think it over, as ordering is not as easy as before when I used to order my camera gear all from stores in the US. Things had changed for me. For this reason, I'm planning to check if such panels are available locally here and again, I might need someone to pick me up to and from. Sounds pretty much like begging… and just to think that some people envied me for retiring early…

Fire and Water…

Weather is cooling down! Oh my what a relief! Sunrise is getting late few minutes by each day and thus I'm leaving to work every morning while it's dark somehow, and it will be darker and darker soon. I love the atmosphere, if not for some of the stupidity on the road of course. I just hope that this winter would not pass without some outside work with the camera, again. Anyway, as a continuation

Tine Agus Uisce

If you are wondering about the meaning of the subtitle here, it just means Fire and Water and you will know why just now, After finishing my work with dice and water, I thought maybe I should do another thing before I move away my gear from the set. And it occurred to me: Why not candles? Surely we can have some action by that, right? Besides, I do have a bunch of candles left around which I bought for some other project in the past and I hate to see them collecting dust like that for nothing! So here we go…

Aqua-Sword

Aqua-Meteor

Initially, the idea was to capture the moment just before the candle's flame goes off by a blow of air. I used a compressed air canister for that. However, where is the action in that? So, right away, I've decided to change my work to include water and fire. Working with water here is a bit dangerous because it might get sprinkled around the set and all that (which it did) but small amounts of that from a syringe hurt no one, I think! And so, the game began trying to capture the right time manually. The good thing about using a syringe is the change in angles now and then, trying to get different perspectives and different action. The hard thing was, though, is getting the sprinkled water right on the flame, which caused many shots have out of focus droplets, sometimes beyond repair and not serving the image in general at all, somehow like Aqua-Meteor, but I like this one somehow.
The depth of field here ranged between f/4 to f/5.6, despite the usage of a macro lens; Canon EF 100mm Macro USM. I lowered the f-number here for two main reasons:

• Even though using 6 speedlites, I thought of lowering the power consumption to have even a shorter "flash duration" which I thought it would be better somehow to capture more precise moments. This of course requires allowing more light in by increasing the ISO or lowering the f-number, and so it was the second (while ISO was fixed at 200).
• The background contained some metallic bar which I couldn't cover, and increasing the depth of field (i.e. increasing the f-number) would cause it to be quite obvious and hard to fix later in Photoshop. In fact, it was already problematic in some shots at this f/5.6.

Der Kampf
One of the shots where
water droplets were not
stable enough even at
the speed of 8000^-1s.

All shots were taken at 1/8000 of a second for the shutter speed and this time I didn't try to gamble with the shutter speed. Yet, I think I do need more than 1/8000s to stabilize the water movement further from what I saw in the final results. I think I will do some research about available tricks to overpass this speed in high speed photography techniques. ِAnother problem was there to be dealt with which was the changing level of the candle flame itself (because of melting). So, it was a work of lowering and raising the tripod's neck (central column) and re-focusing, and forgetting to focus already for some shots. In fact, I've tried to make it a habit for me to check the focus after every shot I made in that session. Anyhow, seems I really need to work on that background in the future, in case I'm working in such set, in such place, again.



Luckily, this set of shots was accepted right away without any refusal on Canstockphoto and on Dreamstime. Probably by the time you are reading this you would be seeing some of these images in my signature frame below the post. Now, there is one more idea which I wish to do at some time but not sure when (priority goes to photo shooting more than editing) and that is to combine several of these recent shots and make new ones of various combination of fire, water and smoke. I'm sure it would be such a delicate work and probably I won't produce much images that way, but it is worth trying.

