Pinholism…

Summer is here, so if you are a person who likes summer, please don't let me encounter you on any platform! It's just the 2^nd week of June and temperatures already getting to, if not exceeding, 50^oC! I had some pleasant short vacation away from work but going back now, after such a holiday, with such heat (and AC problems from time to time) is just so exhausting. Meanwhile, I'm sort of idle with my camera but I'm busy with other things. Might talk about them later. But as promised in my last post, I will talk about another photo which I've created some weeks ago and I didn't want to jam my previous blog post here about it, so I kept it for this week.

Pray

المُقْرِئْ
The Reciter

Some time ago, months ago in fact, I've made a shot with my pinhole cap (or pinhole lens as some like to call it)  picturing myself reading or reciting Quran, opposite to a shiny window. The image is much of a conceptual fine art work instead of the typical expressive sharp image that we, mostly, would expect. This shot was done in a time when I was really working on enhancing the pinhole imagery and trying my best to get it to be as sharp as possible. However, with time, I realized that this is kind of impossible to be done (scientifically) and it would be rather better to work on using this specific look which is created by the pinhole to express a specific mood, and culture. Since the make of The Reciter (it is also one of the rare occasions in which I do name my photos in Arabic actually, because of its nature), I've thought of doing another shot depicting the praying practice (as a Muslim of course) but for one reason or another I really didn't get the time to do it until Ramadhan (and being off with my little vacation) this year. The main problem, though, was to find a suitable location for the shooting; I needed a place with glass that allows so much light to come in, and must be in some good angle in relation to the sun. I guess I've found that good spot in the guest room at home.

المُصَلّي
The Praying

In this room, I had to shoot in the early morning. I did check the room several times but I thought first about some obstacles (some gypsum board wall ) that might block the view if I want to perform the shot in front of the main entrance door to this room. However, all went well in the end (with some tiny bits of cropping and fixing perspective in post-process). Then, we have the problem of the perspective, which was easily solved with my new L-Bracket, which I've attached to the camera body and it allowed me to place the camera considerably stable in portrait position on the ground. The main issue though was the nature of the shoot itself. Metering and taking test shots revealed that I need about 64 seconds. Doing some math and dividing these seconds over the various parts of the typical movements which one do during the prayer, it was about 12 seconds for each. Anyway, I was counting on my own without a timer or anything and the thing didn't really work as some movements were not recorded clearly on the sensor apparently. Thus, and again, I've found myself forced to use the power of blending to merge all the movements - I did several shots with various movements and gestures, and each in 64 seconds. Blending these shots was not an easy task as well and my typical method of blending using Lighten or Darken did not work here. I simply had to change the opacity for various shots and even canceling some shots as well to get the final look as you see it in The Praying. Another critical post-processing point here is trying to make a difference in tones between the prostrating pose and the kneeling-on-the-ground pose, but keeping both gestures or images reasonably "black". It might be noticeable better when the image is enlarged though.
Now, after finishing this image, I'm thinking, again, of a third images for this series even though in the beginning I was thinking that this would be a two-image sequence only and no more; But my mind is still playing tricks and still thinking what I could add to this series (and it must be related to the Islamic practices of course) - Didn't get an answer myself but we'll see. I've been idle with my camera now (specially after some failures) so it would be a good push to get active again.

Finale

Well, I can't emphasize enough how much I'm sick of summer already and it is still June. Sometimes I'm really hating myself for being born in August. I'm already doing project indoors as it is, and now summer is here, then just the thought of going out to shoot anything, day or night, is a No-No.
Meanwhile, despite stopping the astrophotography trend in my brain, there are some good signs, like finding a relatively-cheap equatorial mount or tracker that I can work with but I'm not ordering this now. This would allow me to take longer spans of exposures and get some proper light to the sensor in order to process them properly and show features of the deep sky objects; As all my trials before were nothing more than some constellations and dots in the sky! On the other hand, working with these images was beneficial despite the failures. I've learned new techniques on "stretching" the data out of my images which I might use any time with other types of images and not necessarily with Astro-shots.
Hanging by the ideas, I'm still looking for inspirations among the Andalusian folk songs and I do indeed have some ideas, but when thinking practically, I just get back to "normal" and abandon the whole thing and start thinking again for and about something new. This is is beside thinking about using the pinhole again for a third image to the sequence of Islamic nature, which includes the two images above.
On the other hand, with all the mental struggle here, there is a struggle inside of me trying to push myself and force myself to travel for real despite the hustle and overthinking. It might be a tiresome thing to do but it is essential to get a break before the engine of my mood and my brain breaks down in this place I'm living in. My fuse is getting shorter and shorter. Meanwhile, I'm trying to get myself busier by adding on to my to-do-list, like learning more languages beside Irish on Duolingo. I've added Turkish, German and Russian - and who knows, I might add a 5^th one too! I really wish I can learn many languages with ease; They fascinated me since I was a kid, and now there is some good chances.
Anyway, as I won't be posting in this blog by next week, I'll be busy actually typing a post for my Arabic blog instead about "extracting" gradients from photos and apply them to other photos, and if it is interesting enough I might as well talk about it here. I hear a lot about people selling and others buying such gradients to ease their workflow and such, yet I'm not sure if this is worthy of my time but I'm experimenting and having some artistic fun as well!