Bumblebee…

After the problem with my last post like two weeks ago, which was probably accidental (because I type my post whenever possible, in two locations), I’ve decided now to develop a new way to write my blog down, just like I do with my Arabic blog: Type it as a document and then copy-paste it onto the blogging platform. I think it’d be safer that way, so we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I’ve been going through some upheaval here with my sleeping on and off and my vacation (along with the National Day holiday) are all over and, unfortunately, I didn’t do much with my camera, and now I’m back to work; The daily useless exhaustion. Anyway, despite being somewhat idle, I did some stuff that I might share here anyway!

Bumblebee

Some weeks ago I’ve received an email from Chris Hinterobermaier, the Chairman of Trierenberg’s Circuit photography contest (or as we dub it usually: Austria’s International Photo-contest), motivating me to participate in 2019’s edition of the contest and reminding me of my (unexpectedly) winning panorama last year The Pride of My Homeland and the “psychological” edit of Schizophrenia. Actually, in the beginning I was reluctant to participate. I even replied back telling him that I will think about it as I didn’t work with my camera much (specially after leaving the group). I’ve also told him that I might participate in old photos, this is just to keep his hopes low with the quality of the photos which I’m going to participate with (he might have been expecting something new, who knows!). Anyway, after weeks of thinking about and working on some photos, I’ve finally made a decision to participate and it was indeed with lot of old panoramas and photos but more or less with some changes (like converting some to B&W). Meanwhile, I was hoping to upload something related to Retinitis Pigmentosa as it was February (the month of Retinitis Pigmentosa), but here we go; It’s March already and I couldn’t make one photo related to the subject! I’m still working on it though while typing this text. I had one idea that involved my old car but unfortunately, I do need a great deal of help here and I have none to help, so in a nutshell, I had to abandon the idea for now and do other things, if possible.

Anxiety

Thus, I started on working with few ideas in a whim. But the progress was so slow that I needed few days to get things done, even though it was a vacation time, yet my sleeping pattern was going through spasms! Anyway, after trying out few shots, I’ve decided to shoot another selfie (as usual) with a twist, which produced Anxiety. The twist here is: Since I don’t have anyone to help out, I’ve shot many selfies with different hand poses and then re-composed them all into one image. For a dramatic look, I’ve already decided before shooting even to convert this image into B&W. Of course, I had to do that old trick with my eye and brighten it up by controlling the tones (deliberately even with layer masks).

In the beginning, I was planning to work with the concept of “Using Every Single Pixel,” and that is the tendency to frame the subject (me in this case of course) without leaving any unused spaces around the main subject. However, while shooting, I’ve discovered that this is not a good idea as I would later be copying and overlapping, beside aligning, which would move the frames a bit and cropping is, eventually, inevitable. It is a good practice to imagine the process in your head before and while shooting your photos. In this instance, it is not much of a hurdle since I’m just working in a room in the house, but imagine the situation if you are really out there, traveling or something, just far away from home; It would be good to have yourself backed up and ready for bad surprises by doing a bit of imagination before and during the shoot. One of the struggles here as well was the lighting. Since I wanted things to be dramatic, I knew I need just one light (and if need rises, I would use something to reflect it off).

Window capture for the layers layout from the original file of Anxiety.
That is before the final crop and converting to B&W.

However, to contain the light and concentrate it in one area, it was somewhat compulsory to use a snoot, and directing the light with the snoot alone is really, REALLY, an exhaustive procedure. I even tried to bounce the light off the walls (with the snoot on to contain the light and not spread it all over) but still it was not quite enough. It was about time though until I’ve found the right angle and the right power for the speedlite to finally start shooting the series.

After doing Anxiety, I had other plans for some shot to upload on the go to Trierenberg’s Circuit photo contest. In fact, as I was working with my camera, I was simultaneously in the process of uploading my photos to the contest, and there was a bit of vacancy under the themes of Red and Human Emotions which I thought of filling up with one image into both of them. However, this time I really needed a hand with the work, mainly the modeling, so who else would I pick for this mission? My brother!