Finale

Well, on a side note, after more than a year of stopping posts on Instagram (and I mean photos, not posts related to my Ayvarith conlang on @Ayvarith), I've started to slowly post back. But this time I won't be paying attention to that stupid platform. Some people welcomed me in fact with my first post after the stop. An encouraging sign but still I didn't put much effort into that. Beside that, I've posted once a day only (so far as I'm typing this 2 photos were posted). I used post at least twice a day back when I was active there. In fact, I've even considered having a third new account to post stuff from scratch but I've forgot about this idea and decided to go back to my old account. This time though, no following, no like for like; Just nothing. I'm posting there, and whoever wants to, can give a like and leave. It would depend on my mood and my schedule as well. So, posts won't be schedules as before and I'm already planning to stop posting in some days if I have to.
In the meantime, thoughts about my life and destination is still a recurring idea in my mind. I'm not sure I do have a goal and despite about all what I hear, from all these motivational speakers, about the importance of setting a goal; I still feel that it is all nothing but rubbish. Not aiming to disregard what other people feel about themselves or the things they feel important but I'm seriously in the status of not finding any value; Specially in these societal standards and hypocrisy necessities. There is a feeling going inside when I see newspapers, TV, two people talking, something strange just tells me all that is an act. All are nothing but actors...
Just a final thought, I've made an astrological reading (paid) and one of the questions I've asked was about career or career path and what is best for me in general. I have to say that the reading in general blew me away and the lady did pin the nature of my current work without telling her anything about it. It seems I do have to focus away from the scientific field indeed. She said things will take time to find out and to get along and find the real passion in my life - well, after all the information she gave out about me (even about my delayed speech problem when I was a child), I tend to believe her in fact. Maybe then all these motivational stuff that people have the vibe with currently would make some sense to me? We'll see. For the time being, I really just want to enjoy "some" of my life; Just as she said as well.

تلاقي (Meeting)

Speed Gambling II…

I'm typing this in a very short time so I guess it will be a short post. Many things are going on and big part of that is vexing me, but some good things are happening (or happened actually by last week) when I posted my Arabic post about high speed photography in my Arabic blog.
I was not going to type anything here for this week and call it off, but I'm gathering my power (and mood) to do so. The whole week was busy and amazingly annoying with many things caused mainly by people not being able to regulate their timing and don't really know the value of time. I thought I was guilty of that myself but with this passing week, I guess I'm far way too wrong to judge myself like that. Anyway, among these tasks that I had to do, I had some time to process the last bits of my dice images which I've started 2 weeks ago, and also had the chance to filter some and even tag them (put information on these images) in order to upload them to stock websites. And there were strange events there but I will recount them later. Let's see first the Phase 2 of dice photography here.

Stroke-Stroke-Stroke

As I've posted the week before last, I was working on some high speed shooting for dice falling into water, and I've been fluctuating between the macro lens (100mm) and my trusty 50mm. However, the bulk of the work later on continued to be with 50mm since it was easier to deal with mistakes with this lens, while the macro 100mm lens needed precision (lot of it) to throw the dice exactly in place, in the viewing field of the lens.

Picasso's Dream

However, with 50mm lens, I do get the privilege of cropping the image and place the dice almost where I want in the frame. The drawback though is that the details in the water movement is not quite clear at times. Nonetheless, interesting shapes can be produced at this level. However, after some time, I thought why not speeding up the flash strokes instead of the shutter speed? In other words, what or how it would look like if I used the stroboscopic (multi) flash option? Which I did, and the results were pretty interesting here.

ارتطام (Collision)

I've started as usual with 100mm macro lens but soon I've changed to 50mm again. I realized right away that to get some nice images somehow similar to the high speed shots i can do this work alone by using regular shutter speed (far slower than the sync speed even) and simply go around that by using the stroboscopic function of the speedlite. Unless, of course, having a multiple occurrence of the object is not the aim, then the typical HSS methodology is the thing to go for, even though some shots I've made with the stroboscopic mode do look similar to HSS, as in the case of Three and Two Threes below.

Three and Two Threes

I'm guessing here that to get a closer look to HSS and eliminate multiple images is to quicken the shutter speed a bit. In the speedlite's manual, there is actually an equation to calculate the appropriate shutter speed required for a combination of flash frequency and the number of flashes. However, I've actually played around with these numbers and if there is one thing I've learned in this experiment is the fact that one should not lose oneself to the technicality and just do it. Things are not supposed to be perfect and things are not supposed to be taken with a single shot only; So, there must be a trial and error and experimenting. Calculating things can be useful as a rough estimation but NEVER decides what the end result should be nor the final outlooks.
Also, one more thing I've discovered here is the fact that increasing the number of strokes is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes having 5 or 10 strokes of flash in a single exposure is just about enough to record the movement in a clear way, while too many strokes can or might stabilize the object more or even congest the scene.

