Strobogenic II…

Things are going so fast that it feels like I didn't post here for a month or so. Because of the nCoV-19 pandemic, people are going crazy here. My workplace decided to give everyone 2 weeks off until things calm down. Thus, more time to work with my camera hopefully, until March 15^th. Probably because of that, it does feel like ages since I've posted here and actually time is kind of passing slowly. However, I'm not complaining; I'm counting my blessings here and thank goodness for the fact that I don't have to drive in that daily mess!
Anyway, I've been working with my camera and doing many things with some old photos trying new editing techniques but I'll save that for later. For this week's post, I just want to focus on my work with the stroboscopic lighting which I've established by my last post (or before?).

Strobogenic II

In continuation for my work with the stroboscopic light, and after doing a number of selfies which I've posted about last time (before my RP post), I've kept on working on a little experiment, with roses this time. Initially, this was not my idea; I was thinking of a real model (I mean, someone posing for me in general not a paid model), but that didn't happen unfortunately (still seeking that goal though!). Nevertheless, it was a good experiment somehow from which I've learned from some mistakes (or "misfortunes" if I can call them so).

Grungy Passion

The idea was simple, throw a rose and record that in a stroboscopic manner. However, I've read online in some texts about the topic that the background should be black. For me, I've neglected this particular point simply because I don't have a black background, but I thought working in a dark room would somehow solve the problem. Also, doing my calculations in relation to the shutter speed, the frequency, and the number of flashes, I've realized practically that I do need a dark room to lengthen the exposure freely; Lengthening the exposure here does not really have to extend in terms of seconds or anything. It can still be parts of a second but still considered "slow" in terms of motion (does that make any sense?). Speaking about something in the order of 1/30 of a second and up to a second and beyond.

Side note: Using a shutter of 1/30s with the maximum frequency of 199Hz on the speedlite yields about 6 strikes of flash, which means the motion can be recorded on the sensor with such shutter speed and frequency on 6 moments during this exposure time. Notice that I'm not talking here about anything related to the power of the speedlite. In fact, at some point and under some settings, the speedlite options would limit the number of strikes that can be set in the configuration menu, and this is in relation to the expected power consumption and some issues related to the protection of the speedlite from overheating. Trust me, the heat is a serious issue even with such small units. For this reason, using multiple speedlites with each dialed to relatively low power is a good choice to overcome these limitations.

Receptive

Thus, with a shutter speed of 1/30s it would be better to work in a dark room as much as possible to avoid unwanted ambient light and leave the speedlites to take control over the whole recording of the scene. Nevertheless, I had my own problems with the white wall here, for obvious reasons! Anyway, in the processing phase, the amount of grain produced was great at times, beyond repair, so I just made it part of the image, as in Grungy Passion. Worth noting here that this image specifically was flipped upside down to make the rose as to be falling down, instead of being thrown up. In fact, the gesture here probably helped a lot. Along that line, in Receptive, the image has been turned for 90^o to mimic that receptive motion as if the rose is falling from above, and I tried to emphasize "the visual reading" from the right side here by flipping the image to let the hand start or initiate from that corner. Generally, most of these images were processed with saturated colors but saturating the Red tones only. Cropping as well was a vital tool here and I went beyond the typical cropping limits of Photoshop (remember, I have an older version which has nothing but the rule of thirds embedded to help in cropping).

Side note: In image design, or let's say it is generally accepted, that a viewer, any viewer, would start reading an image "visually" and try to analyze its elements starting from the "natural" direction for that viewer in terms of writing and reading, usually. Thus, if the viewer comes from a culture that reads and writes in left-to-right manner, then "reading" an image would naturally start off from the left. For this reason, I'm trying to emphasize my vision and my background culture by trying to emphasize the direction of reading on the photos I create, as in Receptive (and in Passionately Reluctant as will be shown), where the reading should probably start from the right side because the hand is anchored towards the lower-right corner. 

Passionately Reluctant

This trend of moving things or flipping things to the right side continued with Passionately Reluctant, which is apparently not in a square format (or 1:1 ratio) but rather in some weird elongated ratio here and the reason for that is I tried to keep the motion of the rose inline and coherent with the rule of the golden spiral. However, I had to change the aspect ratio here a bit to fit the curvy line for the golden spiral with the motion of the rose, which ironically, takes away the "golden2 out of it (in case you didn't know, there are other spirals named after metals and each one of them have a different ratio attached to it). This one though didn't appear as throwing the rose up (though I actually did but holding the tip of the stem only). It appeared as if I'm moving forward and backward with it. It doesn't matter anyway; I like the motion after all. Probably the grain here is not quite pronounced but it is there still. I'm not sure though if I did some noise reduction here or not, but for sure I did emphasize the red tones for the rose.
At this level, I've realized that a single rose is not quite "pronounced," if I can call it so. I had this impression that just one rose was not quite enough, specially that the images that I see and judge are viewed from the LCD of the camera; Those images you see here been subjected to a heavy work of dodge and burn and contrast enhancement along the way. In the original RAW files, the trace of the single rose was barely visible. So, in order to enhance my chances, I've decided to throw the whole bouquet of roses!

انْفِراج (relief)

I'm not sure why I named the last shot in the series in Arabic really but I just felt like it. This image as well puts more emphasis (in my opinion) on reading from the right, because if you start reading the image from the left, it would be as if the roses are being caught and not released, in opposition to the title; and again, as I always advocate, the title of the image is part of the image and an essential part of it - NEVER leave your image without a title. Thus, to convey the meaning of releasing and relief, one must start from the right to understand the image properly!
Technical: I didn't go through the technical details in the beginning, but here how was the setup: I've used all my speedlites (7), but one of them was for controlling the other six. So, in action, 6 speedlites were shooting; The seventh remained on-camera to trigger (the in-camera wireless option doesn't work in Multi mode). The speedlites were pointed to a wall in front of me to bounce the light from that wall onto the scene. The room I was in was small so this move did light the wall in the background in these images - for this reason, a black background should be a must in making shots like these. Not saying a white background won't be artistic in any way though, it is definitely a delicate matter and it often gets out of control.

Finale

Now, this is a second patch of the stroboscopic work. At the time of typing these words, I did indeed produce many more images and did other experiments, as I've stated above. During this holiday though I must also invest some time in other important things... like playing games!
With all the fuss and mess going on about the Coronavirus worldwide and the fear spreading over people, I do find myself having some strange feelings deep inside. I don't know what are these feelings, but something makes me calm, and chilling. Some annoyances are there for sure but the general theme here is, quiet. Could it be because of being away from the daily jams? The workplace? The lone nights that I got to spend wandering alone with my thoughts or working with the camera? I don't know. With this tranquility, though, comes a sense of worthlessness for this world. Maybe it is a time period of re-evaluating my life? Memories are visiting me a lot lately, lifting me to some status between soberness and drunkenness; A happy ecstasy and yet a sad one in the same time. Such weird feelings that I'm not able to translate at all for the moment, nor any help could be sought from Google Translate for that as well…I'm just here, waiting for happiness to happen.