In creating Remorse, the greatest hassle really was to find a proper red pigment to make into a tear; Something that wouldn’t be hard to wash later on and yet not so watery in looks. In fact, after giving up a bit about finding such substance (we did try many coloring stuff) I was telling my brother that maybe we should just shoot it with water and colorize it digitally (but even that might not work because water would be too slippery). Anyway, the rescue came along from his daughter’s watercolors set and we created somewhat a thick and saturated bit of pigment and, most importantly, washable! However, looking at it now, I do think I made some great mistake (regardless of how strong the message is, is any). I should have used a single light to add drama and deliver the emotional status better. Using two speedlites (for the background and for my brother) made the image kind of flat and more like an image you would find on stock websites. Well, I’m thinking already of uploading it to the stocks but I would need a model release from my brother. The hassle is in printing and writing down these releases (sigh).

Operation Orange

OK. This one here is a story of failure. So, if you are not into that then just skip this portion or close this page altogether. I’ve spent more than 4 weeks (from around January 29^th) in this project and at the end, the result was null. I had to stop it after all. I feel somewhat free after stopping it (because I really need to use the infrared camera in other things) and yet I feel being fooled. But it’s a mistake from my side, and I should learn from this. So, here is a description of this failed project.

After doing a time-lapse of two bananas about 2 months, shooting them in ultraviolet, I’ve decided to do another “rotten” video, and this time shooting infrared, and the target was an orange. Initially, and for about 2 weeks, I’ve set up a 100W tungsten lamp beside the set because it was the best infrared source. Here, I went through much of thinking to try and shoot with a speedlite (because, after all, the fungus needs a dark environment) but working with a speedlite was not an option because of the power problems along with it (speedlites have no indicator for the power level). Thus, naturally I thought of using a tungsten lamp even though it will keep the room bright most of the time, but I was hoping. After 2 weeks from continuous shooting (every 5 minutes, using my intervalometer of course), I realized not much is being changed; With exception of very little green dots on the surface of the orange. At this point, I did change the strategy and changed the lighting to the on-camera flash which is built-in. I didn’t consider this option in the beginning because the direction would be right on the orange and won’t add any depth like a light from the side; Basic lighting stuff in photography. But with this power problem (and not having a studio flash or strobe that can be connected to an electrical point), I had to step down and not trying to be a perfectionist here. Using the on-camera flash allowed me to check the power (because, naturally, it is part of the camera) as well as keep the room dark all the time. It was still an annoying task somewhat to check the batteries and change them once a day at least, and also check the memory cards to upload the images to the PC. Anyway, after about 4 weeks with slow degradation in the outer skin, a quick inspection to the images I’ve been working with here made me realize that the skin of the orange which changed its color to purple is “infrared invariant,” that is, with infrared photography such changes in color do not make any significant change in the perceived image. Adding to that, my friend noted that this purple color is not caused by the fungus actually. Anyway, not wanting to put everything to waste, I’ve just parsed and made this time-lapse video of the process, which is composed of more than 9000 frames over the span of more than 4 weeks. The time-lapse here is composed to fit all frames in the span of about 1 minute (I think most stock sites require such time limitation, so I kept it at that).

 

At this, I’ve learned my lesson, and I should really take some test shots with live samples before going on with such a long experiment that really, REALLY, wasted my time. Well, it’s over now, on to the next.

Finale

Well, I’m trying to work on something here so I couldn’t finish it to be posted here and anyway I think it would be a bad idea to post it as well and make this blog post longer than it is already. Hope things go well with this shot I’m going to make because February is over and I didn’t really do anything related to Retinitis Pigmentosa still! My initial ideas were put to rest. They involved working with my old car in some space near home but I definitely need someone to help me out AND I must work in the evening if I’m going to use the wireless function to control my speedlites (I do have a radio trigger but it is problematic at times). Anyway, I’m up to a new idea now so let’s hope it works well and ready by the week after next.

Since I’m back to work, stress had been building up and my sleeping is indeed swinging. I’m even waking up around midnight and go to work just like that without even a nap. Things are building up inside me and in a time I was thinking I need a vacation to travel, the idea of just resigning and quit out from all this trash altogether is a frequent mind-visitor. Things are hard though and it’s not easy to find another job right now. Even traveling and living somewhere else where I might, just might, find people that I can get along with better – even that had been an idea that comes often to my mind. Is that an effect of my age that I don’t get along with the rest? Is it because of my eye disease? Is it because I’m single still with no one to share my life with like most of my friends do? I really don’t know. I just know one thing: I’m sick. Sick of everything. I want to sit in a dark corner and simply cry. Cry as much as I can, as much as I want, without being afraid of anyone judging me; I doubt anyone would ask even why, that if anyone noticed anyway.
Anyway, I’m TJ. And TJ is always alright…