Dice Race

Another thing I've learned, the hard way, is to keep cleaning the lens after each drop of the object! As you can see in Dice Race, there are some octagonal flares caused by some water droplets on the polarizer filter over the lens. I was able to crop it out in some images but the majority persisted and it was not easy to remove them, and the best I could do to some is to reduce their "weight" in the image by cropping, and sometimes eliminating them by adjusting the curve and contrast.

Now at this level, I think I'm done with the dice experiment and I do have some ideas to further experiment with other objects and ideas. Anyway, I've taken the time to fill in the information for these images which I've prepared to upload to the stocks (31 in total). To do so, I've prepared a list of keywords and 2 descriptions to use (one for HSS shots and one for stroboscopic ones), while changing the name of the images only. It was a long process to edit these info with every image in Photoshop and I'm not aware of any software that does the work in an easier manner. However, I've uploaded the files to my main outlets: Canstockphoto, Dreamstime, 123RF, Mostphotos.
The weird story here comes from Canstockphotos. If you click the stream at the end of this post to get into my gallery (at the moment of typing and posting this blog post) you might notice 2 images being accepted ONLY. The rest were rejected for "inappropriate keywords". This took me by surprise because the keywords are the same for all images, so why accepting two of the series and rejecting the rest? This is something beyond my "intelligence". The other thing is that they don't specify really the keyword(s) that caused the problem so it is like a gambling game to adjust and re-upload and wait and so on. Thus, I've decided to delete all my images and leave only these 2 which were accepted for reasons I don't understand yet. Meanwhile, the whole collection of 31 images is available on my Mostphotos (they don't review images), which is a relief. Now, it is just a matter of time and waiting for Dreamstime and 123RF to either accept or reject. They usually take a long time; Sometimes, pretty damn long time…

Speed Gambling…

Somebody, anybody, just tells Winter to come over, please? PLEASE!? It's officially the fall season, so they say, and it is actually worth than summer itself even. Stinking humidity, allergies everywhere, and the worse of all, malfunctioning ACs and cars. Aaand let's not forget the boiler's problem at home where everyone still thinks that the water is "hot" while my body shivers violently when I take a shower and they refuse to turn it on because they think the weather, or the water, is still hot.
Anyway, I was going to post a bit about some photos I've shot from the Geology department, in my workplace, and I've edited these photos later on my PC. However, I think I'll skip that. It's just one photo which I've uploaded to the stocks already (you can click the stream at the end of this post to check my stock), and another one which I've turned into a 3D anaglyph. Not sure if I'm going to upload or do anything with the latter though. Anyway, Let's jump right into the experiment I talked about in my previous post.

Speed Gamble

In my previous post I've talked about some idea, using all my speedlites in a high speed photography set, like in the sketch on the left. Well, things weren't easy at first because, as usual and typical, I ran into a battery crisis and I had to give up on most of my rechargeable batteries that I've stocked for such work and got myself a new set of alkaline batteries, which are not rechargeable but hopefully more reliable. Another trouble was to set the table and stack the speedlites side by side and pointing at a specific point. It's a minor problem but it was quite vexing specially with connecting 3 out 7 speedlites with external power-pack (I have three 430EXII and one 420EX and these models do not accept external power sources unfortunately). All along the work process, I've changed the height of the tripod, the angle and few other settings; Most importantly from all these settings, maybe, would be the shutter speed, the ISO, flash zoom, and the flash power.
Now, flash power (for all speedlites of course) was set to manual and was controlled via the main speedlite which acts as a trigger as well (the one on the camera). I have to do this, since this is the only way to work with HSS mode AND control the rest of the speedlites wirelessly. I don't have a special trigger for that purpose. I lowered the power down, in hope that I can shoot in burst mode continuously (as this would reduce the recharging time). However, I was wrong. It didn't work that way and technically, I was limited to one shot. Anyway, I was also limited in raising the power too high up for the speedlites, because it might make my work with post-processing harder than it should be (by eliminating unnecessary parts from the metallic black tray I was using for my set).

