RP 2022…

Well well well! Been 3 weeks I guess since I've posted something here? Things were a bit fussy. Busy a bit, tired a bit, and even sick a bit.
I've talked about making a post for my Arabic blog in my previous post, and I did that. But afterward, I fell sick a bit and I've been fasting for few days afterward which made me sleep most of the day and awake most of the night. No time to make much except to enjoy a bit of the silence of the night.
However, just in the past week I've managed to work a bit on some shots for the RP season, since it's February already; Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month.

RP 2022

In the beginning, I wasn't quite sure what to shoot here. I've spent a considerable time making ideas and brainstorming. i got out with some good ideas (I guess?) but anyway, when thinking about the next steps on how to make these ideas happen, everything seemed clogged. I would either need some help, which I don't have, or need some special tools or props, and the like. For this reason, I had to play it down and be as simple as possible. 

RP Dilemma

So, the first idea that I came about to conclude is a shot that describes the dilemma that we, people with Retinitis Pigmentosa, face in various light and dark conditions and how there is no one solution that fits all situations. To shoot RP Dilemma, I've made use of the sun (using speedlites was an idea as well but I don't want to add complexity to the equation as it is already). Under the sun, I've placed an ND8 (3 stops) filter half-way on the lens and thus making the image half dark and half light. Honestly, working under the sun was such a pain and I couldn't figure out what I was shooting. I deemed all my photos useless and was going to delete them all, but until I went inside and viewed them clearly on LCD, I've realized that I've shot some usable images there. Well, one in fact out of don't-know-how-much. the final image needed some work of course in balancing the dark and light (dodge and burn) and few other things related to saturation and cropping. One thing I'm not satisfied with here though is the look and the direction of the eye which was supposed (as I was planning) to be direct and straight. 

Color My Life

Then I was up to another simple idea, and this time it did require few edits in Photoshop and not all done in-camera. The challenge, thought, with Color My Life is the framing of the image. In the shooting, I admit, I was working hastily as I wanted to finish with this shot as soon as possible and head to something else. I've done it after midnight when everyone was asleep.
Since I'm shooting in infrared, I needed an infrared source, and here comes my old arsenal of tungsten light bulbs (150W) which can be hard to find nowadays! I keep those for emergencies like this, even though I might use a speedlite as well but speedlites got its own problems (to name one: Focusing properly with infrared filter on lens).
The filter in use here was Neewer's IR720, which means the threshold here is 720nm. I could've also use my B+W 650nm infrared filter but I thought it might leak colors more than it should, as the aim here with shooting in infrared is to reflect the idea of low saturation. Higher threshold values would render the infrared image closer to a monochrome or B&W, while low threshold value would allow some color in. Thus, 720nm seemed a safe bet.
As stated already, the real challenge was framing. I had to test many crops till I landed on one that I deemed acceptable. The other challenge was merging the two images; The colored and the infrared. The challenge here was to select only the colored pencils and mask the rest. With my old version of Photoshop, such selecting tools are not the best out there and I had to spend a considerable time trying to do my best with the "marching ants". Yet, it's not perfect of course.
At the final stage, I've added extra sharpening to hands only to add more to the dramatic sense of the image, beside some bits of adjusting the lights in the image. 

The Caneman

However, probably the one in this series was the hardest. I was going to abandon the whole idea but I pushed myself to do it, despite the fact that I didn't quite like the place. I was aiming for some place with a black or dark background, and I don't have such a place anywhere at home, unfortunately.
The idea is, apparently as can be seen in The Caneman, a bit comical with a reflection on the hurdles of being a person with RP (the cane, the shades). Took me a while to adjust the power of the speedlite (and using the oval globe diffuser on the speedlite). But after all, I didn't like the shadow cast from my body (and it would make problems for me when merging the other shots later on) so I decided to take a shot for the scene without me to blend as a background.This bit, though, is not quite to my liking and I feel it popping out as "too unrealistic" even for a comical shot like this, but all in all, this is better than not doing anything at all. The rest of the work is, of course, some editing tricks in Photoshop (if I can call them so) and using the Radial Blur specifically to mimic the movements of the cane and the hand. As for the big head, it is taken from a separate shot of course, up close to the camera. Unlike the previous two shots where I used my favorite Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens, for The Caneman I've used the Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5. 

Finale

Up to the time of writing this text, there are still some ideas the cook at the back of my head and I'm not sure if I will be able to achieve them. February is still ongoing and seems I still have time. Of course, I can do them even after February but it would be nicer if I can finish these ideas related to Retinitis Pigmentosa during this month specifically.
Meanwhile, and looking back at what I would call a "resolution" for my retirement, about managing my time and setting some type of routine for me to do things around, all that seems to be falling apart for the time being, and I'm not sure if I can be up to the task with such turbulent sleeping schedule and tired body.
Now that I don't have to go to work, I'm yearning to go out and do some shooting specially at night, on the beach area, as I used to do in the old days, but driving my car gives me the shivers now. I heard about some people that had been fined for driving while they are registered as being "people with visual disability"; I don't want to be in that place. Yet, no one out there to help me out and tour me around. The national holidays are coming as well and typically it is a good occasion for some night-time shooting for all those decorations and light art. But I have to keep it all to myself for now. There are more pressing matters that I need to deal with and I think I would have some time to think about all of this when I'm over with those. Hopefully…