Slow motion during a session.
For some reason I'm not sure of, the image turns black
when the flashes burst out.

As you can see from the video above, I had to work manually as usual. I've tried to set up my laser gate later on in fact but till this moment, it didn't work quite well. I'll explain the reasons below but first let's see some of the results that I've got in this way (and remember, all was manual, nothing was automated). The following images were, of course, edited and adjusted like a regular photos and they are not right out of the camera. So, there are adjustments and cropping involved; This is beside changing the lens from 100mm macro to 50mm:

The Falling One
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/3.2, 5000^-1s, ISO200

Fallen Luck
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/2.8, 4000^-1s, ISO160

Левитация
(Levitation)
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3, 8000^-1s, ISO200

 

 

Let It Go
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3, 8000^-1s, ISO200

This is a sample for some shots. Some of them had reflections on the water surface clearly and some (well, most) did not. I've used my polarizer to enhance such reflections (and also to protect the lens front). If I remember correctly, there were around 347 taken (the majority were dark frames) and been sorted down to 91 or so, and the process out is still ongoing. At the moment of typing this, the editing is still ongoing and I didn't check all images. Out of the camera, many of the images were dark in fact and did need a push in exposure while editing in RAW; Sometimes +1 and sometimes +2. Not much editing was done in RAW beside setting the exposure and controlling the highlights and shadows in various manners, including Fill, Black Point, and Contrast. As can be seen also, the shutter speed was fluctuating between 4000^-1 and down to 8000^-1 of a second, trying to freeze the water motion as much as possible. I've also changed the flash head zooming for most of the speedlites here, and in the final stages of shooting, I've settled down with 14mm (by pulling down the diffusing panel over the speedlite head) in order to spread light as much as possible on the tray, as it was hard to point the heads down at the water surface.

Not Enough Speed

Now composition-wise, I was not very happy, and probably using the 100mm Macro lens was the perfect solution, but still then I do think using 50mm was a good choice to add some elements around the action and fill the space with something; But my arrangement was a bird absurd! I did indeed try to fix that in some shots but recomposing, cloning, and cropping. At this moment, I think using 1/8000s is the perfect speed (and it is the maximum allowed by the camera).
After finishing a session or two with the manual work, I've decided to try and use the laser gate (from Ubertronix), which I got long time ago and I've seldom used it sucessfuly; In fact, never used it successfully! And this time, was no exception. I've tried at this point though, and according to some old advice from a professional, to connect the trigger to the speedlites instead of the camera because this will reduce the lag time significantly and would yield better results. This method, though, requires opening the shutter for second and allowing the speedlites to be triggered and then close the shutter (either by using timed shutter or using Bulb mode and a remote, which I kind of prefer in fact). That means, working in a dark environment. The location I was in gets considerably dark actually, but I'd have to wait till evening to have a darker atmosphere. Anyway, a quick glimpse at it (after hard work trying to align the laser beam to the receiver to form the laser gate) - told me that it's not going to work; Not the way I like it at least, for a number of reasons:

• The distance between the laser and the gate is wide across the tray (even after changing the orientation of the tray), making it almost impossible to precisely drop the dice across the beam. Thus, the gap must be narrower to drop precisely.
• The height to which I was able to set up the laser gate was relatively higher than required, as I guess. We are talking about microseconds here if not nanoseconds, thus things should be properly close to the water surface as much as possible without showing in the lens's field of view.
• Without finding a mechanism to adjust the level of the gate, it might be a quite troublesome way to use such a gate to capture the moment. If for instance the dice is captured in motion before touching the water surface, then adjusting the height of the gate is required to capture the perfect moment; Otherwise, all shots will be similar. 
• Part of fore mentioned points, I think this keeps us at the level of macro shooting.

Personally, now, after checking the situation and how things work, I think I do indeed prefer using the manual method despite its drawbacks. I think it also gives various results and unexpected results that makes the work amusing to some level. All that hassle with the laser gate is really not required unless I need to work with something quite delicate (like droplets) in the future. Otherwise, I think I will stick to this manual method for the time being. Now, there are a number of things that I think I want to try (planning to but didn't have the time before typing this blog post in fact):

• Try to merge my workflow with stereoscopic flashing, if possible.
• Use variety of lenses if possible other than 100mm Macro and 50mm.
• Try different angles as much as possible.
• Increase the power of the speedlites and use single shot method since the burst mode doesn't work here.
• Maybe change the container or the set to something smaller to give out a better composition and background, and have better control.

Finale

Now, this is it for now. Let's if I can post more about the new trials that I'm going to do with this experiment of high speed photography. Let's hope I get the time and the mood to work! This week has its toll on me already and I'm trying to hard to slow down and simplify my life.

Lately, and after closing down some settings on Duolingo website which makes me theoretically out of the "leaderboard" or whatever they call it, which is about contesting and doing more exercises for more points - after closing that down, I think I'm having more time to myself to do more useful things, specially in the Arabic section of that website. Beside that, I'm thinking of typing a blog post for my Arabic blog about this high speed photography experiment. So, my next week will definitely be busy, but I'll try to manage my time here and there - Let's hope!

Is it weird that I'm fascinated about astrology these days? Well, I had my interest in that but it's been a bit more than before nowadays. It's all just some trials to re-discover and understand myself further. Maybe forgive myself for some things as well? Well, absolutely not wasting much of time with this though (otherwise, I wouldn't be typing this blog post right?). I think all of this condensed work and thought is part of my efforts to forget about my pains and disappointments. Nevertheless, it leaves me just exhausted… Now, if only I can jot down these words that roam my heart into some poem hmm…

Touch Down
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3, 8000^-1s, ISO200

Bipolar…

Here we are, with Ramadhan running now 2 weeks deep, and 2 more weeks to go or so. I didn't take any leave from work this year for Ramadhan, so you can tell how my activities would be in this month. As of writing this, I've already had to skip one day of work because of my sleeping problems. I do have sleeping problems as it is, so imagine the turbulence when Ramadhan comes! However, I've been trying as much as I can to do some chores with the camera, be it astrophotography trials as usual, or some ideas that I'm working with indoors, with some bad news that surprised me: My oval dome diffuser for speedlites is lost, and cannot be found in any single place in the house! I'm not sure what happened there, but I have to work without it right now. I didn't pick it outside the house, so it must be in, and maybe it will show one day, but not sure how or when...

Bipolar

Well, now much have been going on with my camera but I've been really trying to dust off my attitude and mood and work a bit with some ideas that I've been already thinking of doing in a long time now (and one of them is related to Retinitis Pigmentosa which was supposed to be done back in February!). Anyway, as my mind is rambling randomly, I didn't start off with old ideas but just started to work with whatever spark was there in my mind at the moment, and that idea was based on reflections on water surface.

Setting for my reflections shoot (which was adapted after trial and error)
The blue thing is a small fan to make ripples in the water but realized it won't make the image any better.

My beloved lost diffuser
:~(

As you can see in the image above, I had to adapt to using the small beauty dish instead of my usual global diffuser which is lost already. Working with this dish and in such conditions probed to be such a challenge with hard-to-predict results. It took me a while to find out what reflects better. Initially, I've used an aluminum box (biscuits box) and filled it with water but that did not work well and did not reflect well. After surfing a bit I've found out that reflections with water work better with dark/black surfaces and I have to say I kind of felt stupid at that moment! Because I always use dark background under transparent acrylic or glass sheets to make good reflections off them! How come I didn't think of that! Anyway, it was time to get some more kitchen stuff: A cookies' tray.

Bipolar

It took me a while to perfect the position of my head in relation to the tray of water here, and also to position the speedlite with the beauty dish (and a diffuser) in a good place to light the face. The idea of the image was already to take 2 or more shots and merge them reflecting on the bipolarity disorder. Excuse the messy hair in Bipolar, but I really had hard time leaning towards the table (with my face almost touching the table) just to get the reflections on the tray right. No need to delve deep into the work in Photoshop I guess, but I have to say that I didn't like the abundance of black space between the two faces; I've tried to remove it but it didn't work out well, so I kept the original. There is also the luster on the edge of the tray which proved somewhat annoying, but then after a second though, I kept it as it is just to define the limit and edge of the water body.

Bipolar (B&W)

This said, I think I do prefer the B&W version more as it shows a stark contrast of emotions, and mood. This is aided with the fact that I had to do some extra sharpening here (just on the smaller versions for this blog post). But the thing that annoys me remains, that black empty space. Not sure if I'm right with this annoyance or not actually but this triggered me to think of doing it in another way, if I can. What I really didn't anticipate for is the hardship in working with water reflections. Despite the simple settings, but location and lighting proved hard to achieve (or let's say needs time to get it right). This is with the help of a polarizer on the lens (Voigtländer 20mm here) to get the reflections to pop up clearly on the water (in contrast to its typical use in photography I guess!).

Bipolar II

The second trial was to be using my Canon EF 50mm lens this time and not Voigtländer 20mm like the previous shot. That required a change in the positioning of the tray and other things and I tried to use another modifier here (a simple reflector from Rogue attached to the speedlite, which can be bent to direct the light in specific direction). This one, too, took me by a storm as I was trying to fix the distances and the lighting (and because of the change in positions, I had to fix the background a bit). Like its previous predecessor, the idea of Bipolar II was to merge 2 or more images together. And while Bipolar was shot with camera in portrait position, Bipolar II was shot in landscape position but then cropped to keep the important elements. My plan was to show a full face but physically that was not possible and I didn't want to switch back to 20mm (it would have been problematic for all the elements I would need to crop out later). In the make of Bipolar II I decided to use the little fan again but placed a bit far away from the set to cause gentle ripples (unlike the tense ripples while working with Bipolar which made me stop using it). In both instances also, I had to take a "blank" frame; That is a shot for the set without me being in it to use later for corrections and cover-ups. This blank frame was essential for Bipolar II, as the table and the edge of the tray were quite clear, so probably a black band in the middle seems plausible!

Bipolar II (B&W)

As is the case with Bipolar, I find satisfaction with Bipolar II in B&W rather than being in color, as it is more dramatic and shows stark emotions. Moreover, working with Bipolar II was somewhat tricky as the original shot did not show the ripples and the looks through the ripples clearly, but once I've rotated the image upside down, it was clear that there is a contrast in emotions between a smiling face and a "maniac's" look. I've rotated the image originally to see portions of the eyes clearly and try to dodge them a bit but then when I saw how it is clearer than the original position, I've decided to keep Bipolar II in that position. I think the ripples here played a good role too, adding to the drama and the mood of the image. However, dodging the shady areas in general was not quite smooth and I had to abandon the idea altogether. You might have noticed how the light and shadows almost divide the lower half in the image into 2 halves. Probably I needed to use a reflector here on the other side of the settings (but the space wouldn't allow for it anyway). But my expectation is, this would not have happened if I was to use the oval dome diffuser on my speedlite.

These four (or rather two) images are all I've been trying to do with my lazy mood and schedule. As I've mentioned, there are some more ideas that I'm willing to try but I just need to push myself harder, specially with Ramadhan ongoing. Not sure how I'm going to work without my beloved diffuser though; Just when I started to like working with it, I lost it! If I didn't find it any time soon, I might have to prepare for another order. For the time being, I'll try to work with what I have and maybe try some DIY solutions.

Finale

As the situation is growing crazy in this area, as much as I get sicker and sicker of my reality. Not only for that, but because of the irony with these traffic jams, which proved to be denser in Ramadhan than in regular days (our working hours in Ramadhan are shorter). The weather is already reaching 42^oC in temperature, and of course this is not so-pleasant occurrence. Things at work are going crazy for preparations to move to the new location and as for my department we still don't know if we are really moving or not because of the complexities of laws and protocols. I'm starting to regret my decision for not having a vacation during the month of Ramadhan actually but I'm trying to keep myself going by wishing to myself that I would be traveling some time later. This said, I'm really not sure about any plans nor any real wish to travel with the craziness around me, as much as I love it and eager to do it, as much as I am getting tired every time I do remember the hardships of traveling plus the preparations. Sometimes I do wish if I have a companion for such travels. I'll be dreaming for now. Sometimes trying to be optimistic and fighting the darkness inside yourself leaves you so exhausted that you cannot even see the purpose of all of this. One it will all over, so I'll just be waiting…

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…